Spectacular!!
Why do we need the arts to survive? Just look at this video of the Bolshoi. From Russia – land of my ancestors! – with love:
The Lure of Ancient Egypt
I am most fortunate to own this book: 
The author, John Boardman, boasts a most impressive CV. From the publisher Thames & Hudson:
Sir John Boardman was born in 1927, and educated at Chigwell School and Magdalene College, Cambridge. He spent several years in Greece, three of them as Assistant Director of the British School of Archaeology at Athens, and he has excavated in Smyrna, Crete, Chios and Libya. For four years he was an Assistant Keeper in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and he subsequently became Reader in Classical Archaeology and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He is now Lincoln Professor Emeritus of Classical Archaeology and Art in Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy, from whom he received the Kenyon Medal in 1995. He was awarded the Onassis Prize for Humanities in 2009. Professor Boardman has written widely on the art and archaeology of Ancient Greece.
You can see and hear Sir John Boardman talking about his life’s work here.
Professor Boardman’s graceful prose is redolent of times past:
The civilization and arts of Egypt have revealed themselves to the rest of the world in dramatic ways. In antiquity Greeks, then Romans, were attracted to Egypt’s obviously extreme antiquity and the exoticism of its arts….Biblical associations and the longevity of its styles of art and writing seemed to mark it out as something exceptional in the history of man….
Sporadically, the country divided politically into North and South. Overall, however, there was undisturbed unity of culture, language, and art which must have contributed to the fact that the highly distinctive idiom for the arts which had been developed in Egypt by the third millennium BC lasted with very little basic change in appearance, styles, subjects and techniques, for more than three thousand years….
Egyptian art is overwhelming in its stylistic idiosyncrasy, its at-first-sight unlikeness even to the various other arts of the urban world with which it made contact. In this must lie much of its unceasing appeal to modern eyes.
There is, of course, so much more in this section, where Sir John’s erudition shines forth in a way that is never pedantic but invariably engaging.
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Rahotep and Nofret
Rahotep ruled during ancient Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty. These statues of Prince and his wife Nofret were discovered deep inside their mastaba in 1871, by Albert Daninos an assistant to the French archaeologist Auguste Mariette.
These statues are in such superb condition due to the fact that they had not seen the light of day for several millennia. Particularly striking are the eyes, which were crafted chiefly of rock crystal:
Indeed, so lifelike were they that when the workman shone their lights upon them, they thought they were in the presence of living beings. Terrified, they fled the premises.
Music, for lifting the spirit
Two sisters sing the Barcarolle from Tales of Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach:
This has long been one of my favorite YouTube videos. In case you’re wondering, this entire opera is filled with gorgeous melodies. The Barcarolle may be the most beautiful; it is the most famous, at any rate.
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The Pie Jesu from Gabriel Faure’s Requiem. This is one of the most consoling, transcendent musical works that I know. The beloved Pie Jesu is sung here by the Norwegian boy soprano Aksel Rykkvin. (Due to the fact that time marches on, Aksel is currently performing as a baritone.)
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This was a real find: Avinu Malkeinu, performed by the cantors of the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City:
The Case of the Cascading Crime Novels!
The above are all titles I’ve read fairly recently and not written about in this space. Therefore, these will be capsule reviews of varying length.
Fact is, I’ve had trouble concentrating of late. (Can’t imagine why.) And when that happens to me, I turn to Inspector Maigret. He rarely lets me down, and he didn’t this time. Below is a list of characters that appear in this series entry, as enumerated on the back of the book:
A mysterious note predicting the murder of a fortune-teller; a confused old man locked in a Paris apartment; a financier who goes fishing; a South American heiress…
A bizarre cast of characters, n’est-ce pas? And yet here is Maigret, stolid and persistent and aided mainly by the trusty Lucas, committed to solving a most perplexing murder case.
Signed, Picpus came out in 1944. It amazes me how little these novels seem to date, with the passage of years. The edition pictured above is part of Penguin’s project of issuing new translations of all the Maigret titles. This one was published in 2015 and translated by David Coward. I was somewhat surprised that the text was rendered in the present tense; once I got used to it, though, it read as smoothly as the books in this series usually do.
I’ve written much about Simenon; he is one of my favorite writers. As a human being, he was both fascinating and appalling. But never boring.
My favorite actor in the role of Maigret is Michael Gambon.
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Wolf Pack by C.J. Box is the nineteenth novel in the Joe Pickett series. (There is also a story collection entitled Shots Fired.) The Bitterroots is fourth in the Cassie Dewell series. Cassie is a sheriff’s investigator in Montana, while Joe Pickett is a game warden in Wyoming. I enjoyed both books, though I’d give Wolf Pack a slight edge.
I’ve become a big fan of C.J. Box; I look forward to reading Long Range, the 20th Joe Pickett novel.
C.J. Box
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E.C.R. Lorac‘s Murder in the Mill-Race is one of the more captivating classics I’ve read in recent years. Written in 1952, it has the flavor of a classic English village mystery but with fully developed characters and an involving plot. Plus the writing is lovely:
He snatched his coat and hurried out of the house, across the garden, through the gate in the yew hedge and across the dewy lawns of the Manor, taking the short cut to the steep path down through the park. All around him thrushes and blackbirds were calling from the tree tops, and chaffinches and bullfinches poured out their clear liquid song: the air was fragrant with the sweetness of midsummer, fragrance of pinks and roses in the garden, hay and meadow flowers in the park. Fat white lambs rushed to mother ewes as Ferens made his way down the steep path, the world vivid and vibrant with life and sunshine.
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Trouble Is What I Do features Leonid McGill, a private investigator in New York City. For a relatively short novel, it contained a myriad of characters and a byzantine plot. Nevertheless, some of the McGill’s sly observations on human nature made me smile. He seems to have performed innumerable favors for both shady characters and those in law enforcement, and he is continually calling in his markers.
This is the sixth novel in the Leonid McGill series, which is, I think, less familiar to readers than the series featuring Easy Rawlins. In the past, I’ve had trouble getting into Walter Mosley’s books, but this one was fun.
Walter Mosley
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The Peter Robinson was a bit of a disappointment. I guess lately I’ve been looking for mysteries that have a unique or interesting sideline. The plot of Many Rivers To Cross felt labored, as if the author were thinking, ‘I’d better come up with something and soon!’ As always, I liked hanging out with Alan Banks and his fellow officers, but that wasn’t enough to make this one a major winner, for me.
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I recently wrote a positive review of An Honorable Man by Paul Vidich. In fact, I was so impressed by that book that I wanted to read the next one right away. So : The Good Assassin is set in Cuba just prior to Castro’s takeover. (I remember this time well. I was in high school in Miami Beach, Florida at the time, and there was a sudden influx of Spanish-speaking students, some with very limited English, others who were nearly fluent.) The atmosphere of the place is vividly evoked in this novel; however, the plotting was not as tight as in An Honorable Man, so I didn’t feel as though it quite measured up to Vidich’s first outing with his series protagonist George Muller. Nevertheless, I look forward to reading Vidich’s latest, a nonseries title called The Coldest Warrior. It has been called “A worthwhile thriller and a valuable exposé” by finicky Kirkus Reviews
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A note on the obtaining of reading material during the pandemic: I’ve been downloading from Amazon at a completely reckless rate. Except when I am traveling – when one could do such a daring thing – e-book reading is not my first choice; I usually borrow hardbacks from the library. However, that august institution is shuttered for the time being. I am trying very hard to acquire as few hard copy titles as possible. Ergo, all the downloading.
Sigh…This too shall pass. For some reason, I keep thinking of the line from Othello:
Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.
Peregrinations and ruminations, for sustenance in tough times
Two days ago, a walk around the neighborhood was most salutary. While I didn’t take these pictures, I did see these flowers!
Narcissi
Vinca
Crocuses
Daffodils
Forsythia
But then you go inside and the same grim news awaits you… Or, rather, more and different grim news. But no, mustn’t dwell on it. Instead, be grateful for what we still have to sustain us:
Great books, like this one: 
I just finished it, and I loved it. Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau is a character I will cherish going forward. It’s been a long time since I fell so completely in love with a character in a novel as I did this time.
I continue to enjoy the Darko Dawson series by Kwei Quartey. Dark is a many-sided, fully three dimensional creation. I cherish him also, as well as his world in Ghana.
Kwei Quartey and Louise Erdrich have both created worlds for me to lose myself in. Much needed at this time. I am deeply grateful to both these gifted authors.
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I am always finding new paintings that amaze me. I mean, look at this!
Scenes from the Passion of Christ by Hana Memling, ca1470
My post of March 12 featured this work by Annibale Carracci:
Boy Drinking – a show piece for Carracci’s technical expertise – resided at the Christ Church Picture Gallery at Oxford University until approximately 11 PM on Monday, March 16. That is the estimated time at which it was stolen, along with two other priceless paintings, one by Salvator Rosa and another by Van Dyck. Click here for more on this theft.
Let’s hope for a speedy recovery of these priceless works of art.
As if the world doesn’t have enough to worry about right now, I know…
Finally, there is always music, as with this gorgeous Stabat Mater by Domenico Scarlatti, whose sonatas I recall playing on the piano many years ago. (The visual, this achingly poignant Pieta, is by, once again, Annibale Carracci.)
“….one feels a power seething inside one, one has a task to do and it must be done.”
Vincent Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Zundert, Netherlands. Having lived variously in the Netherlands and Belgium, he went to Paris to live with his brother Theo, an art dealer, in 1886. Despite the brothers’ deep love for each other, there were conflicts. Van Gogh was always painting and drawing; he soon developed the idea that living in the south of France would would be beneficial to his life and his art. And so, in 1888, to Arles, and the yellow house.
The Yellow House, 1888
While in Arles, Van Gogh’s health, both mental and physical, rapidly deteriorated. Yet as an artist, this was one of his most prolific and fruitful periods. He had had an idea of creating a sort of colony artists, and Paul Gauguin did in fact join him there for a time. It is hard to imagine two more volatile personalities cohabiting in the same small space. After 63 days had passed, Gauguin left Van Gogh, the yellow house, and the south of France forever. (The Yellow House by Martin Gayford describes this turbulent period in fascinating detail.)
Meanwhile, Van Gogh was experience increasing periods of instability and breakdown. He left the south of France in 1890 and went to live in Auvers-sur-Oise, a suburb of Paris. In this way he could be close to Dr. Paul Gachet, who was himself an aspiring artist as well as a physician.
Portrait of Dr. Gachet, 1890
This was to be the last port of call for the tormented spirit of Vincent Van Gogh. In July, he was found in his room with a gunshot wound to the chest. He survived for some thirty hours. No surgeon was available, so the bullet could not be removed. At any event, a fatal infection soon set in. At the time of his death on 29 July 1890, Van Gogh, his stunning genius largely unrecognized by the art world, was 37 years old.
(In recent years, a controversy has arisen as to whether Van Gogh actually shot himself, or whether some other person was responsible. For more on this, click here.)
This quick summation leaves out a great deal. For instance, there is a period when Van Gogh was living in The Hague – 1882 to 1883. He took in a prostitute named Clasina Maria “Sien” Hoornik. Sien, pregnant at this time, served as an occasional model for Van Gogh.
Sien, who already had a five-year-old daughter, gave birth to a boy in July of 1882. Vincent cared for Sien; he loved her children even more and was especially taken by little Willem:
A baby, for Vincent, was simply “the best thing”— life’s first fresh bud, irresistibly calling for the consolation that makes us human, a primary reality of a kind he himself was fated never to produce.
Julian Bell wrote A Power Seething some four years after the publication of the mammoth tome – 976 pages – by Stephen Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. 
In his introduction, Bell explains:
I have written this book out of my love for Vincent van Gogh, the letter writer of heart-piercing eloquence. Researching it, I have gotten to know something of Vincent the social animal, the misfit tearing a ragged course through the late nineteenth-century Netherlands and France.
I deeply appreciate that Bell declares his love so boldly and without apology. He wields an even hand in the telling of this story, but his devotion to his subject nonetheless shines through. By the time you finish this (comparatively slender) volume, you may very well feel the same. I did, but I was most of the way there already.
In July of 2018, my friend Jean and I had the pleasure of attending a presentation at the Smithsonian entitled “Van Gogh and the Painters of the Petit Boulevard.” I created a post on the subject; it features two guest appearances by my granddaughter.
There exists a lovely book on this subject. 
I also recommend this edition of Van Gogh’s wonderful letters. It contains visuals of those letters, in addition to some of his most memorable art. 
Vincent and his brother Theo were very close. Theo almost singlehandedly kept Vincent afloat, both financially and artistically. It’s often said that Vincent sold only one painting in his lifetime. He might have sold more, had he not given his art away so freely and so generously. Theo was shattered by Vincent’s death. In frail health himself, he died six months later at age 33.
Theo van Gogh
*1882
Johanna ‘Jo’ van Gogh-Bonger (1862-1925) was Theo’s wife. In 1890, she gave birth to a son, whom they named Vincent Willem. Jo was instrumental in assuring that Vincent’s fame was established and continued to grow in the art world. 
Julian Bell, writer and painter, comes by his gifts naturally; his father, Quentin Bell, likewise practiced these professions. His father, in turn, was the art critic and theorist Clive Bell, who was the husband of painter Vanessa Bell, who was the sister of Virginia Woolf. (The Bells and Virginia and Leonard Woolf comprised the nucleus of what famously became the Bloomsbury Group.)
The Handover, by Julian Bell
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has a section for questions and answers. Someone asked if there were any descendants of the van Gogh family still living. The site features a gracious response from Willem van Gogh.
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A Van Gogh gallery
Bedroom in Arles, 1888
The Night Cafe, 1888
Red Vineyards, 1888
Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles, 1889
The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890
The Starry Night, 1889. One of the first paintings I ever came to know and love. My mother took me to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. I was eight years old. We went upstairs; she sent me in ahead of her. I just stared and stared, not moving.
Starry Night over the Rhone, 1889
We all end our lives with a deficit, van Gogh once told Theo, “yet, yet, one feels a power seething inside one, one has a task to do and it must be done.”
What I was supposed to be doing, what I actually did
Today I was scheduled to attend two sessions of my Lifelong Learning classes. First (AM):
The Epic of Gilgamesh!
Possible representation of Gilgamesh as Master of Animals [Wikipedia]
Our lecturer has a doctorate in languages of the ancient Near East. He is amazing! (And no, this is not him; I just thought it was pretty cool):
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In the afternoon, Rembrandt/Velasquez – a delicious immersion in the greatest of the old masters.
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Thus far, our lecturer has introduced us to Annibale Carracci:
Annibale Carracci Boy Drinking, 1582-1583
Self-portrait, 1590-1600
and the Caravaggisti, so-called followers of Caravaggio, who were mostly active in the late 1500s to the early 1600s:
Mars Chastising Cupid, by Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582-1622)
Christ Amongst the Doctors, by Orazio Borgianni (1574-1616)
Madonna and Child with Saint Anne and an Angel, by Carlo Saraceni, c.1608-1610
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Alas!! Classes were canceled today, due to the corona virus outbreak. So instead of hearing about the fascinating history of Mesopotamia in which Gilgamesh is embedded, and seeing the gorgeous slides of the Old Masters, I found myself at the local CVS, beseeching the saleslady.
This excursion, at least, was a success. Behold: a 32 fl. oz. container of CVS brand hand sanitizer (photographed beside a 16 fl. oz bottle of Snapple to establish scale):
I waited in line for about fifteen minutes. This was the only size available, and they were allowing only one container per customer. Still, I felt lucky to get it at all.
Hopefully, this will end soon, and I pray that the sick and vulnerable will be spared.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
To conclude on a more upbeat note, here are two flash mob videos for you to enjoy. The first one I just discovered today; the second is one of my all time favorites.
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This flash mob was staged in a shopping mall in The Netherlands; the occasion was the reopening of Amsterdam’s celebrated Rijksmuseum in 2013, after a renovation that went substantially over budget and took ten years to complete instead of the projected five.
‘Onze helden zijn terug’ translates into English as “Our heroes are back.’
The Pleasures of Paired Reading, Revisited
I last wrote about what I call “paired reading” in relation to a presentation in which I participated several years ago. When searching for a theme for a new book-related program, I decided to revisited the concept in an updated form.
First of all: what do I mean by paired reading? In recent years, I have found myself reading in sequence books that are linked by some kind of commonality. This commonality could occur in regard to characters, plot elements, setting, or any number of other factors. Most often this happens when I read a work of historical fiction. I would then find myself wanting to know more about the time and place that formed the context of the novel. (The reverse occasionally happens if I am reading a work of history or especially, of biography.)
This then is the latest iteration of the list:
THE PLEASURES OF PAIRED READING
Courting Mr. Lincoln by Louis Bayard, paired with Your Friend Forever, A. Lincoln, by Charles Strozier
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale and Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, the latter being amazingly readable for a novel that came out in 1862 – I couldn’t put it down!
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James and Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece, by Michael Gorra
The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Out of the Black Land by Kerry Greenwood, paired with Temples, Tombs, & Hieroglyphs: A Popular History of Ancient Egypt by Barbara Mertz
Crocodile on a Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters, paired with Amelia Peabody’s Egypt: A Compendium, edited by Elizabeth Peters and Kristen Whitbread
The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn by Alison Weir, paired with Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
A Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life of Raymond Chandler, by Tom Williams, paired with The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely – or one of the marvelous short stories (e.g. “Red Wind”)
Murder As a Fine Art, by David Morrell, paired with ‘On Murder Considered As One of the Fine Arts’ by Thomas De Quincey
Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked by James Lasdun, paired with Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic by Melanie McGrath, paired with White Heat by M.J. McGrath
This past January, I led a discussion of Courting Mr. Lincoln for a book discussion group. This necessitated my reading the book a second time, thus reaffirming my initial belief that this novel is an outstanding example of the art of historical fiction. Louis Bayard combines vivid characters an equally vivid sense of place; add to that his trademark wit, and you have a truly memorable reading experience.
Here we have Joshua Speed trying to instruct Abraham Lincoln in the fine art of ballroom dancing:
“All right,’ said Joshua. Try it with me. Until you find your way.”
“We’ll regret this,” Lincoln said.
“Now you are the lead, so you will just…you will hook your right hand round my back. Like that. Now I will rest my hand…lightly…here.
“This will end badly.”
“Be quiet. Now…raise your elbows. Shoulder height, that’s it. And back straight. And knees…well, you can bend the knees a little.”
“Like this?”
“Well, no, not like you’re praying.”
“I am praying.”
Charles Strozier‘s book covers the same territory as Bayard’s. Neither author shies away from the issue of the true nature of the Speed/Lincoln relationship. 
In an article in Paris Review last year, Bayard makes the following assertion:
If I was going to go there, if I was going to plant my rainbow flag on the Great Emancipator’s grave, I would have to account for my private agenda.
Bayard concludes thus:
The book I ended up writing, Courting Mr. Lincoln, takes no definitive stand on its subject’s sexuality, but neither does it shy away from the question. It lives in the land of the spoken and unspoken, which is the realm where Lincoln himself almost certainly dwelt. When all is said and done, do I need Abraham Lincoln to be gay? No. I just need him to be something more complicated than he’s been allowed to be. I would argue we all need that.
Louis Bayard
(Sharon reminded us that there is a mystery series featuring Lincoln and Speed, written by Jonathan F. Putnam.)
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The Suspicions of Mr Whicher remains one of the best true crime narratives I’ve ever read, one that I think is destined to become a classic of its kind. It has been made into a film and distributed by Britain’s ITV. the full title is The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: The Murder st Road Hill House.
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I called the next part ‘the Henry James section.’ To begin with, revisiting Portrait of a Lady, which I first read many years ago, and then following it with Michael Gorra’s beautifully written and insightful exegesis, remains one of the most satisfying intellectual experiences of my adult life. As for Turn of the Key, it was a good thriller, and author Ruth Ware certainly did not disguise her debt to Turn of the Screw.
But Turn of the Screw itself is, for me, one of the most mesmerizing novels ever written. I’ve read it several times, listened to the audiobook, watched the movie, watched the opera – and I am still not sure exactly what precipitated the disaster at Bly. Of course, Henry James does not want you to be certain about this – ever.
Henry James
M. Slaughter attributes the following observation to critic Edmund Wilson:
“James’s personal and authorial blind spot was sex, and his inability to confront, perhaps even to understand, sexual feelings, was transformed into the ambiguity of the governess.”
The film version of this novel that I invariably turn to is the 1961 production entitled The Innocents and starring Deborah Kerr as the ill-fated governess Miss Giddens. Below is a particularly unforgettable scene. Watch what happens to Deborah Kerr’s face at 1:48.
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I called the next section ‘the Egyptian part.’ Of course, at present I am enraptured by the Art in Egypt course I’m taking at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. So I was more than happy to spotlight these Egypt themed books. Three out of four of them were by Barbara Mertz, a PhD Egyptologist and author of the much-loved Amelia Peabody mystery series. Dr. Mertz also wrote romantic suspense undeer the name Barbara Michaels.) Mertz lived in Frederick, not far from here, and not long after I came to work at the library, she came to present a program for us. (She was introduced by Marge, my colleague and close friend.)
Barbara Mertz 1927-2013
Out of the Black Land is a stunning work of historical fiction, set during the reign of the heretic king, Akhenaten. (Kerry Greenwood is also the author of the Miss Fisher murder mysteries.) I can’t resist featuring once again this mesmerizing recreation of the workers of the village Deir-el-medina. This as well as several other films and objects were on view at the National Geographic’s Queens of Egypt exhibit last year.
And here is the trailer for Philip Glass’s opera, Akhnaten:
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Quite a few of us have been waiting impatiently for the third installment of Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. It has now arrived – official publication date is Tuesday of next week. The title is The Mirror & the Light. It’s already on order at the local library.
Wolf Hall is an amazing work. It brings the era of Henry VIII to life like nothing else I’ve ever read. This is one of my favorite passages from the novel:
He remembers one night in summer when the footballers had stood silent, looking up. It was dusk. The note from a single recorder wavered in the air, thin and piercing. A blackbird picked up the note, and sang from a bush by the water gate. A boatman whistled back from the river.
I get goose bumps reading that.
Meanwhile, the second installment, Bring Up the Bodies, presented such a vivid picture of Anne Boleyn, I felt I had to know more. Alison Weir, veteran author of numerous extremely readable novels and nonfiction works, more than filled that yearning on my part with The Lady in the Tower.
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I read two selections from Raymond Chandler. This, from The Big Sleep:
What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.
From Michael E. Grost’s invaluable site, A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection:
The best part of The Big Sleep is the ending. This apostrophe to death is magnificently written, and recalls such Elizabethan essays on the same subject as the finale of Sir Walter Raleigh’s The History of the World (1610). Chandler’s skill with words reached new heights here, a skill that carried over into his next novel, Farewell, My Lovely (1940).
And this, the opening lines of the short story “Red Wind:”
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
(Oh, to hear Keith Morrison of Dateline NBC speak those lines!)
Raymond Chandler collaborated with Billy Wilder on the screenplay version of James M. Cain’s pulp novel Double Indemnity. The film was released in 1944. In 2009, it was discovered that Chandler appears in the film, in a small cameo:
For more on this, see the Guardian article “Chandler’s Double Identity.”
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Click here for more on Thomas De Quincey.
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James Lasdun and Ian McEwan are two of my favorite authors. The latter is justly well known and celebrated; this is not true, however, of Lasdun, who is British by birth but currently resides in this country. Give Me Everything You Have tells a gripping and disturbing story; I highly recommend Lasdun’s fiction as well, especially the novel The Horned Man and the story collection It’s Beginning To Hurt.
James Lasdun
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Finally, these two books by M.J. McGrath, aka Melanie McGrath. White Heat was a selection of the Usual Suspects discussion group, but in the course of learning about this author, we found out about The Long Exile.
It begins in 1922 with Robert Flaherty and the making of his groundbreaking documentary Nanook of the North:
In the 1950s, two generations of Ungava Inuit were forcibly relocated by the Canadian government from their hunting grounds in Hudson Bay to “the Arctic wastes of Ellesmere Island,” 1200 miles to the north. They were assured that they would be able to continue their livelihood there, especially as regards hunting in order to feed themselves and their families. This proved not to be the case. As winter set in, they began to starve.
McGrath tells this story in harrowing, pitiless detail. For more on this subject, see my blog post and the review in the New York Times.
This book I’d never heard tells a harrowing story that begs to be more widely known. I for one will never forget it.
Melanie (aka M.J.) McGrath
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I was especially pleased by the lively participation of this group of book lovers. They asked questions and made comments that added materially to the content of my presentation. At the conclusion, when I had gone through my book list – and my voice was unhelpfully giving out – I asked if anyone had a book they’d like to recommend.
Jean shared her enthusiasm for a biography of Andy Warhol by Victor Bockris. (As it happens, I recently saw a Warhol retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago. I was surprised to learn what an excellent draftsman Andy Warhol was.) Judy spoke in favor of Long Bright River by Liz Moore, a new crime novel that has of late been garnering excellent reviews. Therese mentioned News of the World by Paulette Jiles, an historical novel that many of us have read and loved unconditionally. Several other titles were mentioned.
I was especially pleased to glimpse copies of the book list that were freely marked up by group members. Hopefully this means they got some good ideas for future reading. That, of course, is what this whole exercise was about!
Books to the Ceiling 