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Post by Fading Fast on Oct 15, 2023 2:41:06 GMT
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby published in 1995
Some books are good because they accurately capture a moment, a place and a group of people, as Bright Lights Big City did for just-out-of-college kids in NYC in the '80s. I was a kid just out of college living in NYC in the '80s and, while I didn't live the drug culture of that book (I still agonize over taking one aspirin), I still saw its people and culture all around me back then. Was it well written, I don't know, but it was real.
High Fidelity feels like it did the same thing for mid-thirty-year-olds in London in the '90s, capturing that time in life when an ennui sets in as many have to accept, for the first time, that they are in no way young anymore and that all their dreams aren't going to come true. But there's enough humor about bad decisions and life stuck in first gear to keep the book from being a downer. Instead, it's a pretty fast, light read.
College-drop-out Rob is a struggling record-store owner who dwells on every failed relationship that he's had back to the early teen playground stuff that most of us breeze past in reflection if we remember it at all. But it was getting dumped in college that led to his dropping out and, eventually, a DJ gig and record store that turned a passion into, what has presently become, a failing business.
Now in his mid thirties, he still makes lists of his favorite songs and movies - and looks down on anyone with less-nuanced taste with disdain (like in high school) - with his equally directionless friends / store employees. Yet he can't help noticing that his other friends, especially the college grads, have moved on with their careers and relationships. This includes his lawyer girlfriend who has just left him for another guy, thus, sparking an early mid-life crisis.
Rob is so self absorbed that he can remember twenty-year-old conversations with a girl he went out with for a week, but can't see that his obsessing has left his life in a cul-de-sac. With that set up, the rest of the book is Rob half trying to get both his lawyer girlfriend back and his life in order, while also sabotaging both of those efforts with his obsessing, his inability to stop making the same mistakes and his ego that he knows is his enemy, but still can't help.
If you have a friend like Rob in your life - kinda self destructive, but also charming in his or her enthusiasm and silliness - you can feel the authenticity in High Fidelity. Plus, it's pretty darn funny as it captures the small craziness that goes on in everyone's relationships, jobs and family.
It's equally good at capturing the cultural zeitgeist of that final pre-internet moment when making mixed tapes to impress a girl was still a thing or when stapling paper flyers to telephone poles was how people promoted everything from garage bands to new magazines. It's a good, fun and fast read to breeze through while you're deciding what you really want to read next.
N.B. The book was made into a reasonably fun, albeit, a bit too-long movie that is worth watching, if for no other reason, then to see the insanely pretty wan blonde Danish actress Iben Hjejle in the main female role. Comments on the movie here: "High Fidelity"
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Post by NoShear on Oct 20, 2023 15:35:40 GMT
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby published in 1995
Some books are good because they accurately capture a moment, a place and a group of people, as Bright Lights Big City did for just-out-of-college kids in NYC in the '80s. I was a kid just out of college living in NYC in the '80s and, while I didn't live the drug culture of that book (I still agonize over taking one aspirin), I still saw its people and culture all around me back then. Was it well written, I don't know, but it was real.
High Fidelity feels like it did the same thing for mid-thirty-year-olds in London in the '90s, capturing that time in life when an ennui sets in as many have to accept, for the first time, that they are in no way young anymore and that all their dreams aren't going to come true. But there's enough humor about bad decisions and life stuck in first gear to keep the book from being a downer. Instead, it's a pretty fast, light read.
College-drop-out Rob is a struggling record-store owner who dwells on every failed relationship that he's had back to the early teen playground stuff that most of us breeze past in reflection if we remember it at all. But it was getting dumped in college that led to his dropping out and, eventually, a DJ gig and record store that turned a passion into, what has presently become, a failing business.
Now in his mid thirties, he still makes lists of his favorite songs and movies - and looks down on anyone with less-nuanced taste with disdain (like in high school) - with his equally directionless friends / store employees. Yet he can't help noticing that his other friends, especially the college grads, have moved on with their careers and relationships. This includes his lawyer girlfriend who has just left him for another guy, thus, sparking an early mid-life crisis.
Rob is so self absorbed that he can remember twenty-year-old conversations with a girl he went out with for a week, but can't see that his obsessing has left his life in a cul-de-sac. With that set up, the rest of the book is Rob half trying to get both his lawyer girlfriend back and his life in order, while also sabotaging both of those efforts with his obsessing, his inability to stop making the same mistakes and his ego that he knows is his enemy, but still can't help.
If you have a friend like Rob in your life - kinda self destructive, but also charming in his or her enthusiasm and silliness - you can feel the authenticity in High Fidelity. Plus, it's pretty darn funny as it captures the small craziness that goes on in everyone's relationships, jobs and family.
It's equally good at capturing the cultural zeitgeist of that final pre-internet moment when making mixed tapes to impress a girl was still a thing or when stapling paper flyers to telephone poles was how people promoted everything from garage bands to new magazines. It's a good, fun and fast read to breeze through while you're deciding what you really want to read next.
N.B. The book was made into a reasonably fun, albeit, a bit too-long movie that is worth watching, if for no other reason, then to see the insanely pretty wan blonde Danish actress Iben Hjejle in the main female role. Comments on the movie here: "High Fidelity"
Fading Fast, your review reminded me of a piece written for Trouser Press by, I think, Mick Pink Fairies Farren about the heroin chic in the early 1980s. It drew a paradox between Keith Richards scrubbing his blood in Switzerland versus the destitute druggie on the streets of New York City... On a much lighter note, are you sure I can't offer you a CBD gummie??  |
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 5, 2023 2:55:18 GMT
Moss Rose by Joseph Shearing originally published in 1934 (Joseph Shearing was the pen name of Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell)
Moss Rose, set in late 1800s London and Germany, is prolific author Joseph Shearing's imagined version of the events of a real-life unsolved murder of a prostitute. Shearing spins an intriguing yarn centered around a quietly but frighteningly psychotic female protagonist.
Belle Adair, a fallen "lady," is living in a London bordello next to a chorine and prostitute who is violently murdered late one Christmas Eve. Adair sees a man leaving the prostitute's room and then quietly rifles through the murder scene bringing evidence back to her room.
Most normal people would be horrified at the murder, awake the house and call the police, but Adair is already strategizing about how she can use this knowledge and evidence to her advantage. She's so calm about it, you at first, almost miss how insane it is.
Adair then does some sleuthing to acquire even more evidence against the putative killer, whom she has learned is a German "gentleman," Maarten Morl, of wealth and position in his own country. When Morl is subsequently arrested, Adair sees her opportunity.
That setup leads to a tale of one of the oddest blackmails ever as Adair doesn't use her evidence to get money (well, a little, but that's not the point), as she wants Morl to, effectively, use his influence and standing to place her in society as a "lady" in Germany.
If it sounds a bit nuts, that's because it is. But Morl is in a tight spot as he can either appease insane Adair or probably hang for a crime he may have or may not have committed.
The tale then moves to Germany as Morl, with his fiancee and her father in tow, takes Adair back to his home. Morl explains Adair to his family as a woman who did him a "great favor.” In Germany, she lives with his mother on her isolated, well-run but modest German estate.
Adair slowly realizes two things. One, that even having complete power over this man doesn't mean she can really get what she wants and, two, that her power over him is weakening as distance and time make it unlikely she could use her evidence against him.
The story then takes a strange twist. Adair, truly a crazy woman, but one who is also young and pretty and one who can make her thoughts sound logical even when they are spinning into orbit, tries to win Morl away from his devoutly religious mouse of a fiancee.
The climax, no spoilers coming, solves both the mystery of the London murder and Adair's fate, but the strength of Shearing's book is the singular character she created in Belle Adair.
Everything normal people respect, or at least try to respect - the law, the sanctity of life, other people's religious beliefs, their own religious beliefs, marriage vows, funerals, etc. - have no meaning to sociopath Adair other than as tools to manipulate others to get her way.
Written in 1934 and set in the late 1800s, Moss Rose's Belle Adair is a very modern solipsistic character as she would fit right into our era where some believe they are entitled not only to their own opinions (which they are) but to their own facts (it doesn't work that way).
Shearling is an excellent storyteller. He turned a real-life unsolved murder into a character study of a psychotic young woman who draws you into her crazy mind. Plus, Moss Rose is wonderfully evocative time travel to a world of gas lights and horse-drawn carriages.
N.B. For fans of the movie Moss Rose (comments on it here: "Moss Rose" ), know that the book is very different. Both the book and the movie start off with the same murder, but each then goes off in a very different direction with the book being a much darker tale. |
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Post by topbilled on Nov 5, 2023 3:42:38 GMT
Moss Rose by Joseph Shearing originally published in 1934 (Joseph Shearing was the pen name of Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell)
Moss Rose, set in late 1800s London and Germany, is prolific author Joseph Shearing's imagined version of the events of a real-life unsolved murder of a prostitute. Shearing spins an intriguing yarn centered around a quietly but frighteningly psychotic female protagonist.
Belle Adair, a fallen "lady," is living in a London bordello next to a chorine and prostitute who is violently murdered late one Christmas Eve. Adair sees a man leaving the prostitute's room and then quietly rifles through the murder scene bringing evidence back to her room.
Most normal people would be horrified at the murder, awake the house and call the police, but Adair is already strategizing about how she can use this knowledge and evidence to her advantage. She's so calm about it, you at first, almost miss how insane it is.
Adair then does some sleuthing to acquire even more evidence against the putative killer, whom she has learned is a German "gentleman," Maarten Morl, of wealth and position in his own country. When Morl is subsequently arrested, Adair sees her opportunity.
That setup leads to a tale of one of the oddest blackmails ever as Adair doesn't use her evidence to get money (well, a little, but that's not the point), as she wants Morl to, effectively, use his influence and standing to place her in society as a "lady" in Germany.
If it sounds a bit nuts, that's because it is. But Morl is in a tight spot as he can either appease insane Adair or probably hang for a crime he may have or may not have committed.
The tale then moves to Germany as Morl, with his fiancee and her father in tow, takes Adair back to his home. Morl explains Adair to his family as a woman who did him a "great favor.” In Germany, she lives with his mother on her isolated, well-run but modest German estate.
Adair slowly realizes two things. One, that even having complete power over this man doesn't mean she can really get what she wants and, two, that her power over him is weakening as distance and time make it unlikely she could use her evidence against him.
The story then takes a strange twist. Adair, truly a crazy woman, but one who is also young and pretty and one who can make her thoughts sound logical even when they are spinning into orbit, tries to win Morl away from his devoutly religious mouse of a fiancee.
The climax, no spoilers coming, solves both the mystery of the London murder and Adair's fate, but the strength of Shearing's book is the singular character she created in Belle Adair.
Everything normal people respect, or at least try to respect - the law, the sanctity of life, other people's religious beliefs, their own religious beliefs, marriage vows, funerals, etc. - have no meaning to sociopath Adair other than as tools to manipulate others to get her way.
Written in 1934 and set in the late 1800s, Moss Rose's Belle Adair is a very modern solipsistic character as she would fit right into our era where some believe they are entitled not only to their own opinions (which they are) but to their own facts (it doesn't work that way).
Shearling is an excellent storyteller. He turned a real-life unsolved murder into a character study of a psychotic young woman who draws you into her crazy mind. Plus, Moss Rose is wonderfully evocative time travel to a world of gas lights and horse-drawn carriages.
N.B. For fans of the movie Moss Rose (comments on it here: "Moss Rose" ), know that the book is very different. Both the book and the movie start off with the same murder, but each then goes off in a very different direction with the book being a much darker tale.
Is the mother still the culprit in the book? |
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 5, 2023 3:57:42 GMT
Moss Rose by Joseph Shearing originally published in 1934 (Joseph Shearing was the pen name of Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell)
Moss Rose, set in late 1800s London and Germany, is prolific author Joseph Shearing's imagined version of the events of a real-life unsolved murder of a prostitute. Shearing spins an intriguing yarn centered around a quietly but frighteningly psychotic female protagonist.
Belle Adair, a fallen "lady," is living in a London bordello next to a chorine and prostitute who is violently murdered late one Christmas Eve. Adair sees a man leaving the prostitute's room and then quietly rifles through the murder scene bringing evidence back to her room.
Most normal people would be horrified at the murder, awake the house and call the police, but Adair is already strategizing about how she can use this knowledge and evidence to her advantage. She's so calm about it, you at first, almost miss how insane it is.
Adair then does some sleuthing to acquire even more evidence against the putative killer, whom she has learned is a German "gentleman," Maarten Morl, of wealth and position in his own country. When Morl is subsequently arrested, Adair sees her opportunity.
That setup leads to a tale of one of the oddest blackmails ever as Adair doesn't use her evidence to get money (well, a little, but that's not the point), as she wants Morl to, effectively, use his influence and standing to place her in society as a "lady" in Germany.
If it sounds a bit nuts, that's because it is. But Morl is in a tight spot as he can either appease insane Adair or probably hang for a crime he may have or may not have committed.
The tale then moves to Germany as Morl, with his fiancee and her father in tow, takes Adair back to his home. Morl explains Adair to his family as a woman who did him a "great favor.” In Germany, she lives with his mother on her isolated, well-run but modest German estate.
Adair slowly realizes two things. One, that even having complete power over this man doesn't mean she can really get what she wants and, two, that her power over him is weakening as distance and time make it unlikely she could use her evidence against him.
The story then takes a strange twist. Adair, truly a crazy woman, but one who is also young and pretty and one who can make her thoughts sound logical even when they are spinning into orbit, tries to win Morl away from his devoutly religious mouse of a fiancee.
The climax, no spoilers coming, solves both the mystery of the London murder and Adair's fate, but the strength of Shearing's book is the singular character she created in Belle Adair.
Everything normal people respect, or at least try to respect - the law, the sanctity of life, other people's religious beliefs, their own religious beliefs, marriage vows, funerals, etc. - have no meaning to sociopath Adair other than as tools to manipulate others to get her way.
Written in 1934 and set in the late 1800s, Moss Rose's Belle Adair is a very modern solipsistic character as she would fit right into our era where some believe they are entitled not only to their own opinions (which they are) but to their own facts (it doesn't work that way).
Shearling is an excellent storyteller. He turned a real-life unsolved murder into a character study of a psychotic young woman who draws you into her crazy mind. Plus, Moss Rose is wonderfully evocative time travel to a world of gas lights and horse-drawn carriages.
N.B. For fans of the movie Moss Rose (comments on it here: "Moss Rose" ), know that the book is very different. Both the book and the movie start off with the same murder, but each then goes off in a very different direction with the book being a much darker tale.
Is the mother still the culprit in the book? |
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Post by Andrea Doria on Nov 5, 2023 12:38:23 GMT
"Moss Rose," sounds wonderful. I like that the book is even more about Belle Adair and her own crazy "truth" than the movie was and I love anything that feels like time travel.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 5, 2023 12:42:23 GMT
"Moss Rose," sounds wonderful. I like that the book is even more about Belle Adair and her own crazy "truth" than the movie was and I love anything that feels like time travel. |
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 19, 2023 11:58:01 GMT
Lilies of the Field by William Edmun Barrett published in 1962
Always read the book first. Great advice, but sometimes not possible as, occasionally, you find your way to a book via the movie, as I did with Lilies of the Field.
The movie (see comments here: "Lilies of the Field") is fantastic; it's a little gem of a film. The book, to, is a little gem, but surprisingly, the movie might be slightly better.
The story is the same: a young black Baptist man, Homer Smith, driving cross country and living out of his beat-up station wagon stops at a poor Midwest, desert outpost of five nuns, escapees from East Germany, trying to scrape out an existence and build a chapel for the surrounding poor community of, mainly, Mexican Catholics.
The nuns, led by the indomitable Mother Maria Marthe, the "Mother," engage Homer to do some work for them for a day in exchange for food and some not-discussed wage. Immediately, Homer and the Mother lock horns as she, in her broken English, decides his name is "Schmidtt" and refuses all entreaties by him to correct her mistake. She also decides that God has answered her prayers by sending him to her to build the chapel; a thought he laughs at as he plans to leave at the end of the day.
But intrigued by the imperious Mother and her quirky and pleasant band of nuns - trying to learn English from lessons on a record, the nuns incorporate the record's scratches and skips into their English - Homer stays on "for one more day" to do "a little more work."
Despite continually butting heads with the Mother - you don't reason with her as her English seems only to work when she's telling "Schmidtt" what to do - he stays on a bit longer and, then, longer still, but, finally leaves in frustration (there's little food and no pay), only to come back as he can't get the nuns, the Mother or their chapel out of his head.
Once back, it's full steam ahead on the chapel-building effort with Homer working for a construction crew twice a week to help pay for building supplies and food for the nuns and himself (he's all in even if he doesn't admit it to himself). But even with his wages, there's still not enough money to buy all the supplies, which worries Homer, but not the obdurately faithful Mother who believes her prayers will produce the necessary materials. Homer and she do not see eye to eye on this point.
(Spoiler alerts, next two paragraphs) Just in time, the poor Mexicans begin randomly bringing supplies to Homer as the story of the chapel being built by a black man working without pay for the East German nuns inspires the town to rally around the effort. From here, it's non-stop work for Homer, now aided by the Mexicans (who know much better than he how to work with adobe bricks), evenings teaching English to or singing with the nuns and more butting of heads with the Mother.
As the chapel is being completed and the first service is planned for the following Sunday, the Mother tells, yes tells, "Schmidtt" that he'll be sitting in the front pew with her. He knows this is her way of thanking and honoring him, so despite being a Baptist with no desire to pray in a Catholic church, this man who went round after round with the Mother, can't say no.
It's a story of faith and good will bridging cultural, racial and ethnic gaps. It's presented as a fable or legend and, to be sure, it is fable-like as it is all too easy. But that's what good and hopeful stories do: they inspire us to be better people and to make a better world than we have today.
While the movie might nudge out the book, I'd start with the book because, one, it is an excellent, short and inspiring read and, two, you want to form your own images of the people and places in your head before seeing the movie. |
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Post by BunnyWhit on Nov 20, 2023 23:04:11 GMT
you want to form your own images of the people and places in your head before seeing the movie. |
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Post by Fading Fast on Dec 13, 2023 11:15:54 GMT
The Late George Apley by John P. Marquand originally published in 1938
The Late George Apley is a 1930s' version of a progressive look-back at a Boston Brahmin born just after the Civil War who tried to embody all that being an upper-class, protestant, proper-Bostonian of his day, 1870s - 1930s, entailed.
Today, it's easy to mock, even denounce, that culture and conduct, but as always, using simple shorthands and only a modern perspective to judge a different time and place misses the context and circumstances that created that man, moment and way of life.
It is a way of life that clearly was already on the way out when this Pulitzer Prize winning novel was penned. Written in the form of a memoir, we learn about George Apley mainly through his copious correspondence with family and friends. It takes some adjustment reading a novel composed mainly of the lead character's letters, but once you settle in, the different personalities come to life and the family reveals are powerful.
Apley was born on third base, but breaking the metaphor, he understood that his entire life, and tried to live up to the responsibilities the role and fates demanded of him. It meant following a prescribed path and belief system where one's individual wants and passions are suppressed because the good of the family, the social structure and Boston comes first.
That makes it, despite his, for the most part, unearned wealth and position, an odd and, oftentimes, difficult life as one rarely does what one wants to, but what one is supposed to do as George Apley's father, wider family and circle of older friends makes very clear to George from an early age.
College-age George painfully learns this lesson when an affair with a local Irish girl (the horror!) turns serious and the family steps in, not to force - almost nothing is forced on George - but to explain why a marriage to this admittedly nice girl would damage, not just George, but all those directly and indirectly relying on him to carry on the responsibility of being an Apley.
They note the clubs he wouldn't be admitted to (important for connections in that day), the leading businessmen that would turn away from the family's firm, the social circles and other informal seats of power that would shun him and how even his children would carry a stigma.
As the male heir of the main Apley branch, he would be undermining the entire family and its history. Even with a modern perspective of how ridiculous all this sounds, you can feel the intense pressure on Apley to part company with his Irish girlfriend and marry only within his class - which he sadly does.
That sets the pattern for George's life as choice after choice - work, clubs, committees, how to raise his children, even where to bury the family's dead - is made for the greater good of the family, the Brahmins and the city of Boston. He does all this even though, in Boston, his class's leading influence is already, if not admittedly, in decline.
At some point, George the individual almost ceases to exist as his fealty to his role, to its value to the family and wider society becomes who he is. Decisions aren't made based on individual desire but a holistic-group perspective, which (theme alert) diminishes and damages the individual.
Harder still, all this attempted molding and grooming to lead the Apley family is repeated in George's son John. (Spoiler alert) However, after seeing up close what this soul-crushing responsibility did to his father - a polite but passionless marriage and public and private behaviour dictated by expectations not personal choice - son John walks away from it all.
He did it, however, not in a 1960s style "I hate you" rebellion, but by graduating Harvard Law (as expected) and then taking a job and building a career and life in New York (Sodom and Gomorrah to a Boston Brahmin).
In some of the most heartbreaking moments in the book, George tries to cajole and induce, but never force or threaten, John back to Boston as he sees all that his life has stood for implicitly renounced by his son. But the son and daughter, who refuses to marry "in her class," want no part of the Apley legacy as they see, not only the personal damage the Brahmin life causes, but that its entire belief system is dated and failing.
The Late George Apley is not only a eulogy for George Apley the man, but also for the Brahmin way of life, especially as social and civic leaders of Boston. Today we see that former leadership as prejudiced, classist and elitist. It was all those things and it was wrong. But those inside the system were no more all evil than the oppressed are ever all angelic.
Apley was a man of his times; times we can denounce today, but a man who lived a life within that construct with integrity and fortitude that can't so easily be dismissed. The value in Marquand's Pulitzer Prize winner is its perceptive capture of George Apply as a representative of a ruling class in its twilight.
N.B. The Late George Apley was turned into a 1947 movie staring Ronald Coleman. |
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Post by I Love Melvin on Dec 13, 2023 14:28:01 GMT
That's a very thoughtful review (as usual). Generally, only a new generation can successfully transition away from an older one; it seems to be harder to break ranks from within and to heed cultural shifts if they aren't encountered early in the way his children seem to have. In his day Apley probably thought he was building a bright new world, but his children can only see the tarnish setting in. In a way it's a tale as old as time, but seeing it play out within such a rigid mindset makes the stakes clearer. I haven't read it and since I may have only so many books left in me I may not get to it, but I certainly feel as though I understand Marquand's story through your analysis. I wonder if the movie version, which I haven't seen, is as sensitive to a world in flux; sometimes Hollywood just couldn't resist turning leads into "the hero", whether they were originally intended to be that or not. They also would have been faced with turning the unconventional narrative you described into a more coherent form for movie audiences.
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Post by Fading Fast on Dec 13, 2023 14:50:05 GMT
That's a very thoughtful review (as usual). Generally, only a new generation can successfully transition away from an older one; it seems to be harder to break ranks from within and to heed cultural shifts if they aren't encountered early in the way his children seem to have. In his day Apley probably thought he was building a bright new world, but his children can only see the tarnish setting in. In a way it's a tale as old as time, but seeing it play out within such a rigid mindset makes the stakes clearer. I haven't read it and since I may have only so many books left in me I may not get to it, but I certainly feel as though I understand Marquand's story through your analysis. I wonder if the movie version, which I haven't seen, is as sensitive to a world in flux; sometimes Hollywood just couldn't resist turning leads into "the hero", whether they were originally intended to be that or not. They also would have been faced with turning the unconventional narrative you described into a more coherent form for movie audiences.
I want to, but haven't seen the movie yet. I believe TCM runs it, but so, far I haven't caught or recorded it, but definitely will the next time it's on.
I think, for the reasons you note, it will be hard to translate the book's nuances and integrity to the screen, but we'll see. |
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Post by Fading Fast on Jan 11, 2024 23:31:24 GMT
Wall of Noise by Daniel M. Stein published in 1963
"His doubts about Kelsey were diminished by the memory of all the bets Tarrant had won for him in the past. The money involved had long ago been spent, lost and replaced, but the satisfaction of having won it remained. The thought of it gave Papadakis a warm feeling of opulence and easy profit. He loved to gamble and Tarrant's proposition had been irresistible to him from the start."
Everybody is a gambler all the time; life necessitates it. The only difference between people is some see it and some don't and some are good at it and some aren't. But whether you see it or not, or are good at it or not, doesn't change the fact that life is just a series of gambles.
I found my way to Wall of Noise via its 1963 movie adaptation (comments here: "Wall of Noise"). Once again, the cliche is true: the movie is good; the book is (much) better.
As noted often, the mid 1950s into the early 1960s was a heyday for dramas, umm, melodramas, umm, soap operas, umm, big giant ball-of-cheese soap-opera stories. Saponaceous book upon saponaceous book was churned out with the better (ehh, I guess, better) of them being turned into movies.
In Wall of Noise, author Stein wraps two wonderful things into one story: a insider's look at the world of thoroughbred racing and the torrid life of a brilliant, but erratic trainer whose gambling nature, prickly personality and passion for women keeps his career on the margin, buffeted by a series of ups and downs in his professional and personal life.
Back then, thoroughbred racing was a major sport familiar to much of the public. Stein's protagonist, talented trainer Joel Trarrant, in his mid thirties, ruggedly handsome and taciturn, has a gift for understanding the high-strung horses in his care. Yet, he hasn't mastered the politics of people - in particular, the rich and, usually, clueless-to-horses owners that hire him.
When the book opens, Trarrant is training a few mediocre horses at a small Baltimore track, but then a wealthy California developer, Sal Rubio, hires him, sight unseen, to train his horses, with the promise of autonomy in decisions related to the horses (ha!).
Without a contract - Tarrant often takes wild gambles with his life decisions (but not his horses) - he moves out West and begins training Rubio's horses. There he meets Rubio's much-younger wife, former movie star Helen Hastings, with whom he's quickly having an affair.
Everything in Tarrant's world is amped up: his prior marriage imploded when his best friend and favorite jockey stole his wife; he thinks nothing of gambling his last dollar on one race; he'll drink through the night and, then, work a full day at the track and he'll ride the unbroken horses in his care because he won't ask another man in his employ to do a difficult job he won't first do himself. Tarrant's personal and even professional life is chaos, but he is thoughtful and protective of his horses.
Wall of Noise is an engaging window into the nuances of Tarrant's world of thoroughbred racing where we learn how horses are prepped for races, how a good trainer can spot the smallest change in a horse's gait (a sign of a potential injury) and how everything from a thoroughbred's feed to its gate position is part of that day's racing strategy. It's a tutorial on racing that flows seamlessly with the narrative arc of Tarrant's ups and downs.
After the job and affair in California blows up as it had to (sleeping with the boss' wife and all, plus he didn't have the autonomy he was promised), Tarrant heads out to a small track in Nevada with one horse, a powerful but moody thoroughbred who has not won a race in years (he overpaid Rubio for him in a fit of anger).
Also part of this traveling circus is his friend, the jockey who stole his wife (who'd guess, but there's still some friction between these two), who is the only jockey who really knows how to ride Tarrant's temperamental horse.
In hock for his overpriced thoroughbred, Tarrant reconnects with an old pal, a gangster and gambler, Johnny Papadakis (sorry, but in the 1950s, the accepted stereotype was that many Greeks were gamblers and bookies) who uses a legitimate modeling agency, which doubles as a escort service, as a front for his various "less-legitimate" businesses. You just have to love how tawdry this world is.
After putting everything he has plus on the upcoming race of his horse (betting some money legitimately at the track and more through his pal Papadakis) and winning, Tarrant proceeds to party with Papadakis and some of his, umm, "professional" women. Now, most men, you assume, would know to draw a hard line between prostitute and girlfriend, but not Tarrant.
So, when he heads back to the West Coast, with his now rising-star race horse to enter him in the big-money California races, his circus includes his beautiful, but mercurial-in-nature hooker-girlfriend - hey, it's a choice.
Tarrant and his winning horse now have a high profile in racing circles, which only increases the pressure to win. For the moment, he's the new star of thoroughbred racing with the beautiful girlfriend (her job history isn't known in California) whom everyone wants a piece of.
Despite his new prestige, Tarrant's hold on racing fame is tenuously based on one horse. If his horse stops winning (it happens sometimes) or is injured (it happens often), the fame and money flow go as well.
So when his horse's tendon swells a bit the week of the upcoming stakes race (the big one), Tarrant is faced with a go-no-go decision with everyone from the jockey to the media opining. By race day, the horse seems better, but is he almost imperceptibly still favoring that leg? Wall of Noise takes you to the edge of your seat on this race and the book's equally dramatic ensuing denouement.
Ayn Rand wrote captivating novels about men of passion and honor who would not sacrifice one bit of integrity in their professional lives for easy advancement. They are wonderfully inspiring tales, but they are not real life.
Joel Tarrant is a real-life version of an Ayn Rand character. He isn't perfect, but his default is to honor his profession as a horse trainer and tell everyone else to go to hell if they don't like it. But he does compromise, especially when he starts to taste success. And like those Randian characters, his personal life is a mess with a series of passionate but broken relationships littered about his past and present.
Wall of Noise rises above its saponaceous genre and mediocre writing because, in Joel Tarrant, you meet someone you understand and respect, despite his many flaws.
You appreciate his Randian skills and professional integrity, but recognize and relate to him because he's a man who makes mistakes and bad decisions sometimes, like all of us. But he doesn't go for the quick or easy buck as he lives life by his own honest-but-flawed standards. He's Randian at his best, but human quite often, which makes him an engaging character and Wall of Noise an engaging read. |
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 29, 2024 18:11:44 GMT
Love in the Afternoon by Claude Anet, originally published in France in 1924
"They persisted in proving to themselves that they were not in love, that between them stood nothing but an episode in which pleasure was the beginning and the end." - Claude Anet, Love in the Afternoon
"The lies we tell ourselves are the most subtle of all lies." - Lewis B. Smedes
I found my way to this short novel via the 1957 Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper movie Love in the Afternoon based on the book. Very loosely based on the book would be more accurate as you can see some of the book's outline in the movie, but it's much easier to note the many differences.
Set in pre-Revolutionary Russia (versus 1950s Paris, as in the movie), this 1924 novel has a surprisingly modern feel as the heroine - young, beautiful, scholastically brilliant and fiercely independent Ariane Nicolaevna - is the kind of heroine modern period writers love to create.
But modern writers, in their virtue-signalling glee, can't control themselves and often create a two-dimensional character who is more out of time than of their period. The intention of these modern writers is to have the character check every in-vogue progressive box versus creating a real, living, breathing and flawed human from a historical era.
Ariane Nicolaevna, though, is of pre-revolutionary Russia if famous 19th century Russian novelists accurately represented their country's views toward women, society and sexual freedom.
While hardly as libertine and out loud as our anything-goes 2024 world, 19th century Russia allowed a lot of sexual escapades to take place if handled with discretion and within the unwritten rules that kept "proper" society still looking, well, proper.
Ariane Nicolaevna, by the time she is a high school senior, is the cynosure of her provisional town as men of all ages so covet her that they shower Ariane with attention and gifts, often, in return for nothing more than the opportunity to be seen in public with her. That is an odd foreshadowing of our present-day social media age in this 19th century Russian village.
When her father denies her request for funds to go to university and the aunt who raised her attaches strings to her offer of tuition dollars, Ariane, very business like, obtains the funds from an older admirer in return for sex.
Sure, we're in the realm of the famous quote about having already established what a particular woman is with only the price left to discuss, but with limited options and done with cold detachment, Ariane comes out looking like a calculating woman in control of her situation.
It's now off to Moscow and university, where Ariane meets Constantin Michel, a man several years her senior. He's a successful and worldly businessman who is the first lover Ariane has wanted for pure passion and not for what she can obtain from him.
Yet, she still approaches her relationship with him in a detached manner often telling him this will be just a short affair. That aligns nicely with globe-trotting Constantin who avers he is an old pro at this and equally happy to have a quick affair before moving on.
Pause for a moment on the moderness of this 1924 novel looking back a decade or more from there to pre-Revolutionary Russia. But nothing then or now is ever easy.
We have two people who enjoy casual dalliances, not love affairs, getting together. What could go wrong? Well, one or both could fall in love and ruin the equanimity of their relationship. What if they both fall in love, but deny it to themselves and each other? What if they try so hard to deny it to themselves and each other they end up brutally hurting the person they love?
That is, basically, the last third of the novel. Two people who have designed their lives and psyches not to fall in love - who mock and dismiss it - begin falling in love and repeatedly cycle through the five stages of grief trying to deny it.
They lash out at each other, do petty things to hurt each other, talk about their other lovers (some real, some made up) or what they are going to do when their affair is over. Yet when they are not brutally hurting each other, they can't help falling in love.
(Spoiler alert) Literally, right at the end, they drop their guard and kinda, sorta admit their love or, at least, that they are going to stay together - end of novel. Yet it's only a somewhat happy ending as you wonder if these two can really do the hard work of sustaining a long-term relationship when they are so good at finding and indulging in casual affairs.
Love in the Afternoon has an incredibly modern feel to it, adjusted for time and place. Movies and novels before and since have been exploring its same theme: can two people turn casual sex into a life-long monogamous love. The human condition is eternal.
What oddly makes Anet's novel fresh is its 1924 publication date; a time when a women having casual sex openly and without guilt was a statement. Its libertine attitude is recognizable to us today, yet also, thankfully free of our modern obsessive politics. Love in the Afternoon is a short, entertaining trip to pre-Revolutionary Russia with a surprisingly open take on sex, love and relationships. |
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Post by Fading Fast on Mar 17, 2024 11:14:00 GMT
The Lonely Girl by Edna O'Brien originally published in 1962
The Lonely Girl is the second book in Edna O'Brien's trilogy The Country Girls that sees the two rural Irish girls from the first book, now late teenagers, living in Dublin. You'll want to start, though, with that first book, The Country Girls (see comments here: "The Country Girls").
The beauty of O'Brien's writing is its sincerity and ability to put you in a time and place very far from present day. Ireland of the late 1950s/early 1960s comes alive in O'Brien's skilled hands as do her real, flawed and honest characters.
After meeting Kate and Baba as rural girls in the first book, in The Lonely Girl, they are trying to adjust to living in a city, which has norms and social rules that are foreign to them. The more-cultured people, too, seem out of reach to these poorly educated girls.
Kate is the book's focus as the girl from a dysfunctional home, who received erratic schooling, but much Catholic doctrine. Working in a grocery and pulled into Dublin's nightlife by the gregarious, too-confident and scheming Baba, Kate is trying to get her city sea legs.
Kate is a smart, shy girl who lacks the education that would have opened up her world. Baba opens up Baba's world on her own through trial and error where she learns about life at the street level, but Kate doesn't function that way.
So Kate quickly gets involved with a sophisticated older man, Eugene. Yes, there are some "daddy issues" at work here. He also, though, has the things Kate intuitively wants - culture and education - but that she doesn't know how to get.
Most of the novel is following the arc of Kate's relationship with Eugene. It begins with the early and fun start of their love affair as their sexual relationship - Kate's first - develops very slowly.
The problems of a cultured, middle-aged man from the upper-class living with a much younger, poorly educated girl from the rural lower class, of course, follow in time, especially in a Catholic country that views their unmarried status as sinful.
The climax, no spoilers coming, sees the relationship at a crisis. Will they overcome the challenges of their age and social-status differences or will their affair become just a chapter in each one's life?
This straightforward tale works because O'Brien brings Kate to life. As the narrator, Kate is unreliable, not because she's deceptive, but because she's an emotional teenager telling her story in real time, without any distance to provide perspective.
That is what makes it feel raw, but real. Few of us were ever a teenage girl in Ireland in the late 1950s, but we all were teenagers once and we understand the emotional swings and narrow view one has of life at that young age.
We know Kate loves Eugene, but she can hate him briefly and bitterly when he shows attention to the cultured girlfriend of one of his pals. Later, she rifles through his desk trying to learn something that will let her keep him. It's raw teenage emotion on display.
Your teenage years were probably very different from Kate's, but you'll recognize yourself or your friends in her emotional swings from bratty child to reflective adult as life rushes at her too fast for her to absorb. O'Brien's talent is capturing the universal teenage experience.
The novel also works because it time travels us to an Ireland from the past. Church doctrine looms large as does a bitterness toward the English. Still, many of the young have had their fill of both of those ideas and just want to live life. It's specific, yet timeless.
The Lonely Girl is a quick page-turner that, for fans of the trilogy's first book, lets you visit with old friends as they take the next step in life's journey. After that, it's on to the intriguingly titled final installment of the adventures of Kate and Baba, Girls in Their Married Bliss.
N.B. The Lonely Girl was turned into the excellent 1964 movie Girl with Green Eyes, with Rita Tushingham, Peter Finch and Linda Redgrave. Comments on the movie here: "Girl with Green Eyes". |
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