Just Give Me Some Truth

Last week I saw two films on John Lennon, and both were disappointing.  As a Beatles fan(atic) from way back, it troubles me to see distortions onscreen, particularly when the audience may consist of people unfamiliar with Lennon's life who may take these depictions to heart.

The first was the feature film +Nowhere Boy, directed by Sam Taylor-Wood.  The best thing I can say about this film is that Aaron Johnson looked, in long shots, like the young John, especially when he had his Buddy Holly-like glasses on.  The most effective scenes were those when John and Paul first meet and the Quarrymen play their first gigs.  On the other hand, the scenes with Ann-Marie Duff (estranged mother Julia) were exaggerated (her acting, their relationship with each other).  Yes, Julia was young when she had John, but I've read many many books on the Beatles and didn't expect to see her attraction to and love for him so over-the-top flirtatious, nearly incestuous.  John grieved deeply and always after her sudden death, but it wasn't because of any sexual attraction; it was because he was just starting to know her after years of absence.


Christopher Eccleston in Lennon Naked had the accent down, but is too old to be portraying John Lennon in the the mid-60's through early 70's.  That alone was distracting, but more than that, again we had stereotypical Lennon anecdotes, including

•  his cruelty to others (Cynthia, childhood friends, Brian Epstein)
• his possible sexual liaison with Brian Epstein (the beginning of the film concentrates on this)
•  his childishness/failure to "grow up" (jumping into pool with clothes on, bed-in being mocked by the press)
• his insensitivity to the other Beatles when breaking up the band (at least they showed Paul jumping the gun by announcing he was quitting before Lennon could get the word out)

Although these things are documented and well known, to concentrate on them without also showing clearly his creativity, humor, and generosity seems just another attempt to sensationalize. 

Fortunately, Lennon NYC on PBS Monday night redeemed John's portrait.  Of course, it was a documentary, so we saw what was.  Documentaries can also distort, but this one did not.  John didn't come off looking like a saint -- his excessive drinking and boorish behavior during his famous "Lost Weekend" was honestly depicted, as was his neglect of Julian.  But we saw his outspokenness against the Vietnam War and Nixon's efforts to have him deported for this; his love for NYC/America; his great love for Yoko and Sean.   And, of course, his huge talent in action.  It was fascinating to see how the melodies came and lyrics were revised as the songs evolved.  This is the John Lennon we should remember.

Striking Oil with Rick Bass

Where The Sea Used To Be, there are now forests, mountains, tremendous layers of rock.  This deeply-layered novel has multiple depths as well - several layers of storylines going - the topmost being the search for oil, led by Old Dudley. 

Old Dudley echoes characters in books I've previously read:  Marcus in Iris Murdoch's A Message to The Planet, Sam Pollit in Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children, and Maurice Conchis in John Fowles' The Magus, all impish master manipulators, sometimes sadistic, seemingly impervious to the human/physical destruction they leave in their wakes.  Despite his extremely difficult and often repulsive personality, Old Dudley is loved.  It is not, however,within his capacity to return it; the only thing he feels any passion for is his constant search for oil as he penetrates the rocks beneath him, and his dominance over others as he strives to attain this end.

Although I've probably read short pieces by Rick Bass in lit journals, as his name was familiar, I had never read any of his books.  For a first novel (1998), this book is profound, learned, and polished.  At times it is mythic, as in the moving scene when the great black bear joins the dying Helen at her picnic table for a late-night pancake feast.  It's also deeply grounded in reality -- Bass's descriptions of the tiny mountain town of Swan and its surrounding land and water, of its inhabitants both human and animal, and of the relationships that develop among them are as sharp and clear as November mountain air.

Even the town's name has echoes and reverberations, layers like the rock Old Dudley seeks to master.  There are two Swans - when Wallis, one of Dudley's proteges, first seeks out the town, he is told to go onward to the second Swan.  At the end of the book, Artie, the owner of the town bar, says he spotted two swans for the first time in thirty years.  The swans, which had been plentiful before that, had been killed by wolves many years since, so their visits had ceased.  Matthew, Old Dudley's finest protege (until Dudley sapped his essence, his oil, his richness) tells how the only time swans make a sound is "right before they die.  It's the only sound they make in their whole life.  That's why they call it a swan song.  They lie down and stretch out their neck and whistle.  It's not a pretty sound -- not at all like you'd think.  It's horrible."  Matthew then goes on to say that he heard this sound when, as a kid, he caught one and stoned it to death.  Perhaps this is why Matthew allowed Old Dudley to sap the life out of him -- he was caught ( baited) and, like the swan, gradually killed (the swan's stoning by Matthew like Old Dudley's repeated shots to Matthew's life force).  Stoning - an appropriate image in a book filled with images like this, of the earth's various layers being, in one way or another, put to mankind's service. 

Old Dudley's manhood could be compared to the oil drill - his worst nightmare is waking with a flaccid penis (dry oil well).  What constitutes manhood?  In Dudley's mind, it is bending others to his will, whether it be his proteges, women, townspeople, or nature in its various forms.  Although he feels superior to the rock he drills, Dudley is still afraid of the nature he doesn't know -- the woods, the upper layers of the earth, animals, snow --  and repeatedly curses these things. 

The one thing he can't control is his daughter Mel.   She retains her independence from him, having chosen long ago to stay in Swan and track the wolves( see Women Who Run With the Wolves - Mel personifies one of these archetypal women).  Although she's inherited Dudley's stubbornness, she refuses to be cowed by his cruelty, his sarcasm, his will.  She's connected to the upper earth (people, the wolves and other animals around her), to the townspeople (particularly Helen) and possesses a respect for life, nature, and self that Dudley lacks. 

Dudley teaches Matthew and Wallis how to find oil; Helen teaches the townspeople how to read the weather; Matthew teaches Wallis how to track elk; and Mel leaves her decades-long tracking of wolf patterns to teach the town's children.  Along the way, people learn as much from the world around them as they do from their specific tutors.  One character, young Colter, springs free from the confines of the town to explore farther north, out of reach of the rigs and Dudley's grasp, leaping over the rock wall Matthew built years ago (it runs for miles through the land) and which was lengthened and built on since by all the townspeople.  This wall is a constant work-in-progress.  It connects the people to their land.

Rick Bass is a wonderful nature writer with a deep understanding of human nature as well.  I knew I would love this book after reading the first sentence:  "He had been eating the whole world for the seventy years of his life; and for the last twenty, he had been trying to eat the valley."  Clever Bass, hooking me.

The Singular Mark Twain

This year is the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain's death.  He stipulated that his Autobiography not be published until this date occurred - now it is coming out in 3 volumes to be published by the University of California Press (1st volume due November 2010).  After reading The Singular Mark Twain by Fred Kaplan, I am even more anxious to delve into Twain's autobiography.  Twain said, "I think we never become really & genuinely our entire & honest selves until we are dead -- & not then until we have been dead years & years.  People ought to start dead, & then they would be honest so much earlier."  His Autobiography promises to be a revelatory read.

The Singular Mark Twain is another tome - 655 pp. - but his story was told with such panache that it was not at all daunting.  As a longtime fan of Twain -- I re-read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn again last year and found it even deeper than I remembered it -- it was interesting to me to read of his life, his love for his wife Livy, and the relationships he had with other important figures of the age, particularly William Dean Howells.  I read Howells' A Hazard of New Fortunes in college, but don't remember much of it.  Howells certainly was a good and loyal friend to Twain over the course of many, many years, and Twain was often not an easy man to deal with. 

I would have eliminated some of the details of Twain's financial problems; his penchant for poor investments was detailed repeatedly.  These are the only parts of the book I glossed over.  I'd been aware that he became even more difficult toward the end of his life, but did not know the details.  It was dismaying how easily swayed he was by his daughter Clara against Isabel Lyon, who devoted so many years of her life to making Twain happy as secretary, companion and housekeeper.  This was probably the worst case of Twain turning against people he had formerly held dear.  The darker aspects of his personality (and his writing) were always there -- it seems that as he aged, he was less reticent to keep them hidden.

What was most entertaining to me was seeing the variety of ways he manifested his individuality. He was generally fearless in airing his opinions, some of which were quite unpopular in his day -- he was disdainful of religion, outspoken against prejudice (a contrast to his early years), and against imperialism.  He was an avid traveler who preferred ships over trains, curious to experience the mores and people of many different lands.  He explored areas physically and mentally that many of his contemporaries were reluctant to visit.

I can see why Hal Holbrooke never gets bored playing Twain.  Mark Twain was such a rich personality, so full of wit, so very "singular."  He was very often blind to his faults, but aren't we all? 

What Happened to the Battle That Was Ragin'?

As Jenny Diski says repeatedly in Picador's lovely "BIG IDEAS/small books" edition of The Sixties:  "The music was undeniably as great as we thought it was."  She repeats this over and over again, and over and over again I agreed with her.  She says, perfectly, "The music knew where we were going in our heads and wrote the score."  It reminded me of the scene in The Big Chill when one of Harold's (Kevin Kline's) college friends accuses him of being stuck in the 60's because all he plays on his stereo is 60's music.  One friend says, "Come on, there's been some great music since then", but isn't able to name any.  (That film soundtrack remains one of the best of all time.)

This is a small book, in both size and length, at 134 pages, but Diski is succinct, objective, and honest in her analysis of those times.  She's also a Brit, so it was interesting to read her take on what was happening in the U.S. from someone "across the pond."

I have another book by Diski, Stranger on a Train, (subtitled "Daydreaming and Smoking Around America With Interruptions").  The title alone was funny, and I really enjoyed this addition to the Travel section of my bookcase.  It was much more than a book on her travels by train, and the difficulties of smoking during her travels; like Paul Theroux, she has a knack for writing memorable portraits of the people she meets, and for writing profoundly on life in general as she makes her way to her destination.

I'm glad Diski made clear at the beginning of the book that:

"The Sixties, of course, were not the decade of the same name.  They began in the mid-1960s with the rise of popular culture. . . aided by a generation of people who did not have an urgent economic fear, nor (in Britain) a war to deal with, and it ended in the mid-1970s when all the open-ended possibilities we saw began to narrow. . ."

She says that the "big idea" we had, that included "freedom, liberty, permission, a great enlarging of human possibilities" was "an idea we failed to think through.  It was a failure of thought essentially, rather than a failure of imagination."  This is crucial.  What made those times so exciting and made them feel so open-ended was the power of our imaginations.  We had a great sense of play. 

She talks about the "terrible clarity of vision" that's "available to the young of every generation, and those who look become the trouble-makers, the difficult ones, that the elders complain about eternally."  How much better could the gist of those times be stated?  This also rang a bell to me personally, as I have always felt that I'm the "difficult" one of my siblings, the one unafraid to pull the covers off the truth and talk about what lies underneath.  I think a lot of those who were close to me at the time held that same spot in their family dynamic.

Diski is truthful about the failures of those times, but also kind toward our youthful hopes and dreams.  "Like the young at all times, I imagined that such as us had never happened before, and that nothing was ever going to be the same again once the old had passed into their pottering retirement.  What the young don't get is that they are young; the old are right, young is a phase the old go through."

To paraphrase Dylan, there are certainly still "battles ragin'", but I don't see youth on the front lines of those battles (against war and various oppressions) like we were in the 60's.  There are surely youth out there who are pursuing their ideals, and those ideals surely include freedom and liberty.  But despite the proliferation of media tools for networking and the spread of information, I don't hear or see much real rebellion in the air, at least not from youth.  Diski thinks the generations older and younger than us "are more inclined than we were to reproduce for their young what they experienced in their childhood, rather than offer them Wonderland.  We were stardust, we were golden and we had to get ourselves back to the garden. . ."

 

The Passage

Recently, I find myself pulling fantasy novels off my bookshelf. Is it because I need an escape from the debilitating and constant unemployment situation? Because of the continuing and futile war, disappointment in Obama, floods and earthquakes killing so many people? Although I’ve always enjoyed fantasy and sci-fi (I loved Anne Rice 's vampire series, and the heroine in Dana Gabaldon’s Outlander series is one of the all-time greats of any genre), they don’t form the bulk of my library, and recently, I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction. But it’s also true that since childhood, I’ve loved myths and fairy tales. I still periodically re-read them, and just bought a nice leather volume of Bullfinch’s Mythology at the latest AAUW Book Sale. Myths are, after all, our oldest stories. Stories of quests, strange creatures, and the battle of good versus evil remain as popular today as eons ago. (Also, the first novel I wrote turned out to be a fantasy novel – did I subconsciously want to write a tale like those that first hooked me on reading?)

My nephew recently lent me The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly, which was very well-written. I particularly enjoyed his history of the fairy tales used in the book, in an appendix to the novel.

The book that’s lingered in my head for weeks now, though, through others I’ve read in the meantime, is The Passage, by Justin Cronin. I bought the book after reading an interview with him on the Powell’s Books website (http://www.powells.com/); the book sounded intriguing, and I was in the mood for escape after the two tomes I’d just finished (see earlier blog).

The theory voiced most often in the media in explanation of the spate of films and novels about vampires and zombies in the past few years is this: We feel helpless in relation to the economy, environmental disasters, and endless and futile wars (sounds like I fit right in). These vampire/zombie films and novels voice our helplessness in the face of implacable foes that can’t be killed and which we can’t control.

From the first chapter, Cronin convinces us that his world is real. It could be our world, which is what makes it truly frightening. Although The Passage is dark and terrifying, it’s also full of compassion for its characters. The unlikely heroine is a child, but there is another character whose presence remains throughout the book even after he’s physically left the scene, and was, to me, the true hero.

These vampires are unapproachable and not the least enigmatic, unlike Lestat or Louis (or Edward in the Twilight series). They’ve been created by man, and man can’t fix the terror he’s unleashed.

My only complaint is the ending. I felt the same way after reading the long and creepy, and sometimes maddeningly repetitive novel, Drood. This ending isn’t as frustrating, but I did have the same urge, though only momentary this time, to toss the book across the room. Then I re-read the last chapter and thought maybe it had to end that way. Or did it? Cronin’s definitely left things open for a sequel.

Two Massive Tomes

My sister Lydia usually reads several books at a time.  I may have a book of poetry on my coffeetable that I'll read to break up a long novel or book, but I usually just concentrate on one book, preferring to lose myself in that one world and give it my full attention.

For a change, though, I decided to tackle both the 1200+-page history Gotham by Burrows and Wallace, and the 800+-page novel NewYork by Edward Rutherfurd.  I'm coordinating the chapters by date, i.e., I'll read the history of New York through a certain date, and then the novel through that same time span.  It's easy to link the two because Rutherfurd's chapters are subtitled by date, and the massive history can easily be stopped when I reach the stopping end of an era, so to speak.  Gotham ends in 1898, while the novel takes us through the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center.

What's interesting about doing the reading this way is seeing how the novelist makes the historical record come alive (although Gotham wasn't his only source).  We care about these characters.  What made one man or woman a Loyalist and others Patriots?  The fictional characters interact with historical ones like Ben Franklin and George Washington.

We follow several families through the generations, with certain talismans being passed down from one to the next.  The most poignant thread was that of the wampum belt, which we encounter toward the beginning of the novel, and which ends up being worn (and disintegrates) during the World Trade Center attacks.

Burrows and Wallace's writing, although like a textbook, is not dry.  The biggest difficulty I had with it was the weight of the book itself - how to hold it without making dents in my legs or ending up with aching wrists! 

I discovered many facts about New York City that were unknown to me before this reading, such as the fact that NYC was one of the largest slaveholding sites, fighting long and hard against abolition, and that NYC was our first capitol.  Of great interest to me was reading about the history of the publishing industry, how it began and evolved.  The footnotes were as interesting as the text - here's a sample, regarding the sewing industry:

"Singer introduced a family machine in 1856.  Home sales were sluggish at first, until Singer offered them at half price to ministers' wives and to sewing societies connected with churches, after which sales to "respectable" women picked up. . ."

The Draft Riots of 1863 detail the lynching and burning of blacks.  This is but one of the horrifyingly violent episodes in NYC's history, and one of Rutherford's characters, whose family we've come to care about, is a victim of this horror.

There's so much here - women's history, mercantile history, wars and battles and greed and generosity, writers and artists, plagues and inventions, common sense and blindness.  As I love the intensity, excitement, bustle and uniqueness of our most exciting city, it was a pleasure to discover its history.  I was touched that Rutherfurd ended his novel shortly after one of his characters visits Strawberry Fields, and then finds out that a Freedom Tower is to be erected at Ground Zero.  His character says: 

"That Strawberry Fields garden he'd come from, and the Freedom Tower he'd been thinking of:  taken together, didn't they contain the two words that said it all about this city, the two words that really mattered?  It seemed to him that they did.  Two words:  the one an invitation, the other an ideal, an adventure, a necessity.  'Imagine' said the garden.  'Freedom' said the tower.  Imagine freedom.  That was the spirit, the message of this city he loved."

It was an interesting experiment on my part, tackling these two books this way, and I'm glad I did it.  I'd recommend this method to anyone, but you may want to purchase a lapdesk first. . .

Please Go to "Please Give"

My Aunt Moogs conscientiously made small donations to many different charities; my mom does the same; I continue to do so despite being unemployed.  The desire to support causes we believe in (and believing that our doing so helps) runs in the family.  So I could identify with Kate's (Catherine Keener's) guilt and angst in Nicole Holofcener's Please Give, now playing at the 19th Street (Civic Little) Theatre in Allentown, at 7:30 tonight through Thursday.

The question is:  Where does it stop?  Do our small donations make a dent in the suffering all around us?  Are our assumptions about charities valid?  Once we start giving, the pleas quickly become a deluge.  Are we better off making one lump-sum donation to a single cause?  Do we stop giving and worry about ourselves?  Or do we just do what we can and try not to lose sleep over all that's undone?

In this film, Kate (Catherine Keener) wonders how to justify a purchase of expensive jeans for her daughter when people on the street below her (lovely and amazing) apartment freeze and go hungry.  And how does she justify making a profit re-selling old furniture at a huge mark-up, purchased from sellers ignorant as to its value -- does she tell them, and watch her own livelihood disappear?  Or learn to live with the guilt?

Nichole Holofcener has an ear for the way real people talk and act, especially women experiencing various degrees of crisis or stasis.  She presents her characters as they are, leaving us to judge them, as she does not.  Some scenes are uncomfortable to watch, as when Kate's daughter Abby receives a facial and her pimples are literally squeezed, but we cringe as well when Kate attempts to give her restaurant leftovers to an elderly gentleman outside a restaurant.  He's waiting in line to be seated, and Kate's and her family's embarrassment at her mistaking him for homeless is palpable.  This kind of discomfort -- the recognition it sparks and the questions it raises -- is one of the reasons film can have such power to move us.

The well-to-do vintage furniture store owners Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) have arrangements to purchase (or have already purchased) the apartment next-door.  This apartment is presently occupied by an elderly woman (Ann Morgan Guilbert as Andra), grandmother to Mary (callous) and Rebecca (kind and dutiful, played by Rebecca Hall, so beautiful in Vicky Christina Barcelona).  Kate and Alex can't expand into the apartment next door until Andra dies.  They wonder and worry how this agreed-upon transaction appears to Andra and her granddaughters, and how their friendly (and sometimes calculated) overtures appear.  The granddaughters don't seem bothered by the arrangement.  And crotchety Andra?  There are indications that she may not be too batty to be unoffended. 

The acting is splendid all around.  Sarah Steele deserves a Supporting Actress nomination for her role as Abby, accurately and perceptively capturing the surface concerns (the desire for expensive jeans), the backtalk, and the depth of a smart 15-year-old girl.  During the facial scene mentioned above, her complexion and expression minutely change as she listens to offhand news from Mary (Amanda Peet) that she realizes holds more import than her young heart can bear.  I was happily surprised to see Sarah Vowell in a small part as one of Kate's store patrons. 

The Roches "No Shoes" perfectly opened the film, a perfect fit in tone and content -- "I complained that I had nothing left to lose/And then I met a manWho had no shoes... "