A Clash of Cultures

A History of Future Cities by Daniel Brook

This book is a history of four cities: St. Petersburg (also in its Leningrad incarnation), Shanghai, Dubai, and Mumbai (in its Bombay incarnation).

The two cities that I found to be the most interesting were St. Petersburg and Shanghai. Both cities were founded by the imposition of the Western Enlightenment and its subsequent desire for trade with other cultures, the curiosity with other cultures, and the exploitation of a native culture for its own betterment and the West's.

Peter the Great, the Russian Czar, thought that he could import the Western Enlightenment into Russia by laying the groundwork of St. Petersburg. The mix of Western Culture and Russian Culture, after he wrested the area from the Swedish crown, would lead to a High Russian Culture that would rival and overtake the Enlightenment of Western Europe. All the good would flow to Russia, because that is the way the autocrat, Peter, wanted it. But, oh the Other People and the Little People, they don't know that they must serve the Autocrat not themselves. They will go and order things the way that they want them to be, not the way that their Betters Know That They Should Be. This problem persists in the World today.

Shanghai was also founded by a Briton who wanted to trade with the Chinese Empire. Britain had manufactured goods that needed markets preferably in China. The Chinese Emperor gave the land for the barbarians to use as their trading city, but then the Emperor refused to trade because the Europeans had nothing that the Chinese wanted according to the Emperor. Except for Opium from the British Indian Empire, the Chinese were willing to take some of that good stuff. In order to obtain the silks and lacquers and porcelain and art of the Chinese, Europeans only had, by the decree of the Chinese Emperor, Opium to trade. Hence the Opium War, a shameful war by all accounts on all sides.

Whereas Peter the Great made a city for the expansion of Culture and Trade, the Chinese Emperor made Shanghai to contain and contract the meeting of Cultures. It didn't work out well for either man's goals.


No Easy Day: An Autobiography of a Navy Seal: The First Hand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden by Mark Owen

I saw Zero Dark Thirty and wondered about the accuracy of the last part of the movie, so I read this book. The movie and book pretty much follow each other in the raid.

The rest of the book is about how Mr. Owen became a Navy Seal and what his training consisted of. The rest of the movie is about the wanderings in the Torture Desert of Moral Ambiguity to find the Devil. Both parts of those stories depend upon what the reader or viewer is really interested in.


The Iron King by Maurice Druon

Philip IV the Fair was the King of France in the later part of the thirteenth century. He decided that being a Temporal King was no great challenge and he went after the Papacy too. He made up his own Pope and then went after the wealth of the Templar Knights who ran the Crusades and financed many shenanigans throughout Europe.

Philip broke the Templar Knights (they are the ones that The Maltese Falcon belonged  to) but didn't get anymore satisfaction out of it than did the Fat Man and Sam Spade. The head of the Templar Knights cursed Philip the Fair and his progeny to the thirteenth generation as he burned at the stake. And it appeared that the Curse did some Good or Bad as it was intended.

Philip the Fair died soon afterwards and his children and their children fell on hard ruling times and the Hundred Years War. The French ruling family, the Capets, died out. The Valois branch took over. The British ruling family of the Plantagenets (who were connected to the French Capets through intermarriage) fell apart and began the Wars of the Roses which gave Shakespeare the basis for his History Plays.

The book has a couple of subplots about a scheming knight and an Italian Banking House that were interesting sporadically. I usually just skimmed those parts. The royals are the interesting stinkers in this book.

Dorothy Dunnett's The Lymond Chronicles is a better written set of books about the mid-sixteenth century that gives intimate details of the history and culture and customs of Europe. It helps to know French and Latin for her books, although one can get by just fine without them. Mr. Druon doesn't have the depth of research nor gives the historical details that Miss Dunnett does, but he is a quick read.

Some Odd People

The Guilty One by Lisa Ballantyne

This book is a murder mystery that goes to trial where the truth to be discovered about the trial and whether the accused child murderer did what he is accused of is discernible about half way through the book and the trial.

The real mystery is why the child's attorney, or solicitor (this is a British mystery), is estranged from his adoptive mother and biological mother.

This is good trash reading.


That Furious Lesbian: The Story of Mercedes de Acosta by Robert A. Shanke

Mercedes de Acosta knew every one who was Any One in the early twentieth century. She was a lesbian groupie who slept with all the great lesbians of that age, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Eva le Gallienne, Laurette Taylor, Alice B. Toklas, etc.

Miss de Acosta also wrote plays for the theater of the time and screenplays for Hollywood movies.

This is a good biography. It moves fast and explains the period and its people well to anyone who has not read much about it.

And Cecil Beaton was the one who called her a furious lesbian. Really Mr. Beaton, you are one to talk.

Interviews With Artists

Interviews in the Early Twentieth Century

When I saw Midnight in Paris, the lead character was dancing with one of the American Artists in Paris in the 1920s, and he was complaining about her insistence on leading. The Leading Lady was Djuna Barnes. I was doing some reading and research about that time and those artists and I had never heard of the Lady so I added her to the syllabus.

Interviews by Djuna Barnes was an good read not only for the American personalities of the 1910-1930s, but Miss Barnes was a breezy and inventive interviewer. She might put her subject in a one act play for the interview or she might take the interview and make the subject answer any of her questions with the platitudes and cliches and turns of phrase that the subject was known for. She could be as whimsical and as playful as Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland.

Now I know where the style and form of those short interviews at the beginning of The New Yorker's On The Town come from. Miss Barnes was doing it and doing it well before The New Yorker.


Performance Art in the Early Twenty First Century

I never thought that a novel about some Performance Artists would be very interesting to me. The main theme of a Performance Artist is Herself. And Most of them are just not as fascinating as they appear to be to themselves. A variety show or book about Performance Artists is much like Vaudeville. You have to sit through some boring and strange abusive acts to get to the headliner. And the headliner just might not be to your taste.

I Am Trying to Reach You by Barbara Browning is a novel about an academic who unartfully (have you ever read some of their papers on art and their "theories" of art? Nope, and there is a good reason for that. Most of them are incomprehensible even to other academics. Hmmm, there must be some Performance Art Academic Critics who can't even recognize their own Acts or Art to Criticize. But that way lies Madness and a Grant) criticizes Performance Artists and even some of his own Academic Scholars.

If this is getting too convoluted and circumlocutory like a Hexagon Mobius Strip for you, just ignore the previous paragraph because the narrator is likable and doesn't quite understand any of the Performance Artist's Performances himself. But like a Good Academic, he keeps up the effort to find some cosmic or even some neighborly meaning thereof.

While the Narrator muddles through his Art Theories, he does live life and that is where the crux of the novel lies. The Narrator attempts gallantry and just human concern for the Old Lady in a Walker who lives down his hallway. He deals with his lover who is a continent away and learning to live with and medicate a possibly fatal illness.

He follows a You Tube Video Dancer named falserebelmoth who makes dance videos that the Narrator is sure have some sub textual meaning to them. The video dances are just like life. They are there, and we are here and there, and meaning is stuck in the background or off to the side of the video, cut off by the video frame or in the shadows. If we could just see it or get it into focus. If we could just add some more pixels and make it sharper.

I actually went on You Tube to see if there were any videos by falserebelmoth and to see if I could see them through my own eyes and not the Narrator's eyes, but Miss Browning did not go that far.

She should have.

Family Noir

I will read anything by Ross MacDonald.

He was a US/Canadian citizen by the name of Kenneth Millar who wrote the best Noir Detective stories about The Sins of the Fathers (and Families) that carried through the generations and caused Mayhem and Murder for the next generation or two.

His landscape was California of the Post WWII and the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War Times. People go to the wars and come back altered and bearing bad fruit that will disturb and molest and deform the next generation. The Beauty of California countryside will always slide into ranging and out of control fires and mudslides inland and rip tides along the coast. Beauty hides the motives of a Harsh Mistress of Nature, both natural and human.

The plots of the novels are as convoluted as are the motives and anxieties of the characters. The characters are not the most introspective or self aware people, the hero detective, Lew Archer, supplies that in "Spades". The characters are bewildered by the supposed Good Fortune of California, because that Fortune goes Bad for them because of their deals with the Devil of American Prosperity and Pursuit of Happiness.

I've just finished re-reading all the novels. And now I wish I could do it again. When I read other detective fiction, it all goes flat and stale for me. No one else has Mr. MacDonald's terse yet poetically precise turn of phrase to describe his characters and their dilemmas. No one else can bring the Horror of bad actions and motives in a Family and make them so tragic and appalling. Everyone else thinks that they just have to describe the bad acts (child molestation, abuse) in details to catch their readers. Mr. MacDonald doesn't do that, he describes the consequences and there are no rampaging and fake serial killers who kill for a spree and who are geniuses begging for some appreciation of their talents. Mr. MacDonald's characters are people who are silly and stupid and naive and unknowing. The Kill is a moment of panic and desperation or a moment of Temporary Madness and the rest of their lives are the Big Cover-up for that Sin.

Is there any detective novelist today who has this depth? I haven't been able to find one. Let me know if you have.

I want to read Good Trash Detective Novels that remind me of Greek Tragedy. I want a detective novel that is close to me, not some fantastic S&M dream of some great human hunt.

Reading List

1. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
2. Area Code 212 by Tama Janowitz

Inevitable Death

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green


As I have said before, I like to read Young Adult Fiction when I want a fast book read. Young Adult Fiction quickly establishes its characters and the plot; and keeps everything moving swiftly to the end. It is as if the Young Adult Fiction Authors had all taken an intensive fiction writing course in The Works of Ernest Hemingway or Ellen Gilchrist. Keep the language simple but effective and spell it properly (::cough Twitter::)

This novel is narrated by Hazel who is fourteen or sixteen (let us say fifteen then) and has Stage IV cancer in her lungs. Her breathing is assisted by her faithful oxygen pump and later at night by a BiPAP. But even with assistance, most of her energy is spent on actually making herself breath and feeling the effects of not being successful at that.

Still At It, But Not Bragging....

Oh yes, I am still reading but I haven't been bragging about it lately.

This must stop! I must display my reading skills.

1. Angel by Elizabeth Taylor: No not her, the other one. Amusing tale about a lady writer who knew what she wanted to write and how to live her life. Convention and conventional people be damned! I ended this tale admiring the written-about lady writer, even though she was limited and selfish and arrogant. And yes, she (the written about Lady Writer) ended as a Cat Lady, but the cats need the Ladies and the Internets, so don't criticize. I will read some more of Miss Taylor's books.
2. The Sewing Circle by Axel Madsen: Very poorly written, half the time you have no idea to whom the pronouns are referring---ha ha! But the subject matter is salacious and interesting although from my own reading into the subject and period, some of it is inaccurate. Read this one as you read The Star and The National Enquirer in the Grocery Line---

   Brad and Angelina lost their whip! How will they have the SEX that holds them BOUND TOGETHER?

   This is about the Dykes holding up the Great Wall of Hollywood sign up in the hills. A lot of Greta Garbo and Mercedes de Acosta and Marlene Dietrich and their sexual exploits in Golden Hollywood.
3. The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo: This one is about the Male Brigade who cleaned the closets of Hollywood back in the Golden Days. And this one has pretensions to Film Criticism. It is about the movies and how they treated Homosexuality in those days. It goes from hints and silk PJs in the Silent Era to the Outbreak of Gay Guys in Wife Beaters dancing in Gay Clubs in the 1980's Non-Porn Films.
4. Madame Blavatsky's Baboon by Peter Washington: Theosophy sounded interesting to me, but this is not the book for me to learn that much about it. Very dull and poorly organized. Spiritualism should be scary and fun.
5. Anatomy of Injustice by Raymond Bonner: "The Black Guy did it", per Susan Smith and most Police Investigative Units. Even though, the White Guy practically describes the murder to the Defense Lawyer, while the mentally challenged Black Guy just keeps denying it because he honestly doesn't understand Any of the Questions. This book shows why there should be No Capital Crimes. Justice is Man-Made and Administered and therefore as much a suspect as any defendant can be. Recommended. And Justice isn't impersonal---it is Personal as shown by the efforts on the part of the prosecution to impeach a competent woman defense lawyer.
6. V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton: Kinsy Millhone doesn't narrate much of this one. Miss Grafton mixes up narrators for the nineteenth letter and investigation in this series. Good but not one of her best. And the ending is Out of Character for one of the characters. Not Millhone, Miss Grafton always knows and allows her PI her own self.