Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon (1992)

Four Weddings and a Funeral is one of my favorite romantic comedies, but I always find the ending a bummer. I think Hugh Grant should've wised up and chosen Kristin Scott Thomas, not the lame American. When Bitter Moon started rolling we had a good laugh, because there were Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas, married. I wonder if Mike Newell's casting was a wink at this film, which had come out two years earlier. Thomas's character is even named Fiona in both films.

The cast was basically the only thing that I really liked about Bitter Moon. Grant is never better than when he's looking uncomfortable, and he looks plenty uncomfortable here. Kristin Scott Thomas is quite effective as his wife. Peter Coyote is something of a revelation: I'd only known him as a counterculture figure (he pops up in everything I read about early Dead and Airplane) and a narrator of PBS documentaries, but he's got a great sick charisma here. Even the minor roles are well cast: Victor Banerjee's gentlemanly Mr. Singh has a touch of the sinister enigma about him, and Stockard Channing's cameo as Oscar's agent is key.

As for the movie itself? I found two zealous, almost convincing defenses of it here and here. I'm willing to concede that most of the ideas those essayists discuss are in the movie (incidentally, I find it interesting that those essayists seem to disagree on the nature of the ending: is Fiona and Mimi's tryst part of Oscar's ambush of Nigel, or is it Mimi's final revenge on Oscar?).

I just wish the ideas had been presented in a more persuasive movie. ...But now that I try to set down what I thought were flaws in the film, its presentation, its characters, whatever, I find I'm deleting everything I write, because most of what I thought was a flaw was actually explained by the kind of story Polanski was trying to tell, and the almost cruel detachment with which the story had to be told. Hmm. So what is it I want to say about this movie? I think I got it (not as eloquently as the two essays I linked to above, to be sure), intellectually, but I didn't particularly enjoy it.

Lalo Schifrin: Talkin' Verve (1999), and partial list of Verve anthologies

The first surprise was "Old Laces," a beret-and-goatee style take on a theme by Telemann: finger-snapping bass, cool flute, transposing baroque order into '60s swing. Jethro Tull's "Bourée," it turns out, is a complete rip-off of Schifrin's idea here. Not that it makes Tull's record (which has just that much more pop savvy) any less effective - but you'd think Ian Anderson could have acknowledged the debt in an interview or two...

The second and more pleasant surprise was that Lalo Schifrin, who I knew basically by rumor and by his theme for "Mission Impossible," was jazz. Really. No doubt his primary métier was the kind of Latin-inflected big band show-tuney pop that dominates our recreations of non-counterculture '60s pop culture. That is, Lalo Schifrin as a composer and arranger made groovy lounge music. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, and Lalo did it with a lot more class than some others I've heard: "The Wave," from 1962, is one of the best of it's kind that I've heard. (Not to mention its basic piano riff is familiar from showing up in a UFO track - "The Planet Plan," from 3rd Perspective.)

But he's not just schlock: Lalo comes to this territory with the chops and sensibilities of a real jazzer. What else would you call his three-and-a-half-minute-long virtuoso piano solo on "Samba Para Dos" (1963)? It takes off from Latin syncopation to encompass Monkish lurches and Brubeckian timeplay, balls-to-the-wall blues and groovy abstraction. It's simply killer.

And what else would you call his stint with Dizzy Gillespie? He composed an album-length suite for the man, and recorded it with his big band: 1962's "The New Continent," three movements of which are included here.

This disc is out of print, but it's well worth tracking down. It's part of a series of artist comps (plus a few themed multiartist sets) that Verve released around the turn of the decade to cash in on the acid jazz/club jazz craze: Talkin' Verve. I have three or four of these, and so far they're pretty satisfying: as I've said, I really dug the club jazz thing when it was around, and these discs cater to exactly me. Plus, dig those irresistible late-'90s graphics!

Has anybody been as gonzo with the anthologies as Verve? They were a major jazz label: not as important to the evolution of the music as Blue Note or Impulse, say, but important enough. But ever since the dawn of the CD era they've been flooding the market with series of anthologies of their artists. The amazing thing is, these all seem to be unique collections, with only partial overlap. Most of them are out of print, but available cheap used: good for the casual collector like me.

For most of them I've been unable to find a master list on-line, and Amazon doesn't always index its discs by series title. So here's what I've been able to find. Needless to say, I only have a bare smattering of these titles; I offer this only as reference.

One last note: you may find, as I do, that this gets pretty comical after a while. It's utterly silly for them to keep rehashing the same catalog so many different ways (not that you can't find some gems in each of these series that aren't available elsewhere). But I wish more jazz labels (or their modern corporate dungeoners) were half as aggressive at making their best stuff available in attractive packages.

Standards: Great Songs/Great Performances (Great American Songbook; these are really short discs, mainly aimed not at CD buyers but at the mp3 market; 2010):
Oscar Peterson
Quincy Jones
Billie Holiday
Lester Young
Kenny Burrell
Stan Getz
Carmen McRae
Dinah Washington
Ella Fitzgerald
Louis Armstrong
Fred Astaire

Plays The Hits: Great Songs/Great Performances (part of the abovementioned, but instead of Great American Songbook these are covers of contemporary pop tunes: think Wes Montgomery playing Beatles songs; 2010):
Jimmy Smith
Wes Montgomery
Grover Washington, Jr.
Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66
Ramsey Lewis Plays The Beatles Songbook

Jazz Club (Verve is one of the main participants, with Polygram and some other labels, in this European series focusing, again, on club-oriented jazz and lounge; 2009):
Electric Jazz Lounge (V.A.)
Jazz Samba (V.A.)
Jazz For Broken Hearts (V.A.)
Smooth Jazz Christmas (V.A.)
Let's Dance Jazz! (V.A.)
Great Vibes (V.A.)
Electric Bossa (V.A.)
Do It Again (V.A.)
Jazz Goes Hollywood (V.A.)
Talkin' Jazz (V.A.)
Organized! (V.A.)
Summer In The City (V.A.)
Blues Masters (V.A.)
Bar Jazz (V.A.)
Cocktail Jazz (V.A.)
Jazz For The Road (V.A.)
Jazz Remixed (V.A.)
Disco Jazz (V.A.)
Sampled! (V.A.)
Christmas In Cuba (V.A.)
Beatles Vs. Stones (V.A.)
Latin Jazz (V.A.)
Jazz For Lovers (V.A.)
Saxophone Ballads (V.A.)
The Sound Of Dixieland (V.A.)
Jazz Rock (V.A.)
Bossa Nova (V.A.)
Spaced Out Jazz (V.A.)
Thriller Jazz (V.A.)
Swingin' Big Bands (V.A.)
Jazz Swings Motown (V.A.)
Chill-Out Jazz (V.A.)
Bossa Nova Guitar (V.A.)
Swinging Jazz Piano (V.A.)
Coffee Time Jazz (V.A.)
Exotic Jazz (V.A.)
Psychedelic Jazz (V.A.)
Bossa Nova Singers (V.A.)
Soul Jazz (V.A.)
Henry Mancini Songbook (V.A.)
Cole Porter Songbook (V.A.)
Cool Jazz (V.A.)
Black Power (V.A.)
The Coolest Rhythm & Blues (V.A.)
Mambo Fever (V.A.)
Norway Nights (V.A.)
Movie Themes Go Disco (V.A.)
The Soul Of Jazz (V.A.)
Swinging Evergreens (V.A.)
The Best Of Talkin' Loud (V.A.)
Kurt Edelhagen - Up Up And Away
Eugen Cicero - Classics In Rhythm
Chick Corea - Electric Chick
George Duke - Keyboard Giant
Astrud Gilberto - Non-Stop To Brazil
Shirley Horn - Swingin'
Horst Jankowski - Walk In The Black Forest
Jimmy Smith - Plays Red Hot Blues
The Swingle Singers - Swinging The Classics
Kai Warner - Fantastic Sound Of
Quincy Jones - Swinging The Big Band
Stephane Grappeli - Tribute To Django Reinhardt
Nat King Cole Trio - Honeysuckle Rose
Horst Jankowski - For Night People Only
Oscar Peterson - Fly Me To The Moon
Antonio Carlos Jobim - One Note Samba
Connie Francis - Cocktail Connie
Lalo Schifrin - Mission Impossible And Other Thrilling Themes
Kai Winding – Jazz For Playboys
Max Greger – Greger’s Groove Party
Max Greger – Hallo Kleines Fraulein
Walter Wanderley – Hammond Bossa From Brazil
George Shearing - Swinging In The Latin Mood
Ingfried Hoffman - Hammond Bond
Old Merry Tale Jazzband - Am Sonntag Will Mein Süsser...
Stan Getz - Body And Soul
Ella Fitzgerald - Lady Be Good
Don Ellis - Soaring
Ella Fitzgerald - Live In San Francisco
Dizzy Gillespie - Live In Berlin
Nina Simone - My Baby Just Cares
Charlie Parker - Now's The Time

Pure Bossa Nova (originally by Universal Music Ltda. Brazil, released in the US by Verve; there's another series out there by the same title with some of the same artists, but the Verve one can be identified by its cool graphics and by the subtitle "A View On The Music Of..."; I have all of these, and they're excellent, if short; 2008)
Antonio Carlos Jobim
Lúcio Alves
Vinicius de Moraes
Sylvia Telles
Walter Wanderley
Tamba Trio
Os Cariocas
Roberto Menescal
Nara Leão
Carlos Lyra

Diva Series (female vocalists, each volume called Diva Series; mid-2000s):
Ultimate Diva Collection (V.A.)
Ella Fitzgerald
Anita O’Day
Dinah Washington
Sarah Vaughan
Nina Simone
Carmen McRae
Billie Holiday
Astrud Gilberto
Blossom Dearie

For Lovers (romantic ballads; mid '00s):
Paris (V.A.)
New York (V.A.)
Rio (V.A.)
Around The World (V.A.)
Christmas (V.A.)
Johnny Hartman
Astrud Gilberto
Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
Stan Getz
More Stan Getz
Antonio Carlos Jobim
Louis Armstrong
John Coltrane
More John Coltrane
Ben Webster
Nina Simone
Bill Evans
Chet Baker
Ella Fitzgerald
Charlie Parker
Oscar Peterson
Dinah Washington
Carmen McRae
Billie Holiday

Verve Unmixed (no individual artist comps, but it's worth mentioning anyway: this is a series of four numbered discs plus a Christmas disc that was released to go with a corresponding set called Verve Remixed, with contemporary mixers turned loose on the Verve catalogue; early '00s)

Talkin' Verve (aimed at acid jazzers; late '90s-early '00s):
Roots of Acid Jazz (V.A.)
Swingin’ (V.A.)
With A Twist (V.A.)
Mambo-Mania (V.A.)
Groovy (V.A.)
Cool (V.A.)
Roland Kirk
Quincy Jones
Cal Tjader
Buddy Greco
Les McCann
Walter Wanderley
Dizzy Gillespie
Astrud Gilberto
Jimmy Smith
Wes Montgomery
George Benson
Willie Bobo
Shirley Scott
Lalo Schifrin

Finest Hour (broad cross-section of Verve artists; early '00s)
Anita O’Day
Antonio Carlos Jobim
Art Tatum
Astrud Gilberto
Ben Webster
Benny Carter
Bill Evans
Cannonball Adderley
Carmen McRae
Charles Mingus
Chuck Mangione
Clifford Brown
Count Basie
Crusaders
Dinah Washington
Duke Ellington
Erroll Garner
Fred Astaire
Gato Barbieri
Jimmy Smith
Joe Williams
Mel Torme
Nina Simone
Oscar Peterson
Quincy Jones
Ramsey Lewis
Roland Kirk
Sarah Vaughan
Sonny Rollins
Stan Getz
Tal Farlow
Wes Montgomery
Willie Bobo
Woody Herman

Definitive (this is kind of confusing: it's a series of cross-licensed discs by Verve and Blue Note, and "Definitive" is such a generic title that it's hard to figure out exactly how many there were; early '00s):
Cannonball Adderley
Chet Baker
Clifford Brown
Nat “King” Cole
Stan Getz
Joe Henderson
Bud Powell
George Shearing
Jimmy Smith
Art Tatum
McCoy Tyner
Sarah Vaughan
Dinah Washington
Joe Williams

Ultimate (the gimmick here was to have a famous musician pick the tracks - an idea better suited to a magazine article than an actual CD; 1999 or so):
Charlie Parker
Jimmy Smith
Art Tatum
Shirley Horn
Tony Williams
Oscar Peterson
Sarah Vaughan
Stan Getz
Nina Simone
Ray Brown
Wes Montgomery
Ella Fitzgerald
Billie Holiday
Dinah Washington
Bill Evans
Dizzy Gillespie
Cannonball Adderley
Anita O'Day
Clifford Brown
Bud Powell
Coleman Hawkins
Ben Webster
Joe Williams
Cal Tjader
Lester Young

The Best Of The Verve Years (the title is a rare acknowledgment that many Verve artists only came to the label after having done more important work elsewhere; all of these had titles and graphics that varied by artist, but I believe it's all one series; early '90s):
Joe Williams - Every Day
Stan Getz - The Artistry Of (2 vols.)
Billie Holiday - The Lady In Autumn
Roy Eldridge - Little Jazz
Jimmy Smith - Walk On The Wild Side
Louis Armstrong - Let's Do It
James Cotton (no subtitle)
Illinois Jacquet - Flying Home
Slim Gaillard - Laughing In Rhythm
Dizzy Gillespie - Dizzy's Diamonds
Flip Phillips - Flip Wails

Verve Jazz Masters (even broader cross-section, numbered volumes; early to mid '90s):
1. Louis Armstrong
2. Count Basie
3. Chick Corea
4. Duke Ellington
5. Bill Evans
6. Ella Fitzgerald
7. Erroll Garner
8. Stan Getz
9. Astrud Gilberto
10. Dizzy Gillespie
11. Stephane Grappeli
12. Billie Holiday
13. Antonio Carlos Jobim
14. Wes Montgomery
15. Charlie Parker
16. Oscar Peterson
17. Nina Simone
18. Sarah Vaughan
19. Dinah Washington
20. Introducing Jazz Masters
21. George Benson
22. Billy Eckstine
23. Gil Evans
24. Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
25. Stan Getz & Dizzy Gillespie
26. Lionel Hampton & Oscar Peterson
27. Roland Kirk
28. Charlie Parker Plays Standards
29. Jimmy Smith
30. Lester Young
31. Cannonball Adderley
32. Chet Baker
33. Benny Goodman
34. Coleman Hawkins
35. Johnny Hodges
36. Gerry Mulligan
37. Oscar Peterson Plays Broadway
38. Django Reinhardt
39. Cal Tjader
40. Dinah Washington Sings Standards
41. Tal Farlow
42. Sarah Vaughan: The Jazz Sides
43. Ben Webster
44. Clifford Brown & Max Roach
45. Kenny Burrell
46. Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Sides
47. Billie Holiday Sings Standards
48. Oliver Nelson
49. Anita O’Day
50. Sonny Stitt
51. Blossom Dearie
52. Maynard Ferguson
53. Stan Getz Bossa Nova
54. Woody Herman
55. Harry James
56. Herbie Mann
57. George Shearing
58. Nina Simone Sings Nina
59. Toots Thielemans
60. The Collection

Compact Jazz (amazingly broad collection, mid to late '80s, seems to contain lots of acts that aren't strictly Verve, since it was the early days of CDs and labels seem to have been a bit more willing to cross-license):
Count Basie
Chick Corea
Bill Evans
Ella Fitzgerald
Erroll Garner
Stan Getz
Astrud Gilberto
Stephane Grappelli
Billie Holiday
Chuck Mangione
Wes Montgomery
Gerry Mulligan
Oscar Peterson
The Singers Unlimited
Jimmy Smith
The Swingle Singers
Sarah Vaughan
Dinah Washington
Best Of Dixieland
Nina Simone
Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong
Charlie Parker
Antonio Carlos Jobim
Count Basie Plays The Blues
Best Of Bossa Nova
Dizzy Gillespie
George Benson
Miles Davis
Best Of Latin Jazz
Count Basie & Joe Williams
Chet Baker
Count Basie: The Standards
Arthur Prysock
Duke Ellington & Friends
Buddy Rich
Mel Torme
Harry James
Ella & Duke
Gene Krupa & Buddy Rich
Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
Billy Eckstine
Benny Goodman
Ben Webster
Sonny Stitt
Jean-Luc Ponty & Stephane Grappelli
Anita O’Day
Clifford Brown
Best Of The Jazz Vocalists
Modern Jazz Quartet Plus
Chick Corea In The Seventies
George Shearing
Lionel Hampton
Gene Krupa
Dizzy Gillespie Big Band
Oscar Peterson & Friends
Toots Thielemans
Oscar Peterson Plays Jazz Standards
John McLaughlin
Gerry Mulligan and the Concert Jazz Band
Charlie Parker Plays The Blues
Coleman Hawkins & Ben Webster
Quincy Jones
Dinah Washington Sings The Blues
Jimmy Smith Plays The Blues
Michel Legrand
Betty Carter
Sidney Bechet & Friends
Sarah Vaughan Live
Lester Young & The Piano Giants
Bud Powell
Woody Herman
Stan Getz & Friends
Art Blakey
Cannonball Adderley
Django Reinhardt In Brussels
Cal Tjader
Best Of Blues
Best Of The Big Bands
Helen Merrill
Sonny Rollins & Friends
Johnny Hodges
Maynard Ferguson
Stan Getz With Strings

Wong Kar-wai's Days of Being Wild (1990)

The most impressive shot is an amazingly long tracking shot down a Manila street, up some stairs, and through the second floor of a railway station. It's a tour de force, but me and the Mrs. disagreed on its effectiveness: I thought it was so amazing that it crossed the line into stunt territory - by the end I was just wondering how they did it, imagining how they must have cued the actors to start moving and speaking when the camera entered the room, etc. Mrs. Sgt. T just thought it was an amazing shot.

That was the only thing I thought overdone about the movie, though, and I can forgive it as a moment of exuberance by an artist just starting to glimpse his potential. Days of Being Wild is, as everyone seems to agree, where Wong Kar-wai became Wong Kar-wai; I'm not sure I completely agree (I certainly enjoyed As Tears Go By, and saw a lot of Wong's trademarks there, I think). But it is a great film, and a departure from his last, and the thematic and stylistic connections with In the Mood for Love are obvious.

No doubt a lot of what makes it the real arrival of Wong Kar-wai is that it's the arrival of Christopher Doyle. I now realize how much credit he deserves for Wong's success. I liked the visuals in ATGB, but they're nothing compared to this: instead of the steroidal neons of the earlier film, we get bled-out browns and grays and greens that manage to suggest both passion and confusion. The Philippine jungle seen at the beginning and end of the film is a great example: instead of lush, tropical colors we get an almost sickly washed-out green, simultaneously suggesting the milky richness of nephrite and a kind of spleeny bitterness...

The look of the film I don't find nearly as stylish as In the Mood for Love, but the themes here don't call for that anyway. Instead of tidal passions barely repressed, here we have outpourings of emotion with nowhere to go. So instead of opulent, entrancing surfaces we get confusing mixed hues and textures. Combined with the frequently odd camera angles and perfectly unbalanced compositions we have a a perfect visual representation of passions too strong and untamed to be dressed up. It's a monsoon movie. The best scene is the first one between Maggie Cheung and Andy Lau, at night in the rain, her heart aching so bad she can barely think, her face shining between thick black shadows of buildings, his face barely visible under his shiny black policeman's hat...

Doyle's visuals serve Wong's new narrative technique perfectly. I'm not sure if it's a technique; abandonment of narrative is what I want to say, but that's a little too extreme. It's just that he's decided that he's really only interested in the emotions, and he jettisons all the realistic story details that a normal movie would include, but that are really irrelevant to understanding the emotion. We know next to nothing about Maggie Cheung's character: we get only the barest bits of information about her background, and the passage of time in the movie is so murky (despite the camera's obsession with clocks) that we don't know much about how she gets from one emotional state to another. What we know about her is mostly how she feels: tentative love, passionate heartbreak. The same goes for all the characters.

To me this meant that the movie struck me as melodramatic, in the best possible way: its emotions (not just Maggie Cheung's, but Carina Lau's and of course Leslie Cheung's as well) are almost operatic in their intensity and abandon. Mrs. Sgt. T, however, said she was impressed by how emotionally dry the film was - certainly it depicts strong emotions, she said, but with a curious distance. I can see that, too, kind of: it's almost as if the radical foregrounding of the characters' emotions at the expense of the realistic details of their lives objectifies those emotions, rendering them static icons of emotion, rather than states of feeling that people pass through.

Thoughts On Stuff's Patrick-san accounts for the movie, and its place in Wong's ouevre, much better than I can. His post is worth a read.

Bye-bye HMV Shibuya, 'kay?

David Marx at Néojaponisme has an informative lament up about the closing of HMV's Shibuya branch, complete with a run-down of the store's cultural significance. (Short version: it helped foster Shibuya-kei bands, including one or two I absolutely love.)

I never spent as much time or money at HMV as I have at tower, but I spent enough. And at Wave, which he also mentions; Wave in Roppongi was my first brush with Japanese music-store nirvana, so I always had a soft spot for that chain, too. ...I rather think HMV's financial problems might have been entirely due to me moving back to the States. Like Willie Dixon says, "I never said I was a millionaire - I said I spent more money than a millionaire."

Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer (2010)

This is a perfect movie, certainly one of Polanski's best, and I'd even say it's the equal of Chinatown. It'll never be as influential, both because Polanski's not the man for this cultural moment like he was for Chinatown's and because it's not as innovative. But in its look, its feel, its expertise, its acting, and its emotional and political depth, this is just as strong. (I even think Polanski cleverly alludes to Chinatown in the characters of the Chinese gardener and cook - it's a meaningful allusion, too, suggesting that here, too, things are not as transparent as the glass walls suggest.)

That's a huge claim, but I'll stand by it. I loved every frame of this film, right down to the magnificent ending, with what happens happening just off-screen, handled with an understated grace that only accentuates the horror.

Just as he did with Chinatown and Frantic, Polanski manages to create a sense of noirish dread without resorting to the deep shadows associated with noir. There's a lot of black and gray in this film, but they're clean, oceanic hues arising organically from the film's setting (I know it wasn't actually filmed on the Vineyard and the Cape, but he perfectly captures the look of the Massachusetts coast in winter), and the dignified, impenetrable blacks of security vehicles. Instead of hidden corners of dark houses we get huge picture-window vistas. And still we get things sneaking up on us - the news helicopter made me jump out of my seat.

The performances are pitch-perfect, too. Pierce Brosnan's ex-PM is a great creation, making cunning use of all Brosnan's Bond charisma (and in a possibly metafictional way - does Brosnan's resumé predispose us to believe the ghost writer's suspicions about him?). Ewan McGregor is perfect as his anonymous eponymous (or is he?) character. Olivia Williams, so brilliant in Dollhouse, is devastating as the ex-PM's wife - sympathetic and scary in turn. Her character, of course, may actually be who the title refers to, in a number of ways (the figure of the political spouse has been getting some excellent fictional coverage lately - I've been quite enjoying The Good Wife, too).

I guess it helps if you're a bit paranoid about the National Security State(s). Someone I saw this with was skeptical that the CIA had that much reach. If only.

Jim Emerson has two excellent posts about the movie here and here (the first one is actually commenting on someone else's praise, the second one is hardcore analysis - awesome).

*

It's worth mentioning, I think, that I missed this in the theaters but caught it at the David Minor Theater here in Eugene, which is a theater pub, the first I've ever been to. It's a small one, and at least this film was actually a DVD (Blu-ray, I think) projected on a big screen. I was apprehensive about this experience, but as it happened, I loved it. The picture quality was excellent - I can't say I noticed any difference from an actual projected film, and within minutes I forgot I was watching a DVD (and as Roger Ebert has repeatedly pointed out, the picture quality in your average multiplex can really suck - I've seen things projected on dim bulbs, out of focus, with lousy sound).

And showing it from a DVD meant we were blissfully free of commercials, PSAs, and previews. We payed a low price to watch a movie, and that's what we got.

What about the pub thing? The deal here is that you can order before the movie or during (you step out into the lobby to order). Once or twice during the screening, therefore, a waiter came in and called, quietly, somebody's name to deliver their order. Distracting? Certainly, and that's probably why, despite the fact that it was dinner hour, only a couple of people ordered anything. But to be honest, my impression was that this was a movie-loving group of people: quiet and attentive, and so even with the food deliveries it was a much less distracting environment than your average multiplex, with its texting teenagers and people talking to the screen.

We'll probably go back.

Walter Mosley: A Red Death (1991)

I like this one as well as the first one, I think, which is saying something. In some ways I might have enjoyed it more because I came at it innocent of any expectations set up by a movie.

It intrigues me that Mosley jumps ahead in time five years for the sequel. It surprises me, because I thought immediate postwar black LA was such a rich milieu - I was ready for four or five more books exploring that particular moment, its fleeting promise and fresh disappointment. Mosley seems to have decided to go broad rather than deep, though: by jumping up five years and setting this in the middle of the Red Scare, he seems to be setting himself the task, not of sketching every nuance of black life in one time and place, but of showing how one black life interacts with larger historical trends. It's a good trade-off, even though I'm apprehensive about future volumes that take the series into the '70s; Wattstax-era LA would seem to offer such a radically different aesthetic that I just don't know how Easy'll fit in. But then, I imagine that's part of the point.

I also like how compromised Easy is at the end of this book. He's made deals with two or three devils, broken any number of promises he half-made to himself. Is this a subversion of the knight-errant theory of noir? Or is it an established part of the genre that the hero can't remain untouched by the moral corruption of the world he lives in? Whichever, I found Easy's compromises pretty emotionally affecting. However tough Philip Marlowe had it, Easy's got it tougher - because he's black, so (for example) cops are not just obstacles, they're antagonists. It's like the old line about Ginger Rogers doing everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels.

Stieg Larsson: The Girl Who, etc.

I think I've mentioned before that one of the bloggers I read on a daily basis is Ta-Nehisi Coates. Since I also read Andrew Sullivan, that means that two of my favorite bloggers write for The Atlantic. And both of them are on vacation right now, and both have turned their blogs over to guest-bloggers in the meantime.

I'm of two minds about this. I sympathize with what is no doubt considerable pressure from their employer to keep generating new content during what is a well-deserved break; and I sympathize with their desire to take a well-deserved break from what is undeniably, at their level, a grueling demand for new writing. The guest blogger idea is not a bad one, considering the alternative is darkness or reruns. They used to do this on late-night TV: Carson used to have guest hosts when he went on vacation. Letterman doesn't do that, usually; he just shows reruns. But he's brought in guest hosts when he's been sick, and I've enjoyed it then. So why not try the same thing on blogs?

Unfortunately I have to say that for me, the guest bloggers are largely failing. In Sullivan's case it's because he's chosen guest bloggers based on his own old tribal allegiance to the right: his guest bloggers (and his underbloggers) are moderate right-wingers, but they're still farther to the right than Sullivan is, even if he doesn't realize it, and it means that I (and I doubt I'm alone) end up rolling my eyes at what his guest bloggers write far more often than I do at Sullivan himself.

Coates has gone a different route; this time around he's drawn about equally from the ranks of his most eloquent commenters and from other bloggers he likes. The effect is interesting, because each guest seems to be representing a different facet of what Coates does - there's the Civil War history blogger, the hip-hop blogger, etc. And I'm sure each of them is good at what he or she does - but even taken collectively, they aren't TNC. What I'm learning about a good blog (at that level: mine doesn't even count) is that it's about the personality behind it, as much as it is about any particular viewpoint or expertise. I have no interest in some of the things TNC writes about, and I'm unsympathetic to some of the points of view Sullivan airs, but in each case I'm fascinated by how a personality I feel I've come to know (yeah, yeah, impossible: but still) handles even issues I don't care about. I'm not interested in hip-hop, but I'm interested in what TNC thinks about hip-hop, if that makes sense.

That said, Lorin Stein, one of TNC's guests this week, had an interesting post up the other day about beach reading, the history and subtext of the concept. I was interested to see it because I just got through a couple of weeks of almost nonstop immersion in Stieg Larsson's bestselling trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo who Played with Fire while Kicking the Hornets' Nest. I picked up the first one as a total impulse buy while getting in line at Powell's, and the whole time I was reading them, "beach reading" was the phrase that kept running through my head.

Beach reading as both excuse and ideal. FWIW, I agree that beach reading as a marketing tool is bogus (and Stein has some more interesting things to say about marketing and contemporary literary fiction here and here), but at the same time I do find that there are certain kinds of books that are better suited to reading on the beach (or wherever you're spending your summer outdoor leisure time: for me it's the balcony of our apartment) than others. Easy to read and immediately engrossing are qualities that help; note that those qualities aren't exclusive to either "popular" or "literary" fiction. I can only think off-hand of two books I've actually read on an actual beach, and one was one of the Harry Potter books, while the other was To Kill a Mockingbird. (Which one is pop lit?)

I try to read my share of serious books, but at the same time, as should be obvious by now, I also crave the feeling of being sucked into a book almost helplessly - and "beach reading" carries that connotation for me as well. That's what I was hoping for with Larsson's books. And that's what I got, although not the way I expected.

I did find them impossible to put down. One of them I literally stayed up all night to finish. And yet I never felt like it was impossible to put it down - in the first book especially I mostly felt like I was waiting to be grabbed. I couldn't stop reading, and I couldn't figure out why. The prose reads fluidly enough, but it isn't as drum-tight as some thrillers I've read. It's actually kind of gray. The characters are intriguing, but it takes us so long to really get to know them that I don't think it was them who kept me going. The plots are intriguing and garish, but they take so long to unfold that I didn't find myself wondering what was going to happen next so much as when anything was going to happen at all. And yet, I hasten to add, I couldn't put them down.

Which isn't to say that I feel like I wasted my time with them. I felt like that with The Da Vinci Code, which swallowed me the same way when I read that a few years ago. That was an amazingly satisfying read, but the minute I finished it and realized that Brown was basically lying about his sources, not to mention pandering to the worst prejudices of his readers, I felt like I'd been had. Abused.

These books ended up growing in stature as I read them, and after I'd finished. And I think the reason for that, the themes, is connected to at least one thing I can identify as something that kept me immersed in them.

I'm a liberal: I often admire the achievements of places like Sweden and wonder why we can't do the same. I'm not ashamed of this. And I recognize that one thing Larsson was trying to do was show that maybe not everything in the welfare state is as awesome as it seems, that maybe there is room for abuse, or a tendency to control the life of the individual too much. I recognize that, and yet at the same time the Sweden in his books is still incredibly attractive: it's a society that works, that's basically at peace, that has its values in the right place. Larsson may be trying to say that this is no longer true, but even in the fallen state he presents, it looks like a pretty nice place to me.

Which is what makes his central theme - pervasive, insidious, hidden misogyny (the first book's Swedish title, acc. to Wikipedia, translates to Men who Hate Women, and it's a perfect title) - so powerful. Many of the characters, and certainly the institutions, seem to have, as I say, the right values - and in spite of that, Larsson suggests, misogyny still manages to survive, and maybe even to thrive. He's at his strongest when he's showing how the worst motives can disguise themselves as the most respectable, and how the most sociopathic urges can lurk within the most nondescript of people. And how women, so often, are the ones who pay the price. And you know, if it can happen there...