1922: Arts and Culture

Oct13

In mid-1922 the magazine Vanity Fair coined the word “flapper” to describe the new “free’ young women who were beginning to embrace a more relaxed and libertine lifestyle, at least in the big cities and East Coast enclaves of sophisticated culture. These women “wore shorter skirts, cropped their hair and danced brazenly in public.” The music they danced to was new, too. Jazz music with its syncopated sounds was the successor to ragtime, and the Twenties became the Jazz Age as the fashionable set tried out dances such as the Charleston and the Lindy Hop.

In 1922, Louis Armstrong left New Orleans for Chicago to join King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. At the same time, Al Jolson, a white singer and entertainer who often performed in blackface, was making hit song recordings such as April Showers and Toot, Toot, Tootsie (Goo’ Bye!). According to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, “Jolson was to jazz, blues, and ragtime what Elvis Presley was to rock ‘n’ roll.”

Christian Thrillers?

Oct10

These three books were nominated for the INSPY Awards for “faith-driven” literature in the Mystery/Thriller category. Two of the three made it to the shortlist of five novels in the category considered to be the best of the nominations. My question is: can Christian (or faith-driven) and thriller go together? I’d answer my own question with a qualified “yes”.

I read The Bishop by Steven James first in this orgy of faith-y thriller mysteries, and I’d say it’s both the best of the three and the most problematic. It’s problematic, for Christian readers at least, because it’s grisly and graphic. FBI Special Agent Patrick Bowers is dealing with a pair of serial killers who murder for the fun of it, for the thrill of the chase and the game. The murders this pair commit are disturbingly violent and torture-filled, and the entire novel reminds me of the TV show Bones, a show that comes close to making the “art of murder and torture” seem to be an appealing and intellectually stimulating vocation. Murder by using chimpanzees as surrogate attackers or slow torture/murder by being chained to a rotting corpse are not creative acts of intelligence.

On the other hand, Mr. James does an excellent job of working the philosophical and moral questions raised by a detective’s job into his story. Agent Bowers has a teenage stepdaughter, Tessa, for whom he is the responsible guardian, and as an intelligent young adult still forming her own worldview, Tessa brings up a lot of food for thought, all in context with the story. There’s a wonderful discussion of detective fiction, Arthur Conan Doyle vs. Edgar Allan Poe in chapter eighty-one. (The chapters are short.) And in a couple of other chapters, the characters discuss human nature and whether being “true to oneself” is a good thing or a bad. All of this philosophical and religious speculation is neatly embedded in the story and not at all awkward or pace-slowing. Bottom line, it’s a good, well- paced novel IF you don’t mind the repulsive details of the crimes. The Bishop is the fourth book in The Bowers Files series. It can stand alone, but there are a lot of references to previous books and cases.

Fatal Judgement by Irene Hannon is the first book in a new series called Guardians of Justice. It’s the one of these three that didn’t make the INSPY shortlist, but it’s a creditable action mystery with a romantic angle that did a decent job of keeping my interest to the end, even though I knew what the outcome would be, romantically and mysteriously speaking. U.S. marshall Jake Taylor is assigned to protect a federal judge whose sister has been murdered. The possibilities are that the judge was the real target or that she is the next target. Marshall Jake Taylor already knows Judge Liz Michaels, and he doesn’t much like her. Nevertheless, a job is a job. Can Jake find the killer before he strikes again? And was he somehow mistaken about Judge Michaels?

The third book in my own trilogy of thrillers, Back on Murder by J. Mark Bertrand, was especially interesting to me because it’s set in Houston. The street names, the restaurants, the malls, the hurricane (Ike), and everything else is authentic Houston-flavored. Spotting the local references was fun. Back on Murder is a police procedural, heavy on the detective work and the politics within HPD. (Names and characters are, I assume, totally fictional to protect the innocent.) Detective Roland March is a veteran Houston cop, disillusioned and near burn-out with a secret in his past that has almost destroyed his marriage and his career. The current case, which takes place in the fall of 2008, concerns a houseful of dead gang-bangers, the missing daughter of a well-known Houston evangelist, a few crooked cops, and a Cars for Criminals sting operation. Could they all be related, or is the relationship between such disparate elements only wishful thinking on the part of March who wants to revive his career in the homicide division?

I can’t promise you’ll enjoy Back on Murder as much as I did. As I said, the Houston elements in the novel captured my interest immediately. The story was good, however, and the pace was O.K., a little slow sometimes and almost frenetic towards the end. I do think my dad, a fan of Ed McBain and the Tv show Law and Order, would have enjoyed this novel. And I have the second in the series, Pattern of Wounds, on reserve at the library.

None of these three novels is particularly preachy or even faith-driven, as far as I could tell. Christianity is an element in the novels; some of the characters, usually not the main character, profess to be Christians. But if you’re looking for a clear (or even subtle) presentation of the gospel in these books, you won’t find it. The Bishop raises interesting questions related to faith and worldview. Fatal Judgement, in a low-key way, “preaches” church-going and a return to faith as a foundation in the midst of suffering and problems. Back on Murder presents the story of a cynical, heart-wounded cop associating with some faithful Christians who certainly don’t wear their faith on their sleeves. However, I’m anticipating that Detective Roland March will have some questions of his own about Christianity and a life lived in faith, perhaps in the next book.

1922: Books and Literature

Oct9

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Eugene O’Neill, Anna Christie.

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Edwin Arlington Robinson: Collected Poems. The poem that everyone knows by Robinson, because Simon and Garfunkel rewrote it and set it to music, is Richard Cory. But here’s another rather enigmatic poem from his Pulitzer Prize winning collection:

Cliff Klingenhagen by Edward Arlington Robinson

Cliff Klingenhagen had me in to dine
With him one day; and after soup and meat,
And all the other things there were to eat,
Cliff took two glasses and filled one with wine
And one with wormwood. Then, without a sign
For me to choose at all, he took the draught
Of bitterness himself, and lightly quaffed
It off, and said the other one was mine.
And when I asked him what the deuce he meant
By doing that, he only looked at me
And smiled, and said it was a way of his.
And though I know the fellow, I have spent
Long time a-wondering when I shall be
As happy as Cliff Klingenhagen is.

Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Booth Tarkington, Alice Adams

Newbery Award for Children’s Literature in the U.S.: First awarded in 1922 to The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon.

Also published in 1922:

T.S. Eliot’s master poem, The Wasteland.

The Modernist classic Ulysses by James Joyce.

Sigrid Undset completes her Kristin trilogy with The Cross.

Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis.

Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim. I just saw the movie based on this book for the first time, and I thought it was delightful. It’s sort of a modern fairy tale that takes place in a land of enchantment, a castle in Italy. (No fascists to be seen.)

Reader's Digest – History, Content & Evolution

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And in February 1922, a new magazine, The Reader’s Digest, is launched. Sadly enough, the Reader’s Digest now is only a pale imitation of its former self. It used to be a fine place to get an introduction to the news topics of the day, plus feature articles, adventure and self-help, plus a condensed version of a best-selling novel or nonfiction story, plus some good jokes, anecdotes, and inspirational quotes. I’ve read it in the past several years a few times, and it just seems more commercial and less significant in the choice of topics and the depth of coverage. Nevertheless, here’s to Reader’s Digest, the magazine where lots of Americans, at any rate, learned to enjoy reading.

1922: Events and Inventions

Oct9

February 28, 1922. The United Kingdom ends its protectorate over Egypt, giving Egypt the gift of limited self-rule and independence, but there are significant limitations. Britain still reserves the rights to supervise the Egyptian military, communications, and foreign relations.

March 11, 1922. Mohandas Gandhi is arrested in Bombay for sedition. He is sentenced to six years imprisonment. Gandhi’s program of “non-cooperation” with the British government and the boycott of British goods is having some limited success in at least getting British attention for the nationalist movement.

June, 1922. U.S. scientists claim that the sun produces Vitamin D in the body, a vitamin that prevents the disease rickets.

June 28, 1922. The Irish Civil War begins. The two sides in the conflict are the forces of the Provisional Government that established the Irish Free State in December 1922, who supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and the Republican opposition (the IRA, Irish Republican Army), for whom the Treaty represented a betrayal of the Irish Republic. The war was won by the Free State forces.

August 23, 1922. Turkey attacks Greece in an attempt to recover land lost during World War I.

August, 1922. Hyperinflation in Germany means that 7000 German marks are now needed to buy a single American dollar.

September, 1922. U.S. pilot James Doolittle makes the first coast-to-coast flight across the United States from Florida to California, taking less than 24 hours to complete the journey.

October 28-30, 1922. 30,000 Fascist black-shirted followers of Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, march on Rome in a demonstration of Fascist strength. King Victor Emmanuel, fearing a civil war, sends for Mussolini and asks him to take up the office of prime minister. Mussolini is now in a position to take over the Italian government as dictator and supreme leader of Italy. In November, Mussolini will be granted absolute power for the period of one year by the Italian government.

November 1, 1922. The Ottoman Empire is abolished and its last sultan Mehmed VI Vahdettin abdicates. Later in the month, the former sultan leaves for exile in Italy.

November 26, 1922. Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in over 3,000 years.

December 30, 1922. Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Transcaucasia come together to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

1921: Art and Entertainment

Oct7

Five year old Jackie Coogan stars with British comedian Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin’s first full length film, The Kid. In September, fans mob Chaplin when he arrives in London on his first visit to his native country in nine years.

Rudolph Valentino becomes the heartthrob of early twenties after his performance in The Sheik, a movie in which Valentino plays the starring role of Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan, the romantic interest of English Lady Diana Mayo, played by actress Agnes Ayres. Women who see his silent movies swoon over Valentino, aka “The Latin Lover.”

A popular song of 1921 was My Little Margie, recorded by Eddie Cantor:

1921: Books and Literature

Oct7

Luigi Pirandello’s play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, is first performed in 1921 at the Teatro Valle in Rome, to a very mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of “Manicomio!” (“Madhouse!”). It’s a play about six characters from a play who appear at a rehearsal after having been abandoned by their author. The Director thinks they are crazy, but he begins to listen to them and even have his actors act out their story because they have such a compelling drama to tell. I read the play many years ago in a modern theater class I took in college, but I have never seen it on stage. Pirandello himself wrote about this play within a play within his mind and yet on stage:

â€œWhy not,â€ thought I, â€œrepresent this unique situation â€”an author refusing to accept certain characters born of his imagination, while the characters themselves obstinately refuse to be shut out from the world of art, once they have received this gift of life? These characters are already completely detached from me, and living their own lives; they speak and move; and so, in the struggle to live that they have persistently maintained against me they have become dramatic characters, characters who can move and speak of their own initiative. They already see themselves in that light; they have learnt to defend themselves against me; they will learn how to defend themselves against others. So why not let them go where the characters of a play usually go to attain full and complete lifeâ€”on a stage? Letâ€™s see what will happen then!â€

French writer Anatole France won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921 “in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament.”

Booth Tarkington’s novel Alice Adams was published in 1921 and won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1922.

The Boston Post won the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for “its exposure of the operations of Charles Ponzi by a series of articles which finally led to his arrest.” And newspapers have been exposing Ponzi schemes ever since–usually after most of the financial damage is done. What Ponzi proved is that you can fool a lot of people for long enough to take in a lot of money, but you had better have an escape plan. Eventually, any scheme in which there is no actual valued product or labor involved will fall apart. Or as Dave Ramsey says, “Something that sounds too good to be true IS too good to be true! Itâ€™s very difficult to be conned if youâ€™re not greedy.”

Playing mind games in a play on stage (Pirandello) can be fun, especially since you know it’s fiction. Letting somebody play games with your money isn’t fun, no matter what he promises you.

1921: Events and Inventions

Oct7

January, 1921. The Allies from World War I fix German war debts at 132 million gold marks, to be paid out over 42 years. Germany is practically broke and unable to pay, so the German government asks for a postponement of the debt.

February, 1921. Greece defies the League of Nations and declares war on Turkey, invading Anatolia (western Turkey).

February 12, 1921. The Democratic Republic of Georgia is invaded by Bolshevist Russia.
On February 25, the Red Army enters Georgian capital Tbilisi and installs a Moscow-directed communist government. The Russian Communists are expanding their influence and power throughout the region of Eastern Europe.

April 11, 1921. Out of territory taken from the Ottoman Empire, the British create The Emirate of Transjordan, with Abdullah I as emir. The British continue to exercise some control over the region, and a smaller part of the British mandate in Palestine is reserved to fulfill the British promise of a Jewish homeland. More and more Jews are coming to Palestine, especially since the U.S. has tightened its immigration laws to allow very few immigrants from Eastern Europe.

July 11, 1921. The Red Army captures Mongolia from the White Army and establishes the Mongolian People’s Republic. Mongolia will be a close ally of the Soviet Union for the remainder of the twentieth century.

July, 1921. Canadians Sir Frederick Grant Banting and Charles Herbert Best demonstrate that they can control diabetes in dogs by giving them an extract of insulin from the pancreas of healthy dogs. For this work, Banting and laboratory director MacLeod receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1923. Banting and Best make the patent for insulin available without charge and do not attempt to control commercial production.

August, 1921. As a result of drought, disease, and civil war, famine is devastating Russia. Lenin appeals to the international community for aid.

September, 1921. The world’s first racing track/highway, the Avus Autobahn in Berlin, Germany opens exclusively to motor traffic. The racing track, also a public highway, is 19.5 kilometers (12 miles) long.

November, 1921. Benito Mussolini declares himself to be “Il Duce” (the leader) of the National Fascist Party of Italy.

December, 1921. The predominantly Catholic counties of southern Ireland become the independent country, the Irish Free State. Northern Ireland, mostly Protestant but with a significant Catholic minority, remains a part of the United Kingdom (Britain). Neither North nor South is entirely satisfied with the compromise.

1920: Events and Inventions

Oct7

January 16, 1920. Prohibition officially takes effect in the United States. The sale of alcohol is banned in an attempt to end alcohol related deaths and abuse.

January, 1920. The newly formed League of Nations meets in Paris, France. The League consists of 29 countries, and although it is the brainchild of American president Woodrow Wilson, the U.S. is not a member since the U.S. Senate has not yet ratified the Treaty of Versailles. On January 19 the Senate votes against joining the League of Nations.

April-October, 1920. In the Polish-Soviet War the Poles and the Bolsheviks (Communist Russians) fight over territory and ideology. The Treaty of Versailles had not defined the frontiers between Poland and Soviet Russia, and the revolution in Russia created turmoil with the Bolsheviks wanting to spread communism and assist the communist revolution in neighboring countries. The Polish victory secured Polish independence and made the Bolsheviks abandon their cause of international communist revolution.

August 26, 1920. The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is passed, giving women the right to vote in national elections, including the presidential election in November, 1920.

September, 1920. The first domestic radio sets come to stores in the United States; a Westinghouse radio costs $10.00.

September, 1920. Indian nationalist Mohandas Ghandi launches a peaceful noncooperation movement against British rule in India.

November, 1920. Civil war ends in Russia as the Red Army, led by Leon Trotsky, achieves victory for the Bolsheviks.

November 21, 1920. Bloody Sunday: British forces open fire on spectators and players during a football match in Dublin’s Croke Park, killing 14 Irish civilians. This violence follows the assassinations of 12 British agents by the Irish Republican Army in an earlier attack elsewhere. The country has been in a state of insurrection since Britain declared its intention to split Ireland into two states, predominantly Catholic southern Ireland and mostly Protestant Northern Ireland.

December 11, 1920. Martial law is declared in Ireland.

Slang of the 1920’s. Can you translate the terms bearcat, copacetic, cheaters, flivver, speakeasy, jitney, hooch, ducky, palooka, ritzy?

Wednesday’s Word of the Week: Flanerie

Oct5

The term flÃ¢neur comes from the French masculine noun flÃ¢neurâ€”which has the basic meanings of “stroller”, “lounger”, “saunterer”, “loafer”â€”which itself comes from the French verb flÃ¢ner, which means “to stroll”. Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flÃ¢neurâ€”that of “a person who walks the city in order to experience it”. (Wikipedia)

Flanerie, then, means “strolling; sauntering; hence, aimlessness; idleness.” French poet Baudelaire wrote about the joys of becoming a flaneur, practicing flanerie. A flaneur walks the streets of the city, yes, it’s supposed to be the city, with no aim in mind. Flanerie is not exercise or a means to get to work or to go shopping. Flanerie is aimless strolling with no particular goal in mind. (“There was in Paris a brief vogue for flaneur to amble around town with tortoises on leashes” –to slow one down and remind one of the true vocation of a flaneur. ~Alain de Botton on Baudelaire and flanerie)

Wouldn’t Flanerie make a wonderful blog name? I did find a seemingly abandoned British blog by that name, but it seems up for grabs otherwise. A blog called “flanerie” would be a leisurely stroll through the city of one’s choice with insights both great and small recorded for simple pleasure of recording them. Perhaps a few “found poems.” A transcription of an overheard conversation. With a camera to snap a picture of something you want to remember? Or is photography disallowed because it’s too purposeful?

A good example of intellectual flanerie would be the book by American Chinese author Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living. I can certainly imagine Mr. Lin engaging in a sort of peripatetic flanerie in which he strolled the streets of New York City or Singapore, content to discover whatever serendipitous delights might come his way.

Does flanerie appeal to you? If you become a flaneur, even for an hour or a day, let me know how it works out. I might try it out myself — sans turtle.

1920: Books and Literature

Oct4

Hercule Poirot appears for the first time in 1920 in the Agatha Christie novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. He is a Belgian retired police detective and genius, living in England as a refugee from the recent war. Captain Hastings describes Poirot in chapter two of The Mysterious Affair at Styles:

“He was hardly more than five feet four inches but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. Even if everything on his face was covered, the tips of moustache and the pink-tipped nose would be visible.
The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandified little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police.”

Also published in 1920:
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald’s debut novel was a critical success, but it has been somewhat overshadowed by his most famous and successful book, The Great Gatsby.

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. Main Street was initially awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, but it was rejected by the Board of Trustees, who overturned the jury’s decision. Semicolon review here.

Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Newland Archer is torn between the expectations of society and his own desire for stability and respectability and the passion and adventure he experiences with the exciting and forbidden Countess Olenska. He must choose between May Welland, the woman whom all New York society expects him to marry, and Ellen Olenska, the woman who needs his love and awakens his passion. This novel actually won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature after Main Street was rejected.

Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence.

The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting.

The Bridal Wreath by Sigrid Undset. This novel about a young Norwegian girl in the Middle Ages is the first in a trilogy of books about the life of the fictional Kristin Lavransdatter. It is a lovely set of books, well worth the time and energy that it takes to read them in translation. Sigrid Undset won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1928. Semicolon review of Kristin Lavransdatter. More on the novel here.

For more book suggestions check out Reading the Twenties by Dani Torres at A Work in Progress.