Hey, it's year-end obscure book review time again!
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Upstate New York's Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome is a "living museum" that owns and regularly fliesHey, it's year-end obscure book review time again!
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Upstate New York's Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome is a "living museum" that owns and regularly flies probably the world's best collection of working vintage aircraft, from the earliest days (a 1909 Bleriot XI - the "the oldest flying aircraft in the United States, and the second oldest in the world") through the First World War and into the pre-WWII "Golden Age," (can learn more at www.oldrhinebeck.org). You want to see a Fokker Dr.I not only dogfight a SPAD VII* on a regular basis but then "crash" on a grass landing strip? Well, this is the place!
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This book is more memoir than true history, and even more just listening to an old guy tell stories than actual memoir - and in this case that's a good thing, as it nicely reflects the seat-of-the-pants, "unpolished" approach that Cole Palen took to building and running his truly unique "living museum." This book does a great - if largely anecdotal - job telling the story of the Aerodrome's first twenty years; although sadly, aside from it's "Museum Collection & Air Show Guide" (which is really just a brochure that itself hasn't been redone in nearly a decade), no one's updated this story to include the following near-half-century between this book's 1977 publication and today.
That said, very little has apparently changed in that time. I first visited with my dad in the early '70s, and then most recently again this past October with my own son and grandson, and pretty much everything was just as I remembered. Author E. Gordon Bainbridge (and more on him below) says "the hanger areas were always littered with wings piled in one corner and engines stacked in another," which is just how it looks today; the airshows themselves are exactly the same corny affairs I remember from previous trips (and the crowd sits on the same lumber-on-concrete-block bleachers); and the "non-living" museum displays located in the hangers across the dirt road from the airfield are just as charmingly amateurish as they were 50 years ago, (see below photo). What has changed is the cost of the whole venture, since when Palen started collecting he was able to buy a semi-intact aircraft for anywhere from $50-$200.
But back to the book - a fascinating read for anyone (like me) who's had a lifelong fascination with WWI-era aircraft, although it certainly helped to keep Google handy to look up all the different planes mentioned: Deperdussin, Kinner Bird, Albree Pursuit monoplane (of which the aerodrome owned one of only three ever produced), Siemens Schuckert, Hillman Minx, etc.** - and indeed, many of the Google Images that show up are actually photos from the Rhinebeck collection. There's also a fair amount of old-tech talk that I had to look up as well; things like "the wings had intense dihedral," or "it was the only parasol in the collection." Unfortunately (although not surprisingly), this book is long out of print; I finally found this copy for about $35 on Amazon, but usually it's only available for $100+ from various old book dealers. So - charming, but you have to really want to read it to justify the cost and trouble of getting a copy.
* The "Dr." actually stands for "Dreidecker," which is German for "triplane;" while SPAD is always capitalized because even though I always thought it was an American plane (due to its close connection with Eddie Rickenbacker) it's actually French and therefore an abbreviation of "Société Pour L'Aviation et ses Dérivés." But you knew that.
** Ha - that last one was a trick; "Hillman Minx" was not a plane, but was in fact a British old car from the 1940s. ___________________________________
PERSONAL CONNECTION (and what would a "Philip review of a book no one's ever heard of" be without my usual irrelevant 'personal connection’?): However, in my case, I really DID want to read this book. I grew up just 15 miles from Rhinebeck, and so over the years must have visited at least…gosh, gotta be nearly a dozen times. Being "local," it turns out a number of my high school teachers became involved with the Aerodrome as well, either getting their pilot's license there and then going on to fly in the airshows, or just working on restorations or as ground crew for the weekly shows (held every year from June-Oct). Author E. Gordon Bainbridge - who in the book comes across very much as "Dr. Watson" to Palen's "Holmes" (at least as far as documenting their adventures), and was such an integral part of the Aerodrome that he has his own full-sized display case in one of the hanger museum areas:
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- was "by day" my high school Art and Mechanical Drawing teacher, (the book's editor was also my French teacher, and Dick King - another airshow pilot - was…I’m thinking my shop teacher?). In fact, "Mr. B" had such an impact on my whole "what do I want to be when I grow up?" journey that I leveraged my nascent interest in technical drawing to spend the next 20+ years as a graphic designer (since I wasn't smart enough to actually become an engineer)....more
So just found an even older diary from my mid-20's (i.e., mid-'70s, and apparently this is what I was reading, along with Bodymind, The Whole Person HSo just found an even older diary from my mid-20's (i.e., mid-'70s, and apparently this is what I was reading, along with Bodymind, The Whole Person Healthbook, T. Lobsang Rampa's The Third Eye, and promo literature for some New Age religion called "Eckankar," which I don't remember at all and haven't heard of since, but according to Wikipedia is still out there somewhere - or maybe it's just been "reincarnated."
Was still relatively new to t'ai chi back then, as was America in general so not a lot to choose from.* This isn't a step-by-step "how-to" book so much as an extended (one might say "endless") rumination on "what it's all about, baby" that came from Huang's lessons at the famous Esalen Institute in Big Sur, an early home of "humanistic alternative education." Try as I might - and I've tried a coupla times over the years - was never able to get past the first few chapters. Guess I was just too square, man.
So just found an even older diary from my mid-20's (i.e., mid-1970s), and apparently this is what I was reading, along with T. Lobsang Rampa and promoSo just found an even older diary from my mid-20's (i.e., mid-1970s), and apparently this is what I was reading, along with T. Lobsang Rampa and promo literature for some New Age religion called "Eckankar," which I don't remember at all and haven't heard of since, but according to Wikipedia is still out there somewhere - or maybe it's just been "reincarnated."
Hey, we were all young once…
(Giving it an average 3 stars because I apparently liked it, but don't remember it at all)...more
10 OUT OF 5 STARS - BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (SO FAR)!!
If you enjoy any sort of travel books but haven't yet discovered Dervla Murphy, PLEASE do so - she10 OUT OF 5 STARS - BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (SO FAR)!!
If you enjoy any sort of travel books but haven't yet discovered Dervla Murphy, PLEASE do so - she is just the most admirable, delightful and indestructible travel companion you could possibly imagine.
Have had this one on my shelf for a good while now, and would have read earlier except - and I hate to admit this, as I generally take pride in my geographic knowledge - I apparently didn't realize just where the Indus and Baltistan were, (maybe…India?). But then the minute I opened it up, I realized it was exactly that area of northern Pakistan that has fascinated me ever since first reading about the local travels of Francis Younghusband (1887) and Peter Fleming (1935) in such exotic sounding areas as Gilgit, Hunza and Chitral. (In fact, Murphy begins Chapter Two with a lengthy quote from Younghusband.) Have to put this up front: bought this from Amazon as "Like New," and indeed it was obviously unread - yet came with the inscription "Happy Birthday to Bart - Dervla Murphy" on the first page. Who the hell would get a personally autographed copy of a book like this - and then never read it?? Shame on you Bart, whoever you are - but also thanks for at least reselling this online!
Anyway - just wonderful, but so many thoughts that I don't have the time or energy to put them together in a coherent narrative…so am just going to list a number of the things that really hit me here, which are hopefully enough to encourage you to READ IT YOURSELF, because you really, really should.
* Baltistan and the Karakoram mountains are some of the most remote and desolate areas on earth. So who better for Murphy to travel with than…her six-year-old daughter? But turns out young Rachel is just as tough as her mom, and provides an excellent counterpuntal voice to the narrative, with such gleeful comments as "here's another obstacle!" and "I don't think ANYONE could survive if they slipped HERE!" That said, I did Google "Rachel Murphy" just to confirm that she in fact survived into adulthood, (she did, but otherwise - and perhaps understandably - has virtually zero internet presence).
* Apparently, the region played a more important role back in the heyday of the Silk Road. However, since "Partition" and Baltistan becoming a part of Pakistan, it has been cut off from it's traditional eastern trading partners in Ladakh and Kashmir, and so become both a political and economic backwater/cul-de-sac.
* One always needs to have Google handy when reading Murphy, both to look up places on the map and to translate her local terms - nullah, chowdikar, dhobi, chota, bungo, chenar. Took me forever to figure out that her "dula" wasn't a local word at all, but a reference to the walking stick she'd brought back from an earlier trip to Ethiopia.
* Some interesting if depressing religious stuff here. I was surprised that the Shia-Sunni hostilities extended to this remote region, noted in the form of deadly riots in Gilgit during a major festival. Also, I had never heard of the Nurbashi sect of Islam, but seems like they are the most moderate version out there - and so of course are the least followed. And finally, considering this was written mid-'70s, Murphy makes some apt (if also depressing) comparisons between the Sunni-Shia struggles in Asia and the Catholic-Protestant unrest in Ireland.
This was Murphy's sixth book. I thoroughly enjoyed her first three (which all focused on India/Nepal), and then skipped ahead three decades to read One Foot in Laos (her only book set in Southeast Asia). And now Indus of course, since it also focuses on the Karakoram which - while technically not the Himalaya - are close enough, (and are in fact even more desolate and hard to reach than their more famous neighbors). But since there are now only two books between this and her first three - In Ethiopia with a Mule and On a Shoestring to Coorg: An experience of southern India - I've already added them to my TBR list, because (A) after reading The Blue Nile and Flashman on the March, Ethiopia sounds pretty darn interesting, and (B)…well, my OCD side would go nuts if I then left out just one book of her first six.
I sadly - if coincidentally - finished this book on the one-year anniversary of Murphy's death, (she passed at 90, although considering her life choices I'm frankly amazed she lasted that long). She will be sorely missed....more
Don't remember a damn thing about this book, but DO know now exactly when I read it - 25 Jan 1979 - because Jennifer and I are reading through my anciDon't remember a damn thing about this book, but DO know now exactly when I read it - 25 Jan 1979 - because Jennifer and I are reading through my ancient diaries from when I first moved to Taipei, and marveling about how different everything was back then. Like, EVERYTHING.
Among other things, Taipei was infamous for their pirate book industry - so noted in my diary that I picked this up in hardcover for about 90 cents, (and this was MacLean's latest book, just released a few months earlier). Cool....more
Okay, so it should go without saying that NO one should be learning martial arts from books, much less ones that are over half a century old and writtOkay, so it should go without saying that NO one should be learning martial arts from books, much less ones that are over half a century old and written by a guy who apparently not only knew every martial art ("ate-waza" anybody?) but then even invented his own, (although to be fair, even as I write I realize that this description pretty much also applies to Bruce Lee and his seminal Tao of Jeet Kune Do).
But to paraphrase Lloyd Benson, "I knew Bruce Lee, and you Bruce Tegner, are no Bruce Lee." And it also doesn't help Tegner's case that the only video available of him on YouTube is a 1961 scene from "Ozzie & Harriet" where he's teaching Ricky Nelson how do deliver what look suspiciously like Austin Powers-style "judo chops":
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That said…hey, it was the '70s baby, I was in my early twenties, and there frankly weren't a lot of other resources available at the time. Can't recall how or when I bought this classy "box set," and can't imagine that I ever actually read it - but thumbing through it now in my approaching dotage was kind of a hoot; and much like my other recent find, The Complete Martial Arts Catalogue, brought back some fond memories of a far simpler time, (I mean, we were only dealing with the aftermath of Watergate, not an actual attack on the Capitol for God's sake).
The individual books in this set can be seen at the following pages - but there's no way I'm going to waste any more time commenting on them separately:
Another great Quiller book, this one kicking off just two months after The Tango Briefing, (the first Quiller I read a few years ago; I'm obviously reAnother great Quiller book, this one kicking off just two months after The Tango Briefing, (the first Quiller I read a few years ago; I'm obviously reading these way out of sequence).
The story is set in 1974-75 Hong Kong, towards the very end of the Mao Tse-tung era, and as such presents a nice time-capsule look at the waning days of "bad China," just before Deng Xiao-ping introduced "good China," (which today is sadly veering back towards the "bad" side again); back when the only way to physically see China was to take a local bus from Kowloon up through the New Territories to Man Kam Po, then hike through some scrub fields up to a barbed wire "no man's land" where you could stare across at some other scrub fields and say to yourself, "yup - that's China!" And so this book was particularly fun for me, as not only did I arrive in Taiwan in 1978 (and take my first trip to Hong Kong and the "yup - there it is" border in early 1979); but I had also just gotten my dive certification in '75 or '76 - and so I was able to appreciate (and critique) Hall's descriptions of both HK and Quiller's underwater scenes.
And in general, I gotta say Hall got most of it right. As with his other Asia-set stories, here again he could have added a lot more local color; but as I've noted before, he probably had neither the time not travel budget to do a lot of on-the-ground research for his more far-flung stories. Overall, he does a good job establishing both the flavor and geography of Hong Kong, even if his surveillance scenes start to sound like those "The Californians" sketches on SNL, ("I took Manzanita down to Olympic, made a right over by the Vons Pavilion, then took that all the way down to Robertson…"). He did, however, miss a golden opportunity to cover Quiller's arrival at the old Kai Tak airport, which offered one of the most hair-raising landings in the world as it brought you down parallel and so close to the high-rise apartments in Kwun Tong that you could literally look in people's windows and see what they were watching on TV, before landing on a runway so short that if you overshot it (as planes frequently did), you ended up in Kowloon Harbor. And speaking of, said harbor was so famous for its pollution and overall noxiousness that even Bob Hope famously joked about it during a stopover on one of his Vietnam War USO tours.*
As to the SCUBA scenes - again generally good, although he has Quiller at one point put on his fins before walking down a hall, (something that would NEVER really happen, as the only way to walk in fins is to shuffle backwards); and it was interesting to see Quiller still using a double-hose regulator à la Sean Connery in "Thunderball" a full decade earlier, as I thought most divers had switched to the newer single-hose setups by then.
To the story itself…most Quiller plots involve some sort of MacGuffin that's mainly there to justify the almost non-stop action, (largely fight scenes and car chases). And true to form, it took me until page 230 (out of just 300) here to learn just what the hell the plot of this book was, (which to be fair, was pretty much the same amount of time it took Quiller to figure it too). But from there on, it all DID make some kind of sense…and so overall, another nice read.
Have to comment on Hall's unique writing style. Aside from his famous run-on sentences, he tends to end most of his chapters with a cliffhanger, and then begin the next one well after that particular situation had been resolved, eventually catching readers up as Quiller moves forward. This seems like a tough trick - and probably is - but more often than not Hall pulls it off nicely. He also tends to wrap up his stories quite abruptly, with Quiller still well up shit creek just two pages or so before the end…and then it's bing-bang-boom!, "mission accomplished" with absolutely no denouement - which again, sounds odd but usually does work well for both the author and his creation. One negative note: Hall's fictional "Bureau" is kinda cool, in a goofy, unbelievable Tom Cruise "Impossible Missions Force" way. But calling their agents or operatives or whatever "shadow executives" is just clunky…"Shadow Executive" might in fact work as the title for a single "Mission: Impossible" movie, but otherwise it's just downright awkward.
But still, one of the better Quiller's I've read - and that's saying a lot, because Hall has written himself some damn fine spy stories!
* So…Bob Hope arrives at Kai Tak, and a bunch of reporters are waiting for him as soon as the plane doors open. Hope takes a deep breath, makes a face and says "Good Lord, what's that smell?" Embarrassed, a reporter explains, "well, that's shit, Mr. Hope" - to which ol' Bob says "I know it's shit - but what did they DO to it??"...more
Outstanding retelling of the Crimean War as seen through the eyes of the incomparable Flashman. Was totally unfamiliar with this chunk of British/RussOutstanding retelling of the Crimean War as seen through the eyes of the incomparable Flashman. Was totally unfamiliar with this chunk of British/Russian history, other than a vague awareness of Tennyson's poem, but now I have at least a layman's understanding of the Charge of the Light Brigade (as well as the difference between Light and Heavy Cavalry), the legendary Thin Red Line, and where we gets both the balaclava and the cardigan.
The book does hit a bit of a lull with Flashy held prisoner in Russia, but then picks up again when he meets Yakub Beg and gets back into the Great Game. (As far as I know, the whole last battle at Fort Raim is fictional, although the fort itself is not.) And then there is a surprisingly touching postlude when Flashy passes through Kabul on his way back to India...very nice semi-sentimental ending to an otherwise rousing yarn.
As in his other books, Fraser has his most fun when describing rascals. Flashy himself, of course, but also folks like Yakub Beg and Izzat Kutebar, the fictional Count Pencherjevsky, and (in Flashman) Wazir Akbar Khan; (although his villains - such as Count Ignatiev here and Gul Shah in Flashman come off as more two-dimensional caricatures.)
But that said, I think I'm Flashed out for a while, and so will take a breather before returning to the third book in Fraser's unofficial "Great Game trilogy," the aptly titled Flashman In The Great Game....more
For a guy who writes short books, George Higgins isn't afraid to waste space. He's spend two pages talking about the right (and wrong) way to make a cFor a guy who writes short books, George Higgins isn't afraid to waste space. He's spend two pages talking about the right (and wrong) way to make a cheese sandwich, or three pages discussing what a nice guy the (totally unimportant to the story) porn dealer is. And yet it is such diversions that make his stories so real.
He is most famous (and rightfully so) for his dialogue, which rings true because here too he never goes for the obvious, move-the-story-forward response, but instead lets his characters ramble, dissemble, contradict themselves. Where another writer might just say "no" in response to the question "that gonna be a problem?," Higgins gives us this:
"I don't know. I'm waiting to hear. Maybe not. Hell, how do you know? It comes, it comes. You take it the way it comes. I don't know."
Higgins is often compared to Elmore Leonard, and so it's only fitting that Leonard wrote the introduction to this edition, which he ends with the statement: "During the past twenty years, his name and mine have appeared together in the press - often in the same sentence - some 178 times. I'm honored."
He should be. MOVIE NOTE: So turns out the 1973 Robert Mitchum film (which came out only three years after publication) was available on Kanopy, and so I watched that within hours of finishing the book. Despite it's 100% on Rotten Tomatoes - the last of a full six Mitchum movies to do so! - and virtually all of the dialogue being lifted straight from the book, the whole thing was slow and dated and also pretty damn confusing (or it would've been if I hadn't just read the book). But most disappointing was that they totally changed the ending as far as who was really screwing who. And so while this early genre movie may have had a big influence on heist films to follow, nearly half a century later I'd say you should feel free to give it a miss.
Amazingly, however, Coyle was Higgins' only book filmed during his lifetime, with the only other story turned into a movie being Brad Pitt's excellent 2012 "Killing Them Softly," which was based on Higgins' Cogan's Trade - and filmed a full 39 years after publication! While those are the only two Higgins' I've read so far, if the rest are as good as these two then Hollywood definitely needs to rediscover this guy, and fast....more
Long before he became "the train guy," Paul Theroux was a novelist, writing books about messed-up Americans abroad lMan, did this bring back memories…
Long before he became "the train guy," Paul Theroux was a novelist, writing books about messed-up Americans abroad like The Jungle Lovers, The Mosquito Coast and Saint Jack. And while I don't have first-hand experience in - and so can't really comment on - Africa or Central America, I can say that his take on Singapore and its expat community in the early '70s is spot on.
Other than a couple months touring Southeast Asia playing guitar for a Taiwanese pop star in 1980, pretty much all of my experience from 1978-1993 was in Taipei, but at least in those early days it was much the same as the Singapore described here. I knew Jack Flowers; I knew a dozen Jack Flowers - guys who'd stayed on after Vietnam or even Korea; a mix of burned-out combat vets and (at least initially) optimistic entrepreneurial types who either started their own business or ended up working for some local company as the in-house gweilo, making enough to survive on the local economy but rarely enough to ever let them move - much less retire - back home, and spending way-too-many evenings in Taipei's equivalents of Flowers' "Bandung" bar, (faux-Western places like "The Ploughman's Pub" and "The Hope & Anchor" - better known as "The Hopeless Wanker").
As to Singapore itself, a later career did take me back there from 2013-15, when it was a TOTALLY different place from the one Theroux describes here. But I did have that one month there in 1980 - playing two shows a night but with my days totally free - just seven years after Jack was published, and so that is the fondly-remembered Singapore of my misspent youth: back when the big tourist attractions were the totally-WTF? "Tiger Balm Gardens" (look it up), the "XX Days Without an Accident" crocodile farm, and the transvestite charms of Bugis Street (which in my innocence, I long thought was "Boogie Street"); back when the War Memorial really was on "the very edge of the island" (as Jack notes on the last page of the book), decades before the government reclaimed all that land and built the God-awful "Marina Bay Sands" casino resort, so that the famous Merlion now looks out across a paltry tourist lagoon instead of the endless entirety of the Singapore Straits…
Anyway…a 4-star story but a 10-star trip down memory lane, so a really good time, at least for me. BTW, you can also watch the entire Ben Gazzara film version here on Youtube, filmed entirely in Singapore in 1978 and so almost exactly the city I remember: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxbfz...
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("Look, mom, I made the paper!" - not exactly rockin' out in Chinatown, lol) ___________________________
Huh...and so reading through my old Taiwan diaries recently with my wife, it looks like I actually read this back in 1979, although didn't remember it AT ALL when I read it (again, apparently) a year of so ago. Huh....more
Should have been a nice change from all the depressing historical books I've read from the same period, but still just reinforces how much is being loShould have been a nice change from all the depressing historical books I've read from the same period, but still just reinforces how much is being lost - correction, has been lost - of this once-vibrant land and culture....more
Another booklet provided on request in the mid-'80s by the Tibetan government-in-exile's Information Office in Dharmsala.Another booklet provided on request in the mid-'80s by the Tibetan government-in-exile's Information Office in Dharmsala....more
Another book provided on request in the mid-'80s by the Tibetan government-in-exile's Information Office in Dharmsala.Another book provided on request in the mid-'80s by the Tibetan government-in-exile's Information Office in Dharmsala....more
Just experimenting with Hoopla to see how audiobooks work, because my new car doesn't have a CD player, (apparently almost no new cars do...idiots). BJust experimenting with Hoopla to see how audiobooks work, because my new car doesn't have a CD player, (apparently almost no new cars do...idiots). But anyway, got it figured out and then saw that it had the old Valerian comics, so one thing let to another and...
Anyway, this was apparently the second Valerian story, but the first assembled into a graphic novel and so the initial exposure for most folks, although there was really minimal origin story to it. Whole thing's set in a post-apocalyptic Earth in the "distant future" of 1988...and so none of the aliens and planetary world building for which the series became later known.
TRIVIA: The gangster/musician character of "Sun Rae" is a none-too-subtle reference to legendary jazz oddball Sun Ra, and the goofy scientist "Schroeder" is obviously Jerry Lewis, both figures who in the '70s (and probably all other decades too) were more popular in France than in the States.
Little idea what this would be going into it, other than it was the basis for one of Michael Caine's earlier - and apparently iconic - film roles. GooLittle idea what this would be going into it, other than it was the basis for one of Michael Caine's earlier - and apparently iconic - film roles. Good, but much darker than I anticipated - at least in this book, Lewis is almost like a British Jim Thompson, with nary a sympathetic character in sight, (even including the oft-abused women). And the book is very British, and very old (1970), so there are a lot of references like "a crooner in a John Collier suit was trying to sound like Vince Hall" that really told me nothing.
There are three books in the Jack Carter saga, and while this was the first written it is the final book chronologically, which fact should save you a lot of confusion once you get into the story.
Hoopla has the movie for free, so will probably watch that sometime soon. Would love to then watch "The Ipcress File" (which I read for the first time last year) for comparison sake, but can't seem to locate a copy under Amazon's $15. To my surprise, "Carter" was filmed a full six years after "Ipcress" - I had thought they were more contemporaneous. But "Ipcress" was filmed right after Caine's breakout role in "Zulu," while "Carter" was almost mid-career, shot between "The Last Valley" and "Sleuth." The things you learn.
UPDATE: So did watch the movie...not bad, but very much of its time, and I don't think I could have followed the plot if I hadn't read the book. But Caine with his three-piece and shotgun is such an iconic image, that alone was worth it - quite the antithesis of the nerdy Harry Palmer in "Ipcress."
Not sure what I missed here that so many other readers saw, but I frankly found this a deeply disturbing, highly misogynistic and ultimately stupid stNot sure what I missed here that so many other readers saw, but I frankly found this a deeply disturbing, highly misogynistic and ultimately stupid story. No one was trapped in this building; they were free to go out into the real world anytime they pleased. And yet everyone chose to self-exile inside this building and descend into murderous, cannibalistic madness because...it was very tall and had its own supermarket?? It's not like they were trapped here à la Lord of the Flies, or cracked under the wartime jungle pressures of "Apocalypse Now;" no, these people had everything and so just stood back and allowed their whole society to crumble because...again, drawing a blank here - the garbage chutes got clogged, or people hogged the elevators?
I'm sure the author was using this setting as an allegory for something profound, but I just found the whole thing too unpleasant to spend any additional time trying to analyze it from a socio-politico-ecomonico or whatever perspective. Ballard published this in 1975, and so high-rises might have symbolized something new and scary back then, (I don't think I'd ever been above the 5th floor of anything prior to about 1980). But just a few years back I lived for a couple of years on the 27th floor of a similar high rise in Singapore, and other then REALLY not enjoying going out of the balcony, it was just another apartment. And so I guess I just don't get what was the big deal here - and for the life of me, I can't imagine what anyone saw here 40 years later that led them to think this would make a good movie...
I previously knew Ballard only from his excellent - and TOTALLY different - Empire of the Sun, and so this was really unexpected. Although to be honest, I had seen the equally unsettling movie version of "Crash" some years ago - about a "TV scientist who experiments with erotic atrocities among auto crash victims" (yikes!) - only I just didn't realize that was also a Ballard story...if I had, I just might have avoided this book completely.
UPDATE: Aannndd...just watched the movie (which the library had); aannnnddd...despite an impressive UK cast - Tom Hiddleston, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss, Jeremy Irons, James Purefoy - just as dumb as the book. Maybe it's a Brit thing......more
Wow, this was just a huge disappointment on so many levels. First, the blurb implies that this is a story of Tibet - which it's not. True, it starts oWow, this was just a huge disappointment on so many levels. First, the blurb implies that this is a story of Tibet - which it's not. True, it starts off with one (and only one) nice scene of a British mercenary flying weapons into some Tibetan rebels, and then there's even a twist regarding which side this particular group of rebels are actually fighting for...and then that plot-line and the rebels and Tibet itself all disappear from the story. Like completely, like for the rest of the book.
Instead, Higgins moves "the action" (heavy sarcasm there) to the fictional khanate of Balpur, an unnecessarily made-up "buffer" between India and China, (confusing in itself, as there is a real Balpur in India, but it is deep in Uttar Pradesh and well south of Nepal, much less Tibet). Flying is done now (regardless of the book jacket); the Himalaya are done, all mention of any Tibetan struggle against China is done, to be replaced instead by a plodding, predictable story of getting easily captured, then easily escaping, and then easily crossing some mountains into the waiting arms of India...the whole thing was just so BORING. Oh, and slightly racist too, since all the Chinese are stereotypical villains, and anyone remotely resembling a "local" gets quickly killed off, with only Drummond's one Indian companion among the few survivors, (which otherwise consist of the obligatory beautiful American nurse/platonic love interest, a crusty Irish missionary/doctor, and some McGuffin of a kid they have to get across the border for whatever reason, and who is either unconscious, asleep or otherwise speechless for the whole story).
And then there's the the bad writing, atrocious dialogue...and yet another totally meaningless title! I hate when writers just throw something Asian-y in there - "tiger this" or "dragon that" or "jade whatever." (And it's only as I write this that I realize...hang on, let me check...that yes, some 8-9 years earlier, Higgins wrote another real stinker nominally about Tibet, Year of the - you guessed it - Tiger, which was equally bad and had an equally dumb title...just frickin' lazy. )
Anyway...Somewhere out there is "the great Tibetan spy thriller" waiting to be written, maybe about the CIA training and dropping Khampa tribesmen back into eastern Tibet, or a Civil Air Transport (CAT, forerunner of Air America) black arms flights going down deep in the mountains, something with sword-wielding Tibetan cavalry charging Chinese tanks and heavy artillery...but it definitely ain't gonna come from Jack Higgins. So...still waiting, still looking, with Lionel Davidson's darned good The Rose of Tibet probably coming closer than anything else so far.
Typically great Leonard writing and dialogue, but the plot is so-so - it's basically if Rambo came home with less PTSD and opened a melon farm.
This isTypically great Leonard writing and dialogue, but the plot is so-so - it's basically if Rambo came home with less PTSD and opened a melon farm.
This is my second ebook, and in both of them the endings caught me by surprise. Reader tells me I still have 40 pages or so, but then the story says THE END, followed by an author bibliography, old press articles and interviews, etc. So apparently still getting the hang of how these things work......more
Maybe 3 stars if a stand-alone, but I rounded down because this was just such a disappointing follow-up to McCarry's quirky but delightful debut, The Maybe 3 stars if a stand-alone, but I rounded down because this was just such a disappointing follow-up to McCarry's quirky but delightful debut, The Miernik Dossier.
This time around (four years after the events in Miernik), Paul Christopher investigates the Kennedy assassination, since he alone in all the world understands what really happened:
The explanation struck like a bell in Christopher's mind. He knew who had arranged the death of the President...All his life, Christopher's unconscious had released images and he had learned to trust this trick of his mind. He often knew what men had done before they confessed their acts to him.*
He then "goes rogue" and leaves the organization - unnamed, but obviously the CIA - traveling first to Saigon for fully half the book, but then globe-hopping between Rome, Switzerland, Rhodesia and Paris to assemble the pieces of his conspiracy theory. Long story short (and SPOILER for anyone who's still thinking of reading this - which at this point should be no one), everyone killed Kennedy - the Russians, the Cubans, the Mafia, the Vietnamese...
I dunno...maybe this book was written in the early years of conspiracy fiction and so was still original and surprising, but today it just reads as a confusing mess.
Unlike the epistolic Miernik, which was told through a series of incident reports, cable traffic, interview/interrogation transcripts, police logs, etc., Autumn is a straight-forward third person narrative, and as a result the character or Christopher comes off as a different person than in the first book (at least IMHO), where he was just one of many players.
Anyway - having also recently read (and been disappointed by) the much later The Shanghai Factor, think I'm done with McCarry for a while. Which is too bad, because he's a good writer and he certainly knows his tradecraft and global hotspots. Will probably give him another shot down the road, but for now it's on to (hopefully) bigger and better things.
* Okay, why do CIA case officers-turned-writers insist on giving their protagonists such unnecessary super powers? Jason Matthews did the same thing in Red Sparrow by inexplicably giving Dominika the ability to "see colors," which had zero to do with the story. Isn't being a spy/killer/sex machine enough for either of these guys??...more
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