2024年10月31日 星期四

"The Librarianist" by Patrick DeWitt (2023)


"Here was where Bob Comet had landed, then, and he was not displeased that this should be the case.  The northwest branch of the public library was where Bob Comet became himself.  It was also where he met Connie and Ethan.  Connie came first but she didn't appear as Connie until after Ethan, so really, Ethan came first."

Patrick Dewitt lives in Portland, Oregon, though he's originally from British Columbia, Canada.  He's written five novels, of which The Librarianist is the most recent.

The Librarianist details the life and times of Bob Comet, a rather shy, retiring sort of person who's spent most of his life working in one of Portland's public libraries.  In his youth Bob meets Connie, a sheltered young woman that he'll eventually marry, and later he meets Ethan, an attractive, sexually gregarious man who is Bob's opposite in nearly every respect.

In my opinion this novel, published or otherwise, remains unfinished.  It's not that it's badly written, but there isn't enough story here to justify its length.  About a fourth of this book consists of an almost entirely unrelated episode in Bob's childhood which bears no relation to the book's overall plot, and this "missing fourth" is, to make the book as a whole much weaker, much better than the rest of the novel.  As a character Bob is a somewhat interesting construct, but who is he, really?  Is he the introverted man seen at the beginning and end of this book, or is he the young boy running away from home in the "childhood interlude?"  The two halves of his personality are never reconciled, and lacking a convincing fusion of these two selves The Librarianist just isn't complete.

The above-mentioned childhood interlude is great though.  I grew up in Bay City, and even so I was unfamiliar with the bygone town of Bayocean and its weird history.  That part of the book should have been front and center in the narrative, but apparently the author couldn't muster up enough of that vibe to sustain a longer story.

The Librarianist is definitely readable, but it consists of two halves that don't fit together.  Either of these halves might have been expanded into a good book, but their shared presence in the same story adds up to a whole that's less than the sum of its parts.

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2024年10月20日 星期日

Still More 60s Movies 2

I'll be adding to this as I go along.



The Premise: A widow finds an unusual source of income after her husband's untimely death.

Overall: Geraldine Page is wonderfully unhinged in the lead role.  I'm not entirely sold on the premise, but it's an enjoyable movie throughout.

Fun Fact: The film's title is a reference to Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, another movie Robert Aldrich was involved with.  A third film in this "trilogy" was proposed but never made.


2. The City of the Dead (a.k.a. "Horror Hotel") (1960)

The Premise: An inexplicably trusting young woman ventures into the New England countryside looking for witches.

Overall: The fog machine was working overtime for this one.  More fog per frame than any other movie I've seen.

In The City of the Dead Christopher Lee and Co. deliver a fairly by-the-numbers horror thriller, even though Lee's character's role in the plot is interestingly ambiguous throughout.



The Premise: Yet another one of those "battle of the sexes romps," of which the 60s provided many examples.

Overall: The plot of this movie is one of the most contrived things ever.  A stunning Swedish woman arrives at a married couple's home, announces she wants to bear the married man's children, and for whatever reason his wife leaves them alone for an extended period of time.  Really, Susan Hayward, respect yourself more!

It must be admitted, however, that Julie Newmar gives the 60s equivalent of a boner-inspiring performance here, and I fully understand why subsequent generations of drag performers were so fascinated by her.  But aside from her performance this movie is, largely, an embarrassment.  I'm not saying that it's Susan Hayward's or James Mason's fault, but yeah, it hasn't aged well.

In Case You Didn't Already Know: Julie Newmar would go on to play Catwoman in the Batman TV show later in the decade.


4. Birds Do It (1966)

The Premise: Soupy Sales plays janitor in a rocket laboratory.

Overall: The one thing I can really, truly say in this movie's favor is that the actress playing the head scientist's daughter is hot.  As for the rest... well, I suppose it depends on how amenable you are to screwball comedy.

Fun Fact 1: That "hot daughter" (Beverly Adams) went on to marry noted hair stylist Vidal Sassoon.

Fun Fact 2: This was the only time Soupy Sales starred in a film.  He despised this movie, and spent the rest of his life criticizing it.

Fun Fact 3: Soupy Sales' two sons, Tony and Hunt Sales, went on to form the band Tin Machine with David Bowie.


5. Surf Party (1964)

To some extent The Beatles would kill this scene, but hey, it was fun while it lasted.

Anyone else remember a 1987 movie Back to the Beach?  That movie was predicated upon movies like this one, all part of the early to mid 60s surf craze.

The Premise: Bobby Vinton teaches three wayward girls how to surf.

Overall: Harmless fun, and one of those "time capsule films" that says a lot about the era that produced it.



The Premise: High school students stage a protest after their teacher's suspension.  His transgression?  Talking about S-E-X!

Overall: The ending isn't convincing, but up until the last five minutes it's an engaging movie.  William Shatner, by the way, plays the teacher.  The Explosive Generation was his fourth film appearance and his first starring role.


7. Riot (1969)

With both Jim Brown and Gene Hackman in the cast you know the 70s aren't far off.  Jim Brown, it should be said, more than holds his own in the presence of Gene Hackman, who'd go on to become one of the major stars of the 70s.

The Premise: Several prisoners stage a riot inside an Arizona prison.

Overall: It's a good movie, better movie than many of the other movies discussed here.

Buzz Kulik, the director, also oversaw The Explosive Generation above.  The best known of his films is probably the made-for-TV Brian's Song.



The Premise: James Bond via the Italian film industry.

Overall: The plot goes absolutely nowhere and makes almost no sense.  Most damning of all, that one evil henchmen barely brings his wicked-looking claw thing into play.


9. Dementia 13 (a.k.a. "The Haunted and the Hunted") (1963)

The Premise: Death and horror on an Irish estate.

Overall: It may surprise you to know that Francis Ford Coppola directed this one.  It was his very first movie, made under the auspices of Roger Corman.  After a brief stint with Corman at American International Pictures, he'd go on to Warner Bros., where he'd direct You're a Big Boy Now, Finian's Rainbow and The Rain People.  After The Rain People he'd move to Paramount, where he'd direct The Godfather between 1971 and 1972.

Dementia 13 is... OK.  To its credit it's very short, and it offers an interesting look at a big name very early in his career.  It was filmed for a little over $22,000, which wasn't much even in the 60s, though Coppola did do a lot with the meager resources at his disposal.

Fun Fact: A remake of this movie was released in 2017.



The Premise: Shirley MacLaine works her way through a series of wealthy husbands.

Overall: The cinematic equivalent of fluff.  It's pleasant fluff, but yeah, it's fluff.

Fun Fact: This movie was originally conceived as a vehicle for Marilyn Monroe, but she died before filming began.

Sad Fact: Actress Teri Garr, who passed away recently, appears in this for a second.


11. Goodbye Charlie (1964)

The Premise: A womanizer survives his own murder in the body of a woman.

Overall: Given the current dialogue surrounding gender and gender identity this movie has aged like wine.  Much of it seems very prescient.

It might remind modern viewers of Blake Edward's 1991 movie Switch, which was based on the same play, but where that movie's awkward this one exerts a breezy charm.

Critics weren't kind to this film.  I, however, think it's great.  In 1964 they were obviously walking a tightrope with regard to the subject matter, and in my opinion they did a masterful job.

Fun Fact: Ellen Burstyn is in this.  Goodbye Charlie was, by some accounts, her first movie role.



The Premise: Sophia Loren puts her considerable sex appeal to use as a rich woman seeking a poor husband.

Overall: Yes, it's Peter Sellers doing brownface again.  This time he plays an Indian Muslim (?) living in London.  I can't fault his acting ability, but the brownface aspect of this movie won't translate well for modern viewers.

This said, The Millionairess isn't bad.  The plot is somewhat preposterous, and one gets the feeling that the ending of the play which inspired the movie was more impactful, but when the lovers are inevitably (re)united it's truly heartwarming.


13. The Plunderers (1961)

The Premise: One outlaw helps out another in the Old West.

Overall: It ambles along pleasantly enough.  Doesn't exactly stick in the memory though.

Fun Fact: John Saxon is in this for a bit.


14. Stagecoach (1966)

The Premise: Several misfits flee a Western town for Cheyenne, Wyoming during a period of social unrest.

Overall: An excellent movie, and surprisingly gory given both the time period and the fact that it was filmed on a bigger budget.  The (extremely beautiful) Ann-Margret leads an impressive cast, and even beyond her obvious beauty this film has a lot to recommend it.


15. Guns at Batasi (1964)

The Premise: A group of British subjects find themselves cornered in colonial Africa.

Overall: Richard Attenborough chews A LOT of scenery in this one, sometimes at the expense of the other players, but on the whole it's an entertaining, nuanced look at the policy and politics at work in the British Empire.  I particularly enjoyed the exchanges between Attenborough's character and the Member of Parliament.  "Enlightened savages," "dangerous adversaries" or a competing civilization?  Even now people are making these distinctions, often without pausing to consider the prejudices at work in our perceptions of other cultures.

Fun Fact: This was Mia Farrow's second movie and first credited screen appearance.  She took over the part from Britt Ekland.  Ekland was married to Peter Sellers at the time, and his jealousy over the onscreen love affair between Ekland's character and John Leyton's character forced Ekland to fake an illness in order to exit the production.



Sounds like a horror movie but isn't.

The Premise: Two missionaries in China contend with Red Army soldiers newly arrived in their province.

Overall: Not one of William Holden's better movies.  The Catholicism vs. communism dialogue wears out its welcome, and the Red Army characters are little more than thugs intent on destruction.  To make matters worse, this whole movie was shot in England and Wales, two places that look absolutely nothing like China.

The director claimed studio interference was the source of this movie's many, many inconsistencies, but I doubt giving him full control over the final product would have made Satan Never Sleeps much better.


17. 13 West Street (1962)

The Premise: A man seeks justice -- or is it satisfaction? -- after he's assaulted by several teenagers.

Overall: 13 West Street feels more like a movie from the 50s.  It's a decent effort with regard to film noir, and Alan Ladd is good in the lead, but it flubs the ending.

Fun Fact 1: This movie was based on a novel by the name of The Tiger Among Us.  The author of that novel, Leigh Brackett, wrote an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back, elements of which are present in the finished film.

Fun Fact 2: Ted Knight is in this.  Remember him?  The bad guy from Caddyshack?


18. The Mark (1961)

Like13 West Street above another movie that feels like something from the previous decade.  This one could also be classified as film noir, and Rod Steiger appears in both films.

The Premise: An ex-convict fresh from a rather peculiar type of group therapy attempts to adjust to life on the outside.

Overall: The best written movie I've seen in a long time.  The plot is tightly constructed and holds together very well.

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"Korea: The Impossible Country" by Daniel Tudor (2012)


"Seoul Metro stations are full of advertisements showing happy multicultural families, and in particular, dutiful Southeast Asian wives who seemingly enjoy cooking Korean food and studying the Korean language for the benefit of their grateful husbands.  The aim of these poster campaigns is to increase social acceptance of such women, by portraying them as warm, somewhat subservient (and thus non-threatening), and as near Korean as possible.  In the long run, this will probably have to change..."

I've been to South Korea twice.  My first visit was in 2002, when I joined a guided tour of Seoul, the DMZ and Odaesan National Park.  My second visit was last summer, when I spent a couple days walking around Incheon with my family.

I was very unimpressed with South Korea the first time I visited.  In 2002 our super sketchy tour guides took us to some of the least interesting places and worst restaurants Seoul and nearby localities had to offer.  The weather, the food and the people were all rubbing me the wrong way, and remember being glad that the multi-day tour ended as briefly as it did.  I enjoyed Odaesan National Park, but that was, up until this year at least, my one good memory of South Korea.

2024 was a much better trip.  Last August we visited sans tour guides, checked ourselves into a homestay not far from the airport, and walked around the Unseo area, enjoying two meals before boarding our connecting flight to Taipei.  It was, aside from getting lost on our way to the homestay, a very good two days, and I left Korea thinking about returning next summer.

Hence my purchasing this book at the Incheon International Airport.  It was written by a British writer whose primary contributions to the West's understanding of South Korea consist of articles published in The Economist.  According a blurb on the back cover, he lived (or has lived) in Korea "for a number of years," where he also manages a brewing company located in Seoul.  His Wikipedia page only details his exploits up to this point, so I can only assume this information remains current.

His account of Korean history, culture, economy and related topics is what you'd expect from a book of this type.  It's written for a Western audience, it refrains from saying anything too controversial, and it's been fact-checked thoroughly.  There are some typos in the text that really shouldn't be there, but overall it seems, to me at least, a solid guide to a country that I'm not that familiar with.

From my perspective as an American who's been living in Taiwan for over 24 years now, it's unfortunate that the author overlooks Taiwan in many of his discussions of how South Korea compares to other countries and cultures across the globe.  As fellow "tigers" South Korea and Taiwan have had very similar histories, and it is often this very similarity that puts them at odds in economic terms.

All of the above said, this book has increased my resolve to revisit South Korea next summer.  I think there's more to South Korea than what meets the eye, and the less obvious aspects of this country merit further exploration.

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2024年10月6日 星期日

"Graveyard of the Pacific" by Randall Sullivan (2023)


"I struggled even as a young boy to understand how my father could be such a genuine he-man and at the same time such a bully, a bully to me and to my two younger brothers.  Those two aspects didn't fit together in my mind, and even now, so many years later, I was still trying to sort it out."

Randall Sullivan was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone for over two decades, and besides that he's written several other books.  He lives in Oregon, where the Columbia River Bar is located.

First of all though -- "National Bestseller?"  I have trouble believing that this book, as locally specific as it is, is a national bestseller.  True, I bought it in an airport bookstore in Las Vegas, but I still have trouble believing this book enjoys such widespread popularity.  It's not that I'm trying to malign Randall Sullivan's work in terms of quality, it's just that this book is very regional in nature.  I have trouble imagining it flying off the shelves in Bangor or Tempe.  It's possible that the "National Bestseller" label simply indicates that it sold best in a very specific category, but what that category might be I have no idea.

This book, by the way, doesn't even have its own Wikipedia entry.  It's hard to fathom a national bestseller published only a year ago not having a Wikipedia entry.

Anyway, to get on to the actual content of this book, Graveyard of the Pacific is centered around the Columbia River Bar, the place where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean between the states of Washington and Oregon.  The Columbia River Bar is, as the title suggests, an extremely dangerous place to pilot a boat.

At the outset of the book the author, aged 70, and his good friend Ray decide to cross the Columbia River Bar in a trimaran, a type of sailboat/kayak hybrid designed for two people.  This "crossing of the Bar" is intended to celebrate their decades-long friendship.  While detailing their crossing the author explores this friendship, the two friends' strained relationships with their fathers, the history of the Columbia River Bar, and how this history has been informed by several spectacular shipwrecks.

For me this book brought back a lot of memories.  I spent around half my childhood in Bay City, on the Oregon coast, and while there my grandmother often took me to Warrenton and Astoria to eat in one of the local cafes or purchase books.  I have many fond recollections of things that happened within sight of the Columbia River Bar, and that area will always be special to me.

Aside from triggering a sense of nostalgia, I would say that this book has a lot to recommend it, questionable bestseller status or no.  The author, his egocentricity aside, is an engaging guide to the Columbia River Bar, and I never felt bored by his account of all the love, hate, greed and sacrifice that have marked the human effort to bend a river mouth toward commercial activity.

I do think, however, that the "crossing of the Bar" which frames the author's narrative isn't big enough to tie the two other strands of this book together.  At the end of the day this crossing, no matter how ill-advised or well-executed, is just two older guys in a little boat, and I don't think the "near death experience" the author relates in this context is very convincing.  It certainly isn't convincing enough to bring the whole thing together in the way he intends.

Graveyard of the Pacific reminded me a bit of Barbarian Days, a surfing travelogue I read a while back.  Both books show a facility with the language, and both books make a less accessible subject more accessible by offering a "way in" to the subject through the author's conflicted personality.  I liked Barbarian Days a lot better, but Graveyard of the Pacific is still very entertaining.

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2024年10月1日 星期二

"The Late Great Planet Earth" by Hal Lindsey (1970)


"Almost immediately after the Antichrist declares himself to be God, God releases the dreaded second of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.  This is a figure of the unleashing of war upon the earth."

Hey, check it out, "Now Generation!"  You might think astrology is "where it's at," you might even think the devil is "cool," but let me tell you, the Rapture's on the way and you'd better be ready!

...and sure, the author might be using the Bible to prove the Bible, and he might be overlooking the fact that much of the Bible was written after the events it describes, and he might even be drawing false conclusions from extremely questionable premises, but I guarantee you that after reading this book you'll be ready for the End of Days!

(No, not the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie from the 90s.  I'm talking about the end of the world!)

Long story short, keep an eye on Israel, true believers.  Once the Israelis rebuild the Temple on the spot where the Dome of the Rock now stands, that's your signal to either bunker up or engage in some serious Bible study.  You'll see that once they reinstitute animal sacrifices in the Temple the armies of the Earth will gather against them, real Book of Revelations-type drama.

Oh, and there will be some kind of Arab-African alliance mixed up in there, and a European coalition ("union?") headed by the Antichrist.  Once they finally convene for Armageddon the missiles will really start flying, and the rest will be a rather unenjoyable bloodbath for those not already partying with the angels in heaven.  Are YOU ready for such developments?  Have YOU prepared yourself?  I pray that it is so!

Someone also, by the way, made a movie out of this book, and yes, it's as laughably pretentious as you'd expect.  It was the 70s after all, and given the spiritual seekers who inhabited that decade there was a definite audience for this sort of thing.  Orson Welles plays host for this biblical spectacle, and does so with all the gravitas he was known for.  Leonard Nimoy?  Maybe he was... busy that day?

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2024年9月25日 星期三

"Earthchild" by Sharon Webb (1981)


"This was the beginning, he thought.  The day it all began, the first day into forever.  It seemed so long ago now, that first day... and there would be no last."

Sharon Webb was a science fiction writer and nurse.  This novel, Earthchild, is the first entry in her Earth Song trilogy.  It was followed by Earth Song in 1982 and Ram Song in 1984.  She wrote a few other books, but they're all relatively difficult to find.

Earthchild concerns itself with a corporate solution to the problem of human mortality.  At an undisclosed point in the near future, a corporation releases a chemical into the atmosphere, and the result is a race of people who will grow to physical maturity and stop aging thereafter.  Those mortals untouched by this process descend into a state of relative barbarity, often lashing out against those they perceive as a threat to all that humanity stands for.

It gets off to an excellent start -- the concept is the kind of thing that Arthur C. Clarke would have written to perfection -- and then loses momentum about halfway through.  I can't tell if this is because the author was building up to the book's sequel, or if she just didn't realize this concept as fully as she could have.  The book's central premise, that immortality is the death of human creativity, is a fascinating one, but this premise isn't explored in any meaningful way.  Exacerbating this critical flaw is the fact that the antagonist's motivations are never really explained, and at the end of the book he simply vanishes from the scene without facing any kind of consequences for what he's done.

Maybe the author got to that part in the sequel.  I'll probably never know, because I'm not likely to come across Earth Song at any point in this (or any other) future.

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