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Finding My Place by Traci L. Jones

Oct4

I graduated high school in 1975, the year in which this story takes place. So I loved all the cultural references to TV shows like Barney Miller and Sanford and Son, to songs like Monster Mash and Stairway to Heaven, and to political and social events and entities like the Black Panthers and maxi skirts and hippie communes. But the characters themselves eventually felt flat and unconvincing in spite of all the time period references and slang-sprinkled dialog.

Tiphanie Jayne Baker is the one who’s “finding her place” in a nearly all-white high school in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado. Her parents have made it in the business world–dad’s a banker and mom’s a real estate broker–so they are moving into the house to match the income, out of the predominantly black part of town and into the ritzy white suburbs. Tiphanie has to transfer to a new high school where there’s only one other black student, a boy named Bradley. At first, no one even speaks to Tiphanie or acknowledges her presence, but that situation changes as she makes friends with social outcast, Jackie Sue Webster, and then eventually others in the school begin to notice that Tiphanie is a real person and not just the token black girl.

Unfortunately, it’s at the point that Tiphanie is finally beginning to feel somewhat accepted by the kids at school, except for a couple of garden variety racist idiots, that the story of the friendship between Tiphanie and Jackie Sue takes a turn for the oversimplified and stereotypical. Stop here if you’re not in the mood for spoilers. Jackie Sue’s mom is a former beauty queen, unwed mother, dumb blonde, now alcoholic and abusive mess. Could one possibly impose any more poor white trash stereotypes onto one character? Oh, yeah, Jackie Sue and her mom live in a trailer park, of course.

At the beginning of the story Jackie Sue with her impressive vocabulary and her observational skills was an interesting character. Then she somehow turned into a cliche. Tiphanie, although she’s smart and witty, hovers on the edge of stereotype with her parents lecturing her about upholding the good image of the Afro-American race and her friends accusing her of becoming too white, an Oreo. But whereas Tiphanie feels almost real, and her parents kind of snooty but also believable, Jackie Sue and especially her mom are just a plot device for Tiphanie to learn from and for the reader to get the message that some white people have poverty-stricken, dysfunctional lives that are worse than the lives of upwardly mobile blacks.

Read for a taste of the seventies, if you want one, but not for the realistic characterization.

Other views:
The HappyNappyBookseller: “I really enjoyed Finding My Place. It was a quick, fun and entertaining read. Jones knows how to write a good story and great dialogue.”

The Fourth Musketeer: “In this novel, Traci Jones examines serious issues of prejudice with a terrific sense of humor–I laughed out loud at numerous places in the novel. She explores overt prejudice against blacks . . . but also more subtle types of prejudice.”

Bookish Blather: “As her friendship with Jackie Sue grows, Tiphanie finds herself wrestling with her values, and the values of her family. I loved reading about Tiphanie. She’s smart, funny and witty, and a compassionate person.”

And, again, I am in the minority. Try it if you’re interested and see what you think.

Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm

Sep24

Readalikes: Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, Soup by Robert Newton Peck, The Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald, Flush by Carl Hiaassen.

Related Movies: The Goonies, Little Rascals, Annie, (NOT Shirley Temple).

Song: Mississippi Squirrel Revival

Key West, Florida, June, 1935.

Take one eleven year girl named Turtle with eyes as “gray as soot” who sees things exactly as they are. Plunk her down in Key West, Florida with her Aunt Minnie the Diaper Gang and a bunch of Conch (adj. native or resident of the Florida Keys) relatives and Conch cousins with nicknames like Pork Chop and Too Bad and Slow Poke. Leave her starry-eyed mama back in New Jersey keeping house for Mrs. Budnick who doesn’t like children and dreaming of being married to Archie, the encyclopedia salesman. Add in an ornery grandmother that Turtle didn’t know she had and a cat named Smokey and a dog named Termite.

All of that put together by author Jennifer L. Holm makes a story that reminded me of the above movies and and books and song but at the same time had its own feel and flavor. Turtle is a great little anti-Pollyanna who hates Shirley Temple and knows that “kids are rotten,” especially boys. The Diaper Gang is the Conch version of Our Gang with a wagon for babysitting bad babies and a secret formula for curing diaper rash. And if you’re a fan of the movie The Goonies, you should enjoy Turtle in Paradise, and vice-versa.

I leave you with a recipe from the book that gives you yet another comparative flavor and indication of the appeal of this story:

“After we finish swimming, we have a cut-up. A cut-up is something these Conch kids do every chance they get. Each kid brings whatever they can find lying around or hanging on a tree–sugar apple, banana, mango, pineapple, alligator pear, guava, cooed potatoes, and even raw onions. They cut it all up and season it with Old Sour which is made from key lime juice, salt and hot peppers. Then they pass it around with a fork, and everyone takes a bite. It’s the strangest fruit salad I’ve ever had, but it’s tasty.”

Diamond Ruby by Joseph Wallace

Sep6

I am not sure what made me pick up this book from the library. I can’t find a review in the Saturday Reviews, and I don’t have the book on my TBR list. I am not a baseball fan. I had never heard of author Joseph Wallace, although he’s published several nonfiction books mostly on baseball history. Diamond Ruby is his first novel.

However, even though I’m not a baseball fan, I do like reading well-written books about baseball, especially fiction (see Fascination #23). So, I either read about this book somewhere and thought it sounded interesting, or I saw it on the New Fiction shelf at the library and thought it was worth a try. Either way I’m glad I found and got to read about Diamond Ruby.

In 1923 seventeen year old Ruby Thomas lives in Brooklyn. She has become responsible for the care and upbringing of her two nieces, ten year old Amanda and six year old Allie, since their mother is dead and their father is AWOL. Fortunately for Ruby and the girls, Ruby does have one freakish ability that she can parlay into cash: Ruby can throw a baseball faster and better than most men. In fact she’s just about as fast and accurate as the great Walter Johnson, maybe better.

As the story continues, Ruby’s life and livelihood become enmeshed in the politics of NYC, the enforcement of Prohibition, and the world of professional baseball. She becomes friends with baseball star Babe Ruth and heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey. She draws the enmity and disdain of the Ku Klux Klan and of baseball’s all-powerful commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis. She finds out that baseball, like many sports, has a dark side, and she finds herself a target for opportunists, gamblers, and gangsters who see her only as “a piece of meat” ripe for exploitation.

Such a good book. Diamond Ruby is a strong, courageous young lady with a talent that to her is physical aberration. Ruby has unusually long arms. In fact, the kids around where she lives growing up call her “Monkey GIrl.” Ruby figures her freakishly long arms are in great part responsible for pitching abilities, and she doesn’t know whether to hide her deformity as much as possible or to be thankful that it enables her to feed herself and her nieces. So part of the book is about self-acceptance and gratitude, themes that resonate with anyone but especially with young adults.

This book would be a perfect crossover book for adults and young adults, and it could appeal to lots of different subgroups of readers: those who read sports stories, or historical fiction, or feminist lit, or crime and suspense. It incorporates history and historical events such as the 1918 influenza epidemic, the opening of Coney Island, the death of President Warren Harding, Prohibition, the Yankees’ win in the 1923 World Series, and a heavyweight boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Luis Firpo. But Wallace never loses sight of the story to over-emphasize either sports or history. Diamond Ruby is a rollicking good story about an engaging character who wins the reader’s sympathies until we’re rooting for her both on and off the baseball diamond.

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

Aug17

Pearl and May Chin are sisters, growing up in Shanghai, 1937. The two young ladies are also Beautiful Girls, a phrase that carries a specific denotation in the modern, cosmopolitan culture of Westernized Shanghai. Pearl and May are models whose portraits sell everything from cigarettes to soap. The girls are living a fast, sophisticated, and carefree life, when suddenly everything changes. The girls’ father owes money to the mob, and in order to pay them he arranges a complicated deal that involves arranged marriages for his daughters to two Chinese boys from San Francisco that they’ve never met. And at the same time the Japanese army is sweeping over northern China, headed for Shanghai. Chiang Kai Shek and his Chinese nationalists are opposing the Japanese, and the two forces meet on the streets of Shanghai.

This first part of the book was illustrative of fact that at the same time that huge historical events are taking place, individuals are playing out their own dramas. May and Pearl hardly notice the advance of the Japanese army at first; they are too caught up in their own battle with their father. Then, they realize that their American husbands may be their only ticket to escape the horrors of war and the Japanese occupation of Shanghai and surrounding areas.

Most of the rest of the story deals with May and Pearl and their relationship as sisters and their adjustment to living in a new place and a new culture. The Chinese are not particularly welcome in pre-WW2 San Francisco. There is much bigotry to endure or overcome, and many decisions must be made about how to handle encounters with the U.S. government and with non-Chinese neighbors and citizens. But the center of the story always comes back to the relationship between May and Pearl. Are they rivals or best friends? Or both? How can the two sisters see each other’s faults and shortcomings so clearly and still remain the central source of love and support for one another?

The book made me think not so much of my own sister, although we are good friends, as it did of my children and their relationships. Sometimes they exhibit the same jealousies and misunderstandings that May and Pearl have, but at the same time I see them being fiercely protective and defensive of one another. I do believe that some of my children are each other’s best friends, and that makes me happy, even when it involves a closeness that can see and exploit the other’s weaknesses. The sister/sister relationship in particular is fraught with peril, but also can be rewarding and full of joy. On whom can you depend if not your sister?

Shanghai Girls was a moving look at a pair of Chinese sisters and their perilous journey to America and also to true sisterhood. I enjoyed the trip.

What some other bloggers thought about Shanghai Girls:

Dawn at She Is Too Fond of Books: “The fictional Pearl and May, like many actual Chinese in America during this period, endured. Shanghai Girls is a work of historical fiction that both entertains and teaches.”

A Book a Week: “The sisters in Shanghai Girls have a relationship that is clichéd and predictable. The dialogue is almost painfully banal. Yet the settings (1930’s Shanghai, 1940’s and ‘50’s Los Angeles) are great, very evocative and filled with detail.”

Darlene at Peeking Between the Pages: “I have to say that Shanghai Girls really ends in the middle of nowhere. I was shocked when I got to the last page as I still expected more story but that leads me to believe there will be a sequel and that I’m looking forward to.”

Kailana/Kelly at The Written Wordhas a joint review with Marg of The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader. Good discussion there, and their review confirms that there is supposed to be a sequel.

Unleavened Bread by Robert Grant

Jul30

According to this list of bestselling books of the first decade of the twentieth century, Unleavened Bread by Robert Grant was one of the bestselling books of 1900. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, also published in 1900, was not a best seller. Still, the books have much in common. Unleavened Bread is “the story of a woman who abandons her moral standards in her search for prestige and dominance.” Sister Carrie is the story of a girl who abandons her moral standards in her search for money and a life of ease. I suppose Sister Carrie is the darker of the two novels, but both stories dealt with the pressures of getting and maintaining one’s societal status, and both stories implied that money, ease, and acceptance into high society were common, if unworthy, goals for many young women coming of age around the turn of the century.

I don’t think the “getting into society” goal is quite so common or tempting nowadays. But wealth and power and luxury are all still quite alluring. The ending of Unleavened Bread was quite unsatisfactory. Our heroine, or anti-heroine, Selma, connives her way from poverty and obscurity to power and fame, and at the end she enjoys the beatific vision of her husband as he makes his acceptance speech after being elected to the U.S. senate.

Selma heard the words of this peroration with a sense of ecstasy. She felt that he was speaking for them both, and that he was expressing the yearning intention of her soul to attempt and perform great things. She stood gazing straight before her with her far away, seraph look, as though she were penetrating the future even into Paradise.

The End. Oh, by the way, the senator sold his vote and cheated, with his wife’s encouragement, to get the office. But, all’s well that ends well–or not.

A couple of other quotes from the novel:

“A seven mile drive is apt to promote or kill the germs of intimacy.” That’s a drive in a horse drawn carriage or wagon. I would say the same of a five day road trip through West Texas.

“He had chosen as a philosophy of life the smart paradox, which he enjoyed uttering, that he spent what he needed first and supplied the means later; and the the same time he let it be understood that the system worked wonderfully.”
I doubt that system would work for long for anyone who wasn’t already supplied with at least some of the “means.”

Unleavened Bread reminded me of Sister Carrie, of Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, and of Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. It’s about the thirst for power and popularity, about the Midwest rubes meeting the Eastern establishment, and about the slow but steady dissolution of a woman’s ethical standards in her quest to become rich and fashionable.

You can read Unleavened Bread online at Project Gutenberg.

In Which I Am Born

Jul28

In 1957, the year I was born, Ed Sullivan had Elvis on his show for the third time, showed him only from the waist up, and said: “This is a real decent, fine boy. We’ve never had a pleasanter experience on our show with a big name than we’ve had with you. You’re thoroughly all right.”

Published in 1957:
The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak.
On the Beach by Nevil Shute.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
If Death Ever Slept by Rex Stout.
Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot

Movies released in 1957:
Loving You with Elvis Presley.
Jailhouse Rock with Elvis Presley.
The Bridge on the River Kwai with Alec Guinness, which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

On the actual day of my birth an earthquake shook Mexico City and Acapulco. But I doubt if my mom noticed it way out in West Texas.

Also born on July 28th (not 1957): Beatrix Potter, Gerard Manley Hopkins

Last year I wrote a list of lists and a bit of a meditation on the number 52. 52 is an interesting number with lots of associations. It’s a good number for lists, and I used it this year a few times to confine and order my thoughts in certain areas:

52 Ways to Celebrate Independence Day
52 Things That Fascinate Me
Summer Reading: 52 Picks for the Hols

I have several other lists of 52 in the works. I think I’ll stick with 52 (and 12) for lists; it just feels right.

53 is more solitary. It’s prime. In fact, it’s an Eisenstein prime. Whatever that means. And 53 is a self number. 53 is obviously not a number for links and lists and affiliations and organization. 53 is independent and somewhat isolated. It’s unique.

For this year, I’ll enjoy being 53, somewhat solitary, odd, and eccentric. Perhaps I’ll even be reclusive at times, as much as one can be reclusive in a family of ten people. I enjoy alone and different and distinctive and slightly idiosyncratic. 53 is the number of countries in Africa, so I’ll continue to work on my African reading project. But 53 isn’t the number for much else. It stands alone.

But at the same time, I still get to be 52. I still get to make lists and connections and relationships. Life, like numbers, has a rhythm. Pull back and enjoy your individual times of 53-ness, and then be 52 or 12 or whatever age the Lord has given you to be and fill the year with people and books and written words and encouragement and the messiness and joy of relationships.

That’s how I plan to celebrate this next year of becoming what God has for me.

And I might memorize Isaiah 53, a very 53-ish passage of scripture:

1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.

8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
And who can speak of his descendants?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was stricken.

9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

11 After the suffering of his soul,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.

12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

Books About Teddy

Jul24

Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough.

River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard.

Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris.

Theodore Roosevelt is one of my fascinations. I read McCullough’s Mornings on Horseback back in March, but I never got around to reviewing it. It was a lovely narrative biography of the young Teddy Roosevelt and a good attempt to bring to light some of the influences and experiences in his childhood and youth that made Teddy Roosevelt the man he became. However, the book stops rather abruptly just as young Theodore is on the brink of his national political career. I was primed and eager for more “Teedy” after reading Mornings.

A few Teddy-isms:

“For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.”

“There are two things that I want you to make up your minds to: first, that you are going to have a good time as long as you live – I have no use for the sour-faced man – and next, that you are going to do something worthwhile, that you are going to work hard and do the things you set out to do.”

“Don’t hit at all if you can help it; don’t hit a man if you can possibly avoid it; but if you do hit him, put him to sleep.”

“A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.”

“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

“I can be President of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both.” Teddy’s response to a request to better control the behavior of his eldest daughter, Alice Roosevelt.

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

“I don’t think any President ever enjoyed himself more than I did. Moreover, I don’t think any ex-President ever enjoyed himself more.”

“If I’m to go, it’s all right. You see that the others don’t stop for me . . . I’ve the shortest span of life ahead of any in the party. If anyone is to die here, I must be the one.”

That last statement was made to a member of Roosevelt’s expedition through the Amazon when Roosevelt was so seriously ill with fever and infection that he was not expected to survive to complete the journey of exploration. On this expedition Theodore Roosevelt was 55 years old, and until his leg became infected he could keep up with or outlast any man in the group.

Theodore Roosevelt became president at forty-two, when William McKinley was assassinated. Although he wasn’t the youngest man ever elected president (that was Kennedy, age 43), Teddy was the youngest to become president. When TR’s second term was over, he was still only fifty years old, making him the youngest ex-president, too.

T.R., b. 1858, is my favorite of all the presidents. I don’t say he was the best or the wisest or the one I would most agree with politically, but he would definitely be the most interesting dinner guest of all the presidents. He was a talented politician and statesman, but he was also real and straightforward and ingenuous. That’s an amazing combination.

What people said about Teddy Roosevelt:

“Look out for Theodore. He’s not strong, but he’s all grit. He’ll kill himself before he’ll even say he’s tired.” ~A doctor who knew young Teddy Roosevelt.

“Now look–that d— cowboy is President of the United States!” ~Senator Mark Hanna after hearing of McKinley’s assassination.”

“You must always remember that the President (TR) is about six.” ~Cecil Spring RIce

“One subject I do know, and ought to know, is the birds. It has been one of the main studies of a long life He (TR) knew the subject as well as I did, while he knew with the same thoroughness scores of other subjects of which I am entirely ignorant.” ~Naturalist John Burroughs.

“Mr. Roosevelt is the Tom Sawyer of the political world of the twentieth century; always showing off; always hunting for a chance to show off; in his frenzied imagination the Great Republic is a vast Barnum circus with him for a clown and the whole world for audience; he would go to Halifax for half a chance to show off and he would go to hell for a whole one.” ~Mark Twain

“And talk! I never saw a man who talked so much. He would talk all the time he was in swimming, all of the time during meals, traveling in the canoe and at night around the camp fire. He talked endlessly and on all conceivable subjects.” ~Brazilian Colonel Candido Rondon who led with TR an expedition down the previously unexplored River of Doubt in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.

“The truth is, he believes in war and wishes to be a Napoleon and to die on the battle field. He has the spirit of the old berserkers.” ~William Howard Taft.

Teddy Roosevelt “read so rapidly that he had to plan very carefully in order to have enough books to last him through a trip.” ~Roosevelt’s son, Kermit.

“Death had to take him in his sleep, for if he was awake there’d have been a fight.” ~Thomas R. Marshall, Vice-president of the U.S.

“Never before has it been so hard for me to accept the death of any man as it has been for me to accept the death of Theodore Roosevelt. A pall seems to settle upon the very sky. The world is bleaker and colder for his absence from it. We shall not look upon his like again.” ~John Burroughs

I saw River of Doubt at a bookstore in South Dakota, and I had to buy it. After viewing Teddy’s unmistakeable visage on Mount Rushmore and then seeing the Badlands Teddy’s old stomping grounds, I had to read about this Amazonian journey of exploration undertaken after Roosevelt’s disappointing loss in a bid for a third term as president. Teddy Roosevelt was intrepid and courageous to a fault, and he lived for adventure. At the age of 55 a trip down an unexplored South American river in canoes passing through the territory of savage and violent native tribal peoples who had never seen a white man before should have been out of the question. And the fact that the trip almost ended Roosevelt’s life makes it all the more fascinating.

I’m still reading the my third book about Theodore Roosevelt, a biography that begins with TR’s sudden elevation to the presidency. I’m finding it just as interesting and inspiring as the other two were. I’m not tempted to undertake any physical feats of daring and bravery, but I do want to live as passionately as Teddy Roosevelt. Don’t you know that heaven itself is a more lively and passion-filled place because God created Theodore Roosevelt and took him to explore the universe of God’s creation?

100 Movies of Summer: North by Northwest (1959)

Jul14

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writer: Ernest Lehman
Starring: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, and Martin Landau.

Karate Kid says: The movie had a fairly interesting plot, but I didn’t like it that much because it didn’t confuse me. I thought it was predictable.

Betsy-Bee says: The movie wasn’t really scary, but it got my attention when the suspenseful parts came.

Z-baby says: It was about a guy getting mistaken for somebody else. He got drugged and arrested, and they were chasing him.

Mom says: I like North by Northwest because I like Cary Grant. And some of the scenes are unforgettable: Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) running through the corn fields to get away from the crop duster assassin, Thornhill and Eve Kendall climbing around on Mt. Rushmore, the flirting on the train and the meeting in the woods.

Some lovely dialog, too:

Thornhill: In the world of advertising, there’s no such thing as a lie. There’s only expedient exaggeration.

Roger Thornhill: The moment I meet an attractive woman, I have to start pretending I have no desire to make love to her.
Eve Kendall: What makes you think you have to conceal it?
Roger Thornhill: She might find the idea objectionable.
Eve Kendall: Then again, she might not.

Roger Thornhill: What’s wrong with men like me?
Eve Kendall: They don’t believe in marriage.
Roger Thornhill: I’ve been married twice.
Eve Kendall: See what I mean?

Roger Thornhill: I don’t like the games you play, Professor.
The Professor: War is hell, Mr. Thornhill. Even when it’s a cold one.
Roger Thornhill: If you fellows can’t whip the VanDamm’s of this world without asking girls like her to bed down with them and probably never come back, perhaps you should lose a few cold wars.
The Professor: I’m afraid we’re already doing that.

IMDB link for North By Northwest
Screen shot gallery for North by Northwest.
Buy North by Northwest at Amazon.

100 Movies of Summer: Unforgiven (1992)

Jul12

Director: Clint Eastwood
Writer: David Webb Peoples
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, RIchard Harris, Jaimz Woolvett, Frances Fisher

Mom says: When writing about the movie Red River, I said, “Dunson shoots or threatens to shoot a few men in cold blood basically for just getting in his way or challenging his authority, and that part was rather shocking to my youngest (and to me).” Now that I’ve seen Unforgiven, Red River would be a walk in the park.

Unforgiven is a western about cowboys and gunslingers, too. The movie begins with a shocking scene of graphic violence when a cowboy cuts up a prostitute’s face because she says something he doesn’t like. It get worse after that. I lost track of the body count towards the end. The language is crude, profane, and socially unacceptable. None of the characters is really very likable or sympathetic.

But what really bothered me were all the moments when I felt as if I were left hanging. I kept asking over and over again, “What the heck was that?” Why did Clint Eastwood’s character, William Munny, suddenly decide to leave his kids and go kill somebody after eight or nine years of peaceful pig-farming? Why did his friend Ned go with him? What was the significance of Little Bill’s bad carpentry? Comic relief? Or was he living in a shaky house, metaphorically speaking? Why were the prostitutes so vengeful and willing so spend so much money to get revenge? Why were two cowboys held responsible for the knife cutting when only one of them did it? What happened to the journalist fellow? Why was he in the movie at all? Why couldn’t Ned shoot at the critical moment? Why could Will shoot at all of the critical moments? Was the point of the movie that people never really change? If so, why does the Kid seem to learn from his violent act that he’s not really a killer at all?

Maybe the point of the movie was that people are crazy and unfathomable and don’t follow the movie western formulas. Although I easily can believe that, I don’t want to think about the fact that I inhabit a world in which violence and murder are so easy for some, the “unforgiven”, and so shattering and unrepeatable to others (the forgiven?). If the goal of the movie was to make me think and to turn movie conventions on their heads, Unforgiven was successful. I just don’t want to spend much time thinking about what the creators of this movie gave me to ponder–mostly a lot of unanswered questions and raw, violent brokenness and spiritual emptiness.

Key quote:

The Schofield Kid: [after killing a man for the first time] It don’t seem real… how he ain’t gonna never breathe again, ever… how he’s dead. And the other one too. All on account of pulling a trigger.
Will Munny: It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.
The Schofield Kid: Yeah, well, I guess they had it coming.
Will Munny: We all got it coming, kid.

I don’t recommend this movie for children (rated R), and I actually felt uncomfortable with my 13-year old watching it. He lost interest fairly quickly, though. Adults who are interested in the western genre might find the movie has “redeeming qualities.” Not my favorite, but it did make me think.

IMDB link to Unforgiven.
Buy Unforgiven at Amazon.

100 Movies of Summer: Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Jul8

Director: Otto Preminger
Writer: Screenplay adapted by Wendell Mayes from the novel by John D. Voelker
Starring: Jimmy Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, Eve Arden, Arthur O’Connell, George C. Scott

Mom says: The actors in this movie were of particular interest:

Jimmy Stewart is always good. The unassuming, but brilliant, country lawyer who outsmarts the big city sophisticates has become a cliche, but my man Stewart does the role with panache and credibility.

Lee Remick plays a beautiful and enigmatic young wanton, Laura Manion, and she has the allure to pull it off. She may be one of the most beautiful actresses I’ve ever seen. She was offered the role after first choice Lana Turner had a disagreement with director Otto Preminger.

Duke Ellington did the musical score for the movie, and he makes a cameo appearance.

George C. Scott plays prosecuting attorney, Claude Dancer. (Isn’t that a great name for a prosecutor? I wonder if it’s from the novel.) I couldn’t place him. I knew I knew him, but in this movie he’s so young. I just didn’t associate him with grizzled old Patton.

Ben Gazzara is, of course, Paul Bryan, the fugitive in Run for Your Life. In Anatomy of a Murder, Gazzara is Lt. Frederick Manion, on trial for shooting the man who raped his lovely young wife. He’s not a sympathetic character.

The movie keeps you guessing to the end. Did he or didn’t he? Was he justified? Was he insane? I thought it was a very cynical movie. Nothing is as it seems. No one can really be trusted. Defendants don’t really get exonerated as they do in Perry Mason, but rather they get off on a technicality or a mistaken doubt on the part of the jury.

Maybe that’s the way the world really is, but I prefer tales of innocence vindicated or guilt revealed and punished. I can see why it’s a good movie. Lee Remick, especially, gave a brilliant performance. The story reminded me of the perennially popular novels of John Grisham, right down to the jaded view of justice and the courtroom drama. But Grisham is more hopeful somehow.

The only hopeful thing about this movie was Jimmy Stewart’s indefatigable and irrepressible attitude. You just can’t keep a good man down.

I read the first chapter of Anatomy of a Murder by (Judge) John D. Voelker here. I might like to read the rest of it someday and compare it to the movie.

Link to Anatomy of a Murder at IMDB.
Buy Anatomy of a Murder at Amazon.