Love and Death: Into the Archive

 

Love and Death (1975) is considered the last of Woody Allen’s “early, funny ones,” a comedic breakdown of classic Russian literature and, of course, the themes of love and death. It follows the adventures of self-proclaimed coward and poet Boris Grushenko (Woody Allen) and his pursuit of his distant cousin Sonja (Diane Keaton) through the ups and downs of the Napoleonic Wars. Despite constant visions of the Grim Reaper and encounters on the battlefield and in a duel, Boris survives to marry Sonja, only to have their lives interrupted by France’s invasion of Russia. The two conceive an ill-advised plan to assassinate Napoleon and stop the war, but it ends up with Boris captured and facing the firing squad at dawn. Throughout the film Woody Allen pricks all the grim, intense pretensions surrounding love and death (especially exemplified by war and marriage) with hilarious deconstructions and all-too-literal readings, ending with a joyfully absurd dance with Death.

          An extra bonus, of course, is if you have a passing acquaintance with Russian literature (especially the works of Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, and Fyodor Dostoevsky) and can spot the elements that are being parodied. An epitome of this shtick can be seen in a conversation between Boris and his father near the end of the film, which name-drops many famous novels and episodes by Doestoevsky:

 

          Father: Remember that nice boy next door, Raskalnikov?

Boris: Yeah?

Father: He killed two ladies.

Boris: No! What a nasty story.

Father: Bobick told it to me. He heard it from one of the Karamazov brothers.

Boris: He must have been possessed.

Father: Well, he was a raw youth.

Boris: Raw youth? He was an idiot.

Father: And he acted insulted and injured.

Boris: I hear he was a gambler.

Father: You know, he could be your double?

Boris: Really? (strokes his chin) How novel.

 

If you want to watch a movie where War and Peace meets Borscht-belt comedy, Love and Death is the film for you, “a satire of contemporary mores, a spoof aimed more at the heart than the head!”

The Edge: Into the Archive

 

“The Edge is a 1997 American survival film directed by Lee Tamahori and starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. The plot follows wealthy businessman Charles Morse (Hopkins), photographer Bob Green (Baldwin), and assistant Stephen (Harold Perrineau), who must trek through the elements and try to survive after their plane crashes down in the Alaskan wilderness; all while being threatened by a large Kodiak bear and the men's fraying friendships.” – Wikipedia.

I love this movie basically for one line, the theme for this survivalist film:

Almost as dangerous for Morse (Hopkins) as the bear that is stalking them is Green (Alec Baldwin), who has plans to murder Morse so he can gain his super-model wife. As they work together to survive the wilderness and Morse spares Green after a murder attempt, the two men come to a mutual respect that is only thwarted by Green’s death just as they are rescued. In the end Morse says that Green died saving him.

Although there is much tension and jealousy throughout the film, great emphasis is given not to mere brute survival, but on thinking your way out of a situation, of intelligence and humanity as a solution out of your problems, whether it is a toxic relationship or a wintery wilderness. The one thing you cannot do is nothing, not if you want things to change.

 

• “ Charles Morse : You know, I once read an interesting book which said that, uh, most people lost in the wilds, they, they die of shame.

Stephen : What?

Charles Morse : Yeah, see, they die of shame. "What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?" And so they sit there and they... die. Because they didn't do the one thing that would save their lives.

Robert Green : And what is that, Charles?

Charles Morse : Thinking.”  - IMDB

Stan & Ollie

Stan & Ollie is a 2018 biopic about the later years of the comedy duo Stan Laurel (played by Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (played by John C. Reilly).

“In 1937, while making Way Out West, Stan Laurel refuses to renew his contract with Hal Roach, as Laurel believes they are not being justly compensated for their global fame. Oliver Hardy remains tied to Roach on a different contract, with the studio pairing him with Harry Langdon—and an elephant—in the film Zenobia. They soon get back together, but Oliver's skipping a meeting with Fox results in them not being signed, leaving Laurel feeling embittered for years.” – Wikipedia.

In 1953, in an effort to get financing for a new film (their first in years) they travel together to Great Britain on a tour to raise interest in backing them. Although they find ‘the business’ more interested in snappy new acts like the Americans Abbott and Costello or the British Billy Wisdom, enthusiasm among the people starts to swell. In the end, however, the studio they are wooing bails on them.

In the meantime, the two erstwhile stars gamely struggle through appearances in less than stellar theaters, brooding resentments, a degree of poverty, and failing health. Stan has always been driven by his art, but Ollie has a more laid-back approach, seeing his career as being just one of the elements of his life. He has, nevertheless, deft comedy instincts, and Stan needs him as the perfect sounding board for his ideas. They have always been partners, but as the film progresses and their understanding grows, they become true friends.

Using recreations of their routines and some deft applications of their comedy to real life, the flavor of Laurel and Hardy as we know it is brilliantly recreated.  Steve Coogan and (especially) John C. Reilly, seem to disappear into their roles. The heart cracks when Stan and Ollie have a quarrel that threatens to break them apart forever, a quarrel that the people around them only take as another routine. I for one would like to see the parody of “Robin Hood” that they were trying to sell, and I wonder if material for it still existed or if they had imagined it for this film. It worked.

I waited until my brother John and I could see the film together. We have both been fans of Laurel and Hardy for years (John especially, perhaps, but me a close second), and I felt that the viewing would be a special occasion. It did not disappoint. The final scene of Oliver Hardy, regardless of having had a mild heart attack, carrying on gallantly and gracefully with the show despite his suffering, is an object lesson in life for us all.

The Night of the Iguana: Into the Archive

[Nowhere near as raunchy as the cover would have you believe.]

          “The Night of the Iguana” is a 1964 movie directed by John Huston and based on the 1961 play by Tennessee Williams.

Richard Burton is the disgraced Reverend Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon, who has been reduced to being a guide for a cheap touring company in Mexico. When the thorny and repressed Judith Fellowes (Grayson Hall) accuses him of seducing her young ward (Sue Lyon), he strands the whole touring company at a remote hotel while he plays for time. The hotel is run by Maxine Falk (Ava Gardner), the recent widow of an old friend, and a flamboyant and plain-talking broad. Into this mix comes Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr) a chaste, insightful painter who travels with her grandfather (the elderly minor poet Nonno, played by Cyril Delevanti) as they eke out a marginal existence. Miss Fellowes overcomes all Shannon’s maneuvers and leaves to carry out her plan to ruin him. Shannon struggles with his situation through the long night, complicated by alcohol and other fleshly appetites; he feels as if he is as tethered to his condition as the iguana that is being kept tied up at the hotel for slaughter and cooking the next day. His mind becomes so desperate (he attempts suicide) that he is finally physically tied up in a hammock. The artist Hannah, who has learned much through her struggling life, offers him comfort and counsel, and in the end, she releases him. It is just in time for Nonno, who has been striving to complete final poem, to recite the words for Jelkes to write down. The old man passes away minutes later. The next morning Hannah, freed herself by her grandfather’s death, leaves, as Shannon and Maxine come to an understanding. While he has lost his job as a tour guide (and with it any chance of taking up his religious career again), he has a new position helping Maxine run her hotel. The iguana has been set free.  

I love Nonno’s poem (asking for courage in the face of death and corruption, and written of course by Tennessee Williams himself). For years I thought that Ava Gardner was Elizabeth Taylor, disappearing into another earthy role like her Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” I am glad to be corrected. Taylor was there with Burton during filming near Puerto Vallarta, at the time “a remote little fishing village”; they would be married soon after. John Huston was so impressed with the fishing in the area that he bought a house about eight miles out of town. Puerto Vallarta experienced an upsurge of popularity and prosperity after the movie; in 1988 they erected a bronze statue of Huston in gratitude. 

Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke: Into the Library

Piranesi is the third book from Susanna Clarke. The first two were her monumental fantasy “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” and its follow-up volume of short stories “The Ladies of Grace-Adieu”. Both took place in her alternate timeline of England during the Napoleonic Wars, except with magic. To a certain extent I was expecting, not the same world, but something on the level of JS&MN (782 pages long; it took ten years to write – and she has had about sixteen years – admittedly slowed by her work on a sequel to JS&MN and by ill health - to produce Piranesi). What I found is something on a much more human scale at 245 pages, but I do not judge quality by quantity. I read it in a single day, but that was because it was so good, I could not stop. It is both a fantasy and a compelling mystery.

 

          “Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

“There is one other person in the house―a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.” – Amazon.

 

          The House and its nature recall elements from other Fantasy classics. Perhaps the most obvious is the almost infinite Castle of Gormenghast with its labyrinthine corridors and eccentric nomenclature. But it also partakes of the timeless forgetful nature of the Wood Between the Worlds from the Narnia books; and there are two direct if well-camouflaged references to C. S. Lewis’s work elsewhere in the story. It seems to me to also recall the Neitherworld in Lev Grossman’s ‘Magician’ books, but that may simply be because of his own Narnian influence. I do not mention these similarities to complain of any intellectual piracy but to revel in the echoes of old themes built upon by new authors. Clarke’s invention is singular enough to claim it as a novel vintage.

The book itself is a beautiful item clothed in purple with gilded lines and black and white accents. The only flaw is that the front cover is slightly indented to show the edge of the ‘inside cover’, as it were, which is replete with blurbs. In my experience, covers like this tend to be problematic, as extra care is needed to shelve them to avoid damage. The front cover, after only one reading, is already showing a pronounced tendency to curl.

I think that the only other things that I have to note is that ‘Piranesi’ is a reference to Giovanni Batista Piranesi, an 18^th-Century Italian archaeologist, architect, and artist, famous for his etchings of Rome and of imaginary, fantastic prisons, and that the book won the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction.  

The Mystery of T. M. Junge

T. M. Junge (1860 -1930?) is known only from his rare, never-reprinted, 'proto-fantasy' novel, "Under the Mountain".  Though born in Germany, he spent some time working in England before finally taking up residence in the United States. Much of what is known personally about him is only from several mentions in rather dry reviews in ancient newspapers or casual references from officianados of the genre who appreciated his one and only book. There is rumored to be some material on him in the late Lin Carter's chaotic, legally tied-up files. 

So unobtainable is the book that most of what is known about it are quotations in other works. The only two I have been able to track down are these:

“What we mainly deal with are the Three Dees." 

Giles furrowed his brows. 

"What are they?" 

"Well, there are Devils, which are the worst and most dangerous. That's fallen angels. Unbodied intelligences with a malevolent will; they hate everything but especially humans, seemingly, and have the cunning and malice to go at it hard. Then there's Daemons, which are what you might call spiritual animals, as it were. They arise out of nature and are attached to places and things. Mankind was supposed to be in charge of regulating them in the first place, but lost that ability a while ago." 

The little man gave Giles a significant look. 

"They're wild and kind of stupid, and every now and then one will break out like a fox in the henhouse and have to be whacked back into place. Then there's Dybbuks, which are the weakest but most common. That's dead people, or bits of them, that hang around after they should've passed on. You get your hauntings and obsessions and so on. Getting rid of Devils is rare and terrifying, like hunting tigers; dealing with Dybbuks is like cockroaches, rather personal and disgusting." 

--from Under the Mountain, by T. M. Junge.

Giles watched, mystified, as the other called for pen, ink, and paper, and wrote the following note: 'Flee for your life. All is known, your lies have been revealed, and the jig is up.  Signed, Your Friend.' He folded it, addressed it, and handed it to a potboy to be delivered.

"What good will that do?" Giles asked.

"It's just to put the bats around his ears," the Squire answered calmly. He called for another jug of ale. "Half the time when I've sent that letter, the problem clears itself up right away. Almost everybody has something they don't want dragged out into daylight."

 --T. M. Junge, Under the Mountain

The only other instance of his voice I've been able to discover is not from the novel, but from a letter he sent H. P. Lovecraft in the early Twenties, which the Weird Tales writer quoted to Robert E. Howard:

 "Imagine you are living in a universe on a world where every human being is an alternate version of yourself, expressed in each race and in both sexes. In every different way, they are living your life, under every circumstance, in every time, in every place. Would you not forgive their blunders, understand their failures, tolerate their follies, grant their little joys, and at the same time try to improve their characters and lives, with as much understanding and diligence as you try to improve your own? Imagine this, then go forth and act accordingly." --T. M. Junge

Lovecraft rather bluntly states, "I couldn't."

The mystery of T. M. Junge continues. The rarity of "Under the Mountain" (its short printing was already hard to find in 1900; its connoissuers began thinking of themselves as a select secret club with Junge as their shibboleth) has made finding a copy to reprint impossible - so far. Several are thought to reside in great private libraries or obscure collections. The Library of Congress contains no findable copy; it is presumed stolen. There are those who believe Junge and his work to be merely an ephemeral literary in-joke, the point of which has evaporated with time. But there continue to be enough elusive clues and cryptic references to keep Fantasy buffs on the trail.

Living La Vita Merlini

“Vita Merlini, or The Life of Merlin, is a work by the Norman-Welsh author Geoffrey of Monmouth, composed in Latin around AD 1150. It retells incidents from the life of the Brythonic seer Merlin, and is based on traditional material about him. Merlin is described as a prophet in the text. There are a number of episodes in which he loses his mind and lives in the wilderness like a wild animal, like Nebuchadnezzar in the Book of Daniel. It is also the first work to describe the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay, as Morgen. Geoffrey had written of Merlin in his two previous works, the Prophetiae Merlini, purported to be a series of prophecies from the sage, and the Historia Regum Britanniae, which is the first work presenting a link between Merlin and King Arthur. The Vita Merlini presents an account of Merlin much more faithful to the Welsh traditions about Myrddin Wyllt, the archetype behind Geoffrey's composite figure of Merlin. Whereas the Historia had Merlin associating with Arthur, his father Uther Pendragon, and his uncle Ambrosius in the 5th century, the Vita's timeframe is during the late 6th century, and includes references to various figures from that period, including Gwenddoleu and Taliesin. Geoffrey attempts to synchronize the Vita with his earlier work by having Merlin mention he had been with Arthur long before.” – Amazon.

Merlin has been a figure of interest to me since I was very young, and I’ve always indulged myself in books that concern him in any way, whether it be legendary, historical, or fictional. Search this blog for “Merlin” (or indeed, “Merlyn”) and you won’t even begin to scratch all the works that involve the famous wizard in some way. I was finally able to track down this seminal early work about him at last.

It was fairly expensive for being such a thin little book; it is only 105 pages long, and half of that is the original Latin poem. The other half is the English translation and footnotes. The price is reflected in its rarity and its niche scholarly interest, but I found after hesitating for almost a year I had to have it. It was a quick read, but not without interest. It contains elements of the Madness of Merlin, the Three Fates, and the Matter of Britain (in prophecy), but there is also a large chunk recounting the world creation from Genesis, which I can only consider filler and a little off topic, but probably inevitable in an early medieval work.

I Know a Story: The Straw Ox

 

I Know a Story (1958 Edition, Row, Peterson and Company) was one of my first readers back in 1969 when I was in First Grade.  It contains seven traditional fairy tales, retold by Miriam Blanton Huber, Frank Seely Salisbury, and Mabel O’Donnell, and illustrated by Florence and Margaret Hoopes. I was able (only fairly recently) to track it down and identify it, ordered it, and now I’ve read it again for the first time in 52 years.

I was most interested in the story “The Straw Ox”, a retelling of an old Ukrainian fairy tale. It was indeed by this story I was able to track the book down at last; it is not very widely disseminated. In it a poor old couple cannot afford any livestock, but at the old woman’s direction the old man (who is a pitch-burner) builds a Straw Ox and covers it with tar. They set the Ox out in the field to ‘graze’; passing animals (a bear, a wolf, a fox, and a hare – in this Reader’s retelling the hare is replaced with a dog) ask to take some of the Ox’s tar for various reasons. He agrees and they end up stuck to him (a la the Tar Baby). The old man throws the animals into the barn and only releases them when they promise to bring him livestock in return. The old couple get so rich from the proceeds that they need nothing more, and in the original ending (not used in the Reader) the Straw Ox, no longer being necessary, “stood in the sun until it fell to pieces.”

What interested me about the story (besides its rarity – it was no ‘Red Riding Hood’ or ‘Goldilocks’) was of course the Straw Ox itself. At six years old I already had an attachment to “The Wizard of Oz” and “Pinocchio”, with their stories of inanimate simulacra coming to life. The Ox seemed to me to be in this tradition and worthy to be added to the list. I clung compulsively onto its memory for half a century.

What strikes me now at this distance in time are things I never thought of at six. Was the old woman who came up with the idea of the Straw Ox merely wanting a sort of substitute or ersatz symbol of prosperity, or did she really have a plan to trap the animals? Where did the wild animals get the cow, sheep, and barnyard fowl to pay their ransom? They must have taken them from somewhere, and the old couple were receivers of stolen goods! The Straw Ox disappears halfway through the story, his task accomplished, and is given no follow-up. Perhaps the writers thought it was just too depressing to conclude “it fell to pieces.”

The other stories are 'The Gingerbread boy' 'The Three Bears', Billy Goats Gruff', 'Mr. Vinegar', 'Little Red Riding Hood', and 'The Boy Who Went to the North Wind'. The book itself is in very good condition for a school reader of its age. Besides the usual school property stamps there is only the name ‘Jamie’ (in a bold, sure, cursive hand) on the inside cover and the inside front page. Inscribed by a grown-up to a child named Jamie, I’m guessing. What was surely a memory for him has become my memory now. And so the Continuum … er … continues.  

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: from Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton: The Film Collection

          Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a 1966 film based on the 1962 stage play of the same name by Edward Albee. It stars Richard Burton as the middle-aged history professor George; Elizabeth Taylor as his wife Martha, the daughter of the college president; George Segal as the young new professor in the biology department; and Sandy Dennis as Honey, his somewhat fragile wife. Martha has invited the younger couple over for a visit after a late college party, and as the night wears on and many drinks are consumed, the lacquer of appearances are stripped away, vicious mind-games are played, and bare, tragic truths are revealed about both couples.

At the end of the night, as dawn breaks and the younger couple has finally left, George recites the song that has recurred all night, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (a parody, of course, of “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”). Martha bleakly replies, “I am, George, I am.” This significance of this final line has been interpreted several ways, but I think it inevitably recalls the fact that Woolf killed herself when life seemed too unbearable, and what Martha fears is her own suicide.

The film has an all-star cast, a slew of nominations and awards, and wordplay at a high and engaging level. But what first drew my attention and made me watch the film (maybe ten years or so ago) was the entire setting. It really invoked for me my early childhood, from the night-time exteriors (especially when George goes out to sit on a swing) to the tank of a 1962 Ford Country Squire that George and Martha drive. The maddening full moon is visually insisted upon and makes the darkness only darker.

As I watched it, I realized that at a deep level it was also about Fantasy, in its grimmer aspects as a tool to get through life. George and Martha have been denied many avenues of fulfillment due to their circumstances. There is one aspect of the ‘fun and games’ they play that brings mitigation of their situation, especially to Martha. It is the destruction of this illusion that brings her to the film’s desolate conclusion.  

Who’s Afraid has since become one of my favorite “grown-up” films. When I went to buy a copy, I found it in Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton: The Film Collection, which sold for only $3.09 and $3.99 shipping. That was four movies for the price of one, including (besides Woolf), The V.I.P.s , The Sandpiper, and The Comedians. I knew of good things about at least two of them, so got the lot, and a bargain it was.

---

New to the Library: Symbol or Substance?

Symbol or Substance?: A Dialogue on the Eucharist with C. S. Lewis, Billy Graham and J. R. R. Tolkien (2019) by Peter Kreeft. Kreeft is of course a popular Catholic apologist, and in this imaginary conversation he presents three different positions (Evangelical, Anglican, and Catholic) on accepting the Bread and Wine and whether it is a symbolic memorial or indeed the Body and Blood of Christ.

“In this engaging fictional conversation, Peter Kreeft gives credible voices to C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Billy Graham as they discuss one of the most contentious questions in the history of Christianity: Is Jesus symbolically or substantially present in the Eucharist?

“These widely respected modern Christian witnesses represent three important Western theological traditions. Graham, an ordained Southern Baptist minister who traversed the world and the airwaves to spread the good news of salvation, represents evangelical Protestantism. Lewis, an Oxford professor, a prolific Christian apologist, and the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, was a member of the Church of England. Also an Oxford don, Tolkien was a friend of Lewis, the author of The Lord of the Rings, and a Roman Catholic.”  -- Amazon.

"The Doom Which Lies Upon All Things"

 

I say no matter how clearly the reason of a man tells him that all about him is changeable, and that perfect and matured things and characters upon whose perfection and maturity he reposes for his peace must disappear, his attitude in youth towards those things is one of a complete security as towards things eternal. For the young man, convinced as he is that his youth and he himself are there for ever, sees in one lasting framework his father's garden, his mother's face, the landscape from his windows, his friendships, and even his life; the very details of food, of clothing, and of lesser custom, all these are fixed for him. Fixed also are the mature and perfect things. This aged friend, in whose excellent humour and universal science he takes so continual a delight, is there for ever. That considered judgment of mankind upon such and such a troubling matter, of sex, of property, or of political right, is anchored or rooted in eternity. There comes a day when by some one experience he is startled out of that morning dream. It is not the first death, perhaps, that strikes him, nor the first loss—no, not even, perhaps, the first discovery that human affection also passes (though that should be for every man the deepest lesson of all). What wakes him to the reality which is for some dreadful, for others august, and for the faithful divine, is always an accident. One death, one change, one loss, among so many, unseals his judgment, and he sees thenceforward, nay, often from one particular moment upon which he can put his finger, the doom which lies upon all things whatsoever that live by a material change.  –from “On Experience”, Hilaire Belloc

"The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus/ Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey"

 

          “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus” was the last Rankin/Bass animated Christmas show to use their “Animagic” (stop-motion puppets) feature. It first aired on December 17, 1985, on CBS. The special retells the story of a more obscure book (1902) by L. Frank Baum (he of “The Wizard of Oz” fame), which gives Santa an origin narrative with a more fantastic twist. The special is paired with “Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey” and was first released on DVD under the Warner Archive brand on November 17, 2009.

          The story is told as a flashback, framed by a meeting of the Immortals, a group of elemental spirits, who are gathered together by the Great Ak, the Master Woodsman of the World. Claus, a mortal who had been adopted as a baby by the wood-nymph Necile, has led an exemplary life of good and charitable deeds, but is now on the verge of death. Ak recounts ‘the life and adventures of Santa Claus’ to convince his fellow Immortals that the man is indeed worthy of their one and only Mantle of Immortality. Along the way his Northern residence, reindeer, gifts to children, stockings, and decorated trees are all given yet another explanation. The main villains of the piece are the Awgwas, a kind of evil goblin who try to make children do bad things by making them miserable. It ends, of course, with Claus being gifted the Mantle and becoming the immortal present-giver that he is.

          The “Life and Adventures” holds a rather odd place in the Rankin/Bass Christmas shows. Most of their other holiday specials have at least a tenuous continuity, starting with “Rudolph” in 1961 and lasting into the Eighties with only a few flat contradictions here and there. Their stories (even non-Christmas holiday specials) could be ‘calqued’ together into one long narrative.

These stories grew more fantastic (in the literary sense) and outré as time went on and less based on existing lore, with “Frosty and Rudolph’s Christmas in July” unfolding like a fever-dream Stephen R. Donaldson might have had after drinking too much eggnog; the evil Winterbolt bears a passing resemblance to his Lord Foul in machinations and manipulations. Perhaps Rankin/Bass was influenced by the fantasy works being produced in-house at the time, like “The Hobbit” or “The Last Unicorn”. Anyway, “Life and Adventures” appears in its own discrete bubble in 1985 and puts a period to the original cycle.

My personal memories of this show are, of course, not as steeped in nostalgia as others. Although still keenly interested in holiday specials at the time, and more so because it was based on a Baum book I had never read, I was in my early twenties and was bringing a more critical eye to any new offerings. If I’m recalling things correctly, I had to work my shift at Mr. Gatti’s the night it premiered but had someone record it via VCR for me. I was able to catch most of the beginning on the big in-store TV by lingering while I bussed some tables, then intermittently saw bits of it for the next hour or so. I certainly was impressed (and still am) by the opening number, “Ora e Sempre” (Today and Forever). [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlcQ3hO-EPY]

This special is not to be confused with the 2000 animated film, the similarly named and based “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus”, created by Mike Young Productions and starring (among others) Robby Benson, Jim Cummings, Maurice LaMarche, and Hal Holbrook. This version might be fine, but somehow I have never had the patience to watch it all the way through.

“The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus” is paired on this DVD with another Rankin/Bass Christmas Animagic special, “Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey” (1977). It is based on a 1975 song sung by Gene Autrey, who had previously popularized “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman”. The show is more in line with the Rankin/Bass strand typified by their “The Little Drummer Boy”, although Santa and his sleigh make an early appearance. Narrated by Roger Miller (you know, the rooster Alan-a-Dale from Disney’s “Robin Hood”) as Santa’s donkey (don’t ask), he explains how Nestor, a long-eared misfit living in the Roman era, saves the first Christmas by bearing Mary and Joseph safely the Bethlehem, thus finding his place, ‘going down in history’ like a more famous quadruped with a shiny nose. It has some few similarities to Disney’s “The Small One”, released in 1978 but based on a 1947 book, and no similarity (save one) to the 1960 song "Dominick the Donkey" (Santa's Italian Christmas donkey!) . As a show, I find it neither especially memorable nor offensive. It is simply a sort of extra bonus to my Rankin/Bass collection. 

Cycling Through My Brain: Quotes

Tolkien's Modern Reading by Holly Ordway

 

I got this book last week, and although it is a very ‘meaty’ volume, I read it (deeply absorbed) from about noon until 4 AM in the morning. I do not think I have been so engaged in a work about Tolkien since T. A. Shippey’s The Road to Middle-Earth published in 1982.

Ordway’s thesis is that we have been given a fallacious view of Tolkien as someone who read very little literature beyond the Middle Ages. She attributes this growing myth to certain simplistic views expressed by Humphrey Carpenter in the authorized biography of 1977, misunderstood statements by Tolkien himself that were taken out of context, and an amount of “filling in of DNA” from the opinions of notably anti-modern C. S. Lewis.  

She goes on to support her theory by carefully counting over 200 ‘modern’ works (defined for the purposes of the study as anything published from 1850 onward) by over 150 modern authors. Ordway cites only books that can be confirmed by Tolkien’s mention in his writings and letters, their presence in his library, their use in his teaching, interviews, and as reported by people close to him. She categorizes them neatly by type (novels, children’s books, etc.) and devotes whole chapters to big influences like George Macdonald, William Morris, and Rider Haggard. The book concludes with a neat little chart that organizes all the authors and their works. It is much more readable than the useful but rather dry listings from Oronzo Cilli's Tolkien's Library.

The scholarship on display is amazing, and gracefully shows the ten years she spent on the project. There is little that is theoretical, and what there is, is plainly marked and not included in the definite citations. There is a Photo Gallery illustrating the book (in color and half-tones) showing pictures Tolkien definitely would have seen, given his editions, and that strongly indicate an influence on his own visual style or imagination.

What Ordway’s work mainly reveals (without denying or downplaying the major medieval sources, interests, and influences on Tolkien) is that he was not some sort of crank or fuddy-duddy locked in his ivory tower but was engaged with his contemporary culture. He read works by Roy Campbell, T. S. Eliot, and James Joyce. I enjoyed finding out that he had read The Wizard of Oz and works by Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and Ray Bradbury. But what really tickled me was that he owned Stories of King Arthur by Blanche Winder, which was the first book I ever read of a version of the ‘Matter of Britain’ and which I have ever considered my protoevangelium to The Hobbit.

Holly Ordway’s study goes a great deal further in filling our portrait of Tolkien, who has always seemed to be a somewhat enigmatic figure. What I mainly took away from Ordway’s book (besides a meticulously and convincingly articulated case for her argument) was that Tolkien was not quite the somber, enigmatic figure that Carpenter presented us with over forty years ago. I always wondered, in the words of Charles Shulz’s Schroeder, something to effect of, “How could he have been Beethoven (or Tolkien, as the case might be) and not be happy?” Ordway leaves me with the impression somehow (without stating it out loud) that Tolkien was more cheerful than he has been given credit for.

The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions: Another Quest Achieved

 

Today I got a copy of Howard Pyle’s “The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions” (Dover Reprint) in the mail; this completes my collection of Pyle’s four Arthurian books. As can be seen elsewhere in this blog, I already had “The Story of King Arthur and His Knights” (a hardback ex-library copy), “The Story of the Champions of the Round Table” (another Dover reprint), and “The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur” (another hardback ex-library copy). “Launcelot” is the third volume in the series. Pyle re-told the stories in an old chronicle style but slightly modernized prose (to make it easier for his audience) and illustrated them himself.

I started reading Howard Pyle’s work back in middle school with the “King Arthur” book and I must admit that is the only volume in the series I’ve read all the way through. Although I have parsed through the other three at one time or another, they are mainly here for their splendid artwork, to keep their elder brother company, and to set my obsessive-compulsive impulses to rest. Pyle’s writing style (though his archaic diction is part of his charm) is still rather knotty, and complicated by an extra 118 years or so. If I were younger and more patient, reading them would probably be more compelling. But if the right mood strikes someday, I will have them on hand, and I could give them a try once more.

Parenthood (1989): Into the Archive

 

Parenthood (Special Edition) Steve Martin (Actor), Rick Moranis (Actor), Ron Howard (Director)  Rated:  PG-13   Format: DVD

• Frank : [on parenting]  It's like your Aunt Edna's ass. It goes on forever and it's just as frightening.

  Gil : That's true.

  Frank : There is no end zone. You never cross the goal line, spike the ball and do your touchdown dance. Never.

"They Might Be Giants": Out of the Past and Into the Archives

          “They Might Be Giants” is the 1971 movie adaptation of the 1961 stage play by James Goldman (brother of William Goldman of “The Princess Bride” fame).

In it, retired judge Justin Playfair (George C. Scott), after the death of his beloved wife, retreats into the delusion that he is Sherlock Holmes, in an attempt to find the logic behind a world where such things happen. He soon pins all evil he comes across onto the nebulous Moriarty and goes on a Quixotic quest to find this malicious influence in the world and put an end to it. His brother, who is in desperate need of Playfair’s fortune (being in debt to gangsters), logically attempts to have him committed to an asylum, and the asylum appoints the fortuitously named Dr. Mildred Watson (Joanne Woodward) to examine him.  

“Holmes” accepts her as the natural companion on his quest, and Dr. Watson is soon confounded by his actions. It seems his one delusion has given him much clearer insight into the problems of those around him, especially those who suffer from the ‘delusions’ of honor and romanticism and art. As she follows him on his mad quest for Moriarty she marvels at the help and encouragement he gives to the marginalized eccentrics they encounter. As they are impelled along from one ‘clue’ to another, they become less doctor and patient and more two people who understand one another with growing clarity, even leading to a romance.

However, by the end of their search all the forces of conformity are on their tail, from the asylum to the police to the gangsters.  Holmes and Watson, having deciphered the final ‘clue’, go to face down Moriarty together. The ending is ambivalent: have they really tracked down the source of all evil, or has Dr. Watson descended into illusion with her patient?

This film, though written as a play in the Sixties, is highly redolent of the Seventies; one might almost say it is a transition between the ‘Romantic’ Sixties and the ‘Rancid’ Seventies.  The cast will certainly be familiar to those living through the Seventies: Jack Gilford, Rue McClanahan, Al Lewis, Oliver Clark (the name might not seem familiar, but see him and you will recognize him from dozens of TV shows), and even a young F. Murray Abraham appear. The inhumanity of ‘modern living’ is stressed, and garbage, urban decay, and inflation ooze from the modern wasteland that Holmes and Watson navigate.

 

I first saw “They Might Be Giants” in the early or middle Eighties, I think. I was at the time trying to formulate my ‘Fantastic’ world view with my own variety of clues followed from books and movies that struck my heart just so. If there was a united theme, it was that all things had a secret or shadow side for which merely practical thinking could not account.  In literature I had G. K. Chesterton (Manalive), Thomas Berger (Arthur Rex), Robert Nye (Falstaff) and others. In movies there was Cyrano de Bergerac, Heartbreak House, Dr. Detroit, You Can’t Take It with You, The Madwoman of Chaillot, and dips and dabs from a hundred films and shows. “When the world has gone insane, sanity will seem like madness.”   

I suppose the outlook I was developing would be more technically the Romantic point of view (not in the smoochie sense of the word, but in the adventurous sense). It seems to me now that it was in danger of becoming a terribly Gnostic ideal, it that it can be seen to declare that you are not what you appear to be but are something completely different. I think it is truer to say that you are what you appear to be (say a fat, clumsy old man) but that you are more than meets the eye. And the Romantic Ideal cannot stand on its own. “Reason and Imagination are the two wings of the brain; lacking either one the mind only goes hopping along and cannot fly.”

 It turns out the edition I got lacks the wacky supermarket episode near the end which was there the first time I saw it; I believe that it had been tacked onto the original play for the film, anyway. The only edition that includes the scene costs from $150 (used on Ebay) to $346.97 (used or new on Amazon). I can be content with my copy for $16 and watch the missing clip, if I wish, on YouTube.

Quotes from The Mix Tapes

 

Mildred Watson: God! You're just like Don Quixote, you think everything's always something else!

Playfair/Holmes [Laughs]: Well he had a point. Of course, he carried it a bit too far. He thought that every windmill was a giant. That's insane. But, thinking that they might be... well… all the best minds used to think the world was flat. — But, what if it isn't? — It might be round — and bread mold might be medicine. If we never looked at things and thought of what they might be, why, we'd all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes.

"All is (Fairly) True": Into the Archive

 

“All is True” is a 2018 film written by Ben Elton (writer of the comedy series “Upstart Crow” – among other luminous deeds) and starring Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, and Ian McKellen. It is an autumnal movie, dealing with the autumnal years of the life of William Shakespeare, so I have found it very seasonable viewing fare.

The story: after the burning of the Globe Theatre in 1613, Shakespeare gives up the writing of plays and returns home to Stratford, from where he has been more or less absent for twenty years. He finds he must repair not only his relationship with his family, but with his hometown, his old London friends who wonder why he left them, and his memories of a son who died too young.

Much of “All is True” is speculative, of course, a sort of dancing around known facts. There is some dallying with the idea of the “whiff of Popery” about the Shakespeare family as well as a supposed love affair with the Earl of Southhampton, but nothing that can be pinned down if either notion offends you. The title “All is True” (taken from the alternate title for “The History of Henry the VIII”) must, as with any work of biographical art, be taken with a pinch of salt.

The central mystery of the film has nothing to do with any of those sorts of things and won’t be spoiled by me, and there seems little reason (beyond that is intriguing and artistically devised) to believe it is ‘true’. It is magnificently filmed, wonderfully acted, and reaches an emotionally satisfying ending.

The pacing is slow and thoughtful, giving the viewer time to consider the beauty of the setting and each new revelation. It did not do spectacularly at the box office (it was the beginning of our own plague times and did not have as many explosions or sex scenes or super-heroes as might have appealed to a wider audience) so did not get as many watchers as it perhaps deserves. But it is a worthy piece of art that may prove to have very long legs in the future.    

More Walls Broken: Into the Archive

More Walls Broken by Tim Powers  (Author), Jon Foster (Illustrator)

As this ingenious new novella, More Walls Broken, begins, a trio of academics have just entered a deserted California cemetery late at night, bringing with them a number of arcane devices aimed at achieving an equally arcane purpose. What follows is the sort of dizzying, mind-expanding entertainment that only the always reliable, always astonishing Tim Powers could have written. These three men, professors in the “Consciousness Research” department at Cal Tech University, have come together to perform a seemingly impossible task. Their goal: to open a door between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and to capture the ghost of the recently deceased scientist Armand Vitrielli. For their own desperate reasons, they hope to avail themselves of the secrets Vitrielli left behind at the time of his death. Their experiment, naturally, fails to come off exactly as planned. A door between the worlds does, in fact, open, letting in something—someone—completely unexpected, and setting in motion a chain of events that will reverberate throughout the narrative. Intricate, intelligent, and always thoroughly absorbing, More Walls Broken mixes fantasy and quantum physics in utterly unique fashion. The result is a brilliantly imagined account of multiple realities and unintended consequences that is pure dazzle, pure storytelling, pure—and unmistakable—Tim Powers. In book after book, story after story, Powers has set the standard for literate imaginative fiction. With this essential, beautifully realized novella, he has done it once again. – Amazon