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.