Green Border (2023)

This epic and gripping picture by veteran Polish director and cowriter Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa, The Secret Garden, Mr. Jones) takes on the humanitarian crisis of Muslim refugees making their way from Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to sanctuary in Sweden (or Poland, or anywhere). The problem is getting there. As Muslims entering the EU they face hostility and prejudice at every point, particularly at this brutal “green border” region that Green Border focuses on between Belarus and Poland. It is heavily forested and the terrain can be rugged and swampy. Both Belarus and Poland have semi-official “pushback” policies, which means the refugees are continually moved back and forth across the barbed wire by violent border patrols. Laws obviously don’t matter here. Green Border offers a sprawling set of characters and stories, focusing on the border patrols and activists working on the scene as well as the refugees. Of course it’s worst for the refugees, but the activists are laboring under dire conditions too and we see that even the border patrols, or those not particularly psychopathic, are under tremendous contradictory pressures themselves. The stories and situations are complex as they unravel in this swirling stew. One thing keeps leading to another. It’s often nighttime. The screenplay is rich with the difficulties of individual circumstances, a constant high-wire act. It bears elements of The Grapes of Wrath in the story of one family. The black and white film stock only makes it more stark, the shadows are deeper, darker, and the glimmers of light more fleeting and elusive. It’s hard to watch in places because Holland’s characterizations are drawn so fine these people just come alive even as they are grievously wounded or worse. The middle-aged Leila (Behi Djanati Atai) haunts me, fleeing Afghanistan from the specter of the Taliban. Her big glasses, her deft use of her cell phone, her compassion and generosity, and her fate are deeply felt, searing. The final scenes compare all we have seen in a long movie with the more recent treatment of 2 million Ukrainian refugees after the Russia-Ukraine War started. They are welcomed to Poland even as the inhumane treatment and atrocities continue on the green border. Heartbreaking portrait of a horrible situation but the movie is never less than enthralling. Double feature with Come and See, if you can stand it.

“A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (1948)

(spoilers) J.D. Salinger’s story shares some interesting points with Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” Both were published in the New Yorker, both in 1948, both with shocking twist endings, and both in many ways made their careers as breakthrough stories. I also remember both being taught in my 10th-grade English class. “Bananafish” is basically the start of the Glass family saga. The twist ending is out of the O. Henry school of hit ‘em with never-saw-it-coming wry irony aka the temptations of fickle fate. Here the very ordinariness of the day described—the story feels aimless for much of its length—is what sets up the shock of the ending (content warning: suicide). Interestingly, it is better understood now that a suicidal person may appear cheerful and upbeat shortly before committing the deed, having finally made the decision. Not sure Salinger knew that, which might make it an impressive feat of intuition. There is ultimately a lot of psychological veracity here. Future trademarks of Salinger’s writing are apparent too, such as italicizing individual syllables to better mimic actual speech. One of the most seductive aspects of reading him is the sense that a real person is speaking directly to you. It may no longer be as effective, going on a hundred years later—speech patterns change. But, call it nostalgia if you must, but rereading these stories has often felt like something akin to going home. That’s not to say it’s entirely a pleasure. Rereading “Bananafish,” we know what’s coming. Seymour’s scenes with the young girl, Sybil, often struck me as cringy and forced. He is represented as ostentatiously “good with children” but I’m not convinced, partly because I know what is about to happen. And we know now—we learn elsewhere in the still fragmented cycle of stories—that Seymour’s worshipful brother Buddy is the author (or “author”) of this story. The jovial chatter and stream-of-consciousness bantering and joking—bananafish? bananafish?—feel empty and weird. Is Buddy trying to burnish the reputation of a suicide? Likewise the scene with the woman on the elevator, when Seymour accuses her of staring at his feet. It departs from the narrative of the suicide at peace, as now he is suddenly peevish. I think more of these miscues are Salinger, though some are also Buddy’s. But “Bananafish” is nonetheless an auspicious start, there’s no getting around that—to a singular and vastly influential writing career, to the Glass family tales to come, even just to the Nine Stories collection itself. This story is a good place to start in all kinds of ways.

J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories
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Who’s Got Trouble? (2005)

I’m not entirely sure how I acquired my CD copy of Shivaree’s third album, featuring the deliciously named Ambrosia Parsley, singer, songwriter, and daughter of California, along with guitarist Duke McVinnie and keyboardist Danny McGough. Duke and Danny both, separately and together, collaborate with Parsley on many of the songs in this set. I must have found it in some used CD palace somewhere along the way. It has lurked there in my collection for many years. Or maybe I ordered it up online on an impulse, after reading some review. It has often happened that way. The most memorable track on Who’s Got Trouble?—perhaps all I took from it all those years ago before filing it away, because I responded to it so instantly again—is the cover of Brian Eno’s “The Fat Lady of Limbourg.” The icy-cool trio has a lot of fun bearing down on Eno’s 1970s tale of hapless groupie love on tour in the Benelux region. But returning to Who’s Got Trouble? again, and with regular attention, a good many more virtues begin to disclose. The band underplays it always, with arrangements that feel loose and warmly open, holding lots of space in a smoky room, and not afraid to bring in the horns at will. They let simple sharp musical figures propel the momentum in low-key fashion. Parsley has something of a baby-doll voice that can verge on too Betty Boop cute but on a song like “Lost in a Dream” her skill is eminently apparent, regularly working minor keys and blue notes to good effect, landing on every note and syllable with the precision of a jeweler. In turn, the sidemen support her with a heady voodoo lounge stew that often reminds me of the jazzy cabaret exercises of Tom Waits. Shivaree started off on career highs, with the 2000 “Goodnight Moon,” a Parsley/McVinnie composition, featured over the closing credits of Kill Bill: Vol. 2 and subsequently appearing in about 12 more movies, TV shows, and commercials. Blame it on Moby. By the time of Who’s Got Trouble? they appeared to be fading and the next album, a collection of covers (Tainted Love: Mating Calls and Fight Songs), would be their last. All their stuff is worth a visit on your streaming travels.

The Dark Knight (2008)

USA / UK, 152 minutes

Director: Christopher Nolan

Writers: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer, Bob Kane

Photography: Wally Pfister

Music: James Newton Howard, Hans Zimmer

Editor: Lee Smith

Cast: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Ritchie Coster, Chin Han, Nestor Carbonell, Eric Roberts, Anthony Michael Hall, Patrick Leahy

I have no problem calling The Dark Knight the best Batman movie ever made—by miles, even. I just think we might need to call on Scott McCloud for some analysis of why no Batman movie has ever worked as well as most Batman comics—is it the space between the panels? (If McCloud has done so already, someone please point me there.) In command of a princely budget, shot on location in Chicago, Hong Kong, and London, The Dark Knight is committed to being a high-tech thriller like director Michael Mann makes. Lots of gadgets, stunts, special effects, chase scenes (involving a Lamborghini, fat-wheeled motorcycles, and semitrucks marked “SLaughter Is the Best Medicine”), fistfights, gunplay, and tedious orchestral music from Hans Zimmer, with a giant swirling story about Gotham City and the chaos the Joker (Heath Ledger) unleashes there with bank robberies, hospital demolitions, assassinations, so on so forth. The Dark Knight is also rich with movie stars: Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and the Democratic senator from Vermont, Patrick Leahy

I’m also happy to call Heath Ledger the best Joker of all and even to consider this performance possibly his greatest. But that’s more because his career was cut short in 2008, when he died at the age of 28. It’s hard to say where he would be now, still in his 40s. He rewrote the whole approach to the Joker but I’m pretty sure, given his willingness to take on a risky role and make it great like he did in Brokeback Mountain, that The Dark Knight and his Joker would be in competition with other performances by now. The big boffo attack of The Dark Knight continues to impress, but Ledger’s performance, embedded in it as the unsettling center of gravity, is one of a kind. The rest of the movie seemed kind of boring to me on my third time through. I’m still happy to call it one of the greatest superhero movies, but this might be a good place to wonder about the general utility of superhero movies.

“Grettir at Thorhall-stead” (1903)

About the closest I’ve ever got to the writer Frank Norris is the 1924 movie Greed, based on his novel McTeague. Norris, a Chicago native, died of appendicitis at the age of 32 but that was enough time to establish himself as a promising journalist and naturalist fiction writer, peer to Theodore Dreiser and under heavy influence of Emile Zola. But apparently, as this vampire tale seems to suggest, Norris also had some interest (perhaps only commercial?) in the dark and fantastical tales of European lore. This story is set in a dark, brooding, and unpleasantly cold and volcanic Iceland—not the exotic otherworldly home of Bjork and progressive politics we know from pictures today, but a harsh and remote cold rocky land. It sounds like Norris had been there, but maybe he only read accounts. The first section of this story introduces Glamr, a name associated with a 13th-century Icelandic saga and also used in an 1863 story by Sabine Baring-Gould. Another character here, Grettir, has similar origins. This Glamr is a big stocky handyman at Thorhall’s remote homestead, hired to be a shepherd. I’m not sure what to call Thorhall’s spread—a ranch? Plantation? Farm? What? Glamr threatens the harmony there as an “unbeliever” in a close-knit Christian community. But he’s the first victim along with some animals. This vampire has the strength and size to break the backs of both humans and horses. Before they can bury Glamr, however, his body disappears. Also there had been no trace of wounds on his body, not even the usual tell-tale puncture wounds on the neck. This is a different kind of vampire story, where the vampire is more a wild beast. No tuxedos required, and it’s not really that supernatural, except in a loose and ancient kind of way of thinking about things. Next, all household members, separately, are possessed by intense feelings of foreboding, followed shortly by a sighting by one of the maids of Glamr at a window. Summer comes and goes. Glamr’s replacement, Thorgaut, is more popular around the place than the ill-natured unbeliever Glamr. Grettir himself finally shows up well into the second half—the God of Thunder, more or less, a Hercules type, “well known and well beloved throughout all Iceland.” Nice color all along the way, seals and other things barking in the distance. A big fight ensues, which Grettir wins of course, but not before the vampire fills him with fear by telling him his future is bleak. A very strange story indeed from a young US American naturalist novelist, with not much online to tell when Norris wrote it. He died in 1902 and the story was published posthumously.

Vampire Tales: The Big Collection, pub. Dark Chaos
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Libra (1988)

I was hoping to like Don DeLillo’s 10th novel (and nominee for a National Book Award) more than I actually did. It reminded me of three things that all came later: director and cowriter Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie JFK, Norman Mailer’s lengthy journalistic account of Lee Harvey Oswald in his 1995 Oswald’s Tale, and Stephen King’s 2011 science fiction novel 11/22/63. In all cases the author (or auteur) marinated for years or decades in JFK assassination lore, with all its tantalizing red herrings, and then regurgitated a unified field theory of just what happened, more or less. Libra is among the early versions of this exercise, favoring the sinister CIA bloc of theorists. It’s early enough that it predates what has evolved into the before and after debunking of Gerald Posner’s Case Closed in 1993, which I still haven’t read. I know it says something about me that I know the others and not that one. DeLillo focuses more on Oswald, tracking his youth and his time in Russia and after. His assassination attempt on conservative activist Edwin Walker is here, his marriage to the Russian Marina, his travels from Dallas to New Orleans back and forth, his mysterious street activities. George de Mohrenschildt. David Ferrie. Guy Banister. All here. Jack Ruby too. And finally November 22. Such strange characters populating this murky submerged historical scene. I probably should have read Libra sooner. I’m sure it was revelatory in its time and fascinating as one of the first and best of its kind (the overheated paranoid kind). It has lost some of that by now, and honestly that’s probably more me than the novel. Although I will say, having previously slogged through Underworld, it may simply be that I don’t get along well with DeLillo’s writing, which is discursive and suggestive unto the death. I would recommend it as part of any plunge into the JFK assassination mythos, maybe even one place to start. Of the four I’m talking about here, I like Oswald’s Tale best and then 11/22/63. I haven’t seen Stone’s JFK since it was new. I suspect it might grate more now but I remember it as entertaining and think it could well be so still. As for Libra, I think it gets Oswald right, which would have been harder to do without the KGB transcripts Mailer had access to. But Libra, at this juncture, even as fiction, might be a little too open to amorphous conspiracy theories.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)

Summerteeth (1999)

Let’s start by clearing up the most pressing questions about Wilco’s third album. “Summerteeth,” first, is a colloquial expression for an incomplete set of permanent teeth (“some are teeth”). And, second, the black & white cover photo shows a young girl blowing a big bubblegum bubble. What either has to do with the musical set is not clear, but Summerteeth rocks righteously, tenderly, and shambolically, as Wilco does. At the same time, themes of opioid addiction and marital troubles float in the welter (honcho Jeff Tweedy was addicted to painkillers at the time and his marriage was on the rocks but survived). Some of the references are more blatant than others. Some are very blatant. They considered “A Shot in the Arm” such a winner they included two versions. Admittedly it’s a great song. But it’s clear what “Maybe all I need is a shot in the arm” means in this context, after all the reporting. “She’s a Jar” is more subtle about the relationship troubles, leading with the ambiguous but on balance affectionate stanza “She's a jar / With a heavy lid / My pop quiz kid / A sleepy kisser / A pretty war / With feelings hid / She begs me not to miss her.” The stanza is repeated at song’s end, but in the last line now she is begging him not to hit her. Before you can even grasp what he said it’s on to the next song, a neat, disquieting trick. “Via Chicago” starts “I dreamed about killing you again last night / And it felt all right to me,” going on to add details like blood to the idle fantasy. The song “Summer Teeth” may be trying to relieve our minds about any untoward intimations: “It’s just a dream he keeps having / And it doesn’t seem to mean anything.” Oh OK then! In many ways, though they make me uneasy too, I like the way Tweedy, Jay Bennett, and the band use these unsettling details to roil the waters. It’s more than 25 years later and I hope the survivors are doing well. I see Bennett died of a fentanyl overdose in 2009—details of the sad rupture between Tweedy and Bennett are covered in the essential documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. By my lights Summerteeth is essential too. But I’d like to register one tiny complaint about the CD, of which Wilco obviously is not the only guilty party. I’ve been listening to CDs in my living room lately along with a streaming service setup at my desk. It’s been a while since I’ve sat and listened to CDs this way, on the couch, one at a time, without even shuffle, and it has reminded me of some things I don’t like about CDs. Hidden tracks are one. You think an album is all finished and you go to change it and notice the counter is still measuring time. That’s when you know you’ve got a stinking hidden track on your hands. In the streaming version, track 15 of Summerteeth is titled “23 Seconds of Silence.” Ridiculous, followed by the two hidden tracks, one of which is the second version of “A Shot in the Arm” (I like both versions). At least 23 seconds is relatively merciful. Some hidden tracks make you wait for whole minutes or even parts of an hour, sometimes just for a stupid little throwaway. In summary, I like Summerteeth, but I HATE hidden tracks. Another thing I hate about CDs is skits, but that’s not relevant here.

“Manor” (1885)

If it’s a little surprising to find this gay vampire love story by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs from as long ago as 1885, it’s a little less surprising to find how hard it is to see online in English (get your auf Deutsch right here). It was not translated into English until 1991, per the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB), where it is Ulrichs’s only listed story. It has not been much anthologized either—in a way it still exists as underground artifact. Ulrichs was primarily a lawyer and pioneering gay rights activist in 19th-century Germany. He pressed his cases in the courts and published a lot of essays. Vampire stories were and maybe still are apt refuge for highly marginalized LGBTQ+ folks, already too often necessarily operating behind masks. Sheridan Le Fanu’s amazing 1872 novella “Carmilla” is testimony to that. Ulrichs picked up on the vibe in this tale, which is altogether more romance than shocker (knowing perhaps that the spectacle of man-love would be shocking enough to conventions). Its strength is its commercial weakness, which is that it’s just so plain what is going on here. The boy is 15. Manor, the young sailor, is 19. It’s hearts on eyeballs love at first sight, after a rescue scene. They live on an island system in the Norwegian Sea—way north (where Ingmar Bergman lived too). There is no overt sex but the chemistry and the contentment of sleeping together are palpable. They spend a lot of time in the woods, which I think might be intended as our big clue. Manor is an orphan and sailor by trade. He goes to sea and when he returns he is part of a terrible wreck, which he does not survive and is buried with the rest. But wait. At night, he comes scratching at the boy’s window. His love has transcended death but also he needs blood from the boy to keep this good thing going. You can guess. Soon the boy’s pallor is terrible. The sad moral: “They thrive on the blood of the living and, like a beloved, long for their embrace. But their yearning causes everyone nothing but grief.” The townspeople figure out what’s going on and they’re not having any of it and, well, we know how these things go. It’s worth asking what the townspeople are objecting to, the desecrated grave or the gay. It seems to be more about the grave which Manor keeps climbing out of and leaving a big mess behind. I have to say I can understand the problem. There’s no good end to this, yet however strange it is still a touching love story.

Vampire Tales: The Big Collection, pub. Dark Chaos
Story not available online.

Brian Eno: 1971-1977 – The Man Who Fell to Earth (2011)

I went looking for last year’s documentary on Brian Eno, Eno, which reportedly has 52,000,000,000,000,000,000 versions (several billion each for everyone on the planet) and was a big Sundance hit. I’d like to know how it works and how you see it. Instead, on Prime, I stumbled across this useful little workup, which I missed in 2011. Word has it it’s the first documentary ever about Eno—hard to believe it took so long. The IMDb breakdown is unusually scanty. No director, for one thing, and no mention of lots of the folks interviewed, including Robert Christgau, Geeta Dayal, Simon Reynolds, and various biographers. It covers the main period I am interested in with Eno, his “rock era,” starting with his tenure with Roxy Music in the early ‘70s, and it is generously long, over two and a half hours. All of this documentary is enjoyable but the footage and songs of the early years of Roxy Music were particularly so for me. Lots of very good discussions, often followed by the specific songs talked about. I’m not sure of some sources of the visuals all throughout. There may have been video-like scenarios shot back then, or these filmmakers may just be obliging us with stuff to look at while the music plays. Opinions differ on the arc of Eno’s career, of course, but for me this is the high point, as it drifted after 1977 further into his ambient music exercises and an increasing role as a producer favored by a surprising number of high-profile rock bands (Toto, U2, Coldplay, Grace Jones, James, Ultravox). People in this documentary say that he was a calm and grounding presence in the studio, which I can believe as there is also a certain calm and grounding effect to his music, even the raucous stuff. What can I say? I vividly remember the ‘70s work of Eno and many in his orbit then, including David Bowie, Robert Fripp, and Talking Heads. I have some interest in his ambient work as well, notably the 1973 collaboration with Fripp, (No Pussyfooting). This documentary also covers his work with Cluster (Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius), which in many ways marks the origins of his ambient music ideas, born of an interest in cybernetics. From the crazy befeathered creature who constantly stole Bryan Ferry’s charisma out from under him in Roxy Music to the meditative student of the planet who created Another Green World to the rocker who might have invented Talking Heads in 1974 with “Third Uncle,” Brian Eno has put together a wonderfully unpredictable and wildly engaging career. Lots of details here and, for anyone with any regard for ‘70s Eno, it’s practically mandatory. You might know Eno in the ‘70s already but I can tell you this is worth the revisit. Remarkable creator. Now to track down Eno, hoping it’s more than just some Black Mirror: Bandersnatch stunt.

The Double (1846)

The Double: A Petersburg Poem

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s second novel was published the same year as his first, Poor Folk, in 1846 when he was 25. The Double was taken, then as now, as being under some influence of Nikolai Gogol (whose The Nose and The Overcoat I think I read many years ago but don’t remember well). At any rate I found The Double crazy impressive and impressively crazy. Wikipedia does not include The Double among Dostoevsky’s “major works,” but Vladimir Nabokov, who was not particularly a fan, called it the best thing Dostoevsky ever wrote. At this early stage of my reading through him somewhat systematically, I’m inclined to agree. No one (not even ISFDB) seems to see much of the fantasy/horror genre in it, but it’s one of the best and most effective doppelganger stories I know. Yes, it works at other levels as well: psychological search for identity, comic lampoon of St. Petersburg society, etc. But the bold absurdity of it is just right. “Our hero,” as Constance Garnett frequently translates, is a low-level bureaucrat in St. Petersburg who is not doing well in his work and entering into a nervous breakdown (that explains it! he's insane! per many). About a quarter or third into this short novel he encounters someone who looks like him and has his same name. This fellow, often designated “Junior” to the original’s “Senior,” is even further down on his luck, and homeless. Senior invites him to stay with him until he’s on his feet again. The next morning Junior is gone when Senior wakes. By the time Senior gets to his job he finds Junior working it for him, as him—and doing very well. It’s soon quite apparent that Junior is stealing Senior’s life. All this is rendered in an early but already accomplished version of Dostoevsky’s raving, raw, canting high-strung voice. You’d be wrecked too if this were happening to you. This little gem is rollicking and entertaining all the way. Like the best horror—I guess I’m going there but Dostoevsky, of course, is much more than mere horror—The Double gives us an impossible situation and little explanation. Where does Junior come from really and what does he want? No word. He’s just there, steadily taking over Senior’s life by way of meritocracy. No one seems fazed that there are two of him, and his employer is pleased with the new guy. The Double is often funny, pitched at this hysterical level. But also unnerving, strange, and very entertaining.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Mermaid Avenue (1998)

This interesting collaboration between Billy Bragg and Wilco—and two more that followed in 2000 and 2012, plus similar projects by other artists, none of which I know—started with Woody Guthrie’s daughter Nora, the first director of the Woody Guthrie Foundation. It seems Woody left behind over 1,000 completed lyrics which he never set to music. In 1995, Nora contacted Bragg after seeing him perform at a Woody tribute concert. She wanted to know if he would be interested in setting some of them to music. He was indeed, and he invited Wilco to join, and the first results are on this album. For the most part the songs are divided about equally between them—Bragg writes his and Wilco writes theirs. Everybody performs on all—the credits are complicated, plus extras like Natalie Merchant sit in on some tracks. Some of the Wilco stuff is composed by Jeff Tweedy, some by Tweedy with Jay Bennett. Two—“Hoodoo Voodoo” and “She Came Along to Me”—are collaborations between Bragg and Wilco. The whole Wilco band gets credit on the first. “She Came Along to Me,” one of the best on the album, is credited to Bragg, Tweedy, and Bennett. In general, and somewhat surprisingly for me, as a fan of Wilco who has spent most of my life generally indifferent to Bragg, the best songs here are by Bragg. For one thing, he channels the spirit of Woody Guthrie better. The wry, resigned aside in “She Came Along to Me” and the pause that expresses everything—“Maybe we’ll have all of the fascists out of the way by then.... Maybe so”—might by the most Woody Guthrie moment on the album (and that might be Bennett or Tweedy on the rejoinder). But I think the most Woody Guthrie moment on the album actually goes to another Bragg workup, “I Guess I Planted,” which stoutly shouts for the union battle and is perfectly rousing about it. “Walt Whitman’s Niece” is a nice call-and-response wake-up number to start the album (by way of the sequencing given) and “The Unwelcome Guest” finishes it well. Both by Bragg. That reminds me. I get a kick out of Woody’s various celebrity fixations found in these lyrics: Walt Whitman, Ingrid Bergman (in her Stromboli phase, which to me is still a dish ordered in Italian restaurants), and Hanns Eisler, a composer associated with Bertolt Brecht. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the Wilco gang didn’t contribute anything worth our time here. “California Stars” and the shorty “Christ for President” are two of the best songs here. But I do think, and maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised, that Bragg is the most obviously plugged in to Woody Guthrie.

A Serious Man (2009)

UK / France / USA, 106 minutes

Directors / writers / editors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Photography: Roger Deakins

Music: Carter Burwell, Jefferson Airplane, Band of Gypsys

Cast: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick, Aaron Wolff, Jessica McManus, George Wyner, Amy Landecker, Adam Arkin, Peter Breitmayer

I wanted to make a point about A Serious Man being underrated, but every time I go looking for ranked lists of Coen brothers movies it’s chaos. I keep running into opinions I can’t believe anyone really has. A Rotten Tomatoes list that is aware of Ethan Coen’s solo Drive-Away Dolls from last year, for example, has True Grit #1 and Blood Simple #2 before getting to Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and Miller’s Crossing. The Big Lebowski is down at #14 in that list of 20 while A Serious Man sits comfortably in the middle at #11. That’s not exactly underrated but this list and many of the others strike me as weirdly perverse in any number of significant ways each.

Maybe Coen brothers movies appeal on a range of inscrutable, deeply personal points that may be difficult to discern. I know that’s at least partly the case for me with A Serious Man, which features, though not by name, the western Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park, the growing up home of the Coen brothers. St. Louis Park was the next school district over from mine (Hopkins) and it was where my Dad taught 9th-grade physics and reported he’d had one of the Coens in a class one year. Many of the exteriors in A Serious Man were actually shot in Bloomington, a southern suburb. But I know St. Louis Park in the ‘60s when I see it. They are dead-on, these flat treeless squared-off suburban developments. The trees are all grown up now but this is what it looked like there 60 years ago.

Red Harvest (1929)

Dashiell Hammett’s comical (as I take it) Red Harvest casts a long shadow. It’s arguably the first hard-boiled detective novel, a subgenre that dominated mystery fiction across the 20th century and into the 21st. It was also influential on the movies Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars, at least via a bank shot off Hammett’s own The Glass Key, serialized in 1930. Akira Kurosawa, director of Yojimbo, a certain influence on director Sergio Leone, said The Glass Key, not Red Harvest, inspired his movie. Be that as it may, they all involve corrupt townships which an outsider manipulates into open and devastating warfare. As always with Hammett and much hard-boiled detective fare (the exceptions are James M. Cain and Jim Thompson) I tend to get confused with the typical blizzards of characters, motives, and fedoras that can be virtually indistinguishable. Characters can tend to be embodiments or markers of motive. It’s still fun to read from time to time, and reminds me it’s been too long since I looked at Hammett (or Raymond Chandler). I call this one comical because it is often funny and what else are you supposed to do? It’s a bacchanalia of blood-simple depravity. A fictional town in Montana named Personville (which many call Poisonville) is overrun by bootleggers and gangsters. Our unnamed first-person narrator, the so-called “Continental Op” and a regular in Hammett fiction, arrives and sets the various factions in town against one another. They quickly get to killing every time. One of my favorite jokes is a paragraph where our guy adds up all the corpses in his head and comes to the number 16. Shortly down the road is a chapter called “The Seventeenth Victim.” And it doesn’t stop there. The spoiler would be telling you who survives. Red Harvest is short, under 200 pages, and Hammett remains one of the greatest writers of the form. Yes, sometimes the language may seem too chiseled and/or overly active. But come on. How many writers ever err on that side? Most of them, like me, run on at will and leave all their wordy little darlings in place. It’s possible some may find Red Harvest too dark and grim. But that’s only because of all the death. Lighten up, folks!

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)