Digesting for the beginning of the week.
Writing: Unfortunately, not much, except in this space. Which is great! But…not what I should be doing, not really.
I’m hoping (I seem to say that a lot) that with College Guy settled and some sense of order to what Kid #5 is up to now, my brain will start focusing again. Although current events aren’t helping.
Reading: A bit. The usual mix.
First, in casting about for something easy and, er, free, I found a Dorothy B. Hughes novel I hadn’t read on Hoopla – which is not a feat, since I’d only read three of her books before, but still. It was decently-enough reviewed by a high enough proportion of readers that I went ahead with it.
It’s….not that good. In fact, it’s not good at all. Not nearly the quality of the three I’ve read and enjoyed so much – and would recommend in a heartbeat.
No, this was a strange book, and not in a good way. It’s called Dread Journey because it centers on Kitten, a Hollywood starlet who is convinced the producer/director who’s accompanying her on a cross-country train trip from Los Angeles has it out for her. As in – really has it out for her. So she’s on a journey and she’s in dread. She’s seeing that she’s served her purpose and that he already has a replacement – the sweet, innocent Gratia.
I think there’s a quite interesting and bracing notion at the heart of this novel: Everyone around, every person engaged in some way in the events at hand, knows that Kitten is done for – in some sense, even short of being killed. They sense her fear, they sense Viv’s heart of ice, they understand, deeply and even subconsciously, that they’re part of or witnessing the end game of exploitation.
And no one does anything, really, to help her.
But then, after the events that do happen, they’re all ready to take up proverbial arms and bring down some justice.
There is actually something great and true in that: how human beings sense harm and evil right next door or even under their noses, and sit on their hands because they’re afraid or unsure or proud – but then, oh, we talk a big game don’t we – make sure he gets what he deserves!
Fascinating idea. But just, sorry to say, not strongly executed. It’s very starkly written, and not in a Hemingway fashion which tantalizes with the rest of the iceberg you know is there – but more in a simplistic way that’s ironically hard to follow, mostly because of the way that Hughes utilizes pronouns – there are just too many of them, in close proximity, in every paragraph, with ambiguous antecedents. Sometimes you feel as if you need a flowchart.
Some great lines, though.
About writers returning to the East Coast from Hollywood failure:
It was in their contract: first class transportation back to despair.
On the passengers:
The usual people of the Chief, good and bad, mixed up, none of them quite the same as they’d be if they were at home, not isolated in rushing space.
On the fear that paralyzes them, the obstacle to doing the right thing:
“No one has ever known me,” Augustin said pleasantly. “I’ve never let anyone know me. Because I was afraid.” He turned to Pringle and he shuddered delicately. “He says he’s afraid. The rest of us wouldn’t say so. We’re too civilized. But we’re afraid all the time.”
And then finally this, a passage over which I’ve puzzled. I think it’s obvious, but it’s so out of the blue, I think – well, it can’t mean what it seems. It’s the inner monologue of the car porter. Pringle is the failed writer. Mary is Cobbett’s wife, waiting back home in Chicago.
To James Cobbett, Pringle was a man and a man he wouldn’t care to invite to his home. Cobbett had pride in himself, he didn’t consider a man equal to him unless he were equal in dignity and pride. Mary called him a snob. Well, he’d admit it. He was a snob. It hadn’t anything to do with what a man did or what a man possessed; it was what he was. Cobbett was a snob about the I am, He is. The way I see it, Mary…Explaining in the night where the dark made words easy. There wouldn’t be any problems of race or religion if you could make men see the I am, He is. You’d take a man on what he was.
And where would the Pringles be in James Cobbett’s scheme of things? Well, maybe Pringle wouldn’t be such a miserable specimen if he didn’t have to compete in worldly ways for his place among men. If you could ease him up, he might turn out to be a nice little fellow. A nice little fellow in a world where a little fellow was just as wanted as a big fellow. The Pringles of the world could all be happy together. They wouldn’t have to try to squeeze in where they weren’t wanted if they were just as important being small as big.
You are probably smarter than I am and can make sense of that. My interpretation, naturally offered through my Christian-tinted glasses, is that this is about humility. The grounds for mutual respect lie in acknowledging that God (“I am, He is”) is God – and we aren’t – and being content to be the best we can be where we are, even in our smallness.
I’m not sure, though.
One more note: Hughes names her director character Vivian (called Viv) and his female secretary is called Mike. Of course Vivian was a not-uncommon name for men back in the day, but I’m entertained by the flipping – although as far as I can see, there really isn’t any relationship to the character’s actions in terms of gendered, stereotypical behavior. Maybe she was just being cute.
Anyway, next read was a fabulous short story by 2-time Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead in the New Yorker, “The Theresa Job,” which it turns out is an excerpt from his forthcoming novel Harlem Shuffle, which I am, on the basis of this story, excited to read. The writing is just something else. Economical, sharp and true.
Freddie looked healthy, Carney was relieved to see. He wore an orange camp shirt with blue stripes and the black slacks from his short-lived waiter gig a few years back. He’d always been lean, and when he didn’t take care of himself quickly got a bad kind of thin. “Look at my two skinny boys,” Aunt Millie used to say when they came in from playing in the street.
They were mistaken for brothers by most of the world, but distinguished by many features of personality. Like common sense. Carney had it. Freddie’s tended to fall out of a hole in his pocket—he never carried it long. Common sense, for example, told you not to take a numbers job with Peewee Gibson. It also told you that, if you took such a job, it was in your interest not to fuck it up. But Freddie had done both of these things and somehow retained his fingers. Luck stepped in for what he lacked otherwise.
Freddie was vague about where he’d been lately. “A little work, a little shacking up.” Work for him was something crooked; shacking up was a woman with a decent job and a trusting nature, who was not too much of a detective. He asked after business in Carney’s furniture store.
“It’ll pick up.”
Here’s an interview with Whitehead about what inspired him.
Your story “The Theresa Job” is set in Harlem in 1959, and it revolves around a holdup at a ritzy hotel. How did the idea for the heist come to you?
I was staring off into space and thinking about how much I like heist films and how much fun it would be to write a heist. I always hate the moment when our crook-heroes have gone to all the trouble of pulling off the job and then it comes time to unload the goods on a fence, who looks at the $2 million in gems and says, “I’ll give you ten cents on the dollar.” It’s infuriating! I hate the fence, so it seemed obvious that I should make the Reluctant Fence my protagonist.
You recount the job in minute-by-minute detail. Did you research similar crimes from that era or is this pure invention?
The “tick-tock” element is inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s classic “The Killing,” which features a dispassionate, omniscient narrator who counts down the heist and the robbers’ doomed fates. Pop culture provides familiar structural elements for a bank robbery (deactivate the alarm, subdue the patrons and the staff, attack the vault), but I couldn’t think of any hotel ripoffs. The New York Times archive led me to the 1972 Hotel Pierre robbery, which suited my purposes. Newspaper articles and Daniel Simone’s nonfiction account “The Pierre Hotel Affair”—written with Nick (the Cat) Sacco, one of the crooks—provided the logistics of that twenty-eight-million-dollar heist. How do you know which boxes to hit and how do you spring them open?
The story is adapted from your novel, “Harlem Shuffle,” which comes out in September. Is it strange for you to see this piece of the larger plot standing on its own?
No. It’s a strange world, generally.
Hahaha. Excellent. Can’t argue with that.
Oh, and The Killing? Great movie, and I wrote about it here.
Then last night, trying to convince sleep to come, I ended up reading a recent Library of America story of the week – this one, which the introduction promised was a female response to Harte’s Luck of Roaring Camp– but…wasn’t. I mean, it is a similar plot – community of rugged men in the wilderness being gifted with a civilizing presence – in this case, not a baby, but a female missionary. I found it obviously and flatly written, with none of the humor of Harte’s story. Which, of course, does end tragically, but on the way is at least a bit endearing.
Also am (finally) well into Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self which I can tell is going to finally give me much of the philosophical equipment I need to articulate much of what’s been churning in my head for years.
Watching:
Last night (Saturday) – we watched Kurosawa’s Ran – and no, it wasn’t my idea for once. It was the 16-year old’s, who’s wanted to watch it for a while, but you know, it’s almost three hours long, so it’s not one of those films you can just decide to flip on at 9. You have to plan for it and you have to be in the mood.
And so we were and so we did – and his determination to watch it was also deepened by the fact that the idiot and pretentious film professor in The Freshman has a huge poster of the film in his office. See! It’s a sign!
With Ran, legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare’s King Lear as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan. Majestic in scope, the film is Kurosawa’s late-life masterpiece, a profound examination of the folly of war and the crumbling of one family under the weight of betrayal, greed, and the insatiable thirst for power.
The set-pieces, tableaus and painting-like moments were astonishing and the crucial battle was exceptionally bloody and balletic, and the impact of the whole piece was existentially stark. So, a good time at the movies!
Cooking:
It’s just the two of us now, and one of us is often out and about in the late afternoon/early evenings, so there will be a lot of “there’s a pot of __________ in the refrigerator. Heat some up if you want to eat” right now. So this afternoon, I made this pork, which will serve many purposes.
School:
Starting slowly, here, as I’ve mentioned before. We’re going all in on the literature, his AP Statistics tutoring has begun, his music continues, his college application essay prompts have been printed out and will be the focus of his writing, but then everything else doesn’t start until September 8, I believe. First piano recital on 9/19.
So today? A typical homeschool high schooler day before the rush? Up and out the door by 8:30 to go feed a friend’s cat. Back, and then off to a local parish that has a good Steinway which they allow him to practice on a couple of times a week (we have a piano of course, but it ain’t a Steinway grand), then he’ll be back here to go over some literature stuff, and then later boxing boot camp.
Travel:
I’d thought about a couple of days off somewhere in the middle of the week, but Fred is prompting a re-think. We’ll see.
And that’s a wrap on that.
It should go without saying that this kind of post is…this kind of post. Its purpose is not to summarize my thoughts on all of the great happenings of the world or even in life. It is what it is, as everything is.
Congrats on getting well into the Trueman – I look forward to hearing your thoughts about and formed by it. I made it barely into Ch 2 before my renewals ran out, and was pleased to have conquered Ch. 1. Lots to go back and chew through, and a new set of renewals to take on Ch. 2!