#the tenants of moonbloom

[kilterstreet]

"He had never asked anything of himself – what then was there for others to find?"

-from The Tenants of Moonbloom by Edward Lewis Wallant

[beeblackburn]

Top 5 Books to Read This Year

Tagged by the excellent @xserpx​ (much appreciated!) 😘

1. The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg - SO. Funny story about this book: I first found out about it during a nonfiction sale period at my bookstore and I asked my The First Law server about nonfictions to read, and one particular member gave me this idiosyncratic recommendation that I had little idea of the magnitude of until she sold me on it on the basis of  Menocchio’s life being a microhistory of larger cultural/mental histories at work.

But the biggest draws, for me, personally? Was that she said the books excellently illuminated an entirely different time period of mindset, how alien and different it was from our current one, but with enough humanity and curiosity to retain what recognizably made them similar to us and that Menocchio was treated like he was the main character. This educated lowborn peasant not only had a working mind as a given, but that he had a fascinating belief system that led him to be declared a heretic by the Inquisition and a historian thought he deserved enough merit to write a whole book on. 

And the more I dug into the premise of this book, the more I realized this was tailor-made to be precisely my kind of shit. So many fantasy novels lack the interiority or agency of the lowborn peasantry, so a nonfiction that peeled at the layers of a lowborn man, treated his mind and beliefs as worthy of consideration and genuine theological thought... gods, it’s an amazing rec. Checking around, it seems like it’s a one-of-a-kind sort of historical text,  so I truly hope it lives up to the hype I was given.

2. Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot - The amusing irony to me is that, despite me having recced Eliot’s Middlemarch to two other people in the The First Law server we share, and gotten them invested enough to finish, and finish hard enough to say that they loved it, I haven’t cracked open a single George Eliot book (at this point, not from lack of having, I bought both the Oxford edition and the Penguin Classics Deluxe edition of Middlemarch alone).

That’s not from lack of accolades, a teacher twitter whose reading tastes I trust recced it to me as the best novel he’s ever read, and from what I heard of its themes and how it balances the why of a communication with the how being just as important, the smaller domestic touches to it, and the sheer scope of characterization it promises (I’ve got an interesting vantage point with Middlemarch, I have recced it, and thus I am told of its virtues by people I know and trust). But I don’t want to start off with Eliot’s best work. I want to start off with her shorter-form works first, hence, Scenes of Clerical Life, then her other works that I own, so I can build up to the swell of Middlemarch.

(It also doesn’t hurt that Scenes of Clerical Life focuses on religion and clergymen, and the countryside and smaller lives in the scope of greater events, considering my fantasy veers towards attending the little people more and my Croatian-inspired story deals with questions of faith as well, so three birds with one stone.)

3. The Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker - The Golem and the Jinni was a book that became more than the first foot in the door of a phase of fantasy for me that primarily consisted of domestic fantasies after Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings’ moments of slice-of-life. I checked it out from a list of more domestic/mundane fantasies list and I dearly loved the meandering, patient pace of it, how much Chava and Ahmad’s struggles were that of connection and how to deal with inhumane loneliness against the backdrop of so much humanity. That the narrative preoccupied itself with Chava and Ahmad interacting with their communities, rather than needing to be railroaded into action or a plot, was something I hope the author never gives up on, for it’s a sorely missing part of fantasy (in fact, when the book did railroad into a confrontation with an asshole, I enjoyed it less).

So the sequel’s virtues are self-evident to me, the reviews even suggested it was better than the prior book, the pace just as meandering and slow, if not slower, and the author not skipping a step in terms of focusing on the interpersonal relationships rather than action. But, now, I have different reasons for checking it out, beyond being a fan of this series: to scratch at the itch of humanity through the eyes of inhumanity, considering I’m working with a dragon character and despite their inherited knowledge and memories, still having the innocence and questions of why humanity does this or that, just like Chava and Ahmad both had in the first book. How the inhumane interact with humans has become a fascinating stretch of theme for me via writing dragons, and I’m looking forward to this book to study ways to improve my writing there.

It’s slow, it’s got non-humans treated with complexity, it’s a series of books that deals with the immigrant experience and diaspora, both of the supernatural and the Jewish nature, it interacts with questions of community and how we treat our fellow people, it’s full of slice-of-life passages, which is something I also want to depict in my fantasy, and the interpersonal relationships are first and foremost the important aspects of them. It’s very much comfortable and what I want out of my fantasy.

4. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel - same teacher twitter as the above really dug this book, and someone else I know is reading it, but if The Golem and the Jinni was a comfort read, this feels more geared towards a bracing punch of a book, especially given our current COVID-19 pandemic. I’m not going to mince words: a good chunk of world’s, especially the US, reaction to COVID-19 has been several mixtures of fatal embarrassment and part of that is the bitter realization that most people, both in charge and on the ground, don’t see responsibility towards their fellow person as an inherent quality. Have I grown more cynical through that? I was already pretty cynical, so not more so, but also because there are also plenty of people who do see connections to their fellow people as an inherent duty and condition for our humanity. Thus, why I want to read this book: survival is insufficient, because if we live for ourselves, if we are bereft of others, what are we? Oh, as the book is quoted as saying: Hell is the absence of the people you long for.

A quieter apocalypse feels more like my vibe, especially in the sense that I feel most people, in the wake of an apocalypse, wouldn’t go with the worst-case scenario that post-apocalyptic fiction has taught us about barbaric rapists, petty warlords, and thieves by gunpoint. Those are the worst case lessons, the people fiction endeavors to teach us to avoid being, the thunder and boom and villains of genre fiction. But what happens if our focus isn’t on external human terrors, but more existential questions and concerns after the mortal deaths of so many? Station Eleven seems to be a novel that seems interested in questioning how our humanity endures, how we do not die spiritually past our mortal deaths, how our memories remain resilient, how our works survive past pandemic and societal collapse.

It’s been in my library for quite a while now, and Station Eleven is one of those books that I wish to tackle outside my cozy fantasy wheelhouse. I have not read this, not because the existence of COVID-19 made it too real, but because I now want a post-apocalypse book that refuses to revel in the dark and naked nihilism of its barren genre landscape, choosing to highlight human connections and meaning past our mass-destruction.

5. Tower of Fools by Andrzej Sapkowski - So. Another anecdote: I just bought Witcher 3 a few days ago. Really, all three games. Now, granted, I haven’t been living under a rock. I’ve watched clips, scenes, and know the broad scope of the game’s plot and was interested in it, but digging deeper, what interested me was the Polish influence with the series. Sapkowski does not strike me an unintelligent writer at all, he clearly knows what he’s trying to do and subvert and comment on. Which is to say, when I say I haven’t bought a single Witcher book at all, it says something about what I’ve heard of its translation issues and Sapkowski’s feelings on his Witcher series (though I doubt he’d be much happier that I prefer to read his Hussite Trilogy first as much as I gave him money to begin with. You do you, Sapkowski).

Now, I didn’t follow his works enough to know about the Hussite Trilogy’s existence until @autoapocrypha recced it to me, but from what I’ve researched myself, it really seems like Sapkowski poured a ton of details and love and thought into this world than his Witcher world. It’s a historical fantasy world, full of religious extremism, war being utter hell, costs of violence, and supernatural creatures lurking in the corners, and thus, is perfect research fodder for my Croatian-inspired The Folk Devils of Hrvatska, which incidentally slots into similar themes and setting that the Hussite Trilogy seems to play with. That, and I really do want to get into the fuss of Sapkowski in the brass tacks and such. 

There’s an amazing amount of thematic and unique history to be studied from the Eastern European portion of the world, the infighting, the nationalism, the religious extremism and near-constant strife of war littering the land, full of colonial bastards trying to pull a game of musical chairs with the little people underfoot being stomped on with every pissing contest between rulers. It’s an idiosyncratic space of land I absolutely want to study and want even more of in the general fantasy landscape, given where Sapkowski’s interests lie.

Honorable mentions, because I couldn’t localize to top 5 books (this list was originally over ten!!!):

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune - Found family with supernatural characters? Domestic peace? All living in the same area with no clear-cut bad guy to railroad the plot? Yes, please.

Independent People by Halldór Laxness - Excellent research fodder for the interiority and struggles of the lowborn farmers and trying to carve out a living beyond serving masters with no romanticism at all.

The Tenants of Moonbloom by Edward Lewis Wallant - Another slice-of-life book that pays attentions to the connections that we share with others, especially in the same proximity of space.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - Clarke’s leaner and potentially better novel over her debut one? One that @books-and-doodles described as having a protagonist similar to Fitz? INJECT THIS INTO MY VEINS.

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang - slight research fodder (more to do with pacing and forefronting YA elements before whamming readers into the brutal stuff), but also non-European and woman-written grimdark? 👍

Tagging: @vera-dauriac, @autoapocrypha, @insecticidalfeminism, @doublehex​, @xillionart, @random-jot, @jumpydr4gon, @bloody-wonder, and @mytly4 and whoever else that is following me and wishes to do this tag (I’d like to read your posts, so please tag me! :D)

[arecomicsevengood]

More Quarantine Movies

Going to put up this log of what I’ve seen now, as some of the stuff I liked the most is leaving The Criterion Channel at the end of the month. I really don’t know if anyone gets anything out of these posts, these are mostly synopses and they’re maybe spoiler-heavy. Let me give you the gist of it now: Otto Preminger’s a really good filmmaker whose movies are really interesting, Jean Arthur’s a great actress who enlivens everything and is also in a bunch of good-to-great movies. Also, I didn’t write about it but I rewatched Death Race 2000, that movie rules, feels relevant to today’s politics, and is leaving Criterion Channel at the end of the month.

The Pawnbroker (1964) dir. Sidney Lumet

Based on novel by Edward Lewis Wallant, whose The Tenants Of Moonbloom was reprinted by NYRB Classics with a Dave Eggers intro. Also some of the earliest nudity in a mainstream American film. About the misanthropy of a holocaust survivor, living in New York City, and interacting with black people who vaguely feel like racist caricatures, in part because it’s a movie about a misanthrope told from his perspective. A ton of movies about race from this era feel dated, this feels legitimately edgy, which is a term that gets thrown around somewhat ironically now or viewed as a pejorative, like something trying to offend, this does feel like a genuine attempt to be honest and push things forward (I really was not expecting that nudity) but also doesn’t feel totally successful, definitely not particularly enjoyable.

Shockproof (1949) dir. Douglas Sirk

I haven’t seen Sirk’s later melodramas, this one intrigued me in part because the screenplay was written by Samuel Fuller, and it’s sort of a pulpy noir thing. A woman, fresh out of jail, ends up living with her parole officer who is trying to keep her on the straight and narrow and away from her criminal ex, but they end up falling in love. There’s a thing where the male lead’s younger brother talks about how the lady is beautiful that I sort of wish wasn’t in there, feels creepy to me. There’s a bit of a shift in the narrative with the third act, where the lovers end up on the run, the once-upstanding man now a criminal on account of love, but they are having the endurance of their love tested by circumstance, is one of those things where a story which felt somewhat unique over the course of its telling shifts into something more recognizable.

…And The Pursuit Of Happiness (1986) dir Louis Malle

I have watched most of Louis Malle’s feature films at this point, I believe, and had a vague curiosity about what his documentaries were like. This one, made shortly after he’d moved to the U.S. and married Candice Bergen (something that comes up in Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens, in that some prostitutes read aloud from a fashion magazine that discusses it) he made a film talking to various recent immigrants. He covers a lot of ground, covering people working as doctors, large communities living in housing projects and causing racial tension with black neighbors (who both resent the smell of the food they cook but also suspect they don’t know their rights as the property developers plan to evict everyone and have the projects demolished). By and large everyone spoke to believes in the notion of the American dream of working hard to get ahead. Malle also speaks to anti-immigration think tank people and border patrols. Nothing too surprising but a lot of ground gets covered in a short amount of time. If I didn’t learn anything I at least admired that it felt non-didactic. Anything with more of a point of view or an argument would probably be disingenuous were it to present itself as enlightening.

The Baron Of Arizona (1950) dir. Samuel Fuller

Based on a true story, although with fictionalized elements, about a dude (played by Vincent Price) who becomes a master forger to falsify land grants and claim the entire state of Arizona as his own. Not a great movie, though that’s an interesting story. I bet I could guess what elements were made up for the sake of making a movie out of it, it has this tension of being interesting and unbelievable (although unbelievable by way of rote moviemaking formula), but also the story takes place over an extended period of time and so has some of the structureless feeling of a biopic.

House On Haunted Hill (1959) dir. William Castle

I’m going to confuse this with The Haunting Of Hill House for my entire life, that’s just the way it is. This stars Vincent Price, who’s always great, doing the famous premise where a group of people meet up to spend the night at a haunted house to win money. Vincent Price has a contentious relationship with his wife, who’s openly contemptuous of him and wants his money. There’s a moment where everyone at the house party is given a gun, each in a coffin. There’s a few “twists” all sort of being of the “there was a rational, non-ghost reason for everything” although any of them individually sort of strain the limits of credulity as something that works as a hoax. Vincent Price is basically not the villain, so much as his wife is, although he’s such a ham that loves being creepy that this again strains credibility in that the conclusion of the movie plays against the style with which the previous action has been presented. An enjoyable viewing experience.

My Name Is Julia Ross (1945) dir. Joseph Lewis

This one’s about a woman, looking for work, who falls into a scheme that kidnaps her and puts her up in a mansion, where she’s kept drugged and basically is told to assume the identity of a woman who was killed. I found this one pretty nerve-wracking, as it’s pretty nightmarish, basically about psychological torture. I found this one under Criterion Channel’s Columbia Noir collection, but before these films were considered noir, they were thought of as melodramas, but it’s also sort of a horror film about being gaslighted. There’s a part where they remove a stairwell and try to trick her into falling down? What’s funny is that one of the things that sort of separates this from horror is how quickly it resolves, whereas later work would I think give the audience the satisfaction of seeing the villain be punished in some way, the ending that just goes “then everything worked out alright” ends up making the structure feel more like the whole movie’s reason for being is just to see the protagonist suffer.

God Told Me To (1976) dir. Larry Cohen

Did I write about this already? I watched that a few months ago. Pretty wild basis in seventies grit about people going crazy, committing murders, then goes to a weird/confusing place involving some sort of holy entity in human form, the police procedural aspect butting up against this strangeness which doesn’t feel entirely thought through, and is in fact sort of incoherent, makes for a movie that is, in fact, still pretty good and worth watching although a bit tedious by the end.

Zombi Child (2019) dir. Bertrand Bonello

This I guess just came out in America this year, to the extent that anything came out this year, in theaters, it coming to streaming is basically its release. The zombies in this are of the old-school voodoo sense, taken seriously as a system of belief juxtaposed against French colonialism, as a Haitian teen feels at odds with her circle of friends, flashbacks to Haiti occur. When you watch a bunch of older movies new movies just seem to be not as good. Bonello’s not a bad filmmaker though, he’s able to capture a sort of sensual aspect of particular moments and moods, just not in a way where they then coalesce into a narrative of shifting emotion.

Anatomy Of A Murder (1959) dir. Otto Preminger

This movie is close to three hours long.  It has a Law And Order procedural quality, taking up much of its second half with a courtroom drama, where Jimmy Stewart does a proto-Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer routine. He’s protecting a man accused of murdering the woman who raped his wife. The subject was surely shocking for its time. It becomes pretty clear, extremely quickly that the husband is an abusive piece of shit, but the main thrust of the narrative is still tasked with following the lawyer trying to get him off. Lee Remick, from Experiment In Terror plays the beautiful and doomed wife, who flirts with Jimmy Stewart. Some of these interactions feel weird from a modern perspective, because Stewart’s reaction is like “Yes, you’re a beautiful woman and any red-blooded American male would enjoy looking at you, but it is my duty as a lawyer to paternalistically insist you cover up!” Preminger is sort of known for pushing the envelope, and this one has a lot more talking about sperm and Lee Remick’s vagina than you’d expect. One of the things that’s meant to be a “quirky character detail” is that Jimmy Stewart is into jazz- The score, by Duke Ellington, is great, but there’s also a pretty corny cameo by Duke Ellington where Jimmy Stewart sits in with him, a second pair of hands on the piano. Still, I guess it’s better that he physically appears in the movie than there just being a scene where it implies Duke’s music is played by Jimmy Stewart, as the music is way too good to just be a lawyer’s quirky hobby. George C Scott, from Hardcore, plays the legal expert on the other side. After being pretty long, there is this sort of abrupt, (although well-foreshadowed) downbeat ending, where the jealous and abusive husband flees town to avoid paying his lawyer and to go somewhere quiet he can beat his wife to death, but said ending is played for this “you can’t win them all I guess, shame about the lower classes” quality from Stewart, who is dead broke all movie but seems like he just enjoyed being able to do work for once, even if it’s for a total shitbag. Good movie! Feels thorny and interesting.

Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) dir. Otto Preminger

This is even better. Great Saul Bass credits sequence too. A psychological thriller where the disappearance of a child gives way to the police not being able to confirm the child is real, and doubting the mother’s sanity, becoming pretty nightmarish, dreamy, and exhilarating by turns. Gets to a place of “huh, I wonder what is going on” and then when that finally resolves there’s a pretty extended sequence of silent escaping/hiding, which is, one of those things that films do really well and is super-satisfying. It plays out amidst this background filled with interesting supporting characters, who all, for the first half of the movie, feel like moving parts in this somewhat inscrutable narrative machine.

The Man With The Golden Arm (1955) dir. Otto Preminger

This one I don’t like. Stars Frank Sinatra, who I find annoying, as a recovering heroin addict who relapses again. While I normally like the sort of scenery-chewing supporting cast that shows up in Preminger things, I really didn’t Sinatra’s nerdy best friend, or his wife with Munchausen’s syndrome. While with the other Preminger movies there’s this feeling of a slow reveal of what the plot is with this one I feel like as soon as you know that Sinatra is out of rehab (which you learn pretty quickly) you can guess the movie will be about how he relapses and then tries to get sober for real.

The Human Factor (1979) dir. Otto Preminger

Preminger’s final movie, based on a Graham Greene novel, featuring Iman making her film debut. Movie is mostly about intelligence agencies seeking out the mole in their mist, with intentions to kill whoever it is once they’re certain. It stars Richard Attenborough, as the source of the leaks. Halfway through the story becomes interspersed with flashbacks about Attenborough and Iman’s romance upon meeting in Africa. Continues the habit of ending on a moment that maybe feels like it should be expanded upon or made more resonant.

Bonjour Tristesse (1958) dir. Otto Preminger

This stars Jean Seberg as a teenager being raised by a single father, David Niven, who’s kind of a cad/ladies man who’s very permissive with his daughter, who seems likely to grow up rich and spoiled and find another rich man to take care of her. Deborah Kerr plays the woman who Niven ends up falling in love for real with, and the conflict is then between this woman taking on a maternal role and a daughter who is resentful of this. Deborah Kerr is in Black Narcissus, a movie I love, and here she comes off as smart, the voice of reason. Seberg destroys her father’s relationship by taking advantage of his sort of innate desire to flirt and be liked by women, driving Kerr to commit suicide, and the whole film is then told in flashback by Jean Seberg a year later, as she flirts with boys but has a great sadness and emotional distance about her, which is both inherited and self-inflicted. I’m partly just writing these plot summaries as my way of remembering what these movies are about, but this one is nice because I get to account for complicated characters who are both pretty eminently understandable. I keep getting hung up on the fact that movies today now have a much dumber idea of what a female character is. Maybe it’s something as basic as the fact that, as people read less, it’s rarer for literary novels to be adapted? As I talk in terms of “less good roles for women nowadays,” which is a cliche, it’s obvious enough that bad roles for men follow, as everyone is only as good or interesting as who they’re playing off of.

It’s also funny to think, in this era of “comic book movies,” that very few artists can make a character come to life with body language and facial expression the way an actor can. “Literary” cartoonists like Dan Clowes or Tomine play into the mask quality drawing creates, generating inscrutability as part of their effect. Many of the biggest names in “noir” comics are removed from the melodrama elements of actor’s performance in favor of an aesthetic based on paperback covers, which makes for something far less lively. Meanwhile, Blutch is an amazing artist who would probably do a great job telling lively character studies in a genre form, but he’s way more preoccupied with these Godard-style interrogations of film’s cultural meaning.

Separate Tables (1958) dir. Delbert Mann

From the same year as Bonjour Tristesse, and also featuring David Niven and Deborah Kerr. Deborah Kerr’s good in this- while she is sort of uptight in a maternal way in Bonjour Tristesse, here she’s sort of crippled by repression her mother imposes on her. It’s a totally different character, but she remains defined by various manifestations of repressed energy; I would say she’s most known for playing a nun in Black Narcissus. She’s again opposite Niven in a sort of romantic context, though Niven’s character is meant to be a neurotic freak and he’s not really convincing in that capacity. I couldn’t really work out what the deal is with Niven’s character, he gets arrested in a theater, seemingly because he takes his dick out to show women? Or that’s how I interpreted what was being discussed, but he’s mostly defended by everyone except this lady you’re supposed to hate for how domineering and judgmental she is so maybe it’s something less bad. I honestly couldn’t figure it out because it seemed like the thing I was guessing they couldn’t talk about. This movie also features Burt Lancaster and Rita Hayworth as a couple that broke up once before and are reuniting now. This movie is pretty dull in a way I didn’t know whether to attribute to it being British or it being based on a play, as it feels extremely both.

Seance On A Wet Afternoon (1964) dir. Bryan Forbes

This one’s British too, and features the quality I recognize from British television, where the stars are not attractive, which always feels surprising. This one’s got a pretty great title, and a great premise. This woman, a professional psychic, convinces her husband to kidnap a child so she can comfort the parents and get publicity. The cinematography’s great. I got pretty nervous watching this, I think I am feeling more sensitive to movies as of late, way more willing to find things upsetting and nerve-wracking than usual. I can partly attribute this to the feeling of taking something in from a different cultural context, that leaves me unsure what to expect, but it’s also true that nowadays I sort of constantly have this feeling of “I don’t know how bad things are going to get” about the world in general, and it makes sense that I would apply that to films.

Only Angels Have Wings (1939) dir. Howard Hawks

Jean Arthur’s amazing in this - saw her the first time in The Devil And Miss Jones and then there’s this whole Criterion Channel featurette video running through what her whole deal is: This vulnerability/innocence crossed with an attempted toughness that really is very charming. Here she plays an entertainer just stopping briefly in town who gets hit on by some pilots, and develops feelings of impossible love for a man (played by Cary Grant) whose insistent toughness and refusal to show fear (despite having a dangerous job, of a pilot, that makes everyone who cares about him fall to pieces with nervousness). It’s this very universal type of entertainment, where there’s all these special effects shots of planes flying and a drama of men being men that’s nonetheless anchored by this love story, carried by the fact that Jean Arthur is very real and complex. She’s also a legit comedic actress, which I think makes her feel richer and more watchable than someone without a sense of humor would be. Rita Hayworth plays Grant’s ex, a woman who couldn’t take his daredevil ways but is now married to another pilot who has to do dangerous flights essentially to make up for an act of cowardice that got someone else killed. She’s got her own charisma obviously (and Cary Grant’s equally solid, in this sort of old-Hollywood glamor way) but Jean Arthur feels very alive in a way that carries the movie.

The Talk Of The Town (1942) dir. George Stevens

This one also stars Jean Arthur opposite Cary Grant, but it’s less interesting, partly because of a domestic setting and some stale-seeming comedy. Cary Grant plays Lionel Dilg, (great name!) who breaks out of prison and hides out in Jean Arthur’s attic, with a hobbled ankle, while a preeminent legal scholar moves in. There’s a love triangle between the three of them, and a friendship between the escapee and the scholar. Grant’s been unfairly framed for arson for political reasons by his boss for pointing out the factory where he works is a death trap. The people of the town are easily turned against this sort of leftist agitator  by a last and biased judge. Insanely enough, there’s a movie called “The Whole Town’s Talking” also starring Jean Arthur but it has no relation to this one.

The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936) dir. Stephen Roberts

Upon realizing that many of these Jean Arthur movies were leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of the month, I started taking more in. This is a murder mystery, with screwball comedy accents, and again I’d say it’s really good, although the “comedy” premise wherein a woman sort of plows through the life of a man with no real respect for personal boundaries is the sort of thing that works in a movie even though it seems totally nightmarish when looked at from a certain angle. She writes mysteries, he’s a doctor, people are getting murdered. He is played by William Powell, from The Thin Man movies, which maybe these resemble. I guess the bickering couple that solves mysteries is a trope but it’s one that I don’t think has had any currency in popular culture since Moonlighting, which was in my lifetime but before I would have had any awareness of it. (I would probably enjoy it up until the point where I got bored of the formula.) I thought this was great and would make a good double feature with L’Assassin Habite au 21.

History Is Made At Night, 1937, dir. Frank Borzage

This has Jean Arthur in it too, but the reason I became aware of it was Matt Zoller Seitz tweeting about it. Partly this is because the description on the Criterion site is so bare-bones it barely seems like anything, but it turns out this is because the plot is completely insane and has a ton of twists and to talk about them very quickly veers into spoiler territory. It is, in brief, a love story. The first totally insane in it is the handsome male lead does the “drawing a ventriloquist puppet on his hand” thing and the woman’s totally on board. An element that doesn’t spoil the plot, but does seem somewhat incongruent with the tone, is there’s a French chef character for a comic relief. It’s really good. I’m pointing out the lightest element but the story’s villain is believably sociopathic.

Secrets (1933) dir Frank Borzage

Not nearly as cool or good. While History Is Made At Night feels like a cohesive story that’s just pretty crazy, this one feels divided into acts that have nothing in common with each other. First act is romance, between a rich man’s daughter and his banker. They run away together. I’m basically unsure of when this movie takes place timewise, the rich lady is wearing massive layered gowns I know would’ve been out of fashion by 1933. The second act is a western where they make a home together and have to fight off bandits! But the action is shot in a a pretty disinterested manner. Third act, I’m pretty on edge and bored, but the banker is now the governor of California and is having an affair with another woman, and they’re at a party together, and then the ending feels epilogue style as they’re both old as hell and they have fully-grown children and they’re talking about how they’re taking their leave of the kids to discuss their secrets. Female lead is Mary Pickford in her final film role. I guess this is a remake of a silent film, which was itself based on a play. Yeah this movie sucks basically.

Bitter Moon (1992) dir. Roman Polanski

Sure, I’ll watch a sex criminal’s erotic thriller that’s way too long. Hugh Grant is a married guy on a boat who has a French dude talk about all the sex he and his wife have because he knows Hugh Grant wants to fuck his hot wife. Said wife is played by Emmanuelle Seigner, Roman Polanski’s actual wife since 1989. This is a bad movie by pretty much any metric. It kinda feels like the social function of erotic thrillers is not to be a more socially-acceptable form of pornography, but rather to be pervy enough to remind the audience why you shouldn’t talk about sex publicly and have that be your whole thing. The French, of course, misunderstand this.

The Burglar (1957) dir. Paul Wendkos

Another noir, written by David Goodis. This one is a little formulaic, in terms of what you think of crime movies as being “about.” A burglar, who learned the trade from his adopted father, works with that man’s daughter to commit heists. His gang doesn’t like her. Once the two of them are separated, a corrupt cop seeking to steal a burgled necklace for himself tries to pursue a relationship with her as a means to an end, while a woman allied with him works on the burglar. A drive to New Jersey gets stopped by cops, violence quickly escalates to make the situation more dire. Members of the gang die. Not a bad movie but by no means essential.

My Brother’s Wedding (1983) dir. Charles Burnett

Criterion Channel removed the paywall for a bunch of Black-made independent films, this is one of them, Burnett’s follow-up to Killer Of Sheep. Seemingly starring non-professional actors, it’s about the conflict a guy feels as his brother is planning to get married to a rich woman he resents, and the loyalty he feels to a guy who just got out of prison who everybody hates. The main character is a good dude who wants to help out this pretty dangerous friend the best he can. The film captures his pride and resentment.

Dial M For Murder (1954) dir. Alfred Hitchcock

A few iconic-seeming shots of Grace Kelly in the role of a Hitchcock blonde, i.e. her standing at a phone while someone looms behind her about to choke her, and later standing traumatized. Suffers a bit from clearly being based on a play, with a ton of dialogue, particularly in the second act. The first act is able to provide this very particular type of satisfaction, where someone outlines a “perfect crime” in dialogue and then we see it play out and it falls apart and happens completely differently. It’s funny the criminal gives themselves away due to mistaking one key for another, because this sort of structure really does feel like a key fitting into a lock, things perfectly designed for one another, parceled out at the right time.

[yesterdaysprint]

What's your favourite book/story?

I don’t think I could pick just one! 

My favourite authors in no order (top two favourite books from each) are:

Maritta Wolff (Whistle Stop and About Lyddy Thomas)

Norman Collins (London Belongs to Me and Love in Our Time)

Patrick Hamilton (Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky and Hangover Square)

Willa Cather (My Antonia and O Pioneers!)

F Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned and Tender is the Night)

Kurt Vonnegut (God Bless You Mr Rosewater and Breakfast of Champions)

Trollope (The Way We Live Now and the Palliser series)  

Steinbeck (The Winter of Our Discontent and East of Eden)

Zola (L'Assommoir and Nana)

Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment and The Idiot)

I also really like Peyton Place by Grace Metalious, An American Tragedy and Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, London Fields by Martin Amis, The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks, Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis, The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, The Millstone by Margaret Drabble, The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe, The Tenants of Moonbloom by Edward Lewis Wallant, The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell, Apartment in Athens by Glenway Wescott, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, The Mysteries of Paris by Eugene Sue, Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann, Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr, and everything by Nancy Mitford and Dominick Dunne. 

If I had to pick a short story, maybe A Perfect Day for Bananafish by J. D. Salinger?

I have a tattoo of Behemoth from The Master and Margarita!

[whatcharliereads-blog]

Review | The Tenants of Moonbloom by Edward Lewis Wallant

“Courage, Love, Illusion (or dream, if you will) - he who possesses all three, or two, or at least one of these things wins whatever there is to win; those who lack all three are the failures.” -The Tenants of Moonbloom (Edward Lewis Wallant)

I’m tired, my head is killing and I’m exhausted as I’ve just gotten off a long work shift. Nevertheless, I am determined to review my next book, as this is one of my all time favourites. I read this book quite recently and it immediately made its way into my top five books (the rest of which you can find here). 

The author, Edward Lewis Wallant, is new to me. The novel popped up as a NYRB (New York Review Book) classic, and sounded like a wonderful read; I wasn't wrong. Wallant began writing at age 29, and died aged 36 in 1962. The Tenants of Moonbloom was published one year after his death in 1963. To say that this novel is an undiscovered gem is an understatement - Wallant is an author of little recognition, but his works are fantastic. 

The novel centres around Norman Moonbloom, an educated man turned unemployed deadbeat. Hired by his slumlord brother as a rent collector, Moonbloom gets a first hand look at the human experience - exploring the crumbling apartment buildings each week for his rounds, Moonbloom encounters the lives of the inhabitants of the collapsing buildings including “a gay jazz musician with a sideline as a gigolo, a Holocaust survivor, and a brilliant young black writer modelled on James Baldwin”. After immersing himself in the lives of the tenants and hearing their stories of abuse and deprivation, he is drawn to the idea of enriching their lives as well as his own the only way he can - attending to each and every complaint by repairing the homes of the tenants. 

I really enjoyed this novel. The writing is sublime; monologues from characters that are so extravagant they verge on theatrical, but not so dramatised they seem unrealistic. There is a perfect contradiction between the theatricality of the tenants with the strict, humdrum personality of Moonbloom. Incessantly Moonbloom is full of excuses to remove himself from the role of a psychologist he has unwittingly fallen into, quickly removing himself from one room to the next. As the novel progresses however Moonbloom falls victim to caring for these tenants, even going as far to pay out of his own pocket to repair their homes. As Moonbloom strives to complete the work on the building, as a reader I could feel his charisma slowly changing with every repair he completes; by the end of the novel Moonbloom becomes himself just as theatrical and comic as the tenants he serves. 

The book is a captivating read, I can’t quite describe just how fantastic the characters are; their life stories and sorrows are so engaging, and so distinctive from one another, that they each own the pages of writing they come from, leaving Moonbloom feeling like more of a secondary character until the final helping of the book as he becomes just as peculiar as the rest. By far, my favourite character is Sugarman, the fantastically campy sweet salesman with monologues so extravagant and melodramatic they had me in stitches. 

The ending of the book showed brilliant closure, the final pages are some of the most wonderful I’ve ever read; writing has never filled me with such elation and optimism for life. As Moonbloom leaves the renovated building full of tenants much happier thanks when he started, certain that his employment has come to an end, he is the happiest and freest that he ever has been throughout the novel. And it’s admirable, to say the least.

★★★★★

“Outside was a wonder. The sun shone on the snow and made everything too brilliant to see. They parted, and Norman walked by himself, scabrous and weary. The air was warm, and already a dripping came from the roofs and drainpipes. There was a scent of earth.”
 -The Tenants of Moonbloom (Edward Lewis Wallant)

[nyrbclassics]

And we finish our somewhat Oscar-inspired movie week on this blog by highlighting Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker, about a Harlem pawnbroker and Holocaust survivor named Sol Nazerman, played incredibly well by Rod Steiger. It's based on the eponymous novel by Edward Lewis Wallant, who died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 36. Wallant's The Tenants of Moonbloom was published posthumously in 1963, was was reissued with a Dave Eggers introduction in 2003.