Genêt: London before World War II

London Was Yesterday
by Janet Flanner

This book is a collection of essays, both short and long, that Janet Flanner wrote for The New Yorker magazine in the 1934-1939 which was the time of Edward VIII's abdication "for the woman that I love" and the run up to World War II.

When Miss Flanner's editor, Harold Ross, gave her the job of reporting on France and England in the late 1920s, he told her that he wanted to know what the natives were thinking about themselves and their cultures and their nations, not what she thought of them. And Miss Flanner produced that kind of viewpoint for the U.S. readers.

Miss Flanner reported from Europe for The New Yorker from the late 1920s to her retirement in the early 1970s.

Her essays range from three sentence paragraphs on the doings and dancings of Josephine Baker or the funeral of Anatole France (is he even read today in France?) to several long portraits of Wallis Simpson (that beloved woman) and the new Queen, Elizabeth the wife of George VI who was the father of the present Elizabeth II, after the abdication of Edward VIII. I know that this sentence reads like the boring genealogy of the Bible.

Miss Flanner was a writer with a dry and wry turn of phrase and wit and a detached (easy for her, she was a Yank), discerning view of her subjects and their concerns. She could also do slapstick:

When Lotte Lehmann, as the Marschallin, had a chill and walked out on the opening act of the first Rosenkavalier performance, a leg came off fat Baron Ochs' sofa. Furthermore, an anachronistic wirehaired fox terrier stole the eighteenth-century levee scene, and the lady spy's hoopskirt flew waist-high after the Presentation of the Rose episode.

It is the Marx Brothers all in one.

Jerome Robbins and Men Who Explain

Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins
by Amanda Vaill

I knew that George Balachine was a genius and that he was the Ballet Master and Maker of the New York City Ballet. I also knew that Jerome Robbins, a Broadway kind of dancer and choreographer, was considered to be the "other" Ballet Master of NYCB. I thought that Mr. Robbins was fortunate to be so well considered, as did he, I found out in this biography. But I did not realize just how talented (I have been cruising PBS and U Tube for videos) Mr. Robbins was, just not on Broadway, but in the ballet.

Mr. Robbins not only choreographed but developed (producing, writing, the music, the book, etc.) so many iconic and classic Broadway musicals of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, with West Side Story, Gypsy, and Fiddler on the Roof as just the most familiar to most musical comedy connoisseurs and high school theater departments.

There was a little too much of the Russian shtetl (the background of Mr. Robbins' parents early in the book and his own discovery of heritage late in life and look, Fiddler on the Roof look!) in some parts of this book. But the American talented boy makes good, very good in America! parts and the Broadway history and the NYCB were the chapters that interested me the most.

Men Explain Things to Me
by Rebecca Solnitz

All about Mansplaining in the Wide World of Boys.

Yeah, I get it. I got it from the Supreme Court just recently. There are things that Women just don't understand and they have to be taught by Wise Old Ugly Men. Ugh!

Traveling...

Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elisabeth Bisland's History Making Race Around the World by Matthew Goodman


Jules Verne was a very popular Science Fiction author of the late nineteenth century (before it was called "Science Fiction") who wrote a book, Around the World in Eighty Days, about a stodgy upper class Englishman who mixed too much gin and Napoleon brandy one night at his Men's Club in Kensington or Mayfair or where ever they have those sort of clubs, and got the idea to circumnavigate the globe ("This rounded and filled in and three dimensional 'O'", as Shakespeare would have called it if he were dealing in the three dimensions and time and space and had forgotten the beats in blank verse) in eighty days.

The Englishmen at his club were all betting men and took him up on it to the tune of half of his not inconsiderable fortune (you think that they let any one into those English Men's Clubs in Trafalgar Square?). And the Englishman took off to see the world. He was aided by the fact that the British Empire stretched across the globe, and in his travels, he could pretty much avoid the worldly riffraff who did not speak English or did not adhere to the punctuality of the British railways or steamships. The British pound was also a great help in his travels, it was a good as gold.

So much for Napoleon and his brandy, the British made an Empire that he could only dream of creating.

Nellie Bly was an intrepid girl reporter (she was 25, but "girl" makes her spunkier than "woman" and every one likes a Spunky Girl), who in her career at The New York World newspaper in the 1890's went undercover at the Woman's Insane Asylum to discover and report on its abuses and who joined the women's sweatshop brigade to report on the abuses suffered by the working girls of New York City---the "legitimate" working girls not the prostitutes. She never got that far in her undercover adventures as to take up prostitution.

Miss Bly liked to stand up for the working women and men and report on their lives. She didn't care about the New York City Robber Baron clans who ruled the papers with their money and their antics.

Miss Bly read Mr. Verne's book about traveling the world and spent several days perusing steamship schedules and railway schedules before she went into her editor's office and pitched the story that she, a girl with pluck and spirit, could beat the record of circumnavigating the world in eighty days, all by herself. Sales of the newspaper were dropping off and the editor accepted her story pitch.

Miss Bly went to her tailor and had him make her a traveling suit that would stand up under travel for under eighty days and packed her carpet bag, she was traveling light, no trunks or suitcases, and set off from New Jersey on a steamship across the Atlantic to some fanfare. The World made some money and increased its subscriptions on publicizing her trip around the world. Where in the World was Nellie Bly? (Carmen San Diego, you are such a poseur!)

But meantime unknown to our intrepid girl traveller and reporter, Nellie Bly, another "lady" traveller, Elisabeth Bisland, an editor for Cosmopolitan magazine was going to make the same world trip starting in NYC and going in the opposite direction, across the United States first.

The "Filly" Horse Race was ON! Who would win? Bets were taken and The World organized a sweepstakes, offering a all expense paid visit to Europe for the person who guessed the correct time that Miss Bly would alight from her train in New Jersey after her round-the-world trip. Of course, the arrival time was narrowed considerably by noting the arrival of the cross country train from its schedule.

This book follows the travels and adventures of our Traveling Ladies.

If I had been required as a traveling companion for either of the Ladies, I would have travelled with Miss Bisland. She actually did some sight-seeing and enjoyed her visits to other countries. Miss Bly was the proto-typical American traveller, she had to be somewhere and she had to be there in a hurry. Miss Bly was more worried about winning the race and making the trip in under eighty days to actually enjoy her travels or to notice much of anything around her.

Miss Bly was also an American chauvinist and nationalist. She brought American dollars and British pounds with her on her trip and was annoyed that no one wanted the dollars, the British pound was the desired world currency. Miss Bly also found that the British flag flying everywhere that she went was also an irritating sight. Ah Miss Bly, you were about fifty years too early on your world travels.

But then, Miss Bly did get to meet and visit with Mr. Verne on her world trip.

More Ghost Stories

The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore

The first line in the book blurb on the Barnes & Noble site caught my eye and my sense of the ridiculous:

"Bestselling novelist Helen Dunmore’s historical novels have earned her comparisons in the press to Tolstoy and Emily Bronte."

What? Who would make such outrageously unbelievable comparisons but a book review comedienne? That is comparing apples to raisins or a fly to a saber toothed Big Cat.

Miss Dunmore has written an enjoyable (and a quick read---take that Tolstoy) ghost story about the Battle of Britain and the dreary and rationed aftermath of World War II for the British people. The main characters' lives are arranged and circumscribed by death and deprived life and love. Everyone wants more but no one can have it. It just isn't there anymore. The war wore it out.

The book is about a 1950's doctor's wife in one of those old flats that has a bathtub in the kitchen and dirt in the cracks of 1800's woodwork that not even an archaeologist can dig out for research into climatic changes of the Industrial Revolution. When her husband the doctor is out on a late night call, the wife answers a tapping on the dirty window pane of the main entrance door to find a WWII pilot asking for admittance. The wife is none too circumspect and all too bored with her life and waves the pilot in for a sexy landing. And from there, we explore sex with a ghost or an incubus.

One of the advantages of sex with an incubus is that the living don't pay attention to it. So the wife doesn't really have to hide her affair from anyone (her husband) except the old hag who owns and rents out her flat. The Old Hag, as with most Old hags, knows more than anyone else about the pilot incubus. The Old Hag wants her Youth and her Love back, but she doesn't have the ration credits to obtain it.

Escape From Affluence and Poverty and Sentiment

Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden is the story of Shin Dong-hyuk who was born and reared in a North Korean Internment Camp. His father and mother were inmates who were favored by the guards and allowed to breed. They produced two sons, Shin and an older brother, in their long and dreary and cruel incarceration. Both sons managed to escape the camp, but in completely different ways.

Shin long blamed his mother and father for making him to be born and live in such hellish conditions. Shin ratted out his mother and older brother to the authorities on their escape plans for extra food and served six months in dark cell isolation and being tortured before being brought out to the daylight to watch the camp authorities hang his mother and shoot his brother before his eyes. Shin and his father got front row seats for that piece of Camp Theater.

After the execution of his mother and brother, Shin was placed in a cell with an older man who told him wondrous stories of the Food outside of the camp. Shin, who was overworked, undereducated, malnourished, and fresh from six months of torture which included beatings and being hung to roast over a fire, and the deaths of this mother and brother which were caused by Shin's informing on them, conceived of escaping from the camp to get him some of that food.

Forget Freedom, Shin just wanted to be able to eat to satiation. By the way, the torture was about the same as living in the camp, beatings and overwork and isolation from the children around him and little or no food.

Later Shin left his cell with his Gourmand Inmate and made the acquaintance of a newly arrived North Korean who made the mistake of going back to North Korea after a few years in the relative benign freedom of China. Shin and the new inmate conceived a plan to escape the camp while cutting wood near the camp's electrical fences. They carried out the plan, but only Shin made it out. He used the body of his escape buddy to neutralize the Electrical Fence and crawled over his dead companion to Food.

Although with his education (they only taught rudimentary reading and writing skills to the children in-between work details and beatings), Shin had no idea where China was or what it was, Shin made it to China and spent three years in the country learning a few things about the world and eating Food. Later South Korea paid him to come to their country and after a de-briefing (tattling is one way to make it in the World), South Korea paid to maintain him there.

But the years of deprivation in Mind and Body, left Shin with long term Mental Illness Issues. He has never really adjusted to life outside the camp. Shin now lives most of the time in California where he lectures on his experiences and life in the North Korean Camp. He travels frequently to South Korea for visits.

During his torture session after ratting out his mother and brother, Shin was shown some papers that he was able to read. He found out that his father was in the camp because two of his brothers escaped to South Korea during the Korean War. The remaining family was sent to North Korean Camps because they were considered contaminated by the two brothers' escape. Somebody has to feed and work for the rest of North Korea and the Kim Jongs.

By the way, Shin didn't even know who the Kim Jongs were until he escaped. Education was very shallow even with propaganda for the Camp Kids.

Shin is one of three people who escaped from North Korean Camps. The interns of the Camps are so cowed and overworked and starved that most of them don't even attempt to run. And most who make the attempt end up like Shin's mother and brother.

Remember, it ain't Freedom that motivates. It is FOOD.



Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead

This book was recommended by Salon.

I got about halfway through it, but I didn't find any of the characters interesting. They were all annoying in their privilege. And there was this Middle Aged Man who was hitting on one of his daughter's Bridesmaids. The Bridesmaid wanted it too. But I didn't want to read about it.

I see the recommendation was by a middle aged man. Well, that explains a lot.


Cascade by Maryanne O'Hara

This book was another recommendation.

It's about a woman artist of the thirties who makes all the wrong decisions (love and art) but comes out right in the end. Her father makes what appear to be the right decisions, but they go haywire.

The best woman artist of the thirties character was in The Big Clock, a classic noir book and film.

I guess that I am just not that sentimental.

Reading List

1. A Century of Dolls: Treasures From the Golden Age of Doll Making; Photographs by Tome Kelley; Text by Pamela Sherer
2. Forks over Knives: The Plant-Based Way to Health by T. Colin Campbell and Caldwell B. Esselstyn
3. 100 Dresses: The Costume Institute The Metropolitan Museum of Art
4. Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession, And How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image by Toby Lester

Historical Murder

The Maul and the Pear Tree by P.D. James and T. A. Critchley

In 1811 before the constitution of the British Police Force, two mass murders took place along Ratcliffe Highway in the East End of London along the trading docks of the commercial fleets.

In one murder, a merchant who sold to the sailors from the international fleets, his wife, his infant son, and his teen aged servant were brutally murdered after midnight. The murders weapons were a maul (pictured)

and some sharp knives (unknown).

A week or so after these murders, another set of murders (using the same weapons), were done at a pub a few blocks down a street perpendicular to Ratcliffe Highway called The King's Arms. The proprietor and his wife and a female servant were killed in the same manner as the merchant and his family.

The murders incited the Public imagination and the hunt for the Muderer or Murderers became a Public Cause. A man was eventually arrested on a weak probable cause, but he committed suicide in his goal cell before he could be tried or convicted or released on insufficient evidence. The authors speculate on their favorite suspect(s) for the murders.

I enjoy P.D. James' mystery novels but I did not find this Real World Crime book very interesting.

The Pear Tree was where the Maul hung out before it took up its murdering ways.

Completed Reading List

1. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
2. Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English by John McWhorter