|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1841953830
| 9781841953830
| 1841953830
| 3.56
| 4,207
| 2002
| Jan 01, 2003
|
really liked it
|
”I’m twenty-five years at the auction house, forty-three years of age. They call me Rilke to my face, behind my back the Cadaver, Corpse, Walking Dead
”I’m twenty-five years at the auction house, forty-three years of age. They call me Rilke to my face, behind my back the Cadaver, Corpse, Walking Dead. Aye, well, I may be gaunt of face and long of limb but I don’t smell and I never expect anything.” Rilke has been called out to a deal of a lifetime. A house brimming with antiques that will put Bowery Auctions back in the black. The sister of the deceased owner wants a quick sale, not for the usual reasons of greed, but because she wants to free herself from a distasteful association. She instructs Rilke to personally dispose of all the contents of the attic, not in the usual way, through the auction block, but by burning. There are books up there, you see, very unusual books in matching green and white bindings (some of you will know the publisher from the banner colors). There is an old saying that a lot can be learned about a person by their bookshelves. I’m not sure what my bookshelves would tell someone, except that I have a wide range of interests, that some might say is unfocused. In the case of McKindless’s books, they give Rilke an idea of some of his predilections, some of his fantasies, but it is the stack of photographs that Rilke finds that might give a clearer picture of what lurked behind the man’s eyes. When Miss McKindless tells Rilke to burn the books in the attic, he crosses his fingers and assures her that he will do the deed. ”I can smile and smile and be a villain still.” I’ve never been in a circumstance where I’ve been instructed to burn a valuable book collection, but I can tell you that I wouldn’t be able to do it, nor would I be able to stand by and watch it happen either. I’ve been in a situation where they haven’t even thrown dirt on the man’s grave and the widow is demanding that I haul away her husband’s book collection. Not because the sight of the books made her grieve more for her husband, but because she had a deep-seated resentment towards books that he quite possibly adored more than her. So Rilke will not burn the books. He’s not sure what he will do with them, but he will not be party to something that is certainly an aspect of cultural genocide, even though these particular books are considered to be abominations by a certain percentage of the population. Whether they are trash or treasure is a matter of perspective. ”Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me, and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life.”--Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He has bigger problems. The woman in the progression of photographs is shown with her throat slit by the end. Are these true snuff photographs or are they staged? Is McKindless a garden variety pervert or is he a murderer? Rilke might tiptoe back and forth across the line between right and wrong, but sadistic murder is firmly on the side of wrong. He launches an investigation that will take him deep into the Glasgow underbelly of sexual deviancy. What consenting partners choose to do with one another is one thing, but what these pictures show is too sinister to contemplate. The water is rising swiftly, and Rilke’s thrashing about only seems to drive him deeper under the water. His own sexual desires might land him in more trouble than he can handle. This was funny: ”Shelves of videos. I slid one out...featuring real girls from Glasgow. Why not Real Girls from Rio? Taut, tanned buttocks losing out to the Pillsbury Dough cellulite of the girl next door. It cheered me to think that given a choice the average Scottish pervert wanted to wank to the robust Scottish girl in the street. Then I wondered if all straight men liked these big-busted, well-fed young women, or if it was just the perverts. The thought depressed me again.” Rilke is much more interested in the taut, tanned buttocks of Brazilian men than women, but he is not impervious to an attractive woman. I have to admit there is something strangely sweet about the pervs of Scotland preferring the reality of the girl next door compared to the surgically altered glamour girls of Rio. To me, fantasy is best grounded with at least a modicum of reality. I really enjoyed the moral dilemmas of the book. As Rilke unwinds the McKindless secrets and deals with his cash strapped boss, he is constantly having to reevaluate his sense of right and wrong and the really wrong. People disappoint him, and sometimes he feels like a fool for even trying to do the right thing. He has to interpret the ambiguous prophecy of a ”strung-out sibyl, amphetamine seer.” He has to survive the religious ferver of a demented bookseller who believes he is the left hand of God, bringing justice to bear on those in need of punishment. He has to weigh his own greed and decide if he can live with the consequences of his own decisions. Most importantly, he has to find out the truth about the woman. His future can not begin until he solves the mysteries of the present. I also really enjoyed the auction house aspects of this story, which were not that dissimilar from my own experiences in the book biz. I was hoping that Louise Welsh had written more stories about this unusual detective, but alas, that does not seem to be the case. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten and an Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/jeffreykeeten/ ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Nov 29, 2020
|
Nov 30, 2020
|
Nov 29, 2020
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0525521143
| 9780525521143
| 0525521143
| 3.69
| 176,245
| Mar 24, 2020
| Mar 24, 2020
|
really liked it
|
”Leon hadn’t understood, and he’d given Alkaitis his retirement savings anyway. He didn’t insist on a detailed explanation. One of our signature flaws
”Leon hadn’t understood, and he’d given Alkaitis his retirement savings anyway. He didn’t insist on a detailed explanation. One of our signature flaws as a species: we will risk almost anything to avoid looking stupid. The strategy had seemed to adhere to a certain logic, even if the precise mechanics--puts, calls, options, holds, conversions--swam just outside of his grasp. ‘Look,’ Alkaitis had said, at his warmest and most accommodating, ‘I could break it all down for you, but I think you understand the gist of it, and at the end of the day the returns speak for themselves.’” It is the perfect time to be reading this book as I watch the stock market plummet over fears of what the coronavirus will do to the ebb and flow of money. I pulled my money out years ago to invest in real estate, so I’m really rather a disinterested observer as the panic begins to gain momentum. What makes this downturn interesting is, if there are any Madoffesque Ponzi schemes operating out there, they will be exposed. As long as the markets are good Ponzi schemes work like clockwork. When markets start to get shaky is when too many calls come in too quickly for a scheming ponzi criminal to cover. The party at that point is over. The 2008 crash is what exposed Jonathan Alkaitis’s indiscretions. Rarely do investors hang with you when they start to see the market begin to free fall. They don’t care how many great returns you’ve given them in the past. They want their money back, and they want it back now. Remember the run on the bank in It’s a Wonderful Life? Well, that is exactly what happened to Alkaitis in 2008. There was no money to give them because there were no fresh investors giving Alkaitis an infusion of new cash. The whole scheme spiralled down the toilet. The primary thing that drives a Ponzi scheme is greed. Frankly, I don’t care if some smooth talking, immoral Alkaitis type character takes rich, greedy people for all their money because they should know better. What really irritates me is when guys like Alkaitis take regular people for their small nest eggs and retirement funds. That’s when what he does goes from being a snake oil swindler to being a devastator of lives. Emily St. James Mandel does a great job of laying out exactly what a Ponzi scheme is, but if you have fears that this book is all about schemes and money, don’t worry. Mandel has always been wonderful at building the emotion and authenticity of her characters’ lives. So the way a Ponzi scheme works is that a slick talking operator with some trading experience convinces a few of his rich buddies to invest some money with him, guaranteeing them a certain rate of return. Sometimes those buddies are in on the scheme, and sometimes they are clueless, but they all feel absolutely brilliant when they start getting checks, reflecting astronomical returns. Some math would tell them that these rates of return are impossible, but that isn’t really a thought as long as the checks keep coming. Those initial investors then tell their friends and acquaintances about these fabulously large checks they have been “earning” and recruit more investors to the scheme. So Alkaitis is really just a salesman, a closer who convinces these people he is a brilliant investor, but what these investors don’t know is that he never invests their money. Their money is being used to pay the big returns to the initial investors and to support his lavish lifestyle. As long as the market is a bull market, attracting more investors is no problem, and everything works great. When the stock market tumbles, he doesn’t have the cash to pay out to the numerous, nervous investors wanting their money back. That’s when people with handcuffs make a visit. There is a mystery threaded through the plot as to what really happened to the woman who fell off the boat in the opening chapter of the book. She has an unusual name. She was named for the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (can’t help noticing how closely that name reflects the author’s name), and few people forget a beautiful woman named Vincent. She becomes the trophy “wife” of Alkaitis. She is not stupid, but she sees money as a mysterious agent that seems to materalize, like magic in her new life. ”Everything in the shop was gorgeous, but the yellow gloves shone with a special light. She tried them on and bought them without looking at the price tag, because in the age of money her credit card was a magical, weightless thing.” She was a bartender before she met Alkaitis and will be one again. This is an effortless read. I blew through it on a flight from Denver to Charlotte. Mandel’s writing style is smooth and elegant. She is one of my favorite young writers, and I certainly look forward to her next book. If you haven’t read her work before, I would suggest starting with her book Station Eleven, which could very well prove to be her grand opus. If you like post-apocalyptic novels, you will enjoy her unique and poignant view of a possible future. If you think money is boring, which it is, but regardless you should still understand it, especially if your beloved Uncle Ted leaves you a nice packet, this book will give you some perspective and, hopefully, help you keep from falling into the honey laced traps of conmen. The sage advice, if it is too good to be true then it is really too good to be true, should always be remembered. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Feb 18, 2020
|
Feb 22, 2020
|
Feb 18, 2020
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1932557571
| 9781932557572
| 1932557571
| 3.51
| 37
| Sep 2002
| Aug 21, 2007
|
really liked it
|
So you might wonder to yourself, how do venture capitalists make so much money? ”We take as much equity as we can get for the initial investment, we w So you might wonder to yourself, how do venture capitalists make so much money? ”We take as much equity as we can get for the initial investment, we write ourselves favorable terms in the event of acquisition or bankruptcy, and we diluted the equity of the founders even further with additional rounds of financing--sometimes to the point where they actually have no remaining stake in the company.” So I have had my own unpleasant experience with venture capitalism. In my case, we had a finance company come in to purchase the company I worked at, and basically they acquired/supplied the financing to enable some of the managers, including myself, to own a piece of the property with the eventual understanding that we would own the whole thing. Everything would have been fine. The venture capitalist would have skimmed off a healthy profit, and we would have eventually ended up with a profitable company that would pay for a healthy retirement. We, unfortunately, had a downturn in the economy at the wrong, critical time. The venture capitalist compounded the problem by elevating a person to CEO who was completely unqualified for the position, who alienated and ranoff the talent pool. (It was such a poor pick you would almost think it was done on purpose to insure a quick dissolution of the company.) The situation quickly spiralled out of control. The managers lost all they had invested, while the venture capitalist walked away with a hefty profit. He wrote the terms to insure that he would be fine, no matter what happened. His risk, zero. Ours 100%. I understood the risk, but what I didn’t understand was the potential for undermining the company to allow the venture capitalist to pop the ripcord on his golden parachute sooner rather than having to wait until later. The lies came fast and furious as I continued to ask for clarification on what was really going on. I was a minority owner at 7% and found out very quickly that 7% is the same as having zero ownership. So why would I want to read a mystery based around a venture/vulture capitalist investment? Well, first of all, even though I knew this was going to involve venture capitalism, this is listed as an August Riordan mystery, and I loved the first book in the series titled The Immortal Game. Riordan is a jazz playing, private eye, who navigates the underbelly of San Francisco, almost as well as he plays a measure of improv. Riordan doesn’t show up in Vulture Capital until about page 100. He is a minor character until the final few pages of the book. I was kind of amused at the feeling of being baited and switched, but that kind of goes with the whole theme of Vulture Capitalism. Fortunately, I became caught up in the mystery of the disappearance of Warren Niebuhr, the Chief Technical Officer of NeuroStimix, a biotech firm that is working on technology that will allow people suffering from spinal cord injuries to gain mobility. The company is Ted Valmont’s baby. He has bought and broke up so many companies that he has sort of reached the point in his life where he has that Richard Gere (remember Edward) moment in Pretty Woman where he wants to stop buying companies to destroy them, but begin buying companies with the intention of building things. Ted is even more invested in NeuroStimix, beyond the financial gain or loss. His twin brother is paralized from a spinal cord injury, and NeuroStimix’s research is his brother’s best chance to walk again. Ted soon discovers there are nefarious elements behind the disappearance of his CTO. Another group of investors want to appropriate the technology from NeuroStimix and turn it to other, more profitable, uses, such as prostitution, slave labor, and even terrorism. ”You see, Niebuhr has figured out a way to record and later replay the nerve impulses associated with movements in people who are not paralized. With the right filtering, he can even make records from one person and play them on another. For instance, if you wanted to teach a beginning golfer to swing as well as a pro, you could record the pro’s swing and then replay it on the student.” Or let's say you wanted to teach someone to swing a hammer more efficiently and effectively to increase their productivity. More profit for the owner, but the same shit wage for the worker. Think of all the work that would save people of means from having to actually put in the time to learn how to be good at something. So you wake up one morning and want to be a concert pianist, why go through all the pain of years and years of practice when someone else has already done that for you? Of course, without the work to achieve it, there would be no satisfaction in having the ability. These are actually pretty scary application ideas for this technology, but of course, there are only so many people needing to walk again. The profit is in developing the technology to potentially entice every person on the planet with a large enough bank account to take advantage of the technology. Let’s just continue to make that divide between the have nots and the haves even larger. This is certainly a critical look at the post dot.com world of Silicon Valley. The mystery is interesting, verging on the fantastical, but then one fiction writer’s vision in one decade becomes the reality of the next. Candy from Strangers is the next “August Riordan” which is focusing on the very real hazards of social media and how it is brings pervs and teenagers together in equally exploitative ways. Mark Coggins has proven to me that he is a thoughtful, compelling writer so I’m looking forward to getting his take on my nemesis/close acquaintance...social media. I often wonder to myself what happened to all those expensive ergonomic chairs that were sitting in empty offices all across the Valley in the wake of the dot.com bust? I could really use one. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Aug 24, 2019
|
Aug 25, 2019
|
Aug 24, 2019
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0679735771
| 9780679735779
| 0679735771
| 3.81
| 320,133
| Mar 06, 1991
| Mar 1991
|
it was amazing
|
”...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hid
”...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold onto one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?” I let Keeten finish putting in that quote before I popped him in the head with his own tire thumper. Oblivious fucking bastard, so caught up in words that he didn’t even hear the soft tread of the boogeyman. You want to talk to him? Well, fuck you. You’ve got me. Anyway, he’s a little tied up right now. Hardy har har har! If you are worried about him, you should be. For now, I feel under control. I washed down a handful of Valium with a couple of three finger pours of J&B to create a euphoria of calm before I popped the lock on his sliding glass door. I’m looking at this bum. Is this how normal people dress? He’s wearing black Timberland boots, faded Land’s End jeans, a crimson red Out of Print T-shirt of the Odyssey, and a purple, wrinkled Territory Ahead button-down shirt. Homeless people in New York dress with better class than this guy. Fashion is everything, well, and great hair products. Here’s an example of a guy who knows how to dress. I must confess I killed him. I mean, just having great taste in clothing is never going to be enough to save anyone...from...me. ”Paul Owen walks in wearing a cashmere one-button sports jacket, tropical wool flannel slacks, a button-down tab-collared shirt by Ronaldus Shamask, but it’s really the tie--blue and black and red and yellow bold strips from Andrew Fezz by Zanzarra--that impresses me.” Or how about this fine description of a hardbody who has a fine eye for great clothes. You have to love those sculpted bodies of these rich bitches, who have all the time in the world to turn their figures into works of art.”She’s wearing a red, purple and black hand-knitted mohair and wool sweater from Koos Van Den Akker Couture and slacks from Anne Klein, with suede open-toe pumps.” For this visitation to the land of cows, I still dressed nice, even though I’m running the risk of getting blood on some very, very fine cloth. “I’m wearing a six-button double-breasted chalk-striped wool suit and a patterned silk tie, both by Louis, Boston, and a cotton oxford cloth shirt by Luciano Barbera.” I smell good, too. I just checked in the mirror, and my hair looks fucking amazing. I should buy this guy a nice suit. I’ll put it on my platinum American Express card. The rubes will pogo stick around the store when I bring that out of my. . . . Jesus, he needs a real haircut, too. I ask him, jokingly, if he cuts his own hair. He nods his head. Unfuckingbelievable. So why am I here in Kansas, you might ask? I’m choosing to make that a bigger question because I’m holding the tire thumper. Haha! Well my friends, I am drawn this way. I come out of the sickest depths of Bret Easton Ellis’s demented mind. In other words, I’m created in the image of God. Who am I? We are marginally different, but the rage that is in me is in you. Maybe you haven’t tapped into it yet, but you may when you least expect it. I do understand that we may see different things in clouds, for instance. ”When we look up at the clouds she sees an island, a puppy dog, Alaska, a tulip. I see, but don’t tell her, a Gucci money clip, an ax, a woman cut in two, a large puffy white puddle of blood that spreads across the sky, dripping over the city, onto Manhattan.” I understand I’m a bit more depraved than you are, but I’m wealthy. I’m incredibly handsome. I’m a fashion intelligencia. I’m way smarter than you. I have a larger responsibility to approach the world with a greater degree of honesty. ”This is no time for the innocent.” Everyone deserves to die, especially this moron reviewer who thought he was going to write a fucking review of my fucking book today. WRONG! Look at this passage he noted. ”If she likes me only for my muscles, the heft of my cock, then she’s a shallow bitch. But a physically superior, near-perfect-looking shallow bitch, and that can override anything…” I don’t like him making notes about Courtney. I rip aside the duct tape on his mouth, which had to fucking hurt, and asked him, WTF? “I was going to make a point about you complaining about the shallowness of what Courtney liked best about you, but you are a hypocrite because what you like about her is just as shallow as what she likes about you. Plus, you would need more depth for her to appreciate something else about you.” Can you believe that? I’m writing it just like he said it; then I bash him with the club a couple of times. I think I heard something snap. Fuck! I’m really trying not to lose control here. I have to put the tape back on his mouth because he is hollering with too much volume. Whimpering is fine, even encouraged, but there is no sound proofing on the walls, so we can’t be screaming. I really much prefer the way women scream. The tenor of their voices trips the light fantastic in my head. How many people have I killed? Well, too many to count. It is amazing what you can get away with when you have as much money as I do and look like I do. People are begging to spend time with me. It seems to me like they are really begging to be dismembered, burned with acid, eviscerated. We do have a few things that we need to get straight, and then I need to head back to New York. I’ve got some video tapes that need to be returned, and the late fees are fucking outrageous. Huey Lewis and the News is the greatest American rock band...ever. Indisputable. I notice that Keeten has the greatest hits, which earns him a painful bash to the knee. You have to buy the complete albums. The rest of their songs are as important and fantastic as their hits. Second, Donald J. Trump is a genius. I admire him more than anyone else on the planet. It takes a psycho to recognize a psycho. As far as I know, he is keeping it together, but I feel a kinship with him, a calling in the blood. Haha! did he ever pull the Art of the Deal on all of you. Okay, so you see that I am fair. I let Keeten participate in the writing of this review, but I just couldn’t let him do it alone. I was sitting in my apartment, gazing with fascination at my favorite vagina, the one with the Hermes blue ribbon tied around it, and thinking, I’m not going to let this hayseed from Kansas write a review about me. I’m thinking about taking one of his fingers to nibble on during the flight back, so... maybe... I can get to New York without murdering anyone. You’d give up a finger if it meant saving some other poor innocent life, wouldn’t you Keeten? So you think you want to read this book? HA! Ellis, the sick bastard, did not spare the grotesque descriptions of my activities. In fact, I read the damn book, and even I was starting to yawn a bit through all the blood and mayhem. I think he made his point about what kind of depraved monster, a true creature of God, I am WAY before he quit relating yet another senseless death. And yes, I know they are senseless because not one of my victims has quelled the beast. Blood only begets more blood. Don’t hate me. I’m just a product of the entitlement system. I appreciate it that you all let me be me. Your ability to live with letting my madness run rampant means you are actually more insane than I am. Something for all of you to keep in mind...Patrick Bateman is still out here. Yes, I’m alive and frankly very fit looking. The tanning bed is a wonderful investment. I bought the same one as Donald. If you have a hardbody, come to New York. Look me up. I’ll take you out on the town and show you something you’ve never seen before. I see from the notes here on the desk that Keeten is going to call this a Masterpiece. He isn’t looking so sure anymore. He’s a bit gray, and some blood has trickled out from beneath the duct tape. I used the tape from his garage. It obviously isn’t as good as the brand I normally like to use. *Sigh* If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Feb 25, 2019
|
Feb 28, 2019
|
Feb 25, 2019
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1948705184
| 9781948705189
| 1948705184
| 3.76
| 1,472
| Mar 05, 2019
| Mar 05, 2019
|
it was amazing
|
”You really never know people, not fully. People are strange. They hold onto things, they have secrets. And trust me we do things we didn’t think we w
”You really never know people, not fully. People are strange. They hold onto things, they have secrets. And trust me we do things we didn’t think we were capable of, good and bad. All of us. People can commit all sorts of atrocities, even normal people, good people. Think of wars. How else could such barbarities occur, if the deep capacity to do evil didn’t exist in every one of us?” Secrets. There are all kinds of different secrets. Some of them are merely embarrassing; some of them are compromising to other people, and some of them are secrets that, if revealed, would tear down our lives, timber by timber, brick by brick. Everyone in Fallen Mountains has a secret, and some harbor whole card decks of secrets. I grew up in a town even smaller than Fallen Mountains, and one of the things I learned very quickly was that secrets are hard to keep in small towns. Everyone is aware of what everyone else is doing. They all have the prodigious memory of elephants, and they remember everything everyone has ever done. It is hard for someone to grow into a new person in a small town with no way to escape any part of his or her past. ”The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.” --William Faulkner Secrets in small towns are handled as carefully as a crate of nitroglycerin. Once a secret is revealed, the blast tends to ripple through a community, flattening lives like a category five tornado. Some people like the suffocating coziness of a small town, and others can’t leave fast enough. Possum, Red, Chase, Jack, Maggie, and Laney are people who have stayed in Fallen Mountains. It is home and will be home until the day people use the words “rest in peace” when they mention their names. Now Transom Shultz, best friend of Chase Hardy, left Fallen Mountains, but he has come back. He is a polarizing figure. A man who can make people love him or hate him in equal measure. He takes what he wants and leaves behind what he is done with. Chase has a lifetime of memories shared with Transom, not that he isn’t aware of some of his fallacies, but he forgives him because he loves him like a brother. He trusts him. With the death of his Grandfather Jack, Chase has inherited the farm that has been in his family for over two hundred years. The Keeten family farm in Kansas has only been in our possession for 138 years, so I have to tip my hat to a family that can own a piece of land that long. It isn’t easy, as Chase is finding out. The farm is struggling. It was in trouble even before Chase inherited, and now things have become dire. Chase doesn’t want to be the one, in an unbroken string of ancestors, to lose the farm. When Transom offers to buy the farm, it is like a rumble of thunder in the middle of a drought. Unfortunately, it isn’t until after the paperwork is signed that Chase discovers that their view of the land is different ”’It’s just land, Boss,’ Transom called. Chase slipped into his boots and turned and looked back. ‘It was never just land to me.’” Transom starts raping everything that can be sold off the land. Oil is pumped out of the ground by a fracking company. Old growth timber is chainsawed down and hauled off the hillsides with heavy machinery that leaves deep wounds in the earth. It would take up to three generations to regrow that timber that took mere days to destroy. By trying to save the land, Chase has destroyed it. Transom disappears. He has run off before. Things have gotten a little too real in the past, and he has vamoosed to somewhere far away from the trouble he is trying to duck. As Sheriff John “Red” Redifer begins to investigate, he starts to realize that this time might be different, and as much as he would like Transom’s disappearance to be connected to the oil or timber people, he has a suspicion that it might have something to do with one of his Fallen Mountains people. It could all come back to some of those secrets. Red has his own secret, and this one particular secret is starting to eat him alive. Laney, best friends with Chase and Transom, has a secret that makes her as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof anytime someone mentions Transom. Possum has a secret that is “tied up” somehow with Red and Transom. Red doesn’t want to know anymore secrets. The more secrets he discovers, the more exposed his own secret becomes. Where is Transom Shultz? I was nervous for everyone in this novel. I did not want anyone’s secrets revealed, and as the investigation proceeds, the pressure on everyone to tell what they know increases exponentially. I believe in carrying your own water, and these people have toted it through rivers and over dales. Everyone has motive, and everyone knows something that might have bearing on the case. The thing of it is, at the end of the day, does anyone in Fallen Mountains really want to know what happened to Transom Shultz? What will be the cost? If I were to put my finger on one thing that Kimi Cunningham Grant is really good at, I’d say it has to be the psychological perceptions she brings to each of her characters. Their motivations, their decisions, their thought processes all ring true. If we cast Transom as the villain, I still can’t completely despise him because Grant gives me insight into the shards of his past that shaped him as a human being. The vulnerability of her characters is revealed to us, piece by piece until the mosaic of their individual puzzles start to resemble the soul of Fallen Mountains. By the end of the book, we know these people better than we know some of our friends, and we can’t help but root for every one of them to find some way to be happy. I asked Kimi Cunningham Grant if she would answer a few questions, and she graciously said yes! Jeffrey D. Keeten:I grew up in a small farming town in Kansas, so the small town feel of Fallen Mountains, Pennsylvania, felt very familiar to me. What motivated you to set your first novel in a small town? Kimi Cunningham Grant:When the idea for this book first came to me, I was walking on public land, and I came across a sign stating that it was going to be developed. Chase was the first character that came to me. I knew I wanted to explore the issue of feeling deeply connected to land, and a small town farmer felt like the right place to start. [image] Kimi Cunningham Grant JDK:It felt to me like there were bits of Kimi Grant in most of the characters of this novel. Who did you identify with the most as you were writing this novel? KCG:This is something I love thinking about! How our lives—who we know, what we read, where we go—shape a text. I think there are always parts of the author in everything she writes; it’s impossible to separate who I am from what I write. Related to that, of course, is my belief that readers shape the text, too. For instance, you’ll most likely have a different reading of this novel than say, a twenty-three year old British woman. You’ve read different things; you’ve experienced different things; you likely “read” the world (and texts) differently. (See T.S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent” and Roland Barthes’ “The Death of the Author” if you want to tumble deeper into the rabbit hole of questions of writing, reading, and meaning!) But I digress. None of the characters in this novel are autobiographical. As a parent, I identified with Red’s desire to protect his family. As someone who loves the natural world, I identified with Chase. I sympathized with Possum and really enjoyed developing him. The bits of Kimi Grant in these characters are more things like… my husband is a biologist who has spent years researching the effects of fracking on Pennsylvania streams, and my sons have a red wagon, and I’ve always been curious about trapping. JDK:The book is divided into Before and After chapters. Did you write the book following the linear time and then mix the chapters, or did you write the book in the way it is published, with the two timelines intermixed by writing a chapter on one time line and then the other? KCG:Early drafts were written linearly, but I realized that if I wanted the central mystery to be “What happened to Transom Shultz?” I couldn’t have him disappear on page 200! It needed to happen much earlier. I eventually settled on the Before and After structure, but honestly, the structure was hands-down the hardest part of writing this novel. I kept reading books in this genre to learn how successful authors handled mysteries, but it took me a long time to get it right. JDK:I read somewhere that you write before your family wakes up in the morning. The challenge for most writers is actually finding uninterrupted time to focus entirely on what they are writing. I frequently find myself suddenly struck by a brilliant little nugget when I'm trapped in a social circumstance and unable to break away to flush out the idea. Would you share how you have structured your time for writing and how you deal with inspiration at the most “inconvenient" times? KCG:You’re right. I do write mostly in the morning, before my family wakes up. I’m a homeschooling mom, so my kids are with me all day, every day. They like to talk to me A LOT, which is great, but it also makes it almost impossible to concentrate during the twelve hours that I’m with them each day. As far as actual writing, early morning is what works for me. I do get quiet windows here and there, and I try to make the most of them. I think about my writing a lot when I’m in the woods, and as a family, we try to be there a lot. So, sometimes I’m envisioning a scene or tweaking aspects of a character while the kids are bouldering or running down the trail. I also drive in silence if I’m alone, and I get some good mental work done then, too. JDK:This is a novel of secrets and their impacts on those that hold those secrets and those who would have benefited from or been adversely affected by them. I enjoyed the fact that, in the course of the novel, you showed all the various ways secrets impact those who hold them and those who reveal them. How do you personally feel about secrets? The saying is that honesty is always the best policy, but is it really? KCG:The novel IS about secrets, isn’t it? I never intended for it to be so much about secrets as it is about the simple premise that people are complicated. “Good” people can do bad things, and “bad” people can do good things. When I first began writing this, I mostly wanted to explore whether even very “good” people can, under certain tensions and in certain situations, do things they swore they’d never do. The secrets tumbled in and ended up becoming central to the book. JDK:Fallen Mountains is slated to be published in March 2019, but what else do you have in the hopper? Another novel, I hope? I once read that Stephen King always has three completed manuscripts in his vault, so when the publisher needs the next one, he just fetches one to send them. So how full is your vault? :-) KCG:I DO have another novel in the hopper! I’ve sent it off to my agent, Amy Cloughley, who is wonderful, and who will help me iron out any lingering problems. I have two other ideas for novels that aren’t fully fleshed out yet. One is started; one isn’t. I want to thank Kimi Cunningham Grant and Amberjack Publishing for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jan 09, 2019
|
Jan 11, 2019
|
Jan 09, 2019
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 194557299X
| 9781945572999
| 194557299X
| 3.92
| 52
| 2018
| Jun 12, 2018
|
it was amazing
|
”Awaken at four in the morning, a car alarm, a stifling heat, we knew we would not sleep. I led her naked onto the fire escape. The metal was cold ben
”Awaken at four in the morning, a car alarm, a stifling heat, we knew we would not sleep. I led her naked onto the fire escape. The metal was cold beneath the sheet, a slight wind leftover form nighttime shade, nothing moving but the sound of blind creatures foraging for existence in the rubbish below. We made love under the slumbering dwellers--no, that is not the memory that cradles my nostalgia. We fucked there, giggling at our deed, not needing the proper mattress or higher thread count, only the chaos and mess of youth. I think how I got from there to here, a ruined marriage, a dying career, a contemptible investment, and I know I am missing something vital that Laura and the children can sense each time I force my presence upon them.” If someone does not dig too deep into Tom “Pisser” Pistilini’s life, they might think he has it made. He has a lovely home, a terrific job as a weatherman for a local TV station, a beautiful wife, his two smart quirky kids are attending an elite school, Laura’s pancake business is taking off, and he has a solid group of good friends. The icing on the cake is that he is setting a record each day for predicting the weather correctly. He is doing something superhuman. He is the Pele of weather predictions. What people don’t know, but might be suspecting, is the facade of his life is rattling and shaking in even the mildest of breezes. He is going to cooperative marriage therapy, which is just a PC way for his wife to have an affair with his neighbor. He has introduced a feral cat to his backyard to mitigate the chipmunk invasion. Those cute, but curious, critters are ruining his illegally (another issue for him) implanted lagoon. His son is dressing like an old woman, which they have to let him continue to “express” himself. His daughter has shown up on a compromising tape that may crater her future. He is invested in an immoral business that caters to murder culture enthusiasts. He is sleeping in a tent in the backyard. His friends are fleeing the stench of defeat that is leaking from his pores. The station has hired a hot Latina to be his assistant/replacement. Tom may or may not have murdered one or two people. Otherwise, everything is good. Basically, his life isn’t swirling down the drain. It is being thrust down the drain by an industrial grade power flusher. To cope, he is taking a blackmarket testing phase drug called Luderica. ”It contains chemicals used in pesticides, synthetic opioid, and dideoxyclosanide--a crucial ingredient in dandruff shampoo and gunpowder. Because it cannot be prescribed, I have no choice but to purchase the pills through backchannels, an anti-psychotic, anti-depressive, anti-everything…” Tom is quickly becoming more and more desperate to keep juggling all the ravaged pieces of chipmunks, plates of pancakes, and chainsaws in the air. As his life begins to tumble down on him, he becomes increasingly unstable, or is it more normal? As the ropes wrapped around his arms, legs, and torso snap, he becomes free to fight back like anyone would who has very little left to lose. As he implements his plans for enacting urban terrorism, with a heavy dose of flying by the seat of his pants, he becomes a man whom Edward Abbey would have gladly embraced as one of his Monkey Wrench Gang members. Jon Methven, through the guise of Tom’s problems, takes on the absurdity of our lives. The things we find to be so important are revealed, under any kind of scrutiny, to have no real value. Tom is searching for ways to uphold his fake life when he should be working diligently to destroy it. Not only did I enjoy this book, but I found myself setting other books aside to spend more time chuckling, cringing, and muttering encouragements for Tom to find his way back to where true happiness can begin. I asked Jon if he would accept the challenge of answering some Keetenesque questions. He graciously accepted. Jeffrey Keeten: As I was reading your book, I couldn't help comparing your style to Joseph Heller. The suburban enclave elements had me thinking also about John Cheever and John Updike, who both revealed in their writing the hidden deceitfulness, naked envy, and even immorality that is lurking beneath the facade of upper middle class existence. I can tell by our interactions that you are well read. Could you please talk about some of your literary influences and how you managed their influences in your writing? Jon Methven: Along with Cheever, Margaret Atwood, John Irving and Richard Russo all turned me into a voracious reader. I’ve read everything Irving and Russo have written, and I’ve always been captivated by their ability to meld characters and stories. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, for me, is a brilliant book. More than the humor or absurdity, every sentence is crafted with a GOTCHA moment—I’ll be reading and expecting one outcome, and Heller shifts the language to a different result. For years, I carried that paperback with me on subways, opening it to random sections and reading and rereading passages. Kurt Vonnegut and George Saunders helped me to expand my appreciation of what literature can be, and how to develop a unique writing voice. For modern writers, it’s hard to provide only a short list of admiration. But here goes: Jonathan Franzen, Carl Hiaasen, Ottessa Moshfegh, Rachel Kushner, Jennifer Egan, Chris Bachelder, Christopher Buckley, Gillian Flynn. And, beyond literature, I spend several hours a day reading magazines, essays, and staying up on the latest headlines. You never know where the next story driftwood will come from, or what will make you a better writer. Jeffrey Keeten: As I was chuckling over the Jon Methven: One of the people that Tom Pistilini admires is Ray McClutchen, the self-help guru having an affair with Tom’s wife. He admires him because, in spite of everyone dealing with the meaninglessness and complexity and absurdity of life, Ray sees it as a half glass full. That means a lot to Tom who wants to be one of the good ones, a person who believes in the spirit of life in spite of how all life ultimately ends. I am probably a half-glass-full idealist, so this may seem naïve, but I don’t think society is questioning the absurdity of our situations anymore than past generations. The sky has always been falling. It may seem more so in these times, but I think that’s not the case. I think the world, and humanity, is on the upswing. JK: Tom is unwillingly in a cooperative marriage as the third wheel in an affair between his wife and his neighbor. A harkening back to the commune experiments in the 1960s, which eventually all fell apart as unsustainable. It is clear that Tom not only loves his wife, but is still passionately lustful for her. "I want to tear off her panties with my teeth and let them dangle from a fang 'while we argue.'" Tom and Laura are at a point where divorce isn't even an option due to the high water level of debt they are floating in. Divorce rates are still high in this country which also contributes to more people living in poverty or at a severely curtailed lifestyle level. Obviously, you have spent some time thinking about the future of marriage. What do you feel the future of marriage is? JM: More than a statement on the importance of vows, for me Tom and Laura’s marriage is an examination of how absurdly liberal and politically correct his life has become. He gets together weekly with his wife, her pseudo-lover (Ray), the pseudo-lover’s estranged wife (Olivia), and a therapist (Devin) to applaud the Cooperative Marriage, which is a fancy way of condoning the assumed adultery going on between Ray and Laura. While they discuss the school and sip Prosecco, he imagines himself punting Olivia’s severed head across the room. That’s how many of us feel in social situations, but there are these rigid rules to which we’re expected to conform. But your question—what do I think the future of marriage is? I have put some thought into what it means to be married, and if two men or two women are able to be married, why can’t three people get married? Why can’t we marry our pets? Why can’t we marry artificially intelligent robots? Can we marry extraterrestrial life, if and when we discover them? And if all of this is marriage, what’s so special about it? While not knowing the answer to this question, my life has benefitted from being married, having a spouse who is my partner through the absurdity, by raising children, learning to listen, and developing humility. JK: For Cheever and Updike, alcohol was the go to drug for most of their characters to keep them numb enough or loose enough to continue to uphold their preposterous lives. Alcohol is still the bedrock of the Slancy community, but Tom is also supplementing alcohol with a drug called Luderica. The Opiod epidemic has not proven to be the perfect complacency drug, but I'm sure the pharmaceutical companies are working day and night to come up with the perfect sheep drug. Luderica, too, fails to produce the results intended, but hey, Viagra started out being a heart pill. I personally think even without the influence of Luderica that Tom was going to snap. I really feel that, overall, society is much more anxious, depressed, stressed, and unhappy than ever before. What do you think is going to eventually have to happen for Americans to find a way to be happy? Or is that an impossible dream? JM: I would agree that people are stressed out frantically looking for answers, and our pharmaceutical industry has tapped into that angst for revenue. I think happiness, in the context of taking a pill or having a drink, is probably an illusion. Because in that sense we’re thinking about how we can acquire happiness on the cheap, or have access to it at all times. That’s not how it works. Maybe happiness is being content with how things are, in the midst of unhappiness. Maybe—while it’s a cliché—being grateful for what we have is the way forward. I like books. Reading, writing, and talking about books makes me happy. I like lakes and nature (despite living in NYC). Taking care of the environment seems like a step toward happiness. I like my kids, my wife, my family. Putting in my full effort with them makes me happy. So maybe the Ray McClutchen answer is that if I spend enough time concentrating on what is closest to me, I’ll inadvertently acquire happiness. JK: I want to say how refreshing it was to read a novel dealing with so many real society issues with such honesty, humor, and raw power. You didn't flinch away from PC issues or shy away from those subjects that most writers run away from. You revealed the warts of a "successful," upper middle class existence and showed that failure is sometimes the only road to future success. So what is next for Jon Methven? Are your crossbows and BB guns and feral cats in position? JM: That’s kind of you to say and I’m delighted you enjoyed the novel. I usually have a dozen television pilots, film scripts, essays and novels ongoing at any one time, 90% of which will fail. And then I’ll pick up the pieces and try something new. I completed a novel about the NFL, titled GRIDIRON HUSTLE. When the league’s expansion into London is derailed due to an international sex scandal, the league must venture into the U.S. prison system to field a missing franchise. And I’m nearly done with a novel titled HUMAN WINE, about an extraterrestrial species siphoning human stress as an energy source. Thank you to Jon Methven for answering my questions and also for sending me a free copy in exchange for an honest review. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Dec 13, 2018
|
Dec 15, 2018
|
Dec 13, 2018
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 4.17
| 60,594
| Sep 21, 1998
| Sep 03, 1999
|
it was amazing
|
”The Congo in Leopold’s mind was not the one of starving porters, raped hostages, emaciated rubber slaves, and severed hands. It was the empire of his
”The Congo in Leopold’s mind was not the one of starving porters, raped hostages, emaciated rubber slaves, and severed hands. It was the empire of his dreams, with gigantic trees, exotic animals, and inhabitants grateful for his wise rule. Instead of going there, Leopold brought the Congo—that Congo, the theatrical production of his imagination—to himself.” [image] King Leopold II Belgium was simply not big enough for the future king. ”When he thought about the throne that would be his, he was openly exasperated. ‘Petit pays, petits gens’ (small country, small people), he once said of Belgium.” He watched as countries like Holland, Great Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Germany were colonizing Africa and other exotic isles and becoming rich off the plunder. In the 1880s, he saw his chance and claimed the lands of the Congo. He did this without any kind of referandum from his people. He knew what was best for Belgium. ”Most Belgians had paid little attention to their king’s flurry of African diplomacy, but once it was over they began to realize, with surprise, that his new colony was bigger than England, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy combined. It was one thirteenth of the African continent, more than seventy-six times the size of Belgium itself.” They had no idea the level of atrocities that would be perpetrated in the name of Belgium. I’ve always thought of Leopold II as a 2nd tier genocidal maniac. I’d always reserved the 1st tier for Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, but after reading this book and hearing the estimated number 10 million associated with the deaths in the Congo, I have officially moved Leopold II to the 1st tier genocidal maniac. So why don’t we know more about Leopold II? Why don’t we see him as the genocidal maniac that we associate with the names Hitler and Stalin? Could it be because he was killing black people? Another factor is the way Leopold worked tirelessly to convince people he was a great humanitarian. He found people who would help support him in this endeavor and paid them to write reports that were favorable to his reputation in Africa. He worked equally tirelessly to squash those who came back from the Congo with the lists of atrocities they had witnessed while in Africa. The biggest thorn in Leopold’s voluminous backside turned out to be a British shipping clerk named Edmund Morel, who noticed the amount of goods coming from the Congo that were being traded or sold at prices that would not support a living wage in the Congo. The math did not add up. The only way that Leopold could be selling goods this cheaply was if they were being acquired through slave labor. Morel went on to found a paper that continued to expose Leopold’s criminal activities in the Congo. Morel hammered away at him for the rest of his life. Additionally, Roger Casement was an Irish man who risked life and limb to obtain evidence that directly refuted the rosy picture that Leopold was selling Europe. There were also two American black men, George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, who did everything they could to expose Leopold’s monstrosities to the world. There were many other people who tried their best to stop what was happening, unchecked, in the Congo. The problem was that Europe and the United States wanted to believe Leopold. The most famous book of celebrated author Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness was set in the real Leopold’s Congo. The famous character of Kurtz was based on a man Conrad met in the Congo. [image] ”One prototype for Conrad’s Mr. Kurtz: Léon Rom. This swashbuckling officer was known for displaying a row of severed African heads around his garden. He also wrote a book on African customs, painted portraits and landscapes, and collected butterflies.” Léon Rom was a civilized, well educated man. So how does decorating your garden with severed African heads equate with butterfly collecting and painting portraits and landscapes? Leopold flooded the Congo with the right sort of men. Mercenaries capable of chopping off hands, raping uncooperating women, murdering men, women, and children, and lashing men who didn’t bring enough rubber back from the jungle with ”the chicotte—a whip of raw, sun-dried hippopotamus hide, cut into a long sharp-edged corkscrew strip.” The strip this would cut off a man’s back, buttock, and legs would leave deep, permanent scars if the man was lucky, or in many cases unlucky, enough to live. *shudder* White men felt free of all law in the Congo. “We have liberty, independence, and life with wide horizons. Here you are free and not a mere slave of society. . . . Here one is everything!” So to live as free as one would like, one must enslave others? These men had harems, money, and status, something they could never achieve working as clerks or plumbers in Europe. In the Congo, they were warlords. They killed so many Congolese that they feared not having enough slaves to maintain the plundering of the Congo. “‘We run the risk of someday seeing our native population collapse and disappear,’ fretfully declared the permanent committee of the National Colonial Congress of Belgium that year. ‘So that we will find ourselves confronted with a kind of desert.’” It reminds me of hunters who hunted species to extinction and then bemoaned the fact that they couldn’t hunt those animals anymore. At no point did they think to themselves, maybe we are killing these animals faster than they can reproduce. [image] So why cut off the hands? It seems counterproductive when you need these men to work. Every bullet had to be accounted for with Leopold’s mercenaries, so if a man used a bullet to kill game, he had to have an African hand to account for that bullet. Every African hand was then turned in for a reward. It is too sick to comprehend. Every country in Africa has tales of horror and outrage at the hands of European colonizers. I do believe that what happened in the Congo was by far the worst atrocities on a native population in Africa. The sad part of it is that most of us don’t know anything about it. I knew some, but I didn’t know enough. The “cake” that was Africa was cut up into portions and served to the white European countries as casually as if they were discussing the fates of Africans at a garden party with their children playing at their feet and their wives bringing them slices of the Congo, Nigeria, Kenya, Algeria, South Africa, and Senegal with which they could gorge themselves. Adam Hochschild had a difficult time getting this book published. It was as if the ghost of Leopold was still haunting and suppressing the truth. This is a brilliant and important book that exposes the truth of the Congo and the complicity which every “civilized” country played in allowing such atrocities to occur. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Aug 15, 2018
|
Sep 02, 2018
|
Aug 15, 2018
|
Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||||||
| 3.70
| 2,444
| 1957
| unknown
|
it was amazing
|
None
|
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Feb 20, 2021
|
Feb 21, 2021
|
Apr 06, 2018
| ||||||||||||||||||
| 0330345052
| 9780330345057
| 0330345052
| 3.32
| 13,321
| 1976
| Apr 12, 1996
|
really liked it
| ”One does not marry art. One ravishes it.” Dee Sleign is hanging out in small cafes, exploring fussy, tucked away museums, and doink ”One does not marry art. One ravishes it.” Dee Sleign is hanging out in small cafes, exploring fussy, tucked away museums, and doinking, like she invented sex, an older, richer boyfriend. She is having the Paris experience. She isn’t sure what she should do with the rest of her life, but she gets this idea of exploring the influence that drugs had on Impressionist art for a thesis. Dee is told about an old man who knew the Impressionist painters when they were still alive. He is living in near poverty, but he has masterpieces worth tens of thousands of dollars in the 1970s; in today’s money, those paintings would be worth millions. There is something admirable about a guy who values the art even more than the money they are worth. (A point that is a theme for Ken Follett in this book.) This man, poor in money but rich in culture, tells Dee about a Modigliani that was painted under the influence of drugs and taken back to Italy by a priest. A lost Modigliani. Dee is so excited about the prospect of finding a lost masterpiece that she needs to tell someone. But who? Who does she know who would understand how exciting this potential discovery is? Uncle Charles Lampeth, of course. The man for whom art is a commodity to be traded, sold, or stolen as if it were corn, wheat, or barley. She sends him a postcard and touches off a cavalcade of an Amazing Race version of who can find the painting first. He wouldn’t do that to his niece would he? Whatever ethics he had been born with have long been extinguished from his brain as a guiding principle. In the other part of the story Julian Black is smarting from a lack of funds. He is enraged by the lack of respect from his cuckolding, upper-class wife. He is also the owner of an art gallery on life support. Needless to say, Mr. Black is a very desperate man, indeed. When he learns about this lost Modigliani, he sees it as the last chance to get his life back on track. Peter Usher is an up and coming artist who has been misled and cheated by art gallery owners, like Charles Lampeth. He also, unwittingly, has become mired in the Modigliani scandal, even as he puts in place a diabolical plan to get even with the corrupt players in the art gallery world. Needless to say, we are heading for a cockup that will leave one “winner” and a string of resentful losers. Ken Follett published this book in 1976 under the pseudonym Zachary Stone. On the surface, this novel is a fun romp across Europe, chasing a lost masterpiece by one of the greatest Italian artists, but in the murky waters beneath, Follett is making some much larger points about the people who make money out of culture, but don’t necessarily support it. There was one plot twist that ventures into the implausible that twisted me so hard I nearly broke my neck, but then I have seen enough improbabilities in real life to not be too critical of an author who maybe is getting too clever. If you like art and are looking for a quick, enjoyable read, this will fill your brush with paint. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Feb 2018
|
Feb 03, 2018
|
Feb 01, 2018
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1781090262
| 9781781090268
| 1781090262
| 3.44
| 16,708
| Apr 2018
| Mar 22, 2018
|
it was amazing
|
”There is only so much a man can take before he gives in, before he breaks every tattooed oath and does everything---absolutely everything---he though
”There is only so much a man can take before he gives in, before he breaks every tattooed oath and does everything---absolutely everything---he thought he would never do. For eternal loyalty is inhuman and betrayal is human.” [image] The Sam Worthington and Victoria Hill Scottish Gangster version of Macbeth (2006) is my favorite Macbeth and probably the closest cinematic version to this novel. Inverness. 1970s. Setting: Run down industrial town with toxic air and poisoned earth. Crime is high as more and more of the population becomes addicted to an illicit drug called Brew, made in a witch’s caldron. (I know, heavy, right?) Hecate is the drug lord who, behind the scenes, manipulates everything. Duncan is the police commissioner. All Hail Duncan. He is honest, and if given a chance, he will lead Inverness back to a happy better life. So it all begins with a promotion that is given to a man named Macbeth. He is the head of SWAT, but they want to move him up to head of Organized Crime. It is a job that (Mac)Duff, his longest friend, has coveted. The decision is based off the fact that everyone in positions of power have come from the well educated, upper classes. Macbeth comes from the lower classes and was once completely strung out on Brew. Hecate, always one to sense opportunity, dispatches the witch Strega to Macbeth to share a prophecy with him. Hecate knows that Macbeth is the very guy he has been looking for to derail Duncan. ”The only person more predictable than a junkie or a moralist is a love-smitten junkie and moralist.” Macbeth is love-smitten, indeed, with the lovely woman who calls herself Lady Macbeth. She has fiery red hair, elegance, and flair that makes men go weak in the knees. She owns the casino in town, but her ambitions go way beyond controlling gambling. She thinks Macbeth should listen to the prophecy and become police commissioner, but why stop there? Why not mayor, as well? All Hail Macbeth. [image] Double, double toil and trouble; Macbeth must become someone else, someone he fought, conquered, and left bleeding in the gutter of his past. ”He had to become that other Macbeth, the one he had buried so deep, that crazy flesh-eating corpse he had sworn he would never be again.” To be that man, he needs brew. He needs brew, sliding like silver snakes through his bloodstream, to give him the courage/cowardice to kill Duncan. ”Is this a dagger which I see before me?” Ambition achieved and yet unearned creates anxiety. Who can rest easy on the bones of their enemies when they weren’t truly their enemies, but good men more deserving? As Macbeth does more and more to friends who know too much and to those who simply stand in his way, ”Red feathers were stuck to the walls around them;” paranoia becomes his constant companion, and his weaknesses become more evidence . He is on a collision course with Duff, who becomes the only man who has a chance to stop him. All Hail Duff? Out of all the plays that I’ve read by William Shakespeare, Macbeth is my favorite. I haven’t read them all so I do reserve the right to change my Shakespeare affiliation as I work my way through the Bard’s amazing contribution to English Literature. It turns out to be a terrible alliance, due to the fact that Lady and Macbeth spur each other’s ambitions which, once achieved, turn out to be hollow and too highly priced. The greed for power is strong, and like a drug, people can start to want more, always chasing the feeling of that high when they first triumphed. Inexplicably, I’ve always liked Macbeth. I find myself, whether it is a play, a movie, or this novel, rooting for him even though he isn’t really that likeable. I see the promise in him that is overcome by the evil in him. I’m always hopeful that some writer or movie producer will pull him back from the brink and set him down on a path to be the man I know he could be. Of course, redemption is not the theme of the play, nor of any movie or book starring Macbeth. He must be consumed by his own guilt and insecurities. He must ultimately be destroyed by the weight of his misdeeds. There are ghosts, witches, and playful uses of characters. Seyton is transformed into some creature beyond the pale of human understanding. Everything I’ve read says that Shakespeare never intended the name Seyton to infer that he was Satan, but where the Bard may have let the opportunity flitter away in rewrites, Jo Nesbo did not. Nesbo certainly has fun with the characters. Caithness, a Scottish nobleman in the play, is cast as a woman in this novel, the lover of Duff. Hecate is a witch in the play, but becomes a male drug lord in this novel. Nesbo stays reasonably close to the original plot. [image] I loved the 2015 version of Macbeth starring Michael Fassbender. I’m really impressed with the first volume I’ve read in the Hogarth Shakespeare series. Hogarth was the original press owned by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Next on my list will be Margaret Atwood’s retelling of The Tempest. The others in the series are Tracy Chevalier retelling Othello, Gillian FLynn retelling Hamlet, Howard Jacobson retelling The Merchant of Venice, Edward St. Aubyn retelling King Lear, Anne Tyler retelling The Taming of the Shrew, and Jeanette Winterson retelling The Winter’s Tale. If they have not commissioned your favorite play yet, stay tuned. This novel was a bloody blast. I set aside all other books to focus on reading it over the weekend and found it, frankly, invigorating. Shakespeare made into a page turner. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Dec 08, 2017
|
Dec 11, 2017
|
Dec 08, 2017
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0762102519
| 9780762102518
| 0762102519
| 3.99
| 12,640
| Jun 1953
| Jan 01, 1999
|
it was amazing
|
”’You’re crazy,’ he told himself aloud one day, looking at the list. ‘You’re a crazy nut,’ he said affectionately. He didn’t really think that; he tho
”’You’re crazy,’ he told himself aloud one day, looking at the list. ‘You’re a crazy nut,’ he said affectionately. He didn’t really think that; he thought he was daring, audacious, brilliant, intrepid and bold.” [image] 1956 movie version of the book. I remember it being really good. I can’t even tell you his name because he didn’t tell me until I was a ⅓ of the way through the novel. I thought I knew who he was, but I was wrong. You will be wrong, too, and I want you to be wrong because I want you to be as unnerved as I was when you find out who he is. More importantly, you will discover what he is. He is a sociopath. He tries to fit into society but finds the experience very unsatisfying. ”By the end of August, when he had been in New York five months and had had six jobs, he was again prey to the awful insecurity of being one among many rather than one alone; unadmired and with no tangible sign of success. He sat in his furnished room and devoted some time to serious self-analysis. If he had not found what he wanted in these six jobs, he decided, it was unlikely that he would find it in the next six.” So our guy can’t find the perfect job and decides that getting rich on his own (he is so brilliant he should be rich) is a lot more work, takes a lot of time and a dollop of luck. Wouldn’t it be easier to just marry money? Hey, you don’t have to be a sociopath to think that is a good idea. After weighing all the girls at college, he finally settles on Dorothy Kingship. Her name denotes her status. Her father is a copper king worth fabulous amounts of money. She is the middle daughter of three. She is beautiful (bonus) and insecure (huge bonus). Everything is going smoothly; then Dorothy gets knocked up. He has already jumped from the highboard into the family pool, but instead of a swan dive, he smacks the water with that ugly sound of a dive gone wrong. All those puffy cloud dreams he had about his future as the son-in-law of a filthy, rich man dissipate, and all he is left with is the vision of Dorothy’s swelling stomach. This can’t be! Her father will disown her. Dorothy doesn’t care about the money, which is infuriating to him. Their conversation reminds me of the interactions between William and Jocelyn in the movie A Knight’s Tale. ”Jocelyn: ‘Now be gone! Go! William.’ William: ‘Where will we live? In my hovel? With the pigs inside during the winter so they won't freeze?’ Joceyln: ‘Yes, William. With the pigs.’” Which is all very romantic...for about a week, and then when her hair, clothes, and skin start to smell like swine, she will pine for the scents of jasmine, lavender, and rose. He makes that argument to Dorothy, but really he isn’t worried about how she will react to not having the money. He is frantically trying hang onto his dreams of the Kingship fortune. Without all that money, Dorothy is just a nice girl. This is where the sociopath segment of the book takes off. The decisions he makes to fix this issue are, frankly, ruthless. He isn’t worried about the morality of it, but he is worried about getting caught and facing punishment. This is bad; this is very bad, but the moment when my stomach does a few unnatural flip flops is when it occurs to him that it is going to be easier to seduce another Kingship daughter than it is to start all over researching and romancing another debutante. Next up, Ellen. And if Ellen doesn’t work out, there is always Marion. *SHUDDER!!* [image] There was also a 1991 film version of the book, starring Sean Young and Matt Dillon, that I have not seen but from what I read deviates significantly away from the original plot. Ira Levin does such a wonderful job creating so much unease in the reader. The tension continues to grow with each turned page, and I found myself rooting against this guy, but at the same time, I was still fascinated to see what he was going to do next. Will he be stopped? And at what point will he make that fatal error? It was no surprise to me to discover that Levin won the 1954 Edgar Award for best first novel. He was twenty-four years old when he wrote this book, but his youth is never evident in the plotting or in the character development. It reads like a writer working in his prime. I want to share this moment when the criminal mind is accessing the books owned by one of his potential victims and what those books say about her: ”...and the books, for what better index of the personality is there?---(the novels and plays, the non-fiction and verse, all chosen in proportion and representation of her tastes). It was like the concentrated abbreviation of a Help Wanted ad. The egocentricity which motivated it was not that of the spoiled, but of the too little spoiled; the lonely.” Hey buddy, I don’t know what you’d make of my library, expect that maybe I needed to see a shrink, but I can tell you this reader is never lonely as long as I have a book close to hand. Highly recommended for those who like their books hardboiled in salt and vinegar. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Dec 02, 2017
|
Dec 02, 2017
|
Dec 02, 2017
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1590179161
| 9781590179161
| 1590179161
| 4.14
| 3,113
| May 16, 1953
| Jan 19, 2016
|
it was amazing
|
”I came back and searched dizzily under the trailer, muttering the way drunks do, and then I heard it. A shuffling around inside the trailer. The litt
”I came back and searched dizzily under the trailer, muttering the way drunks do, and then I heard it. A shuffling around inside the trailer. The little tramp had knocked me in the head with her Southern Comfort and now she was in there loading up…. I saw the light inside the armored car, glowing in slitted shapes through the steel. The rustling was louder. She was sitting on the floor, naked, in a skitter of green bills. Beyond her was the custodian, still simpering in death. She was scooping up handfuls of the green money and dropping it on top of her head so that it came sliding down along the cream-colored hair, slipping down along her shoulders and body. She was making a noise I never heard come out of a human being. It was a scream that was a whisper and a laugh that was a cry. Over and over. The noise and the scooping. The slippery, sliding bills against the rigid body. She didn’t know I was alive.” [image] Tim Sunblade breaks out of prison one leap ahead of a spray of machine gun bullets. One of his buddies isn’t so lucky. His face pulped with bullet holes. His body left sprawled over the wall. His eyes no longer able to see the freedom that beckoned. Sunblade isn’t his real name, but he wants a name that represents his love of the outdoors and the freedom to romp around in it. Now once a guy gets out of prison, what does he want? A juicy steak with mounds of potatoes. Some new clothes that don’t smell of starch and prison mold. A long hot bath. And most of all…. ”Her eyes were lavender-gray and her hair was light creamy gold and springy-looking, hugging her head in curves rather than absolute curls. She wore a navy-blue beret of the kind you associate with European movies. Then there was the hair and face and a long loose stretch of metal-colored raincoat, very wet, and the cold smell of it plain in the mustiness. Then there were the legs and the bellhop wasn’t kidding about them.” What is a woman like this playing the ten dollar tramp in Krotz Springs, Mississippi? ”She said I was no better than a tramp myself, that I made love to the cadence of the raingusts on the roof, and it was true I was doing just that, but it seemed the natural thing then. And I felt so marvelously clean and soaped and so in tune with the whole damned universe that I had the feeling I could have clouded up and rained and lightninged myself, and blow that cheese-colored room to smithereens.” Sunblade isn’t expecting anything like her to walk through his door. He is just wanting some help slaking some of that lust that has built up in him like an atomic bomb while he stacked time in prison. Now he has Virginia, but whether she loves him or is simply using him is something he will have time to ponder on at the end of the road. Every time the song ”If you’ve got the money, honey, I’ve got the time” comes on the radio, he has the sneaking suspicion he is still only buying her by the hour. Sunblade has the big score in mind, and a woman is just a distraction. “I was all for dumping her along the way in a day or so. Now I didn’t know for sure, but I still thought I would, because a woman had no place in my plans.” Maybe that would be true of a woman, but Virginia is more than just a woman. When she walks into a bar, she owns the bar. She is gorgeous, but tainted, and with that stain on her character, she is an attainable dream, making men weak in the knees and stupid, and making women want to be her or beat her. She is also one helluva driver, and that will come in handy. This is one of those hard luck stories where enough goes right to give them a glimpse of a future living the way they want to live, but those things that go right are balanced out by a couple of pieces of bad luck at the wrong moments, almost as if a petulant God flicks his fingernail and changes the scope of their fate. Cops have a little more leeway while interrogating prisoners in Mississippi in the 1950s. ”When he came back to me he broke the fingers of my left hand, one by one, neatly and with no wasted action, the way you’d snap celery at the table, almost politely. That finished me for the day, but I remember I hung on until he reached my thumb, and I thought as I floated off into the screaming pain and grayness that if I had taken this much of it I could take whatever else there was, without talking, and that maybe I’d be stronger, strong enough to butt the brains out of my head on the stone walls.” I had a real physical reaction to a lot of the action in this book. Returning servicemen from World War II, the author Elliott Chaze among them, didn’t want to read about men of impeccable character and women who kept their knees together. That wasn’t real life to them, not anymore. They might settle in at night with a few fingers of Scotch behind the white picket fence in front of their house and watch their wives in their perfectly ironed poodle skirt walk across the room, but in their hand would be a book like Black Wings Has My Angel, where people aren’t waiting around to live, but living like the end of the world was chasing hot on their tails. [image] Back in 2012 there was talk of making a movie of this book, starring Anna Paquin and Tom Hiddleston. Something happened, and talks stalled, but hey Hollywood, here is one guy ready to buy a ticket. I’m going to give you one last look between the bars. Tilt your head slightly to the left, and maybe you, too, can see it. ”But no one's immune to thinking. Try drawing a blank for any length of time, emptying your head of everything and still you land on a color, a shape, a personality, a grievance. I can sit here on this cot in my cell and stare at the plaster wall, go absolutely limp in my head, and the story, the story of Virginia and me is there in the plaster.” If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Nov 19, 2017
|
Nov 21, 2017
|
Nov 19, 2017
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0385534256
| 9780385534253
| 4.14
| 364,379
| Apr 18, 2017
| Apr 18, 2017
|
it was amazing
|
***On October 20th, 2023 the Martin Scorsese film based on this book will be released on Apple TV. It will star Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Bre
***On October 20th, 2023 the Martin Scorsese film based on this book will be released on Apple TV. It will star Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Brendan Fraser, and Robert De Niro. With this top shelf cast I think we can be reassured that Hollywood is taking this story very seriously.*** ”Today our hearts are divided between two worlds. We are strong and courageous, learning to walk in these two worlds, hanging on to the threads of our culture and traditions as we live in a predominantly non-Indian society. Our history, our culture, our heart, and our home will always be stretching our legs across the plains, singing songs in the morning light, and placing our feet down with the ever beating heart of the drum. We walk in two worlds.” The Osage Indians lived in Kansas until the 1870s when the government decided that their land was too valuable for them to own. Laura Ingalls Wilder, writer of Little House on the Prairie, was confused as to why the Osage Indians were being forced off their land. Her father explained: ”That’s why we’re here, Laura. White people are going to settle all this country, and we get the best land because we get here first and take our pick.” I have to disagree with Pa Wilder about the "getting here first." Just the fact that you have to force people from the land that you want is stark evidence that you aren't getting to this land first. In the eyes of 19th century white settlers, Native Americans were looked on as a subspecies of human being who didn’t deserve to breath and certainly didn’t deserve to own any useful land. The Osage Indians were moved to Northeastern Oklahoma on a patch of ground that was deemed worthless. But was it? When oil was discovered beneath the reservation land in the 1920s, those dirt scratching Indians became extremely wealthy. The federal government, due to the Osages’ inherent racial weakness, deemed them incapable of managing their own affairs and appointed guardians to manage their affairs, white guardians. As an example, if an Osage wanted a car, the guardian would buy a car for $250 and sell it to the Indian for $1,250. The definition of guardian used words such as protector or defender. It didn’t say anything about exploiter. This is a tale of greed, but unfortunately, it didn’t stop there. It became murder. When the suspicious deaths of Osage Indians reached twenty-four, the fledgling director of the Bureau of Investigations ( It would not be called the Federal Bureau of Investigations until 1935.) J. Edgar Hoover decided that he needed Federal agents on the ground. Hoover had already been systematically removing agents from the program that did not meet his criteria for education level and impeccable character. The agents out West, many of them ex-Texas Rangers, did not fit either of those profiles, but Hoover was smart enough to realize that, for a case like this, spit shined shoes and snappy ties were not going to get the job done. He sent in Tom White, one of those disreputable former Texas Rangers. White brought some people in as undercover agents, and slowly the details of what was going on began to shimmer into view. Witnesses were disappearing or or would clam up when they were asked to testify at trial. One white man who was trying to help the Osage was mysteriously thrown from a train. Another was kidnapped. Building a case was one thing, but actually prosecuting someone was not easy. It became more and more clear that this was not the act of just one man, but a conspiracy. ”A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It’s the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act. “ --Don DeLillo, Libra Meanwhile, the murders continued unabated. Osages were shot, poisoned, stabbed, and even in one case blown up with dynamite. The ruthlessness with which they were systematically eliminated was actually terrifying. I can’t even imagine the level of fear that the tribe was living under. Death was not a nebulous unknown creature, but was actually embodied by members of their community intent on their destruction. The other problem was that white people felt the Native Americans did not deserve the money. The adage the only good Indian is a dead Indian was still in common use, especially if anyone encountered a situation where Indian ownership was in their way. David Grann has done a wonderful job of investigating these murders. Though some people were incarcerated for the crimes back in the 1920s, the more Grann dug, the more threads he found that led to other guardians who should have been investigated more thoroughly as well. The descendents of those murdered Osage still want closer. They still want justice, even if the killers are moldering in their graves. ”The blood cries out from the ground.” ”During Xtha-cka Zbi-ga Tze-the, the Killer of the Flowers Moon. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Apr 18, 2017
|
Apr 22, 2017
|
Apr 18, 2017
|
ebook
| |||||||||||||||
| 0671221396
| 9780671221393
| 0671221396
| 3.79
| 4,079
| 1976
| 1976
|
really liked it
|
”Just remember this,” he said in a deep voice that cut neatly through the confusion. “Whatever I’ve done, you’ve let me do.” [image] When Perly Duns ”Just remember this,” he said in a deep voice that cut neatly through the confusion. “Whatever I’ve done, you’ve let me do.” [image] When Perly Dunsmore moves to Harlowe, New Hampshire, with his auctioneering company and starts espousing the natural beauty of the community, he is mostly regarded as a man a few slices short of a full loaf. Most of the people in Harlowe have been on the land for many generations, and for most of the year, they exist at a sustainable level. They are poor and don’t know it. They raise a lot of their own food and trade for what they don’t have. They are salt of the earth people, suspicious of strangers, and content with what they have. When Perly decides to start having a regular auction every week, there are snorts of laughter and several shaking heads over this fool from out of town thinking he could make money in Harlowe. Perly decides that the first auctions should be held as a benefit to add a deputy to the police force. Deputy? They barely needed a sheriff. Well, there was that person hacked up not too long ago, but then that crime must have been committed by a stranger passing through town, right? Because no one around here would kill someone. The sheriff comes around looking for donations, stuff that people aren’t using anyway. Everybody pitches in because no one wants to be seen as not helping the community, and everyone ends up with a check after the auction. Cash money is as scarce as hen’s teeth. Then there is an auction to help the volunteer firemen. Perly puts advertisements in papers as far away as Boston for people to come to the auction. And people come. Perly doesn’t seem to be as crazy as everyone thinks. John and Mim Moore have a four year old daughter named Hildie. John’s mother lives with them. Several generations of Moore’s are buried up on the hill, resting under poison oak and the dust of many seasons. They clean out the barn of all the stuff they aren’t using anyway for the auctions and then the attic. Every week the Sheriff, sometimes accompanied by the honey worded Perly, stops by to see if there is more to be contributed. The weekly contribution is becoming something more than voluntary. ”’Does it mean so much to you? I know the pleasures of a dressing table to a good-looking woman. But there are other things--better schools for Hildie, year-round church, more ready cash, more comforts…I know what I want.’ Mim could not move without flailing out at the man and making him back off, and she trembled from the effort of suppressing her need to do so. ‘Comfort,’ he said almost fiercely.’You’ve never known much comfort, have you Mim?’ Mim raised her eyes to Perly’s, blue and defiant. Perly dropped his gaze to Mim’s hands, pressed flat and angry against the wall behind her. Slowly, he raised his eyes to Mim’s again, his face curling into lines of pleasure, perhaps of triumph.’You and I will have to get together someday, Mim,’ he said. ’I admire a woman with grit.’ Then, with his own glittering stillness, he held Mim motionless against the wall while the clock in the kitchen chimed over and over again. When she dropped her eyes, he moved quietly away.” I wanted to share this scene because it conveys the simmering, menacing uneasiness that permeates the whole novel. Perly keeps adding more and more deputies who are really just there to keep the contributions coming for the auctions. People give and give and give until all they have left is the land, and Perly has plans for that as well. There are so many points in the novel where I wanted the Moore’s to make a stand. To push back, but when others in the community push back, unfortunate misadventures happen to them. Everyone has families, and having families makes it natural for strong men to be afraid. It almost seems implausible, the level of control that Perly achieves over this community, but it is so gradual that, by the time people realize how bad it is, it is almost too late. I kept thinking to myself, where is my line in the sand? Where do I make my stand and say... no more? How do I do that and keep my family safe? [image] Joan Samson There is very little to share about Joan Samson, unfortunately. She passed away shortly after the publication of The Auctioneer from cancer. She was 39 years old and was working on a second novel. If she had lived, there was a good chance that she would have surpassed the work of Shirley Jackson or at least be mentioned in the same sentence as the famous gothic horror writer. This book has fallen into obscurity, but like other novels I’ve reviewed on Goodreads, a perfect example being Mortal Leap by MacDonald Harris, I’m simply not going to let this book stay a lost novel. It is a wonderful example of gothic horror with superb writing that will make you feel the mounting terror as options for these good people shrink to the size of a mustard seed. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Nov 25, 2016
|
Nov 25, 2016
|
Nov 18, 2016
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0140443150
| 9780140443158
| 0140443150
| 3.85
| 42,854
| 1885
| Nov 30, 1975
|
it was amazing
|
”There are many women who would give way to a passing whim, a sudden violent desire or an amorous fancy if they weren’t afraid that their brief moment
”There are many women who would give way to a passing whim, a sudden violent desire or an amorous fancy if they weren’t afraid that their brief moment of happiness would end in a dreadful scandal and bitter tears.” Georges Duroy comes from the provinces of France to Paris with the determination to make something of himself. He finds a job making a pittance, but fortunately he runs into an old friend from the army named Charles Forestier. Even though Duroy has no real writing experience, Forestier decides to get him hired on at La Vie Francaise as a journalist. He wants Duroy to write about some of his experiences in the army, but the cursed white page that plagues even the most experienced writers is consuming his words before he can even dip his pen to paper. Forestier sends Duroy to his wife Madeleine. She will get him sorted. It doesn’t take long for Duroy to realize who in the Forestier family is doing most of the writing. As he starts to mix in the circles surrounding the newspaper, he starts to see the potential for not only continuing to better his position but also the plethora of opportunities to seduce other men’s wives. He is a handsome rake. ”He had a fund of small talk, a pleasant voice, a caressing glance and his moustache was irresistible. Crisp and curly, it curved charmingly over his lip, fair with auburn tints, slightly paler where it bristled at the ends.” It isn’t long before the women, and even the men, are referring to him as Bel-Ami. As he gains confidence, he also becomes bolder. His first conquest is Madame Clotilde de Marelle. ”’I’ve never seen such pretty earrings as yours, Madame de Marelle.’ She turned to him with a smile. ‘It’s an idea I had to fasten a diamond like that, simply on the end of a wire. They look just like dew, don’t they?’ Alarmed at his temerity and terrified of saying something silly, he murmured: ‘It’s charming...but the ear must take some of the credit, too.’” Her ample bosom first catches his eye, but of course, only a low class lout would compliment a woman’s breasts. By showing an interest in her earrings, he unknowingly hits upon something of which she is proud, her creativity. As you will see when you read this novel, Duroy frequently gets luckier than he deserves. At the same time, I can’t help rooting for him even as he takes on characteristics that are beneath a man on the rise. Forestier is very sick with tuberculosis. The disease is wasting him away. A young man, only in his late twenties, he will not only leave a higher position open at the newspaper, but he will also leave a young, beautiful, ambitious woman a widow. Both the job and the widow are of interest to Duroy. To him, she represents the pinnacle of success, but she will only prove to be a stepping stone for a man as ambitious as he is. The Forestier death scene is particularly poignant because of his deathbed terror of the unknown, which even envelopes Madeleine and Duroy, who are devotedly attending his last moments, despite already scheming about a life after Forestier. When Guy De Maupassant was writing this novel in the 1880s, he already knew he was living under a death sentence. Syphilis was eroding his health at an alarming rate. When he wrote Forestier’s last moments, I couldn’t help thinking that he was recording his own fears and projecting his last curtain call upon this man who was dying too young. First things first, Madeleine changes his name. He is now Duroy de Cantel or D. de Cantel. There are reasons why actors and actresses change their names, not only to be someone else, someone larger in even their own minds when they are acting, but to also have a memorable name that will easily trip off the tongue of those who hear it. Duroy is becoming an accomplished actor in the drama of his own life. He has come a long way from the first squalid rooms he used in Paris. ”His wallpaper, grey with a blue floral pattern, had as many stains as flowers, ancient, dubious-looking stains that could have been squashed insects or oil, greasy finger-marks from hair cream or dirty soap suds from the wash-basin. It all reeked of poverty and degradation, the poverty of Parisian furnished lodgings.” I know it isn’t possible for everyone to experience poverty, but for me, while trying to pay for college and at times walking around with just a few slender dimes in my pocket, the prospect of missing meals certainly honed my appreciation for what being successful really means. Though being successful takes on different meanings for different people, my vision of what a successful life is has certainly changed in the last few years. ”The road to success is thus largely paved by wily mediocrity; but, fortunately, as a counterbalance and a sort of poetic justice, Maupassant takes pains to underline the basic futility of ambition.” We see this philosophy in how Duray, excuse me, D. de Cantel adjusts to his rising prosperity. He is besotted by bitter envy of the triumphs of others to the point that he can’t enjoy the vaulted position he has achieved. Achieved may be too strong a word. He does still recognize who he is. ”A smart, low, open carriage came by drawn at a brisk trot by two slim greys with flowing manes and tails, driven by a small blonde young woman, a well-known high-class tart, with two grooms sitting behind her. Duroy stopped and felt like waving and applauding this woman whose success had been won on her back and who was boldly flaunting her luxury by taking her drive at the same time as these aristocratic hypocrites.” I wonder, if we looked in on Duroy twenty years in the future, if he would still see the woman as an act of defiance to be celebrated, or will he be so steeped in the conventions of his new class that he will see her as someone to be vilified for her impertinence? The women are so well drawn in this book. I find myself admiring them more than the men. They are competent, intelligent, and in many cases, use Duroy as much as he uses them. I especially admire Madeleine Forestier, who, through her subtle astute suggestions, guides Duroy to better opportunities, and even suggests women he should strategically get to know better. She has no illusions about how either one of them are ever going to rise to a place of comfort. The spectre of death, the dissatisfaction with success, the unseemliness of unquenchable ambition, and the hypocrisy of the aristocracy all make for a scathing, enjoyable romp through the dark alcoves, the boudoirs, and the secluded settees of Paris, as seeking fingers grope for the flesh beneath the silk. If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Aug 09, 2018
|
Aug 18, 2018
|
Oct 06, 2016
|
Paperback
|
Loading...
15 of 15 loaded
