Author: bythefirelight

Mardy, Patterns, No Time For Sargents (Golden Age of TV) – A Review

~ bythefirelight ~ 2 Comments

In watching the programs in The Golden Age of Television (The Criterion Collection) you are quickly reminded how much has changed since these stories were first written and produced. Not only have styles, tastes changed, and concerns of TV viewers, but the cultural context in which these stories were first written. In general terms, they reflect a pre-suburban vision of America based in the great urban cities such as NY. They are time capsules of a time that only seems to exist now in mythic memories of the old ethnic neighborhoods of the European emigrants, something that has long passed into history.

Mardy

Is one of the most famous programs from the so called Golden Age of TV and even today the writing with its minute realism is still interesting. Chayefsky truly had a way with dialog and the scene where Mardy is on the phone calling a woman up for a date on Saturday night is as good as it gets when trying to write nervousness. He also knew how to write about people doing nothing quite well. As a story Mardy is also still interesting, but it also feels at this distance (almost 60 years) unreal.

Briefly, Mardy is the last unmarried son of an Italian American widow. He is a butcher and spends his time in the neighborhood bar with his friends worrying about when he’s going t get married. He thinks he’s a looser and so is set to give up on happiness, until he meets a less than attractive woman at a dance and decides, despite the ribbing of his friends, he is going to go out on a date with her again.

What makes the story so distant is the interaction with the mother, who worries that he is going to leave her to marry the young woman and she’ll die all alone. These days that doesn’t even seem like an issue, since it is common for children to leave home after school. It is a sign of failure among many that you are still at home after school. Moreover, this is New York of the neighborhood and everyone is constantly after him to say when he is going to get married. One could be forgiven for asking what’s the big deal? Just get married, of course nothing is ever that easy and Chayefsky is quite good and portraying that and it is in that the story still has its power. The working class world Mardy inhabits may have changed and like Last Exit to Brooklyn is a working class New York that is now part of a distant history, but the character of Mardy can still be found. If one is sympathetic to his struggle just to get along, then the show is worth watching.

Patterns

Patterns is Rod Serling’s take on corporate culture. The story is simple: a young executive is brought in to replace and old and worn out executive and in the ensuing power change the executive finds that he has a broader social conscience than the CEO. While this kind of corporate evil vs the young insider with a consciousness is a common theme (Wall Street for example), Serling’s climax is a little different than even a contemporary work like The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. In the Gray Flannel the only option for the good is to leave the corporate world. For Serling the option is to continue to work, but try to not only work for change with in, but to oust the boss when you can. While that man work as a secret plot, Serling’s young executive tells the CEO this and the CEO is of the opinion that that is fine as long as the corporation continues on, since all that matters is the longevity of the corporation. The feed the beast argument is different and while it is satisfying to believe the young executive is going to change things in his titanic struggle with the CEO, his conclusion rings a little hollow. Perhaps it reflects some of the post war labor-management that existed in the 50’s, but the notion that one is going to bring change just for the sake of being nice to workers doesn’t usually happen. The problem with that kind of ending in a social work is that it doesn’t show the way forward, just makes everyone feel happy. That said, it is well acted and well written.

No Time For Sargents

No Time for Sargents is part of that long list of stories about yokels coming into the modern world and showing it as silly and easily to disturb. Andy Griffith plays a southern boy filled with back country wisdom who has no idea what the modern Army is like. Put the two of them together and hilarity ensues. The southern yokel jokes seem a little stereotypical now and lead right into that long line of silliness that finds is apex with the Beverly Hill Billies. Fortunately, No Time for Sargents still has some funny jokes and its take on the army as a kind of a place where average young men can over turn bureaucratic ineptitude and help make the Army the true reflection of America, a just meritocracy with a can do spirit.

Literary Life in North Korea at Publishing Perspectives

~ bythefirelight

Publishing Perspectives has an interesting look at literary life in North Korea. While it may not be news, North Korea is not the Soviet Union with its underground of writers hoping to smuggle their work out to the west. North Korea is so controlled that even those risky moments of rebellion don’t exist. And naturally, the works are pure propoganda

B.R. Myers warns that “North Korea is country in which all cultural activity is subjugated to the needs of the Workers Party. Even a simple love story, for example, will carry a propaganda message — a man will fall in love with a woman because she has the right attitude toward working for the state.”

Another typical story might be: A solider is lazy and not sweeping the floor of his tent, so a comrade does it for him. The bad soldier comes in and sees what has been done and bursts into tears and says he’s sorry.

The author of the book The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters by B.R. Myers (Melville House) which is partly reviewed you may know as the author of attacks on modern literature that have appeared in The Atlantic.

Review of New Horacio Castellanos Moya Book at El Pais

~ bythefirelight

El Pais gave a brief review of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s latest book Con la congoja de la pasada tormenta. It is a good review, if brief.

Even though he has not put the stories together with this purpose, the 22 stories in Con la congoja de la pasada tormenta (With the Grief of the Tormented Past), by the Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya (Tegucigalpa, 1957), could serve one who does not know the rest of his books as an introduction to characters and themes that people them. Here one meets soldiers and journalists, professors and waiters, photographers and whores, revolutionaries and ex-prisoners, in addition to the endless supporting characters that with a  mere stroke acquire an immediate life (in this Castelanos is Cervantesque). As for the themes, over all of them is one: love, but not hevenly but the other urgent love that is the passion to posses, already seducing, cheating or believing cheated, paying or believing bought. In fact, some stories would fit well in a magazine with naked bodies if it were not for the literary quality, that style of sensual microsurgeon, that is as torrid as the subject mater. Also, because in the stories appear some complicated characters, insecure and anxious men, enfeebled by the testosterone that eroticises one with fantasies about what the rest do in their bed. Likewise alcohol occupies a place of honor – whiskey and beer most of all -, the public places where people drink and the alcoholics in general. And finally, the last of the short list is war, that conditions everything, manipulates and overturns so that the characters walk through the path of exile or brutalization. These three themes, nerveless, treat with unequal fortune and provoke disparate stories, something normal to keep in mind is the stories were written over 20 years. You can recognize two of stories, ‘Variaciones sobre el asesinato de Francisco Olmedo’ and ‘Con la congoja de la pasada tormenta’, that are really short novels. The first relates a trip into the past of a man who looks for the truth about the death of his friend in a gang, or that is what he believes, and fabricates the search with success until it leaves the reader convinced of all his uncertainties. The second uses for its title a quote from Don Quixote when the he found himself at the sale of prostitutes, drinkers and squabbles. Here the narrator is a waiter that becomes involved in a nightmaire at the hands of snobs of all types, and is also about the investigation of a murder. Both stories are near perfect and show that Castellanos dominates that rythm that is not easy to control.

Aunque él no los haya reunido con este propósito, los 22 cuentos de Con la congoja de la pasada tormenta, del escritor salvadoreño Horacio Castellanos Moya (Tegucigalpa, 1957), podrían servir a quien no conociera el resto de su obra literaria como introducción a los personajes y los asuntos que la pueblan. Aquí se encuentran militares y periodistas, profesores y camareros, fotógrafos y putas, revolucionarios y ex reclusos, además de un sinfín de secundarios que con un simple trazo adquieren vida inmediata (en esto Castellanos es cervantino). En cuanto a los asuntos, son sobre todo uno: el amor, pero no el celeste sino ese otro amor urgente que es la pasión por poseer, ya sea seduciendo, engañando o creyendo engañar, pagando o creyendo comprar. De hecho, algunos relatos encajarían bien en una revista con cuerpos desnudos si no fuera porque aquí la calidad literaria, ese estilo de microcirujano sensual, es tan tórrida como el contenido. Y también porque en ellos aparecen algunos personajes complejos, hombres inseguros y ansiosos, enfebrecidos por la testosterona que se erotizan con fantasías sobre lo que hacen los demás en la cama. Asimismo ocupan un lugar de honor el alcohol -sobre todo la cerveza y el whisky-, los lugares públicos en donde se consume y los dipsómanos en general. Y, por fin, el último de la terna es la guerra, que todo lo condiciona, lo manipula y lo trastoca para que los personajes caminen por la senda del exilio o del embrutecimiento. Los tres asuntos, sin embargo, se tratan con fortuna desigual y dan lugar a cuentos dispares, algo normal teniendo en cuenta que se trata de relatos escritos a lo largo de 20 años. Hay que destacar dos de las historias, ‘Variaciones sobre el asesinato de Francisco Olmedo’ y ‘Con la congoja de la pasada tormenta’, que en realidad son novelas cortas. La primera relata el viaje al pasado de un hombre que busca la verdad sobre la muerte de su amigo de pandilla, o eso cree, y que fabula esa búsqueda con éxito hasta dejar al lector convencido de todas sus incertidumbres. La segunda lleva por título una cita tomada del Quijote, cuando el caballero se encuentra en la venta, de nuevo lugar de putas, bebedores y trifulcas. Aquí el narrador es un camarero que se ve involucrado en una pesadilla a manos de señoritos de todos los pelajes, también a propósito de la investigación de una muerte. Ambos relatos rozan la perfección y vienen a demostrar que Castellanos domina ese ritmo nada fácil que exige el medio fondo.

Con la congoja de la pasada tormenta

Horacio Castellanos Moya

Tusquets. Barcelona, 2009

309 páginas. 18 euros

Spanish Authors Video Interviews – Canal-l.com

~ bythefirelight

Moleskin Literario pointed me to this Canal-l which has dozens of interview with Spanish Language authors. There is quite a collection, although the quality suffers a bit. Alone with El Publico Lee from Canal Sur and Pagina 2 from RTVE, one can easily gorge themselves on interviews.

The BBC’s American Archive

~ bythefirelight

Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes points out that the has a series of shows on the BBC with interviews with American authors. The interviews were recorded over a ten year period and all shows are about 30 minutes long. Here are some of the authors featured.

  • Playwright Edward Albee discusses his career.
  • Patricia Cornwell discusses her life and her career as a crime writer.
  • Don DeLillo author of Libra, Underworld and Cosmopolis.
  • E L Doctorow talks about novels including Ragtime and Homer and Langley.
  • Dave Eggers author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius talks to Mark Lawson.
  • Ellroy talks about Blood’s A Rover, which completes his Underworld USA Trilogy and why he has to shut himself away to write.
  • John Irving author of A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Cider House Rules.
  • Stephen King discusses writing horror
  • Norman Mailer speaking in the last major broadcast interview of his life.
  • Nobel prize winning author Toni Morrison talking to Mark Lawson at the Cheltenham Literary Festival.
  • Walter Mosley books include a series featuring Private Investigator Easy Rawlins.
  • Joyce Carol Oates author of over 50 novels including Blonde and Black Water.
  • Marilynne Robinson author of novels including Housekeeping and Gilead.
  • Philip Roth speaking as he published his last novel featuring the character Nathan Zuckerman Exit Ghost.
  • John Updike speaking on his 70th birthday.
  • John Updike speaking in his last recorded interview.
  • Gore Vidal discusses writing and politics.
  • Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse Five, speaking as he publishes a memoir called A Man Without a Country.
  • Playwright August Wilson discusses his attitude to writing.
  • Tom Wolfe explains the ideas behind new journalism.
  • Tom Wolfe discusses new journalism and a novel depiciting sex amongst college kids; I Am Charlotte Simmons.

Banipal – New Egyptian Writing (Spring 2006)

~ bythefirelight ~ 2 Comments

I only found out about Banipal a week or two ago and thought of buying a copy, but at 18 pounds for 3 issues (not too bad) and 17 pounds for shipping (ridiculous) forget that. Fortunately, I live near a major university and they have a subscription. I read through issue 25, New Writing from Egypt. First, I was impressed with the quality of the writing. Too often I have read journals that are compendiums of authors and they aren’t particularly interesting. The authors who I found interesting and have books in English were Ahmed Alaidy’s Being Abbas el Abd (American University Cairo, 2006), which not only was an interesting story, but lexicographically interesting; and Hamdy Abowgliel’s Thieves of Retirement (Syracuse University Press, 2006). They bother were in the more seedy and criminal seeming vain but look worth perusing.

In addition to these writers, were several who were more playful in their stories, such as Haytham Al-Wardany’s Pissing on the World which is just about boys pissing on streets and seeing what they can get away with. Also of note was Ibrahim Farghali’s brief story The Monotonous Rhythm of the Years of Drought which describes the humiliation a man feels when he cheats on his fiancé with his old girlfriend. Safaa Ennagar’s Amoeba was about a woman who wears shapely cloths before her marriage, but after must wear baggy ones. One day in a private moment she again finds the freedom to wear the tighter clothes and has a moment of transcendence.

The collection is filled with interesting works, although having looked at a couple other issues, I do know they can be a little poetry heavy which isn’t bad, just something I don’t read much.

To finish I’ll quote Ennagar who comments on the state of Egyptian writing:

Literary production in Egypt today is either a way of releving the poetic situation of the writer or a kind of intellectual luxury that goes beyond reality. It is a literature of the “ghetto” that neither affects, nor is affected by, social and political movements. It is new on the levels of both form and content, but is presented only within the circle of the literati; there is no interest in spreading it outside the small elite. The print-run is limited (usually 1000 copies) as official institutions generally support works that are more traditional and lasting.

BTBA 2010 Fiction Longlist and My Review of News from the Empire by Fernando del Paso

~ bythefirelight

Three Percent, as part of their Best Translated Book Award for 2010, has used my review of “News from the Empire” by Fernando del Paso In their post and gave it some nice comments.

I can’t do half the job summing up this mammoth book that Paul Doyle did for Quarterly Conversation. So rather than even try, I’m going to give all props to Paul and use his review to profile this particular BTBA title

Another book in their Best Translated Book Award 2010 long list that I read this year and thought was very good (and reviewed) was Vilnius Poker. You can read my review here.

The Long list is a great resource for translated books, especially since all of them are in print right now, so if you see one you like you can buy it. The full list is here.

Hipólito Navarro, El Sindrome Chejov and the Spanish Short Story

~ bythefirelight ~ 3 Comments

I’ve been reading the short stories of the Spanish writer Hipólito Navarro recently (a review forth coming) and enjoying his complex and compressed stories, which are often no more than four pages long yet wait until the end to reveal themselves. He is someone who should make it into English someday. While looking for information on him I found the blog, El Sindrome Chejov (the Chekhov Syndrome) which has a large number of interview with short story writers, including a long with Navarro. It is worth the look.

Q: If a novelist always writes the same novel, is the work of a short story writer a farmhouse that one goes little by little tearing off the roof, reinforcing the walls and adding rooms?

A: Yes, one suspects that it is this way. At least in part…

P: Si un novelista escribe siempre la misma novela, ¿es la obra de un cuentista un cortijo al que se van poco a poco echando los techos, reforzando los muros y añadiendo habitaciones?

R: Sí, cabe sospechar que así sea. Al menos en parte…

A Reader’s Journey Through the Best American Short Stories

~ bythefirelight

The Year of Bass (in a somewhat stunt fashion…Julia and Julie anyone. Perhaps that is a little unfair. ) his reading of all the stories in The Best American Short Stories  series. His reviews of each story are not reviews so much as train of thought reflections, often amounting to a screen’s length of thoughts about the story. He does his homework though, and I’ve never heard of some of these authors and it is interesting how many good stories are out there.

Spain in a 100 Books, the Women

~ bythefirelight ~ 4 Comments

Earlier I posted about a feature in Letras Libres that listed close to 100 books that helped define Spain in the 20th Century. One of the things you may have noticed is there were scarcely any women writers. Laura Freixas has remedied that situation with her addition of 25 women authors. I have read several and several are in English so it is useful list. You can see some of the books I am acquainted with.

This kind of lopsideness in lists shows up a lot in Spanish speaking critics. A few years ago the list of the top 100 best novels of the last 25 years Spanish had 5-10 books by women. Not a particularly representative sample.

I already know the standard answer of these critics: “We don’t apply qoatas, we only look for quality.” Quality? Acording to who? Since literature isn’t an exact sience, the quality will always be a question of taste ( tastes educated, formed, polite, of course, but in the end tastes), a question, then, subjective. Subjective factors are the ones that influence. That, for example, the Aragonese critic Félix Romeo has mentioned more books from Aragonese authors than his Catalan or Canarian college, seems to me explainable: he has more information about these works, the ones he knows, as such they are closer to him. And I legitimate, on the condition that one does not privilege other circumstances over others…that is what occurred when one only asks opinions of men (I am referring to the four critics consulted in that edition of Letras Libres).

Ya sé cuál es la respuesta estándar ante críticas de ese tipo: “No aplicamos cuotas, sólo atendemos a la calidad”. ¿Calidad? ¿A juicio de quién? Pues no siendo la literatura una ciencia exacta, la calidad siempre será cuestión de gustos (gustos instruidos, formados, educados, desde luego, pero gustos al fin), cuestión, pues, subjetiva. En la que influyen factores subjetivos. Que por ejemplo el crítico aragonés, Félix Romeo, haya mencionado más libros de autores aragoneses que su colega catalán o canario me parece explicable: tiene más información sobre esas obras, las conoce mejor, le resultan más próximas. Y legítimo, a condición de que no se privilegie unas circunstancias sobre otras… que es lo que ocurre cuando sólo se pide opinión a varones (lo eran los cuatro críticos consultados en el número de Letras Libres al que me estoy refiriendo).

The first three are available in English. The last I will be reading in a month or two. The full list is here.

■ Nada (1945), de Carmen Laforet

■ Fiesta al noroeste (1953), de Ana María Matute

■ La plaça del Diamant (1962), de Mercè Rodoreda

■ Mi hermana Elba (1980), de Cristina Fernández Cubas

Too Many Prizes: España, aparte de mi estos premios by Fernando Iwasaki – A Review

~ bythefirelight ~ 5 Comments

España, aparte de mi estos premios (Spain, Besides Me These Prizes) by Fernando Iwasaki is a very Spanish novel, one whose humor and satire is directed at the literary prizes that fill Spain’s literary scene and Spanish customs as if they were carried out by the Japanese.  The affect is often humorous for one who knows Spanish culture and he manages to create a parody that is often insightful, although a little  repetitive.

The book is structured around 7 literary contests. Each chapter, which is a self contained story, is prefaced by the rules of the contest, followed by the story, and then the results of the judging panel. It is helpful to know before going any farther that Spain has more literary prizes per capita than any other country, so many that it seems as if everyone has one a prize, even if they are from the most obscure organizations. The contests are meant to celebrate whatever body is sponsoring the award, some are nationalist such as the prize for the best story that celebrates Basque food, others are completely ridiculous, such as the Seville soccer team that sponsors a prize for a story that must include something about the team.

The stories all feature at least one Japanese person who has some sort of link with Spain. In the first story, a Japanese soldier in the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War hides in a cave in Murcia for 70 years until he makes a sudden appearance on a Survivor like reality show that takes place in a cave, killing several of the contestants with his samurai sword. At first he is treated as a criminal, but when he is found to be a veteran the parties of the left celebrate him as a heroic veteran and he becomes a national phenomenon. Books about him become best sellers and the media follow him 24 hours a day, showing him when he falls into a coma, on TV on a live feed. He is given awards by the local government for his service. When he wakes from the coma and learns about the last 60 years of history he commits suicide. On finding that he has written hundreds of haikus in the cave, the local government is quite happy because they can now build an amusement park of Japaneses tourists.

The story then ends with the judging. As with all the stories, the story wins, but the judges note that the story has not really celebrated the group’s interests and has only set the story in Spain. For next years contest, they would like the ability to not have a winner, something that is specifically outlawed in the rules of the contest.  In latter stories, the judges will complain that the story had almost nothing to do with the sponsoring organization. In the story about the soccer team in Seville, the story actually celebrates the team rival.

Iwasaki uses these frame stories to make fun of contemporary society and its obsessions. Whether skewering reality TV shows, molecular gastronomy, soccer fanatics, governments only interested in looking good, or the vanity of literary prizes Iwasaki is able to paint a telling portrait of modern Spain. Mixing in the Japanese characters allows him to both show the history of the Japanese in Spain, and to offer the outsider’s view of Spain. While the Japanese act in the same extremes of national character that his Spaniards do, the ludicrous things that become nationally celebrated, such as frying sushi leftovers in oil and serving that only, raise the question, why is this Spanish thing we do so celebrated? If someone use shrimp shells, as one character does, to create flan, is that breaking some sacred culinary tradition and is the opposite, fried sushi leftovers, actually more pure because of its simplicity?

Iwasaki, like a good parodist, doesn’t give any answers, but it is obvious he thinks that the culture of literary prizes has gone to far. At the end of the book, he gives several commandments for creating stories:

The stories that you send to the contest will never be important to the history of literature. In reality, not even for literature.

Los cuentos que envíes a los concursos nunca serán importantes para la historia de la literatura. En realidad, ni siuiera para la literatura.

Write a story that can be like a literary mother cell that you can clone for every contest. Don’t worry. Clones always are better than the original.

Escribe un cuento que sea como una <<célula madre>> literaria que puedas clonar para cada concurso. No te preocupes. Los clones siempre salen mejores que le orininal.

If you characters are going to be divorced, make the divorce happen before the story starts. People don’t like it when you only write about problems. In addition, four out of five literary judges are divorce or soon will be.

Si tus personajes van a estar divorciados, procura que el divorcio se haya producido antes de que comience el cuento. La gente ya lo está pasando muy mal para que encima tú sólo escribas sobre problemas. Además, cuatro de cada cinco miembros de jurados literarios están divorciados o les falta poco.

My only complaint in an other wise fun book is the repetitiveness of some of the stories. Every story includes a passage about the Japanese soldier that was found on a Pacific island in he 1970s who didn’t know the war ended. While that statement fits within his overall parody and his notion of the mother cell, it practice it is a little tiresome. If he could have found a different way to approach the idea it would have been better.

Over all, España, aparte de mi estos premios is a fun read by one of Spain’s newer generation of writers. I’m sure the book will never make it into translation because it is not universal enough, it would good to see one of the chapters in a collection some day.

Your Face Tomorrow in 3 Months with Conversation Reading

~ bythefirelight

Scott at Conversational Reading has a great schedule for reading Javier Marías’ trilogy Your Face Tomorrow. Considering that it is around 2000 pages long, Scott has come up with a great way to break it up into short sections that make it less daunting. I think I will try to take up the challenge. It’s too bad I read Spanish a little slow because I have all three volumes in Spanish at home.

Here is the schedule:

VOLUME 1

–1: Fever–

* Week 1, March 21-27: pp. 3 – 95 (Section ends at: “But before getting back to the Tupras . . .”)
* Week 2, March 28 – April 3: pp. 96 – 180 End of Section 1

–2: Spear–

* Week 3, April 4-10: pp. 183 – 233 (“Yes, I did remember . . .”)
* Week 4, April 11 – 17: pp. 234 – 316 (“This ability or gift was very useful . . .”)
* Week 5, April 17 – 24: pp. 317 – 387 (End of VOLUME 1)

VOLUME 2

–3: Dance–

* Week 6, April 25 – May 1: pp. 3 – 60 (“And so in the disco . . .”)
* Week 7, May 2 – 8: pp. 61 – 121 (“I left the restroom as resolutely . . .”)
* Week 8, May 9 – 15: pp. 122 – 201 (End of Section 3)

–4: Dream–

* Week 9, May 16 – 22: pp. 205 – 264 (“He fell silent for longer this time . . .”)
* Week 10, May 30 – June 5: pp. 265 – 341 (End of VOLUME 2)

VOLUME 3

–5: Poison–

* Week 11, June 6 – 12: pp. 3 – 113 (“Yes, we almost certainly shared that in common . . .”)
* Week 12, June 13 – 19: pp. 114 – 171 (End of Section 5)

–6: Shadow–

* Week 13 June 20 – 26: pp. 173 – 230 (“When you haven’t been back . . .”)
* Week 14, June 27 – July 3: pp. 231 – 328 (End of Section 6)

–7: Farewell–

* Week 15, July 4 – 10: pp. 331 – 393 (“I didn’t in fact think much about anything . . .”)
* Week 16, July 11 – 17: pp. 394 – 482 (“Wheeler stopped speaking and eagerly . . .”)
* Week 17, July 18 – 24: pp: 483 – 545 (End of VOLUME 3)

The White Ribbon – A Review

~ bythefirelight

The White Ribbon is Michael Haneke’s austere look at a German village on the eve of World War I. The austerity is not only in the composition, but the lives of the villagers, a place ruled by fear, strict obedience, piety and corruption. The village is a symbol of all that is to come in the twentieth century, a place where the inhabitants are the cowed participants of orders that lead them to their own destruction.

As the White Ribbon opens the village doctor is coming home from riding his horse and he suddenly felled by a thin wire that is strung across his path. It is a suspicious event because he has ridden that same path time daily. When it is investigated, the wires are suddenly missing. The accident is one of many mysterious events that occurs in the village and gives the movie a fearful sensibility.

While the mysterious events occur, the film examines the lives of the villagers. There is the baron, a man who thinks nothing of firing a family from his farm if one member is disobedient. In one particular example, the wife of a farm worker dies in an accident in the Barron’s mill. The oldest son of a family destroys the Barron’s cabbage patch as revenge and as punishment the father is let go. All this time the father, instead of blaming the Barron for not keeping his mill working, he accepts what comes to him as a matter of course.

The village minister is the embodiment of austerity and discipline whose sense of righteousness is unshakable. He believes in tying white ribbons to his children to remind them of the goodness that they should strive for. His punishments are strict, a moral discipline he expects from everyone.

As the incidents continue, it becomes more and more obvious that the village is filled with secrets that show the powerful can get away with anything and the weak have no way to resist and go along with the whatever they are told. Only the school teacher and the Baroness can see these problems. The Baroness tries to leave the village, saying that she is tired of the brutality that is everywhere in the village. The school teacher, as an outsider, has not been worn down by fear and is willing, within the limits the German society allowed, to investigate and not let things lay as they are. But then the war comes. The last scene is of the village gathering in the church after Austria and German have declared war. It is a kind of righteous farewell to a world that is about to change.

The White Ribbon is a dark film with cruel mysteries that indite a certain way of life with its obedience and brutality. The movie is not a hopeful one, except, perhaps, in that the world of the village no longer exists. Haneke does not spare anyone from his indictment and White Ribbon is sure to leave one wondering how the people could endure such things, but just watch how the inhabitants keep their heads bowed in fear and you will know.

The Trailer:

Tomás Eloy Martínez – RIP

~ bythefirelight

Tomás Eloy Martínez the author of Santa Evita and the Novel of Peron has died. The New York Times has an obituary. I’ve been meaning to read the Novel of Peron one day, since I own it.

Interweaving factual reporting and magic realism with meditations on myth, history and the quicksilver nature of truth, Mr. Martínez’s two most famous novels explore the lives of Argentina’s two best-known and most enigmatic figures. The first, “The Perón Novel” (Pantheon, 1988; translated by Asa Zatz), originally appeared in Argentina in 1985 as “La Novela de Perón.” It centers on Gen. Juan Domingo Perón, the Argentine dictator who held the presidency from 1946 until he was deposed in 1955, and again from 1973 until his death in 1974.

The second, “Santa Evita” (Alfred A. Knopf, 1996; translated by Helen Lane), was published in Argentina in 1995. It explores the life — or, more accurately, the afterlife — of Perón’s second wife, Eva. Both were best sellers in Argentina and have been translated into dozens of languages.

Requiem for a Heavyweight (Golden Age of TV) – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Requiem for a Heavyweight has always been one of those mythic moments in TV history that has been almost impossible for all but those outside of film specialist to see. Now with Criterion’s release of the The Golden Age of Television you can finally see if the show was as good as has been said.

Written by Rod Sterling and staring Jack Plance as Mountain McClintock, Requiem for a Heavyweight is usually considered the high point in early TV dramas. It tells the story of a Heavyweight boxer at the end of his career. He has been knocked out one too many times and now risks blindness if he goes into the ring again. He’s a simple fellow who is trusting and not particularly smart. He is also a little punch drunk and seems, along with his cauliflower ears, to be suffering the affects of 14 years in the ring. His manager, Keenan Wynn, needs him to keep earning money because he’s in debt to bookies. His trainer, Ed Wynn, wants the best for Mountain, but can’t say know to the manager, either. Mountain spends his time in a bar near the arena where old boxers go to spend the rest of their lives telling stores about the ring. It is not a pretty place and the old champ that is always telling the same stories is a pitiful man. In trying to get a job, Mountain meets an employment agent who tries to help him find something working with children. As Mountain begins to realize he can do something outside of boxing, his manager tries to turn him into a wrestler. For Mountain, wrestling is beneath a man who was almost the champ and was number 5 in 1945. But the Mountain is loyal to his manager until he finds out the manager bet against him in his last fight. Knowing this, he is finally able to break free and though on his own for the first time in 14 years, he now has some sort of future.

When watching these shows one has to approach them as one might a silent movie. Each genre has its own style. Whereas a silent uses over emphasized gestures to convey the story,  Requiem uses tight close ups to convey emotion. Moreover, because these were originally shot with video cameras there is a slight feeling that one is watching a soap opera, something I find uninteresting. However, those things aside, on a technical level Requiem for a Heavyweight is an amazing piece of work. The camera work is impressive and the range close ups, cutting between actors, camera movement in a scene, and the number of different sets is almost film like. This is certainly not a filmed play. They were able to capture a whole range of emotions with the camera. Although the use more close ups that you might expect, they are not tiresome. The sense of atmospherics they created in the bar and all the other dingy places the show takes place are well done, too. The show is at its best evoking a world of cruelty and theft. Only when the show moves to the employment office does the atmosphere weaken, but obviously that was intentional. Finally, the use of extras is quite effective. The strange men who inhabit the halls of the arena give the place a threatening air, and the champ who tells the stories in the bar is effective counter point to the Mountain, showing what he could become if he doesn’t leave the boxing world.

The acting, too, is stellar and Jack Plance is great as the punch drunk boxer. It truly has made Mountain his own. Comparing him to his role in Shane, Plance has created a character that is compelling , sympathetic and completely different. Both of the Wynns are effective, too, Ed especially. He has perfected the good hearted coward who wants to do the right thing, but is too afraid.

The story itself is effective, if having a few oddities. As an indictment of boxing it works perfectly. It is hard to remember 60 years latter how important boxing was and how corrupt it was. The picture Serling paints of the dark side of sports is powerful. Exchanging boxing for football with its broken players would be a good comparison. Still, modern sports has so much more money flowing into it that the dark arenas seem so distant and a little hard to connect with. At its most fundamental, though, Requiem is about exploitation and in that sense it succeeds. Serling, as one can see in the Twilight Zone, was a social writer and wanted to show society’s problems and Requiem is saturated with that concern. However, it also leads him to create the character of the social worker, in other words, the enlightened society, who will lead the boxer from the dark into the light.  While the drama between the Wynns and Plance seem natural and move out of their history, the social worker just seems to take to Mountain suddenly and wants to help him succeed. Perhaps in a longer work her role could be teased out, but here it seems forced, like it is the answer that needs saying. Moreover, the social worker says Mountain should work with children and he takes to the idea. Where does this come from? The desire to offer a social critique and a solution weakens an otherwise strong show.

Taken together, all the elements of Requiem for a Heavyweight make for an impressive show. While a few elements are a little dated, the acting and camera work make this a moment worth returning to.

(500) Days of Summer – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Romantic comedies are formulaic—boy meets girl, or some variation therein—and so it is a welcome change when a film can use those elements and tell an interesting story and even better, do it with a style that that is fresh and adds to the story telling. (500) Days of Summer is the story of a short relationship, 500 days, between Summer and Tom, two people who seem to share all the same interests—The Smiths, the Pixies—and get along so well, yet the relationship doesn’t work, and Tom is left wondering why.

What sets the film apart is how it goes about telling that story. The film is constructed around a non-liner plot where Tom tries to understand what went wrong. The non-linear structure allows the film makers to mix the happy scenes with the ones that show the problems, but also include commentaries from his 13 year-old sister who gives him dating advice, and his friends who know nothing. These elements allow the story to underscore not only his confusion, but Summer’s seemingly contradictory stance on relationships: shed doesn’t want a boyfriend, and yet instigates the relationship with Tom. Overlaying all of this is an occasional narrator who helps transition certain scenes and introduce the fundamental elements of the characters: Tom likes 80’s bands; Summer’s parents got divorced when she was a child and she said she would never make that mistake. Through these elements the story bounces between the idyllic and the disappointing and one is left to make sense of what really happened. In one effective use of split screen which seems influenced by Amelie, the director shows what Tom wanted to happen at a party and what really happened. It is a cleaver technique which illustrates well what Tom is thinking.  The film also relies heavily on musical montages to convey mood, rather than heavy expressions of dialog and it gives the film an impressionistic quality.

The characters, too, are a welcome change. Summer and Tom are both a bit quirky. He wears retro 60s suits with skinny ties, listens to alternative music from the 80s and dreams about changing the downtown LA architectural plan (Downtown LA’s classic architecture is a bit player in this film). She listens to the same music, thinks Ringo Starr was the best Beatle and dresses in 60s retro clothes, too. From the outset they play against romantic stereotypes, and the relationship seems marked more by what it isn’t, a couple looking for the wedding and children, then what it is a boy who wants a relationship with someone who says that will never happen. In this sense, the movie is much more interesting than most romantic comedies because it asks the question: if you don’t want to be tied down by a relationship, why are you in one? Summer instigates the relationship, so it seems she wants one, but them is to cynical, or afraid, or something to admit she wants one. If a relationship is confining, what is the alternative. For Summer it will be exactly what she claims it isn’t.

(500) Days of Summer is the right blend of style and reworking of the genre and shows that the romantic comedy (although there is a fair amount of drama, too) doesn’t have to be insipid.

New Words Without Borders – Graphic Novels

~ bythefirelight

The February Words Without Borders has been posted. This month it is featuring excerpts of graphic novels. Zeina Abirached’s panels are quite interesting and make this issue worth looking at. There are also excerpts from Israeli, French, Dutch, and Chinese writers.

The Swallows Game - Zeina Abirached

Up In the Air – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Ryan Bingham is the perfect symbol of the corporate world—a detached, almost faceless man whose two purposes in life are to fire people and get air miles. He cares little for relationships, considering them an encumbrance that one should work to dispense with. He believes it so much he gives a seminar where he tells the attendees this with a perfectly straight face.  Perhaps, in his line of work it makes the most sense to be detached, unafraid of becoming emotionally evolved in each layoff victim’s problems. Whatever his reasoning, he is so detached as to be almost soulless and incapable of intimacies.

At the beginning of the movie his one great love is getting to 10 million air miles. It is the replacement for human relationships with a corporate relationship. It is also one that while not particularly fulfilling, gives Ryan a sense of his importance in the world he inhabits. Like human relationships, he also knows that the corporate relationships he has are artificial, but he accepts that as just the way things are. He posits a way of life that is solitary, but connected through commercial bonds. In an age of constant marketing it makes perfect sense.

The isolation changes when he meets two women: Alix, a frequent traveler like him, and Natalie, a young up and comer at the company he works with. They represent two sides of the relationship question. Alix believes in casual acquaintances; Natalie the longterm. For Ryan, Alix’s detachment is the perfect accompaniment to his. Natalie, on the other hand, is an anathema and is everything that is wrong in a world that believes in love, marriage, and family. Except that Ryan doesn’t exactly believe it. While the corporate relationships he has sustain him, he finds that they are not enough. There is something to human relationships, something that a membership card can never give. The problem, though, is corporate cards, as long as you meet your obligations, rarely lie or cheat. Ryan can choose between the smooth and impersonal corporate relationships he has, or he can risk the something else.

In the end Ryan finds he wants the other, but that it is seldom as one would like, but messy and given to failing apart. One could say the film suggest that the only human relationships that succeed are those where they are suffused with the same detachment Ryan first espouses. A better read might be that the more detached the more lonely, the more attached the more the risk, something Ryan has studiously tried to avoid. However, a little skepticism when approaching Natalie’s idea that marriage always equals eternal happiness, is perhaps not a bad thing. One just needs to come to some compromise between the two. Up in the Air doesn’t answer the questions, as it shouldn’t, but leaves Ryan up in the air, knowing that there can be, at times, more, but it doesn’t always work. Perhaps, he will go back to the old life, perhaps change. The cynic and the optimist each have their choice, the film is open to either.

Crazy Heart – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Crazy Heart is one of those films that relies on one’s ability to add the back story. For Crazy Heart this is all the broken lives and self-destruction that has marked country music greats like Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings, Tommy Collins (Merle Haggard’s Leonard) and Lefty Frizzell, all who problems with drugs and most died early, their careers long since over. The back story fills every moment of Crazy Heart as Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges) stumbles along in irrelevance, going from small city to city, playing in small bars or even bowling alleys, a bottle of whiskey always at hand, always asking his manager for a better gig, but unwilling to understand he’s an alcoholic, albeit a functioning one who has “never missed a gig.” His journey through the small clubs is a good picture of what happens to musicians when the market has long since left them behind. The fans are still there (and country fans are very dedicated) but you make little money and it can hardly seem worth driving 500 miles or more between gigs.

Eventually, Bad Blake meets a younger woman begins a somewhat improbable romance. What could make a broken down country singer 20 years your elder seems so interesting is a little hard to understand. Nonetheless, Blake sees in the woman and her 4 year-old son a past he lost, a past he destroyed with his career. In the relationship he wants as much to recapture the past as start something new. When he breaks his leg he has the chance to move in with them for a while and his better side comes out and he seems like a relatively responsible man.

Once his leg heals he heads back to his home in Texas, which is 800 miles from his girl friend. In Texas he returns to his ways and although he is trying to write new songs he can only drink. His girlfriend visits and it is going well until he loses the boy in a mall and she blames it on his drunkenness and leaves. It sends him into a tail spin of drinking. Yet unlike so many stories of this kind, he actually get sober. It was a refreshing change. How many times does addiction lead to some sort of destruction? This is where the movie leaves the back story. But Crazy Heart isn’t a recovery story, either and the sobriety story is almost nothing. As the movie ends, it is clear he has been sober for sometime and has gotten his career back together and is opening for a major star.

Crazy Heart is a movie that loves its subject: the country musician. It is filled with good live performances by Jeff Bridges and Collin Farrell and celebrates the music as much as the story. You are meant to want him to succeed, and by extension have his music continue. At times, though, it makes the story seem a little bereft of content. On the one had, you know what made him a good singer, on the other you only see the bullet points of his troubles. At the end of the movie, you may be left with the sensation that it was entertaining, but it seemed so easy. That said, Bridges is excellent as a likable looser who you want to win, but whose bad habits keep him from getting close to what he wants. And the film doesn’t dwell in the deep anguish of addiction and loss, so even its darkest moments it isn’t overwhelming. Perhaps that is a good thing, but it makes the film seem as if it never really hit its stride. Ultimately, Crazy Heart is a heart-felt mix of country, addiction, and Americana that is happiest when the music is playing.

Fabulation and Metahistory: W.G. Sebald and Recent German Holocaust Fiction

~ bythefirelight

The UW is putting on a lecture about W.G. Sebald and contemporary German Holocaust literature. Having recently read Will Self’s (via Conversational Reading) article on the same subject, the lecture sounds interesting. Anyone interested in Sebald might consider checking it out.

Thursday • February 4 • 7pm
Katz Lectures in the Humanities presents: Richard Gray
“Fabulation and Metahistory: W.G. Sebald and Recent German Holocaust Fiction”
UW Kane Hall, Room 220, Seattle
Through an examination of W.G. Sebald, Professor Gray’s Katz lecture engages the conflicts between poetic technique and historical reliability that haunt contemporary German Holocaust literature. Richard Gray is Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor of the Humanities in the Department of Germanics at the University of Washington. He is and author and is editor of the Literary Conjugations series for the University of Washington Press.