Loren Eiseley: anthropologist, poet, essayist, teacher, philosopher, scientist, humanist.
Back in the early '60s, I subscribed to Time Magazine. One issue had an advertisement for The Time Reading Program. The notice included a brief paragraph from a work by a writer I had never heard of--Loren Eiseley. I read the paragraph, and I was hooked. I had to read more by one who could put words together as he does in that brief quote. In this one brief paragraph he combined physiology, art, and evolution. And, he made the point that evolution has not stopped. I immediately joined the book club and never regretted it. The TRP had many books which I enjoyed and learned from, but this is the one book I always think of. I now have ten works by Loren Eiseley.
This quote is the one that hooked me. It comes from his first book The Immense Journey and is part of the essay "The Snout."
"Wherever, instead, the thin sheets of gray matter expand upward into the enormous hemispheres of the human brain, laughter, or it may be sorrow, enters in. Out of the choked Devonian waters emerged sight and sound and the music that rolls invisible through the composer's brain. They are there still in the ooze along the tideline, though no one notices. The world is fixed, we say: fish in the sea, birds in the air. But in the mangrove swamps by the Niger, fish climb trees and ogle uneasy naturalists who try unsuccessfully to chase them back into the water. There are things still coming ashore."
This is from another essay, "The Flow of the River," also from the same work. Eiseley has been walking for many hours and has come to the Platte River in Nebraska, which stretches from the Rockies to the Missouri and then to the Gulf of Mexico. He is hot and dry and dusty. The River is cold yet inviting and only a few inches deep in most places, but still there are dangerous holes and quicksands. He is alone and he can't swim and he is afraid of water as the result of a childhood incident. Yet, the sight of the river stirs him "with a new idea. I was going to float."
"I thought of all this, standing quietly in the water, feeling the sand shifting away under my toes. Then I lay back in the floating position that left my face to the sky, and shoved off. The sky wheeled over me. For an instant, as I bobbed into the main channel, I had the sensation of sliding down the vast tilted face of the continent. It was then that I felt the cold needles of the alpine springs at my fingertips, and the warmth of the Gulf pulling me southward. Moving with me, leaving its taste upon my mouth and spouting under me in dancing springs of sand, was the immense body of the continent itself, flowing like the river was flowing, grain by grain, mountain by mountain, down to the sea. I was streaming over ancient sea beds thrust aloft where giant reptiles had once sported; I was wearing down the face of time and trundling cloud-wreathed ranges into oblivion. I touched my margins with the delicacy of a crayfish's antennae, and felt great fishes glide about their work.
I drifted by stranded timber cut by beaver in mountain fastnesses; I slid over shallows that had buried the broken axles of prairie schooners and the mired bones of mammoth. I was streaming alive through the hot and working ferment of the sun, or oozing secretively through shady thickets. I was water and the unspeakable alchemies that gestate and take shape in water, the slimy jellies that under the enormous magnification of the sun writhe and whip upward as great barbeled fish mouths, or sink indistinctly back into the murk out of which they arose. Turtle and fish and the pinpoint chirpings of individual frogs are all watery projections, concentrations--as man himself is a concentration--of that indescribable and liquid brew which is compounded in varying proportions of salt and sun and time. It has appearances, but at its heart lies water, and as I was finally edged gently against a sand bar and dropped like any log, I tottered as I arose. I knew once more the body's revolt against emergence into the harsh and unsupporting air, its reluctance to break contact with that mother element which still, at this late point in time, shelters and brings into being nine tenths of everything alive."
There is more, so much more.
The Loren Eiseley Society http://tinyurl.com/ld6lzc
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Combination Plate 8
Kim Stanley Robinson
Vinland the Dream and Other Stories
Kim Stanley Robinson is one of my favorite SF writers, a result of discovering his The Memory of Whiteness and the "California Triad" (aka the "Orange County Triad"). I call it a triad because it's not really a trilogy, at least not in the commonly accepted sense, anyway. His short stories are also very good--some SF, some fantasy, some neither.
The quality of the tales in this collection is very high, as it should be, for this is sort of a "best of" collection. It's actually the best of two other anthologies, and that's the problem. All but one of the stories here have already appeared in The Planet on the Table (PotT) and Remaking History (RM). Only "Discovering Life" is not included in either of the two. In addition, there is an omnibus edition, Remaking History and Other Stories, which already includes all of the stories from PotT and RM.
The fourteen stories in Vinland the Dream range from future predictions to recreating the past, or in some cases rewriting the past, as in the title story "Vinland the Dream." In this story we see an archaeologist conduct an excavation to disprove a long accepted tenet, that of the discovery of Vinland by the Vikings.
In "A History of the Twentieth Century: with Illustrations," a historian is commissioned to do a coffee table work with this title. After researching the horrors of the twentieth century he comes up with a rather surprising conclusion.
"Venice Drowned" is the story of a future in which the sea level has risen sufficiently to cover Venice to the point that the shorter buildings are now underwater and the remaining residents have moved either to the upper stories of taller buildings or have build a shack on the roof. One such resident survives by taking sightseers on tours. He also guides and provides diving equipment for souvenir hunters who are busy looting the drowned city.
In the far future, some miners on far flung planets, all but slaves to the mining company, find release and relief in digging in the musical past in "Coming Back to Dixieland." This ragtag group of miner-musicians enter a contest, competing with professionals, with the grand prize an expenses paid series of gigs in the Solar System, one slim chance to escape the trap of the company owned mines.
The last part of the story tells of the concert the group played in the competition, and Robinson's word picture of that concert far surpasses any previous attempt I have ever read. At the end, I felt as though I had been there, immersed in the sounds of classic Dixieland. It reminded me of The Memory of Whiteness for that work also focused on a musician and his music. Robinson must be a musician for he writes so convincingly of music and musicians.
I believe Robinson is also a rock climber for this has played an important role in a number of his novels and short stories. In this collection is "Ridge Running," a story about three men who get together once again to go climbing. It is the first time out for one of them who has had a very serious accident and has suffered brain damage.
"The Disguise" is a neat little thriller, set on the stage in the future. Someone is killing actors on stage and no one knows who it is. Consequently, all involved in the production nervously watch everybody else, wondering if the killer is a part of this cast and crew.
"Mercurial" is a farce. It's a homage to "Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson"' and set on Mercury, in a city that reminds me very much of the city in Christopher Priest's strange little novel, The Inverted World. The city in both stories is set on railroad tracks and slowly inches its way across the landscape. Robinson has also dabbled in gender switching as the detective, Freya Grindavik, is a very tall (over 7 ft tall) lean woman whose arrogance approaches that of Holmes himself. Nathaniel Sebastian accompanies her somewhat reluctantly, which is understandable when he explains the life-threatening situations he found himself in as he reels off a number of her past cases. Sebastian also explains that the life of a "watson" (his term) isn't all that glamorous either.
Overall Rating: I would recommend anything with Kim Stanley Robinson's name on it.
==================================================
Michael Chabon
Gentlemen on the Road
Adventure tale, mostly
I had heard much about Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, so when this title was suggested for a discussion in the SF group I belong to, I was looking forward to it. From what little I had heard, it appeared to be a "sword-and-sorcery" novel, much like Fritz Leiber's Fahrd and the Grey Mouser tales. Leiber's "Ill Met in Lankhmar" is, for me, still the classic tale of this sort. The heroes can best be described as gentlemen adventurers; "rogues' or 'thieves" or 'con men' sounds so harsh. They do get involved in a number of capers which would be unacceptable to law-abiding citizens, but they do it more for the excitement and the thrill of a well-plotted campaign than for any thoughts of pecuniary gain. They, of course, wouldn't reject any cash or jewels or plate that came their way.
There is generally magic involved, with the usual assortment of wizards, spells, incantations, demons, and all the usual assorted paraphernalia. Occasionally they will, unwillingly of course, do a good deed or two, usually when there's an attractive damsel in distress involved. The time of the novel would probably be closest to late medieval or early Renaissance. They don't wear armor, but if they did, they would be described as knights in tarnished armor.
Unfortunately, Chabon decided that wasn't exactly the sort of book he wanted to write. His two gentlemen on the road are con men and we meet them pulling off their usual scam. The planet is obviously Earth, and various references to other peoples and countries are mostly historical. The task they get saddled with is the restoration of a spoiled young man to his throne that has been usurped by his uncle.
The sword part is there but no sorcery. It's basically an adventure tale--well written but still a disappointment. However, I am going to read other works by him because he does strike me as a skillful writer with some imagination.
=============================================================
Primer: A film
SF, Time travel
According to a comment on imdb.com, this film was nominated for a number of awards and won two at Sundance. I can't figure out why, unless it was because it was so low-key, but "hurry-hurry-hurry" most of the time. The actors kept stepping on each other's lines, so it was hard to tell who was saying what. Moreover, when the time machine finally became functional, I found it impossible to follow the story line and was completely surprised by the ending.
Four friends combine their financial resources and develop a lab in a garage owned by one of them. Two of them stumble on a time machine and decide to keep it a secret from the other two. The story moves rather quickly and lucidly the first half of the film, until as I mentioned above, they begin jumping back-and-forth in time and eventually lose me. Moreover, a third man, one who wasn't one of the original four, somehow gets involved and begins doing a bit of time-traveling on his own.
Overall Rating: I would give it 3/5 rating, primarily for the first part which focuses on the initial discovery. This part, the discovery of the strange, unexpected effects of the device they were developing, and their attempts to find out just what is happening and what the implications are, is very convincing and interesting.
==============================================================
John Dos Passos
The 42nd Parallel, a novel
This is the first novel in John Dos Passos' "USA Trilogy." The other two novels are Nineteen Nineteen and The Big Money. The novel is set in the USA at beginning of the twentieth century.
It's structure is definitely experimental. Each section has three very distinct parts, distinct as to content and format.
The largest part tells of four or five individuals (three men and two women, in the first novel anyway)-- their lives, their accomplishments, and their fates. Or, at least we will learn this if we read all three volumes. All of the major characters leave home as soon as possible and strike out on their own, some to a large city to find work while others go on the road. Their fates are different, but Dos Passos manages at one point or another to bring most of them together, some briefly while for some it becomes a long-lasting relationship.
The second part is called "Newsreel," and it's just what the title suggests. It consists of headlines, which are presumably found in newspapers at the time: "Six Thousand Workmen at Smolensk Parade with Placards Saying Death to Czar Assassin" or "Riots and Streetblockades Mark Opening of Teamsters Strike" or "World's 'Greatest Sea Battle Near" or "Madrid Police Clash with Five Thousand Workmen Carrying Black Flag." This, of course, provides the context for the stories of the focus individuals mentioned above.
The third section is titled "The Camera Eye" and is the hardest part to follow. It appears to be semi-autobiographical fragments which are based on Dos Passo's life. What follows is the first part of a typical segment: "and we played the battle of Port Arthur in the bathtub and the water leaked down through the drawingroom ceiling and it was altogether too bad but in Kew Gardens old Mr. Garnet who was still hale and hearty although so very old came to tea and we saw him first through the window..."
My only complaint would be Dos Passos' style, which is somewhat flat, almost journalistic. However, he breaks the narrative up frequently with "The Newsreel" and "The Camera Eye" segments, so I wasn't faced with 400+ pages of flat prose. Perhaps that's why Dos Passos decided to break up the narrative portion as he did.
Overall: very good. I have the second and the third books available, and I want to learn what happens to the focus characters, who have now reached a plateau in their lives and careers. They appear to be settled in for the duration, but there's those two other volumes waiting.
============================================================
Karin Alvtegen
Missing
a novel
Mystery? the accidental detective type
The blurb on the back cover reads as follows: "The New Queen of Scandinavian Crime Writing."
Nonsense.
Karin Fossum is a Norwegian writer, and Norway is considered part of Scandinavia. I think Fossum has a far better claim to being the Scandinavian Queen of Crime Writing than Alvtegen does.
Missing begins in media res. Sibylla discovers that the man she had been chatting up and manipulating to rent her a room at the hotel is found murdered. Of course, the police suspect her. The novel then spends considerable time detailing her abused childhood (what other kind of childhood can there be?) with the mother from hell and the absent father. Alvtegen fills numerous pages on Sibylla's pregnancy, the loss of the child through forced adoption (the mother from hell again), her time spent in a mental institution (well, she got away from the mother from hell, didn't she?), and life on the street after she left the institution.
Occasionally we return to the present and discover that there are multiple killings. Sibylla is now suspected of being a serial killer, who also (only vaguely described in the novel) mutilates the body and removes unspecified organs.
SPOILER WARNING: I will discuss significant plot elements and the resolution of the novel from this point on.
Buried within all this is a detective story as Sibylla decides that the only way to demonstrate her innocence is to find the real killer herself. Therefore, this is in the subcategory of smart citizen and stupid police. They should have called in Inspector Kurt Wallandar who would have solved the crimes in a few days.
In one of her hiding places, Sibylla meets a fifteen-year-old boy whose mother just happens to be a police officer. She convinces him of her innocence, and he manages to get access to his mother's computer at the police station.
I said above this was an example of the stupid police story. What else can one say when the police are unable to find a link among the four victims even though it's there in front of them, just waiting to be discovered by this homeless woman and a fifteen-year-old boy. For example. the police ignore the facts that all four victims had recently received a transplant. Not only that, they saw no significance in that all four had their operations within a day or so of each other. And, coincidentally, all four received organs from the SAME donor. Obviously, this must be a coincidence; it couldn't be a link among them. Of course not.
At the end, after she has solved the case for the police, she also discovers that her father died several years ago. He had a considerable estate and had left half to his wife and half to his daughter. Now, Sibylla learns that the mother from hell is trying to get her declared legally dead so she could get the millions of kronors that the father had left Sibylla. She finds a sympathetic lawyer, and now she will live happily ever after in that small cottage on that beautiful lake.
Overall Rating: I finished it because it was the choice of the mystery group I belong to. Once burned, twice shy, or something like that.
Vinland the Dream and Other Stories
Kim Stanley Robinson is one of my favorite SF writers, a result of discovering his The Memory of Whiteness and the "California Triad" (aka the "Orange County Triad"). I call it a triad because it's not really a trilogy, at least not in the commonly accepted sense, anyway. His short stories are also very good--some SF, some fantasy, some neither.
The quality of the tales in this collection is very high, as it should be, for this is sort of a "best of" collection. It's actually the best of two other anthologies, and that's the problem. All but one of the stories here have already appeared in The Planet on the Table (PotT) and Remaking History (RM). Only "Discovering Life" is not included in either of the two. In addition, there is an omnibus edition, Remaking History and Other Stories, which already includes all of the stories from PotT and RM.
The fourteen stories in Vinland the Dream range from future predictions to recreating the past, or in some cases rewriting the past, as in the title story "Vinland the Dream." In this story we see an archaeologist conduct an excavation to disprove a long accepted tenet, that of the discovery of Vinland by the Vikings.
In "A History of the Twentieth Century: with Illustrations," a historian is commissioned to do a coffee table work with this title. After researching the horrors of the twentieth century he comes up with a rather surprising conclusion.
"Venice Drowned" is the story of a future in which the sea level has risen sufficiently to cover Venice to the point that the shorter buildings are now underwater and the remaining residents have moved either to the upper stories of taller buildings or have build a shack on the roof. One such resident survives by taking sightseers on tours. He also guides and provides diving equipment for souvenir hunters who are busy looting the drowned city.
In the far future, some miners on far flung planets, all but slaves to the mining company, find release and relief in digging in the musical past in "Coming Back to Dixieland." This ragtag group of miner-musicians enter a contest, competing with professionals, with the grand prize an expenses paid series of gigs in the Solar System, one slim chance to escape the trap of the company owned mines.
The last part of the story tells of the concert the group played in the competition, and Robinson's word picture of that concert far surpasses any previous attempt I have ever read. At the end, I felt as though I had been there, immersed in the sounds of classic Dixieland. It reminded me of The Memory of Whiteness for that work also focused on a musician and his music. Robinson must be a musician for he writes so convincingly of music and musicians.
I believe Robinson is also a rock climber for this has played an important role in a number of his novels and short stories. In this collection is "Ridge Running," a story about three men who get together once again to go climbing. It is the first time out for one of them who has had a very serious accident and has suffered brain damage.
"The Disguise" is a neat little thriller, set on the stage in the future. Someone is killing actors on stage and no one knows who it is. Consequently, all involved in the production nervously watch everybody else, wondering if the killer is a part of this cast and crew.
"Mercurial" is a farce. It's a homage to "Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson"' and set on Mercury, in a city that reminds me very much of the city in Christopher Priest's strange little novel, The Inverted World. The city in both stories is set on railroad tracks and slowly inches its way across the landscape. Robinson has also dabbled in gender switching as the detective, Freya Grindavik, is a very tall (over 7 ft tall) lean woman whose arrogance approaches that of Holmes himself. Nathaniel Sebastian accompanies her somewhat reluctantly, which is understandable when he explains the life-threatening situations he found himself in as he reels off a number of her past cases. Sebastian also explains that the life of a "watson" (his term) isn't all that glamorous either.
Overall Rating: I would recommend anything with Kim Stanley Robinson's name on it.
==================================================
Michael Chabon
Gentlemen on the Road
Adventure tale, mostly
I had heard much about Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, so when this title was suggested for a discussion in the SF group I belong to, I was looking forward to it. From what little I had heard, it appeared to be a "sword-and-sorcery" novel, much like Fritz Leiber's Fahrd and the Grey Mouser tales. Leiber's "Ill Met in Lankhmar" is, for me, still the classic tale of this sort. The heroes can best be described as gentlemen adventurers; "rogues' or 'thieves" or 'con men' sounds so harsh. They do get involved in a number of capers which would be unacceptable to law-abiding citizens, but they do it more for the excitement and the thrill of a well-plotted campaign than for any thoughts of pecuniary gain. They, of course, wouldn't reject any cash or jewels or plate that came their way.
There is generally magic involved, with the usual assortment of wizards, spells, incantations, demons, and all the usual assorted paraphernalia. Occasionally they will, unwillingly of course, do a good deed or two, usually when there's an attractive damsel in distress involved. The time of the novel would probably be closest to late medieval or early Renaissance. They don't wear armor, but if they did, they would be described as knights in tarnished armor.
Unfortunately, Chabon decided that wasn't exactly the sort of book he wanted to write. His two gentlemen on the road are con men and we meet them pulling off their usual scam. The planet is obviously Earth, and various references to other peoples and countries are mostly historical. The task they get saddled with is the restoration of a spoiled young man to his throne that has been usurped by his uncle.
The sword part is there but no sorcery. It's basically an adventure tale--well written but still a disappointment. However, I am going to read other works by him because he does strike me as a skillful writer with some imagination.
=============================================================
Primer: A film
SF, Time travel
According to a comment on imdb.com, this film was nominated for a number of awards and won two at Sundance. I can't figure out why, unless it was because it was so low-key, but "hurry-hurry-hurry" most of the time. The actors kept stepping on each other's lines, so it was hard to tell who was saying what. Moreover, when the time machine finally became functional, I found it impossible to follow the story line and was completely surprised by the ending.
Four friends combine their financial resources and develop a lab in a garage owned by one of them. Two of them stumble on a time machine and decide to keep it a secret from the other two. The story moves rather quickly and lucidly the first half of the film, until as I mentioned above, they begin jumping back-and-forth in time and eventually lose me. Moreover, a third man, one who wasn't one of the original four, somehow gets involved and begins doing a bit of time-traveling on his own.
Overall Rating: I would give it 3/5 rating, primarily for the first part which focuses on the initial discovery. This part, the discovery of the strange, unexpected effects of the device they were developing, and their attempts to find out just what is happening and what the implications are, is very convincing and interesting.
==============================================================
John Dos Passos
The 42nd Parallel, a novel
This is the first novel in John Dos Passos' "USA Trilogy." The other two novels are Nineteen Nineteen and The Big Money. The novel is set in the USA at beginning of the twentieth century.
It's structure is definitely experimental. Each section has three very distinct parts, distinct as to content and format.
The largest part tells of four or five individuals (three men and two women, in the first novel anyway)-- their lives, their accomplishments, and their fates. Or, at least we will learn this if we read all three volumes. All of the major characters leave home as soon as possible and strike out on their own, some to a large city to find work while others go on the road. Their fates are different, but Dos Passos manages at one point or another to bring most of them together, some briefly while for some it becomes a long-lasting relationship.
The second part is called "Newsreel," and it's just what the title suggests. It consists of headlines, which are presumably found in newspapers at the time: "Six Thousand Workmen at Smolensk Parade with Placards Saying Death to Czar Assassin" or "Riots and Streetblockades Mark Opening of Teamsters Strike" or "World's 'Greatest Sea Battle Near" or "Madrid Police Clash with Five Thousand Workmen Carrying Black Flag." This, of course, provides the context for the stories of the focus individuals mentioned above.
The third section is titled "The Camera Eye" and is the hardest part to follow. It appears to be semi-autobiographical fragments which are based on Dos Passo's life. What follows is the first part of a typical segment: "and we played the battle of Port Arthur in the bathtub and the water leaked down through the drawingroom ceiling and it was altogether too bad but in Kew Gardens old Mr. Garnet who was still hale and hearty although so very old came to tea and we saw him first through the window..."
My only complaint would be Dos Passos' style, which is somewhat flat, almost journalistic. However, he breaks the narrative up frequently with "The Newsreel" and "The Camera Eye" segments, so I wasn't faced with 400+ pages of flat prose. Perhaps that's why Dos Passos decided to break up the narrative portion as he did.
Overall: very good. I have the second and the third books available, and I want to learn what happens to the focus characters, who have now reached a plateau in their lives and careers. They appear to be settled in for the duration, but there's those two other volumes waiting.
============================================================
Karin Alvtegen
Missing
a novel
Mystery? the accidental detective type
The blurb on the back cover reads as follows: "The New Queen of Scandinavian Crime Writing."
Nonsense.
Karin Fossum is a Norwegian writer, and Norway is considered part of Scandinavia. I think Fossum has a far better claim to being the Scandinavian Queen of Crime Writing than Alvtegen does.
Missing begins in media res. Sibylla discovers that the man she had been chatting up and manipulating to rent her a room at the hotel is found murdered. Of course, the police suspect her. The novel then spends considerable time detailing her abused childhood (what other kind of childhood can there be?) with the mother from hell and the absent father. Alvtegen fills numerous pages on Sibylla's pregnancy, the loss of the child through forced adoption (the mother from hell again), her time spent in a mental institution (well, she got away from the mother from hell, didn't she?), and life on the street after she left the institution.
Occasionally we return to the present and discover that there are multiple killings. Sibylla is now suspected of being a serial killer, who also (only vaguely described in the novel) mutilates the body and removes unspecified organs.
SPOILER WARNING: I will discuss significant plot elements and the resolution of the novel from this point on.
Buried within all this is a detective story as Sibylla decides that the only way to demonstrate her innocence is to find the real killer herself. Therefore, this is in the subcategory of smart citizen and stupid police. They should have called in Inspector Kurt Wallandar who would have solved the crimes in a few days.
In one of her hiding places, Sibylla meets a fifteen-year-old boy whose mother just happens to be a police officer. She convinces him of her innocence, and he manages to get access to his mother's computer at the police station.
I said above this was an example of the stupid police story. What else can one say when the police are unable to find a link among the four victims even though it's there in front of them, just waiting to be discovered by this homeless woman and a fifteen-year-old boy. For example. the police ignore the facts that all four victims had recently received a transplant. Not only that, they saw no significance in that all four had their operations within a day or so of each other. And, coincidentally, all four received organs from the SAME donor. Obviously, this must be a coincidence; it couldn't be a link among them. Of course not.
At the end, after she has solved the case for the police, she also discovers that her father died several years ago. He had a considerable estate and had left half to his wife and half to his daughter. Now, Sibylla learns that the mother from hell is trying to get her declared legally dead so she could get the millions of kronors that the father had left Sibylla. She finds a sympathetic lawyer, and now she will live happily ever after in that small cottage on that beautiful lake.
Overall Rating: I finished it because it was the choice of the mystery group I belong to. Once burned, twice shy, or something like that.
Friday, August 28, 2009
The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XIV
This quatrain is fairly straightforward, and Edward FitzGerald seems to be quite satisfied with it since I can find only minimal changes over the five versions.
First Edition
Quatrain XIV
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two--is gone.
Second Edition
Quatrain XVII
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour or two--was gone.
Fifth Edition
Quatrain XVI
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the desert's dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour or two--is gone.
The most significant change that I can find, and it's not really that significant, is the change from "is" in the last line in the first edition to "was" in the second edition and then back again to "is" in the fifth edition, thereby going from present tense to past tense to present tense in the final edition. I have, again, no evidence to explain the change, but I could guess that perhaps he felt that it was more consistent if all the verbs in the quatrain were in the present tense.
On the other hand, the fifth edition was published posthumously, so if he had lived another decade or two, we might have had a sixth or perhaps even a seventh edition, for FitzGerald's Rubaiyat has always struck me as being a work in progress.
The theme seems fairly straightforward: regardless of whether people's hopes fail or come true, the results are ultimately the same. One leaves ashes, brief and unsubstantial, while the other, like snow in the desert, lasts only a hour or two, also equally brief and unsubstantial.
This, I think, echoes both the Buddhist and the Taoist teachers who tell us that success and failure are the same and should be viewed in the same light--both are ephemeral and both can quickly become the other. Sophocles suggests something similar at the end of Oedipus Rex when the chorus tells us "let no man be counted blessed in his life/ until he is in the grave."
One last echo is Francois Villon (1431-1489) in his poem, "The Ballad of Dead Ladies," (probably sounds more elegant in French), in which he lists a number of fair and great ladies of the past and ends with a quatrain of his own:
Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,
Where they are gone, nor yet this year,
Save with this much for an overword,--
But where are the snows of yesteryear?"
The brevity of our time here and our dreams has been noted in earlier quatrains and is a persistent theme throughout.
First Edition
Quatrain XIV
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two--is gone.
Second Edition
Quatrain XVII
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour or two--was gone.
Fifth Edition
Quatrain XVI
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the desert's dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour or two--is gone.
The most significant change that I can find, and it's not really that significant, is the change from "is" in the last line in the first edition to "was" in the second edition and then back again to "is" in the fifth edition, thereby going from present tense to past tense to present tense in the final edition. I have, again, no evidence to explain the change, but I could guess that perhaps he felt that it was more consistent if all the verbs in the quatrain were in the present tense.
On the other hand, the fifth edition was published posthumously, so if he had lived another decade or two, we might have had a sixth or perhaps even a seventh edition, for FitzGerald's Rubaiyat has always struck me as being a work in progress.
The theme seems fairly straightforward: regardless of whether people's hopes fail or come true, the results are ultimately the same. One leaves ashes, brief and unsubstantial, while the other, like snow in the desert, lasts only a hour or two, also equally brief and unsubstantial.
This, I think, echoes both the Buddhist and the Taoist teachers who tell us that success and failure are the same and should be viewed in the same light--both are ephemeral and both can quickly become the other. Sophocles suggests something similar at the end of Oedipus Rex when the chorus tells us "let no man be counted blessed in his life/ until he is in the grave."
One last echo is Francois Villon (1431-1489) in his poem, "The Ballad of Dead Ladies," (probably sounds more elegant in French), in which he lists a number of fair and great ladies of the past and ends with a quatrain of his own:
Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,
Where they are gone, nor yet this year,
Save with this much for an overword,--
But where are the snows of yesteryear?"
The brevity of our time here and our dreams has been noted in earlier quatrains and is a persistent theme throughout.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Another thought on authorial musings on detectives
This is, of course, the last paragraphs of Chandler's essay, "The Simple Art of Murder." I had hoped that getting stuff down here about detectives and detecting in the last post would free me of them. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened yet. A thought struck me so strongly that I had to return and deal with Chandler's essay one more time.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor--by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I'm quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.
He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks--that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.
The story is this man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in."
------------------------------------------------------------
Chandler is fairly specific about the detective who walks down the mean streets of LA. or Chicago or New York or Boston or Philadelphia: he is an honorable man, a proud man, a poor man, a common man, a decent man, an honest man who speaks the truth.
Actually this man sounded more familiar the more I thought about it. I believe I've encountered him somewhere else. Along with those paved urban streets, could he also have walked down the dusty unpaved streets of a small town out west?
Gary Cooper's Marshall Will Kane in High Noon for example.
Alan Ladd as Shane?
Richard Boone as Paladin in Have Gun--Will Travel.
or John Wayne
or Jimmy Stewart
or Clint Eastwood
or James Arness as Marshall Matt Dillon in that quintessential TV Western--Gunsmoke.
What do you think? Is Chandler's description limited to the detective or is he somehow a basic element of American mythology--the loner who comes in when legitimate authority is unable to handle the situation, deals with it in his own simple, straightforward way, and then rides off and is never seen again, until he is needed to set things straight once more.
Any comments?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor--by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I'm quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.
He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks--that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.
The story is this man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in."
------------------------------------------------------------
Chandler is fairly specific about the detective who walks down the mean streets of LA. or Chicago or New York or Boston or Philadelphia: he is an honorable man, a proud man, a poor man, a common man, a decent man, an honest man who speaks the truth.
Actually this man sounded more familiar the more I thought about it. I believe I've encountered him somewhere else. Along with those paved urban streets, could he also have walked down the dusty unpaved streets of a small town out west?
Gary Cooper's Marshall Will Kane in High Noon for example.
Alan Ladd as Shane?
Richard Boone as Paladin in Have Gun--Will Travel.
or John Wayne
or Jimmy Stewart
or Clint Eastwood
or James Arness as Marshall Matt Dillon in that quintessential TV Western--Gunsmoke.
What do you think? Is Chandler's description limited to the detective or is he somehow a basic element of American mythology--the loner who comes in when legitimate authority is unable to handle the situation, deals with it in his own simple, straightforward way, and then rides off and is never seen again, until he is needed to set things straight once more.
Any comments?
Some Authors' Musings on Detectives and Detecting
This post is Raymond Chandler's fault. It's not really a coherent commentary, but closer to an exorcism I would guess. I was reading an essay by Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder," which I found interesting, even if I didn't agree 100% with him. But, it was the ending that started me off and eventually was responsible for this collection of quotes taken from a few mystery writers, one or two who may be considered Classic while others are too new to have reached that exalted level.
Chandler's essay started me thinking, especially about his thoughts on the detective and detecting. I noticed that some other writers had done the same, and I now began paying more attention to these little asides that now stood up and waved at me. Now that I have become aware of them, something must be done about them. So...
So, the ending of Chandler's essay:
"In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor--by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I'm quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.
He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks--that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.
The story is this man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in."
Are Chandler's detectives like this--Philip Marlowe, for example. Does Chandler come close, or do you think he meant the above more as an ideal to strive for, rather than something that could be achieved?
==============================================
After reading the above, another example immediately surfaced --Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and his attempt to explain to Brigid O'Shaughnessy just why he was going to turn her in:
"Listen. this isn't a damned bit of good. You'll never understand me, but I'll try once more and then we'll give it up. Listen. When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. It's bad all around--bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Third, I'm a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it's not the natural thing. The only way I could have let you go was by letting Gutman and Cairo and the kid go. That's--"
I wonder what Chandler would have thought of Sam Spade. Does Spade fit Chandler's description of what a detective, or at least his detective, must be like? Is Spade a lonely man, a proud man, an honorable man? What would Chandler have thought of Spade's affair with his partner's wife?
==================================================
Hakan Nesser is one of the writers too young to be considered a classic, but he's won a number of awards for his detective novels in his native Sweden. This quote isn't so much about detectives but about the art of detecting. The novel's title is Borkmann's Point, and I misunderstood it to be a geographical location. It isn't. Borkmann was Chief Inspector Van Veteren's mentor when he first joined the Swedish police force. Borkmann's rule refers to a specific point in an investigation:
"In every investigation, [Borkmann] maintained, there comes a point beyond which we don't really need any more information. When we reach that point, we already know enough to solve the case by means of nothing more that some decent thinking. A good investigator should try to establish when that point has been reached, or rather, when it has been passed; in his memoirs, Borkmann went so far as to claim that it was precisely this ability, or the lack of it, which distinguishes a good detective from a bad one.
A bad one carries on unnecessarily."
Any thoughts? It's a rather large claim being made here. I know there have been times in the past when I was doing research for a paper, and at some point, I had to simply stop the search for more information and start to write. It was at that point that I felt I was losing track of my initial idea and was being buried under mountains of data. More often than not, I found I had too much data, and seldom did I have to do more research because I lacked information.
=======================================================
Thomas H. Cook's detective in Sacrificial Ground provides us with a different view of the detective--the angst-filled cry of a lonely man, tormented by what he has seen and now struggling to justify himself to himself. He is neither Philip Marlowe nor Sam Spade.
"He returned to the living room and once again sat down on the sofa. He felt the need to view his life as some kind of whole, as if it could be captured in a single tone or color. But nothing held firm. Nothing but his work, his pursuit--however blind and full of error--of something which could be called justice, or at least, retribution. People had to pay for what they died, and he was one of the ones who made them pay. It was the badge which gave him the right to do that, and he suddenly found ;that he wanted to cling to it with all his remaining strength. Nothing could bring back Sarah, or Angelica or Ollie Quinn, or any of the scores of others whose bodies lay torn and broken in his memory, but whose spirits still moved sleeplessly through him They were more real to him than all the living who crowded the streets and buses. They lived more fully in his mind, and their flesh was warmer and more tangible. It bled and bled, as if the one great heart of all the unjustly dead still beat on through the ages, their cries still ringing out through time, heard like a low moan in the ground or like a scream echoing above it."
He strikes me as being a very different sort of person. Is he too much involved with the victims to be able to step back and think rationally about the crime? Should his feelings help him or hinder him in bringing the killer to justice?
========================================================
Here's another take on detectives and detecting--this time by W. J. Burley, author of a series of mysteries featuring Chief Superintendent Wycliffe, a representative of one of my favorite type of mysteries--the British police procedural. Wycliffe is on recuperative leave in a small seacoast town, in which a murder has taken place. He manages to stay clear of it for some time, but as in all novels with this premise, it isn't long before he gets involved. His reaction to his involvement, even though he's on medical leave?
"[Wycliffe] went to his room and replaced the photograph and the report in Gill's file. He would never have admitted it but for the first time since the start of his enforced holiday he was beginning to enjoy himself. He was indulging in the most delectable kind of pleasure which is both anticipatory and lightly spiced with guilt. Yesterday he had felt tantalisingly excluded from the community of the village, a spectator on the outside; now with this drab-looking file he was licensed to become a privileged interloper . Now, if he wanted to, he could probe into their lives; winkle out their secrets.
Often, at the start of a case, he would savour the prospect as one might turn the pages of a new autobiography or take a peep into a bundle of someone else's letters. The chance to live vicariously in other people's skins; for him, one of the attractions of the job. He knew it to be unworthy and salved his conscience with the reflection that he was rarely censorious, never malicious though always insatiably curious."
Burley's Wycliffe is a different sort of detective, one who in some ways resembles what others always assume police officers and PI's are--the snoop who gets a thrill out of looking through other's dirty laundry. I wonder what Chandler and Hammett and Nesser and Cook would think of him. Which detective of the four authors I just mentioned would most understand Wycliffe? Or would any?
===========================================================
One last one--this comes from John Maddox Roberts' series of Roman mysteries featuring Senator Decius Caecilius Metellus and is set approximately 50 b. c., give or take a few years. Caesar has not yet finally demonstrated that the days of the Republic of Rome are over.
At one point in the novel, SPQR III: The Sacrilege, Decius meditates on the art of detecting:
"There are stages in the investigation of a crime, conspiracy or other mystery that involves many people acting from many motives. At first, all is confusion. Then as you gather evidence, things get even more complicated and confusing, But eventually there comes a point when each new fact unearthed fits into place with a satisfying click and things become simpler instead of more complex. Things begin to make sense. I now felt that things had reached that state. It seemed to me that my guardian genius, my ferret-muse, hovered near and was aiding me to untie this knot of murder and intrigue.
Or perhaps it was just the wine."
In wine, there is truth, so perhaps it was just the wine.
=================================================================
Of course, these are only a few of the ways that writers have written about detectives and the art of detecting. But, these are the ones that have stayed with me for some time now. In spite of the variety of methods and attitudes of the detectives, some of which seem almost contradictory, they most always get their man or woman in the end. That must mean something, but I'm not sure what.
Chandler's essay started me thinking, especially about his thoughts on the detective and detecting. I noticed that some other writers had done the same, and I now began paying more attention to these little asides that now stood up and waved at me. Now that I have become aware of them, something must be done about them. So...
So, the ending of Chandler's essay:
"In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor--by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I'm quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.
He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks--that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.
The story is this man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in."
Are Chandler's detectives like this--Philip Marlowe, for example. Does Chandler come close, or do you think he meant the above more as an ideal to strive for, rather than something that could be achieved?
==============================================
After reading the above, another example immediately surfaced --Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and his attempt to explain to Brigid O'Shaughnessy just why he was going to turn her in:
"Listen. this isn't a damned bit of good. You'll never understand me, but I'll try once more and then we'll give it up. Listen. When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. It's bad all around--bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Third, I'm a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it's not the natural thing. The only way I could have let you go was by letting Gutman and Cairo and the kid go. That's--"
I wonder what Chandler would have thought of Sam Spade. Does Spade fit Chandler's description of what a detective, or at least his detective, must be like? Is Spade a lonely man, a proud man, an honorable man? What would Chandler have thought of Spade's affair with his partner's wife?
==================================================
Hakan Nesser is one of the writers too young to be considered a classic, but he's won a number of awards for his detective novels in his native Sweden. This quote isn't so much about detectives but about the art of detecting. The novel's title is Borkmann's Point, and I misunderstood it to be a geographical location. It isn't. Borkmann was Chief Inspector Van Veteren's mentor when he first joined the Swedish police force. Borkmann's rule refers to a specific point in an investigation:
"In every investigation, [Borkmann] maintained, there comes a point beyond which we don't really need any more information. When we reach that point, we already know enough to solve the case by means of nothing more that some decent thinking. A good investigator should try to establish when that point has been reached, or rather, when it has been passed; in his memoirs, Borkmann went so far as to claim that it was precisely this ability, or the lack of it, which distinguishes a good detective from a bad one.
A bad one carries on unnecessarily."
Any thoughts? It's a rather large claim being made here. I know there have been times in the past when I was doing research for a paper, and at some point, I had to simply stop the search for more information and start to write. It was at that point that I felt I was losing track of my initial idea and was being buried under mountains of data. More often than not, I found I had too much data, and seldom did I have to do more research because I lacked information.
=======================================================
Thomas H. Cook's detective in Sacrificial Ground provides us with a different view of the detective--the angst-filled cry of a lonely man, tormented by what he has seen and now struggling to justify himself to himself. He is neither Philip Marlowe nor Sam Spade.
"He returned to the living room and once again sat down on the sofa. He felt the need to view his life as some kind of whole, as if it could be captured in a single tone or color. But nothing held firm. Nothing but his work, his pursuit--however blind and full of error--of something which could be called justice, or at least, retribution. People had to pay for what they died, and he was one of the ones who made them pay. It was the badge which gave him the right to do that, and he suddenly found ;that he wanted to cling to it with all his remaining strength. Nothing could bring back Sarah, or Angelica or Ollie Quinn, or any of the scores of others whose bodies lay torn and broken in his memory, but whose spirits still moved sleeplessly through him They were more real to him than all the living who crowded the streets and buses. They lived more fully in his mind, and their flesh was warmer and more tangible. It bled and bled, as if the one great heart of all the unjustly dead still beat on through the ages, their cries still ringing out through time, heard like a low moan in the ground or like a scream echoing above it."
He strikes me as being a very different sort of person. Is he too much involved with the victims to be able to step back and think rationally about the crime? Should his feelings help him or hinder him in bringing the killer to justice?
========================================================
Here's another take on detectives and detecting--this time by W. J. Burley, author of a series of mysteries featuring Chief Superintendent Wycliffe, a representative of one of my favorite type of mysteries--the British police procedural. Wycliffe is on recuperative leave in a small seacoast town, in which a murder has taken place. He manages to stay clear of it for some time, but as in all novels with this premise, it isn't long before he gets involved. His reaction to his involvement, even though he's on medical leave?
"[Wycliffe] went to his room and replaced the photograph and the report in Gill's file. He would never have admitted it but for the first time since the start of his enforced holiday he was beginning to enjoy himself. He was indulging in the most delectable kind of pleasure which is both anticipatory and lightly spiced with guilt. Yesterday he had felt tantalisingly excluded from the community of the village, a spectator on the outside; now with this drab-looking file he was licensed to become a privileged interloper . Now, if he wanted to, he could probe into their lives; winkle out their secrets.
Often, at the start of a case, he would savour the prospect as one might turn the pages of a new autobiography or take a peep into a bundle of someone else's letters. The chance to live vicariously in other people's skins; for him, one of the attractions of the job. He knew it to be unworthy and salved his conscience with the reflection that he was rarely censorious, never malicious though always insatiably curious."
Burley's Wycliffe is a different sort of detective, one who in some ways resembles what others always assume police officers and PI's are--the snoop who gets a thrill out of looking through other's dirty laundry. I wonder what Chandler and Hammett and Nesser and Cook would think of him. Which detective of the four authors I just mentioned would most understand Wycliffe? Or would any?
===========================================================
One last one--this comes from John Maddox Roberts' series of Roman mysteries featuring Senator Decius Caecilius Metellus and is set approximately 50 b. c., give or take a few years. Caesar has not yet finally demonstrated that the days of the Republic of Rome are over.
At one point in the novel, SPQR III: The Sacrilege, Decius meditates on the art of detecting:
"There are stages in the investigation of a crime, conspiracy or other mystery that involves many people acting from many motives. At first, all is confusion. Then as you gather evidence, things get even more complicated and confusing, But eventually there comes a point when each new fact unearthed fits into place with a satisfying click and things become simpler instead of more complex. Things begin to make sense. I now felt that things had reached that state. It seemed to me that my guardian genius, my ferret-muse, hovered near and was aiding me to untie this knot of murder and intrigue.
Or perhaps it was just the wine."
In wine, there is truth, so perhaps it was just the wine.
=================================================================
Of course, these are only a few of the ways that writers have written about detectives and the art of detecting. But, these are the ones that have stayed with me for some time now. In spite of the variety of methods and attitudes of the detectives, some of which seem almost contradictory, they most always get their man or woman in the end. That must mean something, but I'm not sure what.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Ray Bradbury: August 22, 1920--
Today we celebrate the birthday of one of the great writers of our time--Ray Bradbury. He has done it all, and, fortunately for us, he keeps doing it: novels, short stories, SF, fantasy, mysteries, screenplays.
Some Novels
The Martian Chronicles
The Illustrated Man
Death is a Lonely Business
Fahrenheit 451
Some Short Stories
"The Fog Horn"
"There Will Come Soft Rains"
"The Veldt"
"The Playground"
"The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit"
"All Summer in a Day"
"The Pedestrian"
What makes his writings special is not just the plot or the characters or his point-of-view; it is his language, the way he makes tracks on paper. Below is a quote from his short story "The Fog Horn" which later became a film, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. The film is a typical creature feature, a large scaly thing that destroys cities and squashes humans before it too is destroyed. The film captured nothing of the story.
"The Fog Horn" has a simple plot: every year something comes up out of the ocean depths in response to the Fog Horn. Just what it responds to is not certain; perhaps it mistakes the sound of the fog horn for the call of its mate, or perhaps it is simply responding to the loneliness in the call.
In the story, the lighthouse keeper tells the young apprentice his theory about fog horns:
"One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound of the ocean on a cold sunless shore and said, 'We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; I'll make one. I'll make a voice like all of time and all of the fog that ever was; I'll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like a empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. I'll make a sound that's so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns. I'll make me a sound and an apparatus and they'll call it a Fog Horn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life.' "
Go, read "The Fog Horn" and maybe a few others by Ray Bradbury. Take your time, read slowly. It's the best way to read him. It's time well spent.
Some Novels
The Martian Chronicles
The Illustrated Man
Death is a Lonely Business
Fahrenheit 451
Some Short Stories
"The Fog Horn"
"There Will Come Soft Rains"
"The Veldt"
"The Playground"
"The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit"
"All Summer in a Day"
"The Pedestrian"
What makes his writings special is not just the plot or the characters or his point-of-view; it is his language, the way he makes tracks on paper. Below is a quote from his short story "The Fog Horn" which later became a film, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. The film is a typical creature feature, a large scaly thing that destroys cities and squashes humans before it too is destroyed. The film captured nothing of the story.
"The Fog Horn" has a simple plot: every year something comes up out of the ocean depths in response to the Fog Horn. Just what it responds to is not certain; perhaps it mistakes the sound of the fog horn for the call of its mate, or perhaps it is simply responding to the loneliness in the call.
In the story, the lighthouse keeper tells the young apprentice his theory about fog horns:
"One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound of the ocean on a cold sunless shore and said, 'We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; I'll make one. I'll make a voice like all of time and all of the fog that ever was; I'll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like a empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. I'll make a sound that's so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns. I'll make me a sound and an apparatus and they'll call it a Fog Horn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life.' "
Go, read "The Fog Horn" and maybe a few others by Ray Bradbury. Take your time, read slowly. It's the best way to read him. It's time well spent.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XIII
As usual, I'm using the first edition as the base and then turning to the 2nd and 5th editions to see what changes FitzGerald made.
First Edition:
Quatrain XIII
Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo,
Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow:
At once the silken Tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."
Second Edition:
Quatrain XV
Look to the blowing Rose about us--"Lo,
Laughing," she says, "into the world I blow:
At once the silken tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."
Fifth Edition:
Quatrain XIV
Look to the blowing Rose about us--"Lo,
Laughing, " she says, "into the world I blow,
At once the silken tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."
I think there's a sense of the brevity of life here. The Rose comes into the world and "at once" her "Treasure," pollen I assume, is spread about the garden.
FitzGerald changed this quatrain less than any other so far. I can see only one minor word change and several punctuation changes, along with reducing the number of nouns that are capitalized, something which has been consistent so far.
In the first edition, he writes "Look to the Rose that blows about us..." This, in the second and fifth editions, becomes "Look to the blowing Rose about us..." I think the revision flows more smoothly. There's almost a break, a caesura, in the first edition between "Rose" and "that," while the line flows uninterruptedly with "Look to the blowing Rose about us." Perhaps he opted for the more continuous flow.
This stanza gave me, and to some extent, still gives me some problems. The first has been resolved, but the second still raises a question each time I read it.
The first problem was the word "blow" and "blowing" in the first and second lines of the three versions.
"Look to the blowing Rose about us--"Lo,
Laughing," she says, "into the world I blow:"
I was reading the word as related to the wind in some way--"the Rose that blows about us" and also describing apparently the way the Rose came into the world, blowing like the wind. Somehow it just didn't fit. I checked the dictionary and found my problem. An old, almost archaic meaning of "to blow" is "to bloom." So, substituting bloom and blooming into the first stanza, it would read
Look to the blooming Rose about us--"Lo,
Laughing," she says, "into the world I bloom:"
I think this makes better sense than seeing "blow" and "blowing" as related to the behavior of the wind.
The second, and so far unresolved problem, relates to the word "tear" in the last line of the quatrain. The problem is not that it doesn't make sense in the context, but that there is a sense of violence here that doesn't go with either the earlier reference to "Laughing" or to anything else in The Rubaiyat.
"At once the silken tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."
Right now, I can't think of any reference to violence in the poem. Death is brought up a number of times, but I never got the sense of violence in any of the quatrains. It stands out. I checked the dictionary for variant or archaic meanings for tear and could find nothing but a suggestion of "haste," as in "tear along a country road."
When I read this stanza, another poem comes to mind, which again seems to convey the sense of violence in a sexual context that seems inappropriate. The poem is Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," and the reference is to the last lines of the poem. The narrator is urging his love to remember that they will not always be young and should make haste for "...at my back I always hear/ Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near" and "The grave's a fine and private place,/ But none, I think, do there embrace."
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
In this poem, I guess an argument could be made that "tear" is being used in the sense of "making haste." And the "Rose," well, a rose lives only one season, so it has to hurry and spread its pollen quickly before summer is over.
So, I'm leaning toward a sense of "haste" in both poems, tentatively anyway.
Any comments?
First Edition:
Quatrain XIII
Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo,
Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow:
At once the silken Tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."
Second Edition:
Quatrain XV
Look to the blowing Rose about us--"Lo,
Laughing," she says, "into the world I blow:
At once the silken tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."
Fifth Edition:
Quatrain XIV
Look to the blowing Rose about us--"Lo,
Laughing, " she says, "into the world I blow,
At once the silken tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."
I think there's a sense of the brevity of life here. The Rose comes into the world and "at once" her "Treasure," pollen I assume, is spread about the garden.
FitzGerald changed this quatrain less than any other so far. I can see only one minor word change and several punctuation changes, along with reducing the number of nouns that are capitalized, something which has been consistent so far.
In the first edition, he writes "Look to the Rose that blows about us..." This, in the second and fifth editions, becomes "Look to the blowing Rose about us..." I think the revision flows more smoothly. There's almost a break, a caesura, in the first edition between "Rose" and "that," while the line flows uninterruptedly with "Look to the blowing Rose about us." Perhaps he opted for the more continuous flow.
This stanza gave me, and to some extent, still gives me some problems. The first has been resolved, but the second still raises a question each time I read it.
The first problem was the word "blow" and "blowing" in the first and second lines of the three versions.
"Look to the blowing Rose about us--"Lo,
Laughing," she says, "into the world I blow:"
I was reading the word as related to the wind in some way--"the Rose that blows about us" and also describing apparently the way the Rose came into the world, blowing like the wind. Somehow it just didn't fit. I checked the dictionary and found my problem. An old, almost archaic meaning of "to blow" is "to bloom." So, substituting bloom and blooming into the first stanza, it would read
Look to the blooming Rose about us--"Lo,
Laughing," she says, "into the world I bloom:"
I think this makes better sense than seeing "blow" and "blowing" as related to the behavior of the wind.
The second, and so far unresolved problem, relates to the word "tear" in the last line of the quatrain. The problem is not that it doesn't make sense in the context, but that there is a sense of violence here that doesn't go with either the earlier reference to "Laughing" or to anything else in The Rubaiyat.
"At once the silken tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."
Right now, I can't think of any reference to violence in the poem. Death is brought up a number of times, but I never got the sense of violence in any of the quatrains. It stands out. I checked the dictionary for variant or archaic meanings for tear and could find nothing but a suggestion of "haste," as in "tear along a country road."
When I read this stanza, another poem comes to mind, which again seems to convey the sense of violence in a sexual context that seems inappropriate. The poem is Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," and the reference is to the last lines of the poem. The narrator is urging his love to remember that they will not always be young and should make haste for "...at my back I always hear/ Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near" and "The grave's a fine and private place,/ But none, I think, do there embrace."
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
In this poem, I guess an argument could be made that "tear" is being used in the sense of "making haste." And the "Rose," well, a rose lives only one season, so it has to hurry and spread its pollen quickly before summer is over.
So, I'm leaning toward a sense of "haste" in both poems, tentatively anyway.
Any comments?
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Combination Plate 7
Tom Robb Smith
Child 44, a novel
Mystery: police procedural
Setting: Soviet Union, under Stalin
I guess the novel is best described, as far as a type of mystery anyway, as a police procedural, since Leo Demidov, an officer with the MGB, the State Security Agency, is the investigator. He has two problems. The first is to identify and apprehend the individual who has been killing children over a period of at least a decade or two. The second is to get the MGB to admit to the presence of a serial killer. The problem is that the ideology of Stalin's regime defines the society as the perfect society in which serial killers can not exist. Only the societies of the decadent West could produce such monstrosities. To insist that a serial killer could develop under the present system, communism, is to cast doubt on the entire system--a criticism of the system and, worse, a criticism of Stalin himself. This is treason, and there can be only one penalty for treason--swift and sure execution.
At the beginning, Leo Demidov is a true believer: anything and everything can be done to bring into existence the future Edenic state promised by Marxist-Leninist ideology, including the need to install terror into society. He has performed acts that he would rather not have done, but it was in the name of the future good of society. His disillusionment begins with the loss of his idealistic and unrealistic views of society and his relationship with his wife.
The major problem that I found, and no doubt many others will argue this is actually a strength and not a weakness, concerns the emphasis of various topics or themes in the work. Smith's main emphasis is on getting across to the reader what it was like to live in Russia under Stalin. Second in importance is what it is like to be an MGB officer. Least important, or so it seems to me anyway, is the mystery itself . Perhaps Smith should have written a novel about life under Stalin and forgotten about the mystery element.
I borrowed this book for a discussion group from the local library, and it seems as though someone at the library agrees with me since the novel is listed as fiction, and not as a mystery.
However, I must also say that this is a remarkable first novel. Smith is able to convey the claustrophobic oppression that all suffered under Stalin, including the MGB officers themselves. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?-- or "Who will watch the watchers?" The answer is --other watchers, who are also being watched.
I have heard a second book in the series is out or almost out, and I plan on taking a look at it. Perhaps he will devote more time to actual police procedures in this one. If so, it should be a very interesting read.
==================================================
Jo Nesbo
Redbreast, a novel
Mystery : police procedural
Setting: present day Norway
Harry Hole is a detective with the Oslo Police Department, much to their dismay at times. Some of his colleagues and superiors regard him at best as a loose cannon. Nesbo has now written seven novels detailing the exploits of Harry Hole. From what I can gather, Redbreast is the fourth novel in the series, but the first to be translated into English. The fifth book in the series, Nemesis, has just recently been translated.
In Redbreast, Harry Hole's case has its roots in the past, WWII to be precise. The case involves in some way those Norwegians who fought with the Germans against the Russians; some no doubt saw Russia as a greater threat to Norway than the Germans, while others had absorbed the Nazi ideology and saw themselves as Aryans.
My major problem with the novel is that I'm not certain if the novel is primarily about Norwegians who fought on the Russian Front with the German army or about the solution to several crimes that take place today in Norway, at least an half century later. The problem is actually similar to the one I discussed in the comments about Smith's book. The novel spent too much time in the past on the front lines and in a recuperation hospital and too little time ihn the present solving the crimes. I realize that the novel's argument is that the roots of the present day crimes lie back in the past, but even Freud recognized that the issues have to be resolved in the present as it is impossible to go back and resolve them when they happened.
Again, like Tom Rob Smith, I find Nesbo to be an excellent writer and one that I will look into again, hoping he spends more time in the present in his other works. I have heard that the next book to be translated, Nemesis, is much more tightly written and has fewer excursions into the past. That sounds promising.
In both novels, Child 44 and Redbreast, we see talented writers with considerable skills creating police procedurals with interesting characters, on both sides of the law. I'd like to see more emphasis on them and less on the past.
==================================================================
Northanger Abby: the film version, 2007
Director: Jon Jones
Screenplay: Andrew Davies
Felicity Jones as Catherine Morland
Perhaps I should begin by saying that dramatization lasted around 90 minutes. A director can't do much more than present the skeleton of the plot in only an hour and a half. At the end, I thought about renaming the film to Northanger Abbey Lite. The basic structure is there: she travels to Bath, meets some people, is invited to stay with some of them (the Tilneys of Northanger Abbey), has some adventures there, mostly embarrassing for her, and gets sent home, rudely and inconsiderately. But, all is not lost...and they live "happily ever after," although if one reads Austen's last paragraph closely, one might have some doubts.
I have read Northanger Abbey several times and have felt it is an incomplete novel (see post Combination Plate 6 on July 4). Actually, it seems to me to be two separate novellas: the first being a comedy of manners in Bath, while the second is a satire on Gothic novels and those who spend too much time reading them. (I wonder what Madame Bovary would have been like if she had read too many Gothics instead of too many romances, or Don Quixote, if he had read too many Gothics instead of fantastic tales of knight errantry.)
Some one must have felt the same way for, during the first half of the novel, we see interspersed with the scenes in Bath some of her imaginative flights of fancy, all obviously influenced by thse Gothic novels. These do not appear in the novel. Somebody, Davies the screenwriter or perhaps Jones the director, felt that something needed to be done to prepare the viewer for the satiric Gothic elements in the last half of the film. And whoever made the decision got it right.
The casting wasn't bad, except for the choice of William Beck for John Thorpe. In the novel, John Thorpe is a mostly harmless, self-centered, pompous fool, one who "rattles about" according to his best friend, James Morland, Catherine's brother. Instead Beck comes across as a nasty-looking villain, one belonging more rightly in a Gothic tale than in a comedy of manners.
What is missing? Well, the skeleton is there, but most of the flesh is gone.
Overall: a pleasant 90 minutes or so.
=================================================================
Chronicles of Riddick, a film
sequel to Pitch Black
Chronicles of Riddick takes place some five years after the events depicted in Pitch Black (see post Combination Plate 6, on July 4). Again Riddick is being hounded by mercs ( bounty hunters). He is surprised to find that there is now an excessively high price on his head, but he must be brought back alive. He is also surprised to discover who put the high price on him.
Civilization is being threatened by a horde of religious fanatics whose tactics are simple: convert or die. While their death rates are exceedingly high, they always find plenty of replacements after conquering the planet. Riddick's task is to stop them. I hope there's a third, because the ending really seems to be a new beginning.
As usual, the special effects are great. Vin Diesel is the star of the show, playing a role that seems designed with him in mind. He has plenty of opportunities to glower at his enemies, and few can manage to glower as well as he can. However, Riddick does seem to mellow a bit in this film. A third film should tell us whether this was only a momentary loss of focus or whether he is in the process of becoming a soft-hearted, sentimental marshmellow. Riddick a marshmellow? Can't happen. Well, let's wait for the third, if there is one.
I'm not counting the animated version which is also out. I will see it some time in the future.
Overall rating: lots of high tech stuff and interesting settings. Good clean fun.
=================================================================
Pat Murphy
The Falling Woman, an SF/F novel
In the cover blurb, Samuel R. Delany, critic and author, describes this novel as "A lovely and literate exploration of the dark moment when myth and science meet..." Generally blurbs found on the covers, front and back, usually provide strong support for the theory that there really are many universes in existence and that blurb writers seldom live in the same one the book exists in. This is an exception.
The science is archeology and the myth is Mayan. Elizabeth Butler is leading an archeological expedition working on a Mayan site on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. She has been separated for decades from her husband who has just recently died. Diane, her daughter, whom she hasn't seen in many years, has come to spend some time with her at the dig. She's not sure why she came--perhaps to reestablish some sort of relationship with her mother, now that her father has died.
The story is told by both Elizabeth and Diane in alternating chapters. Interspersed are several unnumbered sections of three to four pages each which are supposed to be notes from a book Elizabeth is writing. Actually it's a clever way of getting some information about the Mayans and archeology across to the reader without seriously disrupting the narrative flow. Those who wish to read the sections can do so; those who aren't interested can skip the sections and continue on with the narrative.
Elizabeth has a reputation for being a lucky expedition leader. Her digs frequently come up with discoveries that shouldn't have been found because there was no evidence to suggest anything of importance being buried there. And this dig is no different. She told them to dig where no one could see anything that even suggested something was underground there.
Actually Elizabeth cheats. She sees things that other people don't see; she sees people that others can't see. It's as if she can see into the past and get glimpses of the people who lived at this site. At times she can see the place as it was centuries ago, if not thousands of years ago. But, something is different at this site: she not only can see them, but at least one of them, a Mayan priestess, can see her. And, they can communicate to some extent.
A series of accidents occur, injuring one young worker. The local inhabitants insist that the place is haunted and demand a curandera be called in. The curandera performs the necessary ceremonies. But, before she leaves, she warns Elizabeth that both she and Diane must leave. If not, at least Diane must be sent away or there will be a tragedy.
It's a quiet novel--that's the best way I can describe it. There are no monsters here, but there is a slowly growing sense of danger which affects everybody on the dig to some extent. All will be glad when this one is over.
Overall Rating: good novel, meant to be read in a quiet place and in long segments.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
THE NIGHT LAND: A Fantasy by William Hope Hodgson
Millions of years in Earth's future, Night has finally defeated Day, and in the darkness are monsters--physical, psychological, and spiritual--waiting for the day they can destroy The Last Redoubt, the last haven for humanity.
William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was only 40 when he was killed in an artillery barrage at Ypres during WWI. Yet, he has an extensive bibliography that includes five novels and somewhere between 90 and 100 short stories. Most of his tales occupy the literary domain of the supernatural, of horror, of bizarre events and creatures, and of some that can be either SF or Fantasy or both. I find it difficult to classify The Night Land except to say it combines features of SF, Fantasy, and horror.
I see the novel as comprising three parts, even though the novel consists of seventeen chapters and is not divided beyond that.
Part One: The Beginning
The first part consists of Chapter I. It takes place in a contemporary setting, apparently the late 19th or early 20th century. The Night Land was first published in 1912. Chapter 1 tells the story of two people: the beautiful Lady Mirdath and her nameless lover, who is also the narrator throughout the novel. We learn of their meeting, courtship, marriage, and her early death in childbirth.
Part Two: The Quest for the Fair One
Her death does not end the tale. Chapter II begins some millions of years in the future, when there is only darkness over the land and the remaining humans, many millions of them apparently, have retreated to the Last Redoubt, a huge pyramidal structure that spreads over miles and soars many miles upward, so much so that those wishing to live at the top must become acclimated to the reduced oxygen in the air.
Humans have retreated into this great fortress to protect themselves from the monsters, both physical and immaterial, that now roam the land. The humans have devised a protective shield that is powered in some fashion by energy drawn from the earth itself. The energy source is not limitless, so all know that some time in the future the defensive shield will go down and humanity will then cease to exist.
In Chapter II, the narrator tells us that he has strange dreams in which he becomes a young man who lives in this night land, millions of years in the future. These remains dreams until at one point, he actually moves into his dream and becomes the young man in his dream. As such, he has both sets of memories, of the one who loved Lady Mirdath, and of the young man who has lived all of his life in the Last Redoubt. He doesn't understand this; he simply accepts it.
There are stories of a second Refuge, somewhere out there, but nothing has been heard from them in centuries, until a faint telepathic message is received from them. They are doomed, for their source of energy is almost exhausted and soon the energy shield will go down. The nameless narrator discovers that one of the inhabitants is Naani, a young woman. He immediately recognizes her as Mirdath, and she believes she also knows him, but not how and very vaguely, as if in a fading dream. In their brief conversations, it becomes clear that she has at least partial memories of Mirdath. Their souls had once again been reunited, some millions of years in the future.
He of course can not leave her to this fate, not after having come millions of years into the future, only to be separated by death once again. The following chapters tell of his journey to the second Refuge, the monsters he encounters and mostly avoids through stealth and cunning. In Chapter IX, he reaches the Refuge, only to discover that it is too late. Their shield has failed, and the horrors outside have attacked. The Refuge was no longer a refuge but a death trap. Thus ends what I call Part Two.
Part Three: The Journey Back
The third part begins with Chapter X and the discovery that Naani and some others had escaped from the Refuge. As they are able to communicate with a rudimentary form of telepathy, he is able to find her. Typically, the story would, at this point, progress rapidly to the safety of his home, The Last Redoubt. Another option would be to continue the adventure, only having them encounter other and more horrible monsters than he met on his way here.
Hodgson found a third way: an extensive delving into the ways of a man and a maid in this culture. The road to true love is not always a smooth one, as our narrator and the reader soon learn. There is, of course, much billing and cooing during the first part of the trip. However, this soon changes. In his eyes, she becomes willful and disobedient. It begins when near the end of each travel period, he decides she is getting tired and picks her up to carry her in order to make better time. She objects that she isn't tired, etc. He ignores her, and she becomes angry. She then begins to disobey him in various ways, and on at least one occasion acts almost to cause her death and his as he rescues her.
As the Wyf of Bath would have it, the problem is maistrie--who is to be the Master in the house. The narrator sees no problem here; the man is naturally the master. And, what is more, a real woman wants it that way. For how could she really love a man who is not the master, one whom she can control. He believes the problem is that Naani is not yet fully matured, that she is part girl-child and part woman. The woman part recognizes that he is to be the master, while the other still resists the idea, thus the disobedience and willfulness.
The situation deteriorates until it reaches the point where he feels he must discipline her--first he strikes her hand several times, then hits her shoulders with a branch with its branches and leaves removed (as he tells us, much as a parent would an unruly child), and finally strikes her bare shoulders several times on one occasion, again with the branch.
At this point, she now begins to be "obedient," much as a slave would be to her master, she tells him. This, of course, is not what he wants. This interaction between the two is the most significant part of the return journey, even though they still encounter serious, life-threatening dangers.
In the most serious attack on the journey, he is seriously wounded during an melee with a large number of the humpt men (neanderthals?) and would have been killed if she had not distracted them by jumping into the fray, stabbing one, and then getting them to go after her. She leads them a merry chase through the woods and returns when she sees that he is up and now able to defend himself. They barely make it to an island in the center of the lake they had been circling when they were attacked. She then nurses him back to health.
While nursing him, she takes full advantage of the situation, ordering him about 'for his own good." Being weakened, he can't struggle with her; beside, he likes being mothered at times. The problem of maistrie never arises again, except for some mild teasing.
However, the monsters are still about, and the dangers are many. Near the end he thinks he has lost her again.
It is probably the most unique horror/fantasy/supernatural tale of terror I have ever read. Just as the anonymous narrator has his obstacles to overcome, the reader of The Night Land also has a few obstacles while reading. The first is the archaic language (one commentator called it a pseudo-archaic style). There is a certain amount of repetition of phrases; for example, when he attempts to explain something, he frequently ends by saying this is only his guess and the reader shouldn't take it as fact. On his journey outward, he repeats very frequently how much he longs to be with his fair maid and his own true love, and how he constantly thinks about her.
I suspect some? many? will be disturbed by the narrator's unquestioned beliefs regarding the relationship between a man and a maid. I don't think that will go well in the 21st century, and I'm not that certain it went well in the mid and late 20th century. And, I have my doubts that it ever went well with a significant part of the population at any time.
Overall: an unique work that is worth the time and effort spent reading it. I read it many years ago, and it's always remained with me. It was for this reason that I searched for a copy and reread it after many years. It's an experience.
William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was only 40 when he was killed in an artillery barrage at Ypres during WWI. Yet, he has an extensive bibliography that includes five novels and somewhere between 90 and 100 short stories. Most of his tales occupy the literary domain of the supernatural, of horror, of bizarre events and creatures, and of some that can be either SF or Fantasy or both. I find it difficult to classify The Night Land except to say it combines features of SF, Fantasy, and horror.
I see the novel as comprising three parts, even though the novel consists of seventeen chapters and is not divided beyond that.
Part One: The Beginning
The first part consists of Chapter I. It takes place in a contemporary setting, apparently the late 19th or early 20th century. The Night Land was first published in 1912. Chapter 1 tells the story of two people: the beautiful Lady Mirdath and her nameless lover, who is also the narrator throughout the novel. We learn of their meeting, courtship, marriage, and her early death in childbirth.
Part Two: The Quest for the Fair One
Her death does not end the tale. Chapter II begins some millions of years in the future, when there is only darkness over the land and the remaining humans, many millions of them apparently, have retreated to the Last Redoubt, a huge pyramidal structure that spreads over miles and soars many miles upward, so much so that those wishing to live at the top must become acclimated to the reduced oxygen in the air.
Humans have retreated into this great fortress to protect themselves from the monsters, both physical and immaterial, that now roam the land. The humans have devised a protective shield that is powered in some fashion by energy drawn from the earth itself. The energy source is not limitless, so all know that some time in the future the defensive shield will go down and humanity will then cease to exist.
In Chapter II, the narrator tells us that he has strange dreams in which he becomes a young man who lives in this night land, millions of years in the future. These remains dreams until at one point, he actually moves into his dream and becomes the young man in his dream. As such, he has both sets of memories, of the one who loved Lady Mirdath, and of the young man who has lived all of his life in the Last Redoubt. He doesn't understand this; he simply accepts it.
There are stories of a second Refuge, somewhere out there, but nothing has been heard from them in centuries, until a faint telepathic message is received from them. They are doomed, for their source of energy is almost exhausted and soon the energy shield will go down. The nameless narrator discovers that one of the inhabitants is Naani, a young woman. He immediately recognizes her as Mirdath, and she believes she also knows him, but not how and very vaguely, as if in a fading dream. In their brief conversations, it becomes clear that she has at least partial memories of Mirdath. Their souls had once again been reunited, some millions of years in the future.
He of course can not leave her to this fate, not after having come millions of years into the future, only to be separated by death once again. The following chapters tell of his journey to the second Refuge, the monsters he encounters and mostly avoids through stealth and cunning. In Chapter IX, he reaches the Refuge, only to discover that it is too late. Their shield has failed, and the horrors outside have attacked. The Refuge was no longer a refuge but a death trap. Thus ends what I call Part Two.
Part Three: The Journey Back
The third part begins with Chapter X and the discovery that Naani and some others had escaped from the Refuge. As they are able to communicate with a rudimentary form of telepathy, he is able to find her. Typically, the story would, at this point, progress rapidly to the safety of his home, The Last Redoubt. Another option would be to continue the adventure, only having them encounter other and more horrible monsters than he met on his way here.
Hodgson found a third way: an extensive delving into the ways of a man and a maid in this culture. The road to true love is not always a smooth one, as our narrator and the reader soon learn. There is, of course, much billing and cooing during the first part of the trip. However, this soon changes. In his eyes, she becomes willful and disobedient. It begins when near the end of each travel period, he decides she is getting tired and picks her up to carry her in order to make better time. She objects that she isn't tired, etc. He ignores her, and she becomes angry. She then begins to disobey him in various ways, and on at least one occasion acts almost to cause her death and his as he rescues her.
As the Wyf of Bath would have it, the problem is maistrie--who is to be the Master in the house. The narrator sees no problem here; the man is naturally the master. And, what is more, a real woman wants it that way. For how could she really love a man who is not the master, one whom she can control. He believes the problem is that Naani is not yet fully matured, that she is part girl-child and part woman. The woman part recognizes that he is to be the master, while the other still resists the idea, thus the disobedience and willfulness.
The situation deteriorates until it reaches the point where he feels he must discipline her--first he strikes her hand several times, then hits her shoulders with a branch with its branches and leaves removed (as he tells us, much as a parent would an unruly child), and finally strikes her bare shoulders several times on one occasion, again with the branch.
At this point, she now begins to be "obedient," much as a slave would be to her master, she tells him. This, of course, is not what he wants. This interaction between the two is the most significant part of the return journey, even though they still encounter serious, life-threatening dangers.
In the most serious attack on the journey, he is seriously wounded during an melee with a large number of the humpt men (neanderthals?) and would have been killed if she had not distracted them by jumping into the fray, stabbing one, and then getting them to go after her. She leads them a merry chase through the woods and returns when she sees that he is up and now able to defend himself. They barely make it to an island in the center of the lake they had been circling when they were attacked. She then nurses him back to health.
While nursing him, she takes full advantage of the situation, ordering him about 'for his own good." Being weakened, he can't struggle with her; beside, he likes being mothered at times. The problem of maistrie never arises again, except for some mild teasing.
However, the monsters are still about, and the dangers are many. Near the end he thinks he has lost her again.
It is probably the most unique horror/fantasy/supernatural tale of terror I have ever read. Just as the anonymous narrator has his obstacles to overcome, the reader of The Night Land also has a few obstacles while reading. The first is the archaic language (one commentator called it a pseudo-archaic style). There is a certain amount of repetition of phrases; for example, when he attempts to explain something, he frequently ends by saying this is only his guess and the reader shouldn't take it as fact. On his journey outward, he repeats very frequently how much he longs to be with his fair maid and his own true love, and how he constantly thinks about her.
I suspect some? many? will be disturbed by the narrator's unquestioned beliefs regarding the relationship between a man and a maid. I don't think that will go well in the 21st century, and I'm not that certain it went well in the mid and late 20th century. And, I have my doubts that it ever went well with a significant part of the population at any time.
Overall: an unique work that is worth the time and effort spent reading it. I read it many years ago, and it's always remained with me. It was for this reason that I searched for a copy and reread it after many years. It's an experience.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Walter Van Tilburg Clark: August 3, 1909--Nov. 10, 1971
Today is the birth date of an exceptional writer, but unfortunately one who will probably never be listed in the first rank of great American writers. Why? Limited output is the villain.
Clark has only three novels, a number of short stories, and some poems to his credit. Critics and scholars would argue that these are too few to really judge an author's ability and therefore a position in any literary ranking. Yet, I would argue that even this limited body of work demonstrates his skill in depicting settings for his finely detailed and carefully crafted characters and their actions.
Clark has frequently been relegated to the western ghetto because his works are set in a western setting. But, this is similar to putting Austen's novels into the romance category, as I have seen some booksellers do. Most of his work is set out west, but the themes in his stories are found everywhere, not just in the land of sagebrush and saguaros and are still prevalent today. Here is one example:
The Ox-Bow Incident:
First Paragraph--
"Gil and I crossed the eastern divide about two by the sun. We pulled up for a look at the little town in the big valley and the mountains on the other side, with the crest of the Sierra showing faintly beyond like the rim of a day moon."
It opens as many western novels and films have begun--one or two riders cresting a ridge and then seeing the small town down in the valley surrounded by mountains. We next are given a description of the Edenic countryside, for it is Spring and the summer heat has not yet appeared. They then leave Eden, ride down to the town, and head for the saloon. One of them even gets into a brief brawl, for they've been isolated during the winter and have come down to loosen up a bit.
But shortly afterwards the real theme of the novel appears--that oxymoron called "vigilante justice." We hear that a man has been killed and cattle stolen, something has to be done. The story is a depiction of the dynamics of the growth of a lynch mob. The sheriff is a few hours away, and the rustlers may get away. They form a posse and capture three men who have a small herd that they claim they bought from a local rancher. But, there is no bill of sale.
The posse soon divides itself into three groups: those who are for hanging them now, even though there is a sheriff and a judge in town. These argue that the law can't be trusted, and some smart lawyer will get them off. These people are around today, arguing that at times we must ignore the law and act on our own, even if it breaks the law.
A second and smaller group insists that the men and the cattle should be returned to town and to let the law handle the situation.
But by far, the largest group is the undecided and the fearful. Among the fearful are the two POV characters who rode into town. They along with some others would just as soon turn them over to the authorities, but they are afraid to vote this way for fear of what the others may think. By voting against the hanging, they could be seen as showing sympathy for the captured trio and the others might think they are in with them.
In a farcical parody of a trial, the posse votes to hang the three men. Only five vote to bring them back to town and to let the law handle it: among the five are one who would be characterized as a "bleeding-heart liberal minister" by many today, a black man, the son of the Southern gentleman leading the mob, and two others.
A film was made of The Ox-Bow Incident, starring Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn, and Harry Morgan. It was fairly close to the novel, but somebody decided the ending was too bleak, so Henry Fonda's character acted more heroically than he did in the novel.
I've often wondered about the title--it's an incident, something really very minor and inconsequential.
Clark's other two novels are The Track of the Cat and The City of Trembling Leaves. The first was also made into a film starring Robert Mitchum. I haven't seen it yet, but it's in my Netflix queue, and I'll been watching it soon. The second, The City of Trembling Leaves, has no violence, no car chases, no exploding buildings and no shootouts, and therefore nobody has thought about making film of this one. After seeing what Hollywood does to other novels, I'm actually happy that they haven't gotten their hands on this one.
The Track of the Cat has what appears to be a simple plot. A panther or large cat has been killing cattle. Several brothers decide to kill it, and I suspect that the film limits itself to this theme. In the novel though, at the same time as the threat from the large cat, the sons and daughter are getting dissatisfied with their very restricted and regimented lives. This puts a severe strain on the family cohesiveness.
The third novel, The City of Trembling Leaves, is the story of a young boy, Tim Hazzard, growing up into manhood in Reno, Nevada, where Clark himself grew up and lived for many years. Some of the events, especially of Tim Hazard's teen years, seem so real that one can only wonder if Clark himself hadn't experienced them.
The novel opens with a "Prelude," with its musical inflections, for Hazard will grow up to be a composer.
Prelude:
"This is the story of the lives and loves of Timothy Hazard, and so, indirectly, a token biography of Reno, Nevada, as well. Now, whatever else Reno may be, and it is many things, it is the city of trembling leaves. The most important meaning of leaves is the same everywhere in Reno, of course, and everywhere else, for that matter, which is what Tim implies when he calls moribund any city containing a region which you can look all around and not see a tree. Such a city is drawing out of its alliance with the eternal, with the Jurassic Swamps and the Green Mansions, and in time it will also choke out the trees in the magic wilderness of the spirit."
Tim Hazard is, among many things, a mystic, though he doesn't know it, and probably wouldn't know what you meant if you told him so. He has a unique relationship with place, and a philosophy, though he doesn't call it that, that at times verges on Taoism.
I think I've rambled on long enough now, so I'll close here. Sometime in the future, I will write about some of his short stories.
All three novels are great reads and well worth the time spent reading them.
Clark has only three novels, a number of short stories, and some poems to his credit. Critics and scholars would argue that these are too few to really judge an author's ability and therefore a position in any literary ranking. Yet, I would argue that even this limited body of work demonstrates his skill in depicting settings for his finely detailed and carefully crafted characters and their actions.
Clark has frequently been relegated to the western ghetto because his works are set in a western setting. But, this is similar to putting Austen's novels into the romance category, as I have seen some booksellers do. Most of his work is set out west, but the themes in his stories are found everywhere, not just in the land of sagebrush and saguaros and are still prevalent today. Here is one example:
The Ox-Bow Incident:
First Paragraph--
"Gil and I crossed the eastern divide about two by the sun. We pulled up for a look at the little town in the big valley and the mountains on the other side, with the crest of the Sierra showing faintly beyond like the rim of a day moon."
It opens as many western novels and films have begun--one or two riders cresting a ridge and then seeing the small town down in the valley surrounded by mountains. We next are given a description of the Edenic countryside, for it is Spring and the summer heat has not yet appeared. They then leave Eden, ride down to the town, and head for the saloon. One of them even gets into a brief brawl, for they've been isolated during the winter and have come down to loosen up a bit.
But shortly afterwards the real theme of the novel appears--that oxymoron called "vigilante justice." We hear that a man has been killed and cattle stolen, something has to be done. The story is a depiction of the dynamics of the growth of a lynch mob. The sheriff is a few hours away, and the rustlers may get away. They form a posse and capture three men who have a small herd that they claim they bought from a local rancher. But, there is no bill of sale.
The posse soon divides itself into three groups: those who are for hanging them now, even though there is a sheriff and a judge in town. These argue that the law can't be trusted, and some smart lawyer will get them off. These people are around today, arguing that at times we must ignore the law and act on our own, even if it breaks the law.
A second and smaller group insists that the men and the cattle should be returned to town and to let the law handle the situation.
But by far, the largest group is the undecided and the fearful. Among the fearful are the two POV characters who rode into town. They along with some others would just as soon turn them over to the authorities, but they are afraid to vote this way for fear of what the others may think. By voting against the hanging, they could be seen as showing sympathy for the captured trio and the others might think they are in with them.
In a farcical parody of a trial, the posse votes to hang the three men. Only five vote to bring them back to town and to let the law handle it: among the five are one who would be characterized as a "bleeding-heart liberal minister" by many today, a black man, the son of the Southern gentleman leading the mob, and two others.
A film was made of The Ox-Bow Incident, starring Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn, and Harry Morgan. It was fairly close to the novel, but somebody decided the ending was too bleak, so Henry Fonda's character acted more heroically than he did in the novel.
I've often wondered about the title--it's an incident, something really very minor and inconsequential.
Clark's other two novels are The Track of the Cat and The City of Trembling Leaves. The first was also made into a film starring Robert Mitchum. I haven't seen it yet, but it's in my Netflix queue, and I'll been watching it soon. The second, The City of Trembling Leaves, has no violence, no car chases, no exploding buildings and no shootouts, and therefore nobody has thought about making film of this one. After seeing what Hollywood does to other novels, I'm actually happy that they haven't gotten their hands on this one.
The Track of the Cat has what appears to be a simple plot. A panther or large cat has been killing cattle. Several brothers decide to kill it, and I suspect that the film limits itself to this theme. In the novel though, at the same time as the threat from the large cat, the sons and daughter are getting dissatisfied with their very restricted and regimented lives. This puts a severe strain on the family cohesiveness.
The third novel, The City of Trembling Leaves, is the story of a young boy, Tim Hazzard, growing up into manhood in Reno, Nevada, where Clark himself grew up and lived for many years. Some of the events, especially of Tim Hazard's teen years, seem so real that one can only wonder if Clark himself hadn't experienced them.
The novel opens with a "Prelude," with its musical inflections, for Hazard will grow up to be a composer.
Prelude:
"This is the story of the lives and loves of Timothy Hazard, and so, indirectly, a token biography of Reno, Nevada, as well. Now, whatever else Reno may be, and it is many things, it is the city of trembling leaves. The most important meaning of leaves is the same everywhere in Reno, of course, and everywhere else, for that matter, which is what Tim implies when he calls moribund any city containing a region which you can look all around and not see a tree. Such a city is drawing out of its alliance with the eternal, with the Jurassic Swamps and the Green Mansions, and in time it will also choke out the trees in the magic wilderness of the spirit."
Tim Hazard is, among many things, a mystic, though he doesn't know it, and probably wouldn't know what you meant if you told him so. He has a unique relationship with place, and a philosophy, though he doesn't call it that, that at times verges on Taoism.
I think I've rambled on long enough now, so I'll close here. Sometime in the future, I will write about some of his short stories.
All three novels are great reads and well worth the time spent reading them.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Greg Benford: Tides of Light-- Galactic Center Book 4
Greg Benford's Tides of Light picks up the story about two years after the conclusion of Book 3 in the series, Great Sky River. In that work we learn of the slow decimation of the human population on the planet Snowglade and the escape of Killeen and those members of the Bishop clan who decide to search for a planet free of mech domination. Aided by the Mantis, possibly a rogue mech or at least one with its own agenda, the humans lift off in the Argo, not in search of the Golden Fleece, but in hopes of finding a planet they can settle without fear of extermination by the mechs.
Now, they are approaching a planet that they hope will be the new Eden. So optimistic are they that they've already named the planet New Bishop, prematurely as they soon learn. The planet is not unoccupied. Already on the planet are mechs, other humans, and the Cybers, an alien race that has been locked in a deadly struggle with the mechs for thousands of years. Whereas the humans have usually fled the mechs for other parts of the galaxy, hoping to elude them and build a civilization in peace, the Cybers have done the opposite. Feeling that the mechs pose an inescapable threat to all organic life, they have deliberately engaged in battle with the mechs whenever the opportunity arises, and in some cases, have gone searching for opportunities.
Briefly, the mechs on the planet, who have been programmed by their central intelligence to engage in competition with one another to simulate the effects of evolution found in organic life, have lost contact with the central intelligence. Over the years, the competition has gotten severe enough that it degenerated into open warfare among competing mech groups. The warfare weakened them sufficiently that humans on the planet were able to take advantage and began their own campaign against the mechs. Just as the humans were about to destroy the mechs, the Cybers arrived on the scene, took advantage of the situation, and quickly destroyed the remaining mechs.
It is at this point that Killeen and the others arrive. Initially mistaken for mechs by the Cybers, the humans barely escaped to the planet surface where they made contact with the humans already there. They discover that the humans are led by a religious fanatic who believes God had directed him to attack and destroy the mechs and now directs him to destroy the Cybers. Killeen is doubtful about this but must go along or he and the rest of the Bishop clan will be destroyed. Warfare among the humans would only weaken them, so the Bishop clan joins in.
To make life even more interesting, the Cybers, led by by their ruling council, the Illuminates, are puzzled by the arrival of Killeen and the Bishop clan. Once having taken the Argo, the Cybers discover information about the humans that results in an open division among the Illuminates, which ultimately breaks out into a civil war. One group feels that the humans must be destroyed, while a second group believes that the humans, in some way unknown as yet, are necessary for the destruction of the mechs and therefore, the safety of organic life in the galaxy.
Overall, this novel is as good or perhaps even better than the three that precede it. It has action, interesting characters (human and alien), and, what's always necessary for good SF, some scientific extrapolation. In this novel, the major scientific idea is the control of cosmic strings by the Cybers. (For a very brief and readable explanation of string theory, click on the link below to a PBS site. http://tinyurl.com/ncqm5t)
The Cybers have learned to control the strings and are using it for planetary mining. The string is used to slice into a planet. Once it reaches the core, it becomes a conduit for draining the core of needed minerals. There is much talk today that SF is too often being overtaken by real events. Well, I don't think Benford has anything to worry about here. Assuming the strings even exist, it will be some time in the future before we learn to control them, if that's even possible.
Benford has included a four page appendix to the novel--"Chronology of Human Species (Dreaming Vertebrates) at Galactic Center." There's sufficient material here for another 20 or 30 novels, but so far Benford has resisted the temptation and the series seems to have ended at 6 novels. We still don't know what happened to Earth. For those who are wondering about the fate of Nigel Walmsley, as I am, we still don't know. However, in Books 3 and 4, Benford did include some oblique references to him, so perhaps we are not to forget about him completely.
Now, on to Book 5, Furious Gulf.
Overall, got to give this a 5/5 rating.
Now, they are approaching a planet that they hope will be the new Eden. So optimistic are they that they've already named the planet New Bishop, prematurely as they soon learn. The planet is not unoccupied. Already on the planet are mechs, other humans, and the Cybers, an alien race that has been locked in a deadly struggle with the mechs for thousands of years. Whereas the humans have usually fled the mechs for other parts of the galaxy, hoping to elude them and build a civilization in peace, the Cybers have done the opposite. Feeling that the mechs pose an inescapable threat to all organic life, they have deliberately engaged in battle with the mechs whenever the opportunity arises, and in some cases, have gone searching for opportunities.
Briefly, the mechs on the planet, who have been programmed by their central intelligence to engage in competition with one another to simulate the effects of evolution found in organic life, have lost contact with the central intelligence. Over the years, the competition has gotten severe enough that it degenerated into open warfare among competing mech groups. The warfare weakened them sufficiently that humans on the planet were able to take advantage and began their own campaign against the mechs. Just as the humans were about to destroy the mechs, the Cybers arrived on the scene, took advantage of the situation, and quickly destroyed the remaining mechs.
It is at this point that Killeen and the others arrive. Initially mistaken for mechs by the Cybers, the humans barely escaped to the planet surface where they made contact with the humans already there. They discover that the humans are led by a religious fanatic who believes God had directed him to attack and destroy the mechs and now directs him to destroy the Cybers. Killeen is doubtful about this but must go along or he and the rest of the Bishop clan will be destroyed. Warfare among the humans would only weaken them, so the Bishop clan joins in.
To make life even more interesting, the Cybers, led by by their ruling council, the Illuminates, are puzzled by the arrival of Killeen and the Bishop clan. Once having taken the Argo, the Cybers discover information about the humans that results in an open division among the Illuminates, which ultimately breaks out into a civil war. One group feels that the humans must be destroyed, while a second group believes that the humans, in some way unknown as yet, are necessary for the destruction of the mechs and therefore, the safety of organic life in the galaxy.
Overall, this novel is as good or perhaps even better than the three that precede it. It has action, interesting characters (human and alien), and, what's always necessary for good SF, some scientific extrapolation. In this novel, the major scientific idea is the control of cosmic strings by the Cybers. (For a very brief and readable explanation of string theory, click on the link below to a PBS site. http://tinyurl.com/ncqm5t)
The Cybers have learned to control the strings and are using it for planetary mining. The string is used to slice into a planet. Once it reaches the core, it becomes a conduit for draining the core of needed minerals. There is much talk today that SF is too often being overtaken by real events. Well, I don't think Benford has anything to worry about here. Assuming the strings even exist, it will be some time in the future before we learn to control them, if that's even possible.
Benford has included a four page appendix to the novel--"Chronology of Human Species (Dreaming Vertebrates) at Galactic Center." There's sufficient material here for another 20 or 30 novels, but so far Benford has resisted the temptation and the series seems to have ended at 6 novels. We still don't know what happened to Earth. For those who are wondering about the fate of Nigel Walmsley, as I am, we still don't know. However, in Books 3 and 4, Benford did include some oblique references to him, so perhaps we are not to forget about him completely.
Now, on to Book 5, Furious Gulf.
Overall, got to give this a 5/5 rating.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Sorcerer: a film commentary
Warning: I reveal significant events and the ending for the following work.
Sorcerer is the classic example of what happens when Hollywood decides to remake a highly successful film: the result is a film usually considerably less than the original, which makes me wonder why it was remade. So far, I have found only one remake that is superior to the original version--Gaslight. I have heard that two versions of The Maltese Falcon came out before the one starring Bogart, and that all comments I have heard suggest the Bogart version is superior to the first two. I have them in my queue and will shortly view them. There probably are others that I haven't seen or heard of, and I would be interested in hearing about them.
This remake takes a highly successful and one of the most tension-filled and suspenseful films I have ever seen, Wages of Fear, and improves it into a slightly above average action film. About two weeks ago, I posted some commentary on this film and ended by remarking that I was curious about the remake. Unfortunately Sorcerer was no better than one could expect of a remake.
The cast, of whom I'm familiar only with Roy Scheider, who, along with the rest, gives us more than adequate performances.
The plot of Sorcerer remains essentially the same. Those fighting an oil field fire need explosives to bring the fire under control. The only explosives are several hundred miles away and must be transported by trucks over back country roads that most four-wheel drive vehicles would have some problems with. The explosives have aged and therefore are apt to go off if jarred or shaken. Four drivers, attracted by the large wages, in two trucks leave on what is essentially a suicide mission.
There are several problems with this remake. One of them involves the background of the characters who end up in this small poverty-stricken village somewhere in South America. In the beginning of the original, Wages of Fear, we meet a number of the inhabitants of this village and gradually four, who are obviously foreigners, begin to stand out among the rest. We don't know how they got there or even much about them or their past history; that is left up to our imaginations.
The first "improvement" consists of giving the viewer specific incidents in the pasts of each of the four characters that forced them to go flee in order to prevent being killed or imprisoned for a variety of crimes. This, however leaves gap between the time they flee and their appearance in this small out-of-the-way village. How did they get here? In one case, a character's appearance is extremely puzzling. He was apparently a Palestinian who was captured by Israeli forces in Jerusalem after setting off a bomb. Since he was captured, it seems highly unlikely that he would end up in a small village in South America. This struck me as unrealistic or improbable, and that carried through, unfortunately, for the rest of the film.
The second problem and most serious problem was the nature of the crises the drivers faced.
In Wages of Fear, the problems the drivers encountered were those one might reasonably expect to face on a poorly maintained road: construction areas making it difficult to maneuver, a washboard road, and a large boulder blocking the road on a mountainous stretch, among others. None of these would be considered an especially hazardous situation except for the highly unstable explosives.
Unfortunately, this wasn't enough, so the director, William Friedkin decided improvements were needed here. Driving over ten or more miles of a washboard road with unstable explosives wasn't considered sufficiently hazardous, so that was dropped. It was replaced by crossing over a flood-swollen stream on a cable bridge. That both trucks got over the stream on this bridge that shouldn't have supported a motorcycle simply was beyond belief. I read science fiction and some fantasy, so I can willingly suspend my disbelief, but this was going too far.
The second crisis "improvement" consisted of an encounter with the cliche of cliches--the bandits. The truck was stopped by bandits who were going to kill Scheider and his partner, but in true Hollywood fashion, all four were killed by the drivers who had only one pistol while all four were armed, some with what appeared to be semi-automatic weapons.
The third improvement was the elimination of the original film's focus on the drivers. In Wages of Fear, the director spent considerable showing the viewers how this dangerous trip affected each of the four drivers--each driver attempting to deal with his fear in a different way. In Sorcerer, this almost completely disappeared as the director focused on the events rather than on the characters. I think this also was a major factor in the reduction of the film to a rather mundane action film. Viewers get their cues about what to feel and how to respond from many sources in the film--from the music for one, from the events for another, and very importantly from the characters' responses to the events. Ultimately, eliminating the characters' responses from the film significantly reduces the emotional impact on the viewers.
Not being content with this, Friedkin decided to improve the ending also. What is wrong with a truck slowly creeping in to its destination with a driver desperately trying to stay awake, accompanied by the body of the other driver? Instead, we find the driver stopping and leaving the body on the side of the road. The engine dies, and the driver tries to start it once or twice. In the beginning of the film we learn that the Scheider character is not only an experienced truck driver but also a mechanic. Perhaps I missed something here, yet we don't see him even lift the hood to discover the problem. Having him run out of gas two miles from his destination is really weak. In any case, he takes one of the cases of explosives and staggers the last two miles to the oil field--waving and shaking the volatile explosives as he goes. Regardless of the problem, why didn't he just leave the truck and the explosives and walk to the oil field and let them know where it was?
The ending of Wages of Fear wasn't sufficiently ironic, so that had to be modified also. Instead of getting careless in his joy at surviving and about to have more money in his pocket than he's seen in a long time, the Scheider character returns to the small village and celebrates with the villagers and a few mine officials, shortly before he leaves. As the camera pulls back from the cantina where the celebration is being held, the viewer sees two well dressed men approach the place. They are hit men who have been looking for the Scheider character and just happen to show up at this time.
How ironic!
Overall rating: adequate. The positive rating comes primarily from the cast, who never really got a chance to show what they could do.
Sorcerer is the classic example of what happens when Hollywood decides to remake a highly successful film: the result is a film usually considerably less than the original, which makes me wonder why it was remade. So far, I have found only one remake that is superior to the original version--Gaslight. I have heard that two versions of The Maltese Falcon came out before the one starring Bogart, and that all comments I have heard suggest the Bogart version is superior to the first two. I have them in my queue and will shortly view them. There probably are others that I haven't seen or heard of, and I would be interested in hearing about them.
This remake takes a highly successful and one of the most tension-filled and suspenseful films I have ever seen, Wages of Fear, and improves it into a slightly above average action film. About two weeks ago, I posted some commentary on this film and ended by remarking that I was curious about the remake. Unfortunately Sorcerer was no better than one could expect of a remake.
The cast, of whom I'm familiar only with Roy Scheider, who, along with the rest, gives us more than adequate performances.
The plot of Sorcerer remains essentially the same. Those fighting an oil field fire need explosives to bring the fire under control. The only explosives are several hundred miles away and must be transported by trucks over back country roads that most four-wheel drive vehicles would have some problems with. The explosives have aged and therefore are apt to go off if jarred or shaken. Four drivers, attracted by the large wages, in two trucks leave on what is essentially a suicide mission.
There are several problems with this remake. One of them involves the background of the characters who end up in this small poverty-stricken village somewhere in South America. In the beginning of the original, Wages of Fear, we meet a number of the inhabitants of this village and gradually four, who are obviously foreigners, begin to stand out among the rest. We don't know how they got there or even much about them or their past history; that is left up to our imaginations.
The first "improvement" consists of giving the viewer specific incidents in the pasts of each of the four characters that forced them to go flee in order to prevent being killed or imprisoned for a variety of crimes. This, however leaves gap between the time they flee and their appearance in this small out-of-the-way village. How did they get here? In one case, a character's appearance is extremely puzzling. He was apparently a Palestinian who was captured by Israeli forces in Jerusalem after setting off a bomb. Since he was captured, it seems highly unlikely that he would end up in a small village in South America. This struck me as unrealistic or improbable, and that carried through, unfortunately, for the rest of the film.
The second problem and most serious problem was the nature of the crises the drivers faced.
In Wages of Fear, the problems the drivers encountered were those one might reasonably expect to face on a poorly maintained road: construction areas making it difficult to maneuver, a washboard road, and a large boulder blocking the road on a mountainous stretch, among others. None of these would be considered an especially hazardous situation except for the highly unstable explosives.
Unfortunately, this wasn't enough, so the director, William Friedkin decided improvements were needed here. Driving over ten or more miles of a washboard road with unstable explosives wasn't considered sufficiently hazardous, so that was dropped. It was replaced by crossing over a flood-swollen stream on a cable bridge. That both trucks got over the stream on this bridge that shouldn't have supported a motorcycle simply was beyond belief. I read science fiction and some fantasy, so I can willingly suspend my disbelief, but this was going too far.
The second crisis "improvement" consisted of an encounter with the cliche of cliches--the bandits. The truck was stopped by bandits who were going to kill Scheider and his partner, but in true Hollywood fashion, all four were killed by the drivers who had only one pistol while all four were armed, some with what appeared to be semi-automatic weapons.
The third improvement was the elimination of the original film's focus on the drivers. In Wages of Fear, the director spent considerable showing the viewers how this dangerous trip affected each of the four drivers--each driver attempting to deal with his fear in a different way. In Sorcerer, this almost completely disappeared as the director focused on the events rather than on the characters. I think this also was a major factor in the reduction of the film to a rather mundane action film. Viewers get their cues about what to feel and how to respond from many sources in the film--from the music for one, from the events for another, and very importantly from the characters' responses to the events. Ultimately, eliminating the characters' responses from the film significantly reduces the emotional impact on the viewers.
Not being content with this, Friedkin decided to improve the ending also. What is wrong with a truck slowly creeping in to its destination with a driver desperately trying to stay awake, accompanied by the body of the other driver? Instead, we find the driver stopping and leaving the body on the side of the road. The engine dies, and the driver tries to start it once or twice. In the beginning of the film we learn that the Scheider character is not only an experienced truck driver but also a mechanic. Perhaps I missed something here, yet we don't see him even lift the hood to discover the problem. Having him run out of gas two miles from his destination is really weak. In any case, he takes one of the cases of explosives and staggers the last two miles to the oil field--waving and shaking the volatile explosives as he goes. Regardless of the problem, why didn't he just leave the truck and the explosives and walk to the oil field and let them know where it was?
The ending of Wages of Fear wasn't sufficiently ironic, so that had to be modified also. Instead of getting careless in his joy at surviving and about to have more money in his pocket than he's seen in a long time, the Scheider character returns to the small village and celebrates with the villagers and a few mine officials, shortly before he leaves. As the camera pulls back from the cantina where the celebration is being held, the viewer sees two well dressed men approach the place. They are hit men who have been looking for the Scheider character and just happen to show up at this time.
How ironic!
Overall rating: adequate. The positive rating comes primarily from the cast, who never really got a chance to show what they could do.
Monday, July 20, 2009
China Mieville's _The City & The City_
China Mieville is probably best known for his science fiction novels; I've read his Perdido Street Station and have a copy of his The Scar awaiting in my TBR bookcase. I was surprised therefore to hear his latest work described as a mystery, a police procedural, to be exact.
I found a copy at the library, and The City & The City is exactly as advertised, a police procedural. The body of a young woman who was murdered was discovered one morning and Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad was assigned the case. It is a typical police procedural with all the necessary accouterments--crime scene experts, interrogations of witnesses and suspects, and, of course, the unearthing of the victim's past life. The mystery is sufficiently convoluted with various groups and individuals and motives thrown up at one time or another to confuse the reader. The solution, once revealed, is satisfying.
But, the real charm of this novel is its setting. It is one of the most bizarre settings I have ever encountered and I've been reading science fiction for over a half century now. The closest I've come to this setting was in a novel by C. J. Cherryh, Wave Without a Shore.
Bear with me as I try to explain where the story takes place. It is set in a mythical country in Europe, actually a city-state might be closer, or perhaps two city-states. The body is discovered in Beszel, both a city and the country itself. However, there are two cities and two countries occupying the same territory. No, this isn't a story about different dimensions or time lines, but about two countries, Beszel and Ul Qoma, with differing languages, cultures, costumes, and traditions that occupy the same spot on this planet, and moreover, they dislike each other. Beszel has encouraged good relations with the US while Ul Qoma has developed close links with Canada.
What makes this work is the intense indoctrination that every child born in the two countries receives. They do not see each other even though they may be walking on the same street because they have trained themselves not to see each other. It's called unseeing. Some areas of the city belong to Beszel while others to Ul Qoma. However, many parts of the city, called crosshatchings, are used by the citizens of both countries, but even there they do not "see" each other. An example of a crosshatching might be an intersection that must be used by the inhabitants of both cities.
Buildings of each city may be next to each other, but the citizens of each city do not "see" the buildings of the other. The architectural styles are easily recognizable, as are the clothing fashions, so citizens may not inadvertently enter the wrong building or acknowledge a citizen of the other city.
Somewhere in the city is Copula Hall. Those citizens who find it necessary to visit the other city, as Inspector Borlu does, when he discovers that the body found in Beszel is actually that of a resident of Ul Qoma, must go to Copula Hall. After sufficient bureaucratic paperwork is filled out and an intense indoctrination in Ul Qoma culture and laws is administered, the citizen enters Ul Qoma and can now "see" its buildings and inhabitants, while those of Beszel are now invisible. Inspector Borlu, for example, discovers that his counterpart in the Ul Qoma police actually lives only a block or so away from him, but now he can see him and his apartment, while his own is now invisible.
The citizens know of the other city but they have conditioned themselves to not see it. To acknowledge the existence of the other by entering one of its buildings or interacting with a citizen is called a "breach." It is punished by a group known only as Breach, which seems to have some technology not available to anyone in the two cities. This group's only concern is the maintenance of the division between the two cities. For example, if a citizen of Beszel crosses illegally into Ul Qoma and kills an inhabitant, Breach will intervene because a breach has been committed, and not because of the murder. Frequently the person who commits a breach disappears and is never seen again.
I hope I haven't confused you too much, and that you will get a copy of The City & The City. It's one that I will read again, partly for the enjoyment and partly for a better understanding of the work. I got so enmeshed with the workings of the two cities that at times I forgot I was reading a mystery.
Overall Rating: 4/5 Stars
I found a copy at the library, and The City & The City is exactly as advertised, a police procedural. The body of a young woman who was murdered was discovered one morning and Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad was assigned the case. It is a typical police procedural with all the necessary accouterments--crime scene experts, interrogations of witnesses and suspects, and, of course, the unearthing of the victim's past life. The mystery is sufficiently convoluted with various groups and individuals and motives thrown up at one time or another to confuse the reader. The solution, once revealed, is satisfying.
But, the real charm of this novel is its setting. It is one of the most bizarre settings I have ever encountered and I've been reading science fiction for over a half century now. The closest I've come to this setting was in a novel by C. J. Cherryh, Wave Without a Shore.
Bear with me as I try to explain where the story takes place. It is set in a mythical country in Europe, actually a city-state might be closer, or perhaps two city-states. The body is discovered in Beszel, both a city and the country itself. However, there are two cities and two countries occupying the same territory. No, this isn't a story about different dimensions or time lines, but about two countries, Beszel and Ul Qoma, with differing languages, cultures, costumes, and traditions that occupy the same spot on this planet, and moreover, they dislike each other. Beszel has encouraged good relations with the US while Ul Qoma has developed close links with Canada.
What makes this work is the intense indoctrination that every child born in the two countries receives. They do not see each other even though they may be walking on the same street because they have trained themselves not to see each other. It's called unseeing. Some areas of the city belong to Beszel while others to Ul Qoma. However, many parts of the city, called crosshatchings, are used by the citizens of both countries, but even there they do not "see" each other. An example of a crosshatching might be an intersection that must be used by the inhabitants of both cities.
Buildings of each city may be next to each other, but the citizens of each city do not "see" the buildings of the other. The architectural styles are easily recognizable, as are the clothing fashions, so citizens may not inadvertently enter the wrong building or acknowledge a citizen of the other city.
Somewhere in the city is Copula Hall. Those citizens who find it necessary to visit the other city, as Inspector Borlu does, when he discovers that the body found in Beszel is actually that of a resident of Ul Qoma, must go to Copula Hall. After sufficient bureaucratic paperwork is filled out and an intense indoctrination in Ul Qoma culture and laws is administered, the citizen enters Ul Qoma and can now "see" its buildings and inhabitants, while those of Beszel are now invisible. Inspector Borlu, for example, discovers that his counterpart in the Ul Qoma police actually lives only a block or so away from him, but now he can see him and his apartment, while his own is now invisible.
The citizens know of the other city but they have conditioned themselves to not see it. To acknowledge the existence of the other by entering one of its buildings or interacting with a citizen is called a "breach." It is punished by a group known only as Breach, which seems to have some technology not available to anyone in the two cities. This group's only concern is the maintenance of the division between the two cities. For example, if a citizen of Beszel crosses illegally into Ul Qoma and kills an inhabitant, Breach will intervene because a breach has been committed, and not because of the murder. Frequently the person who commits a breach disappears and is never seen again.
I hope I haven't confused you too much, and that you will get a copy of The City & The City. It's one that I will read again, partly for the enjoyment and partly for a better understanding of the work. I got so enmeshed with the workings of the two cities that at times I forgot I was reading a mystery.
Overall Rating: 4/5 Stars
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XII
First Edition: Quatrain XII
"How Sweet is mortal Sovranty!"--think some;
Others--"How blest the Paradise to come!"
Ah, take the Cash in hand and waive the Rest;
Oh, the brave Music of a distant Drum!
Second Edition: Quatrain XIII
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the promise go,
Nor heed the music of a distant drum!
Fifth Edition: Quatrain XIII
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!
The changes are mostly aesthetic and involve no major differences in the theme of this Quatrain, which is, briefly stated, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Take what pleasures one can today and don't put them off for dreams of future wealth or glory or paradise.
The reference to the "distant drum" has brought about a variety of interpretations, based mostly on a misunderstanding of what that distant drum signifies. It does not, at least in the explanations that I've seen, mean anything like following one's own dreams or even that different path that Frost refers to. From what I've read, the distant drum signifies that the palace gates are open and that all workers are now expected to come to work. What the narrator therefore tells us is that we should be content with what we have and not strive for future glory or wealth, either in this world or the next. Buddha, Confucius, and Lao Tze all urged us to forgo worrying about the future and the future life and concern ourselves with today.
This quatrain follows the previous one in which Old Khayyam urges us to be content with the simple pleasures of life--bread and wine for the body, poetry for the mind, and human companionship to share these pleasures. That would be Paradise today.
The changes seem to be consistent in the direction of moving away from poetic diction to a more prosaic wording. In the first version, FitzGerald seemingly quotes what many people strive for--"mortal Sovranty" and "the Paradise to come." In the later editions, he drops the presumed quotes for a simple statement of what he thinks others desire.
The "mortal Sovranty" of the first version now has become simply "Glories of This World" in the later editions. Perhaps FitzGerald felt it was better to trade in the poetic diction for more commonplace terms that would be more easily understood.
The second change in the first two lines may be a bit more complex. In the first edition, FitzGerald pairs "mortal Sovranty" with "the Paradise to come." In following editions, this is no longer just "the Paradise to come," but "the Prophet's Paradise to come." Did he add "the Prophet" to make it clear that he was referring to Mohamed's vision or did he simply need two more syllables for the sound of the line?
The third line expresses Khayyam's suggestion that we take the bird in hand and not worry about that other one in the bush. We should "take the cash in hand" and "waive the rest" "or let the promise go" or "let the credit go." Enjoy what we have here and now and forget future promises. This isn't easy for many people to do or understand. I think it was Proust who suggested that "There is a sort of a compulsion in us to value what we lack at the expense of what we have."
The last line of the first edition--Oh, the brave Music of a distant drum--is ambiguous. It is not clear just how the reader is to think about that brave music. Is it included in "the Rest" which should be waived? Is it a temptation--the siren call of that distant drum. Is it something that might lead us or even should lead us to forget about the cash in hand? In the latter editions, FitzGerald make it obvious that we aren't supposed to heed the call of that drum. It is to be ignored just as the Glories of the World or the glories of the Paradise to come.
I mentioned in earlier posts that there are those who insist that this is a religious poem in which wine and other items are really religious in nature. The poem shouldn't be taken literally but must be interpreted in order to tease out the true religious substratum. I expressed my doubts about this in the past, and I think this Quatrain poses some real problems for such an interpretation. This Quatrain seems to be so rooted in living in the present that I don't see how one can see this as advocating a commitment today to some sort of a future life in Paradise.
Any thoughts?
"How Sweet is mortal Sovranty!"--think some;
Others--"How blest the Paradise to come!"
Ah, take the Cash in hand and waive the Rest;
Oh, the brave Music of a distant Drum!
Second Edition: Quatrain XIII
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the promise go,
Nor heed the music of a distant drum!
Fifth Edition: Quatrain XIII
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!
The changes are mostly aesthetic and involve no major differences in the theme of this Quatrain, which is, briefly stated, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Take what pleasures one can today and don't put them off for dreams of future wealth or glory or paradise.
The reference to the "distant drum" has brought about a variety of interpretations, based mostly on a misunderstanding of what that distant drum signifies. It does not, at least in the explanations that I've seen, mean anything like following one's own dreams or even that different path that Frost refers to. From what I've read, the distant drum signifies that the palace gates are open and that all workers are now expected to come to work. What the narrator therefore tells us is that we should be content with what we have and not strive for future glory or wealth, either in this world or the next. Buddha, Confucius, and Lao Tze all urged us to forgo worrying about the future and the future life and concern ourselves with today.
This quatrain follows the previous one in which Old Khayyam urges us to be content with the simple pleasures of life--bread and wine for the body, poetry for the mind, and human companionship to share these pleasures. That would be Paradise today.
The changes seem to be consistent in the direction of moving away from poetic diction to a more prosaic wording. In the first version, FitzGerald seemingly quotes what many people strive for--"mortal Sovranty" and "the Paradise to come." In the later editions, he drops the presumed quotes for a simple statement of what he thinks others desire.
The "mortal Sovranty" of the first version now has become simply "Glories of This World" in the later editions. Perhaps FitzGerald felt it was better to trade in the poetic diction for more commonplace terms that would be more easily understood.
The second change in the first two lines may be a bit more complex. In the first edition, FitzGerald pairs "mortal Sovranty" with "the Paradise to come." In following editions, this is no longer just "the Paradise to come," but "the Prophet's Paradise to come." Did he add "the Prophet" to make it clear that he was referring to Mohamed's vision or did he simply need two more syllables for the sound of the line?
The third line expresses Khayyam's suggestion that we take the bird in hand and not worry about that other one in the bush. We should "take the cash in hand" and "waive the rest" "or let the promise go" or "let the credit go." Enjoy what we have here and now and forget future promises. This isn't easy for many people to do or understand. I think it was Proust who suggested that "There is a sort of a compulsion in us to value what we lack at the expense of what we have."
The last line of the first edition--Oh, the brave Music of a distant drum--is ambiguous. It is not clear just how the reader is to think about that brave music. Is it included in "the Rest" which should be waived? Is it a temptation--the siren call of that distant drum. Is it something that might lead us or even should lead us to forget about the cash in hand? In the latter editions, FitzGerald make it obvious that we aren't supposed to heed the call of that drum. It is to be ignored just as the Glories of the World or the glories of the Paradise to come.
I mentioned in earlier posts that there are those who insist that this is a religious poem in which wine and other items are really religious in nature. The poem shouldn't be taken literally but must be interpreted in order to tease out the true religious substratum. I expressed my doubts about this in the past, and I think this Quatrain poses some real problems for such an interpretation. This Quatrain seems to be so rooted in living in the present that I don't see how one can see this as advocating a commitment today to some sort of a future life in Paradise.
Any thoughts?
Friday, July 10, 2009
The Wages of Fear: a film
I had heard about The Wages of Fear some time ago, so I decided to take a look at it myself. I can't believe that film lasted 2 1/2 hours. Normally I take a break some time around 90 minutes or so, but this time I sat through the entire film. When I watch it again (it's on my "must see again" list), I will time it.
Briefly, it is one of the most tension-filled films I have ever seen. Perhaps someone more experienced in film analysis can say why.
The plot is almost absurdly simple. The film is set in an unnamed South American country, perhaps Venezuela. An oil well is on fire. Nitroglycerin is needed to put it out. The nearest supply of nitro is 300 miles away. The road between is so bad that transporting the nitro by truck without special safety equipment would be a suicide mission. There's no time to bring in the special safety equipment, so the oil country hires four men, who are out of work and out of money to drive two trucks the 300 miles. That's the plot.
The film opens with some initial background. We see the men and discover quickly that they want out of the small town where there is no work, but without money they can't leave. We learn a little about the men themselves, just enough to make them individuals, but little if anything about their past history. They are there, they are broke, and they are desperate enough to take on a suicide mission to escape, one way or another.
Their journey, of course, is extremely difficult, but the obstacles don't appear around every curve and are simply those that might be encountered on any road just barely hacked out of the wilderness. Under any other circumstances, they would be a nuisance or an irritation, but for trucks loaded with nitro, they become lethal.
The acting is uniformly excellent. One of the major roles is played by Yves Montand, the only name I recognize. Some of the other characters are familiar, but I can't place them in any particular film. The film, first shown in 1953, is based on a novel of the same name, I gather, by Georges Arnaud, and the film has made me curious enough to see if I can find it.
I have also just learned that there is a remake of The Wages of Fear. Why they changed the title to Sorcerer is beyond me. The remake is directed by William Friedkin (The Exorcist) and stars Roy Scheider, one of my favorite actors. I have Sorcerer in my queue and should see it in a few days. I wonder what "improvements" were made by Friedkin, and I wonder if he changed the ending. I may even learn why the name was changed to Sorcerer.
Briefly, it is one of the most tension-filled films I have ever seen. Perhaps someone more experienced in film analysis can say why.
The plot is almost absurdly simple. The film is set in an unnamed South American country, perhaps Venezuela. An oil well is on fire. Nitroglycerin is needed to put it out. The nearest supply of nitro is 300 miles away. The road between is so bad that transporting the nitro by truck without special safety equipment would be a suicide mission. There's no time to bring in the special safety equipment, so the oil country hires four men, who are out of work and out of money to drive two trucks the 300 miles. That's the plot.
The film opens with some initial background. We see the men and discover quickly that they want out of the small town where there is no work, but without money they can't leave. We learn a little about the men themselves, just enough to make them individuals, but little if anything about their past history. They are there, they are broke, and they are desperate enough to take on a suicide mission to escape, one way or another.
Their journey, of course, is extremely difficult, but the obstacles don't appear around every curve and are simply those that might be encountered on any road just barely hacked out of the wilderness. Under any other circumstances, they would be a nuisance or an irritation, but for trucks loaded with nitro, they become lethal.
The acting is uniformly excellent. One of the major roles is played by Yves Montand, the only name I recognize. Some of the other characters are familiar, but I can't place them in any particular film. The film, first shown in 1953, is based on a novel of the same name, I gather, by Georges Arnaud, and the film has made me curious enough to see if I can find it.
I have also just learned that there is a remake of The Wages of Fear. Why they changed the title to Sorcerer is beyond me. The remake is directed by William Friedkin (The Exorcist) and stars Roy Scheider, one of my favorite actors. I have Sorcerer in my queue and should see it in a few days. I wonder what "improvements" were made by Friedkin, and I wonder if he changed the ending. I may even learn why the name was changed to Sorcerer.
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