“De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period” (1952)

In this story by J.D. Salinger we see him carry off—insofar as he does carry it off—a farcical, mostly empty tale, riffing at a hundred miles an hour and nothing to work with. I see on Wikipedia that it was originally published in World Review (London), after the New Yorker rejected it because “the piece was judged too short to adequately address the complex religious concepts.” Complex religious concepts was news to me. It doesn’t strike me as a very serious story. It’s written when the first-person narrator, John Smith, is an adult, looking back on episodes in his youth, particularly involving his stepfather. The family of three departs for Paris after the stock market crash of 1929. They stay in Paris 10 years, during which the mother/wife dies. Back in New York City in 1939 they are trying to make ends meet. Smith is a painter, though not convincing when he talks about it. He did take some art classes in Paris, maybe even got a degree. He sees an ad for a position in Montreal at a correspondence art school. He drops Pablo Picasso’s name all over the place and gets the job. But it’s an absurd job, just part of a fraud operation. One of the students he critiques is a nun and he’s very impressed with her work. He sends her a note of encouragement but, shortly after, the convent withdraws her from the class. This is a kind of blow to him, a crisis. Apparently this is one place where religion is read as an element of the story. But the context is all so absurd and comical I didn’t really recognize it as any kind of religious crisis of faith or whatever. Then, per Wikipedia, Smith has an official Epiphany one night as he is “looking into a display window of an orthopedic appliances store.” This also barely registered on me, I must admit. Because the narrator dedicates the story to his stepfather in the first paragraph, I assumed things were all good between them and that aspect was one of my favorite parts of the story. Wikipedia seems to think otherwise and now I’m not so sure. The classic Salinger voice is wisecracking and perhaps deceptively lighthearted. I know he would get increasingly into profundities about life and religion, not always well-suited but it’s arguable he got better at it, notably as he developed his Glass family. I think this is more of an awkward early attempt and does not work well.

J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories
Read story online.

In Rainbows (2007)

A Radiohead experiment: I never properly heard In Rainbows until I started on this set of reviews and was thus nearly wholly unfamiliar with it. As free downloads went in 2007, I found myself relatively indifferent to the big gesture by Radiohead. It was nice to see them acknowledge the ongoing frenzy of illicit downloading—decades of repressed resentment toward the grossly venal music industry erupting like volcanos. Of course it was also Radiohead’s calculated marketing move to participate directly if a little awkwardly in this phenomenon of the internet era. It was a better response than we got from Metallica and some others, although, in fairness, most people are prone to distemperate yelping when they think they’re losing money that belongs to them. At the time, I was working on downloading (“free”) stuff like Illinois Jacquet and Thom Bell box sets and all 60+ James Brown albums from the ‘60s and ‘70s. I did download In Rainbows (because why not? the elusive appeal of Radiohead prevailed as always and I still had not got to the bottom of it) but then there it sat lonely and neglected on my hard drive, no track (that I noticed) ever picked by shuffle. Eventually that hard drive failed and with it all charm for digital music files, blows against the music industry empire notwithstanding. In Rainbows is on streaming services now, of course, including a second disc with an EP’s worth of extra tracks from the same sessions, released later on a two-CD Japanese expanded edition package that now starts at $65 for a used copy. As usual for me and Radiohead—I’m sure my take is getting monotonous by now—I hear glimmers and shimmers of eccentric beauty welling up and randomly passing by. Nice, but the experience does not reliably recur. The music on In Rainbows seems to sink too easily into the background and very little distinguishes itself. I noticed one time, and as usual by random, that the album made a groovy background for a texting session. And, while very little from In Rainbows has made any lasting impression on me, at least I can report, for those looking for the quick version, that the most popular tracks appear to be “All I Need,” followed by “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” and then “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi.” When I listen to them purposefully, yeah, they sound pretty good. But even the cat stopping by to ask for food—which happens multiple times every day—can take me out of any spell cast by this album, the high points of it distributed so subtly as to be nearly nonexistent.

#670 on the Pop Thruster Best 1,000 Albums Ever list

“Three Days” (1984)

[spoilers] I thought this story by Tanith Lee was pretty good—gothic more than supernatural, with a supremely messed-up family. In fact, one weak point is how extreme it is, with a sadistic father who loathes his children and humiliates them in public. Another weak point is too much explanation. But the narrative pull is strong, something I’m learning to appreciate for itself, as much horror tends to accord it less regard, if not dispensing with it altogether. The story focuses on Honorine, the only daughter of the father, the youngest and most vulnerable of his three children. When we first see her even the first-person narrator, a friend of one of the sons, is cruel in his description. “She was not ugly, but that is all that can be said. Indeed, had she been ugly, she would have possessed a greater advantage.” There’s more—he goes on about her for some time. The narrator has been invited along for the rituals of occasional humiliation of the children by the father. It so infuriates this narrator to be made witness that he breaks off with his friend. Next there’s a scene where the sister—Honorine—is seen by the narrator by chance. Now the impression she makes is much different: “... there truly was about her a gracefulness—of gesture, of attitude. And a strange air of laughter, mischievous and essentially womanly, that despite myself began to entice me to her vicinity.” The reason for this change is not entirely clear, but has something to do with an occultist group operating out of a bookstore. It could be that Honorine has come to believe she is the reincarnation of a persecuted woman who lived in an earlier century, or perhaps there are witches in the group and they are doing something, or some combination. Honorine seems to have had a boost in confidence by identifying with the woman. I could pretty much hang with all this, and I’m not sure what I’d do with the story myself, but at this point it starts to become more psychologically real and yet paradoxically less believable. The father, who verges on omniscient or has some excellent private detectives, finds out about the group and the woman and Honorine’s beliefs and attacks them directly, which shatters all the progress Honorine has made. Next stop suicide. I mean, OK, maybe. But it seems sad and pointless to make the story about this elaborate and unbelievable cruelty, mainly because it isn’t believable and lost me altogether. Still, Lee is a good storyteller and on balance it’s an enjoyable read.

The Dark Descent, ed. David G. Hartwell
Story not available online.

The Haunting of Hill House (1959)

Shirley Jackson’s haunted house novel has been so wildly oversold to me (chiefly, recently, on so-called booktube) that it could not possibly live up to the hype. But it’s pretty dang good anyway, even effectively scary in parts. It may be too late now for going into it the best way possible, which is with no knowledge at all of it. I mean, there’s only two movies, one play, and one TV series. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were video games too. Jackson hits you with a lot of tropes and cunning tricks. The layout of the mansion in question is very peculiar. The main character, Eleanor, has a troubling background. Now in her early 30s, she has spent the previous 11 years caring for her demanding ailing mother. Jackson even injects farcical and very funny humor with the appearance of a character in the last third. We laugh but by that point we are a little sickened by developments. There’s no gore, I don’t mean that—it’s just the constant unease by that point has done its work. One of Jackson’s best effects is phenomena that are experienced by more than one character but not all, as if the terrible spirit can choose who experiences these things—stuff like very loud pounding and other unusual noises, or strange smells. As you have likely heard, the four people are there as part of research into psychic or supernatural phenomena. Like a character out of The X Files, the scientist heading up the project wants to believe, but he approaches it cautiously. Eleanor is there because she has a history of psychic phenomena associated with her. Theodora feels a little like Jackson’s stand-in here. She is fashionable and witty and somehow had a lesbian vibe to me. Luke is related to the family that owns the haunted mansion—putting a member of the family there for the project is one of their conditions. There are also a couple of caretakers who refuse to spend the night there but provide services during the day. Mrs. Dudley particularly is funny. The Haunting of Hill House is really well conceived and executed. It lives up to its outsize reputation as one of the best horror novels ever written.

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

Kraftwerk’s Computer Love (2022)

Australian Steve Tupai Francis has a bio that claims “over 25 years’ experience in writing in a range of contexts including music, academia, and civil society” and possession of a “collection of over 3,000 records.” What he may lack in bona fides—I don’t know his music writing—he more than makes up for with his enthusiasm. For the album Computer Love particularly, but also, in chatty footnotes, for David Bowie, Kate Bush, Visage, and others. He reignited all my own ardor for the deceptively light 35-minute set. Francis just kept proclaiming it one of the best of all time until suddenly I had the daily habit again. He’s all about the complete package too—not just the songs and lyrics but also the cover art and attendant world tour, one of the greatest of all time, he says, and instantly I began to regret never seeing them. I was perfectly infatuated with Computer Love in 1981. If the metric is raw number of times I’ve played an album, then it’s my favorite Kraftwerk album, although at one time or another I’ve owned a handful of their best. What seems amazing to me now, all these years later, is how clearly Kraftwerk saw the coming of personal computers and even the internet, at least in terms of look, feel, and mood. Yes, they were using the most primitive tools to do it—the Speak and Spell toy, for crying out loud—but using them well, maximizing them all the way. The rumble of voices, the counting in multiple languages, “Computer World,” “Computer Love,” it’s quite almost overwhelmingly perfect. “By pressing down a special key / It plays a little melody.” With our attention spans shrinking down to the size of a little melody, as Kraftwerk foretold, it’s wry and painful and uncanny and hilarious all at once. It may never have sounded better than while I was reading this book—and I obsessed over this album once. Francis triggers a lot of that simply by insisting on it, because much of what he says in his flights is true. In that way it reminds me of another 33-1/3 title, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli. Francis and Fusilli take different routes in terms of emphasis, but they are equally effective at infectiously raising the passion for these great albums. I mean, you probably have to love them in the first place. But if you do, prepare for a good+ time.

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

Hail to the Thief (2003)

I was sure I really liked Hail to the Thief when it was new (a live version was released just this past week), even though I kept thinking of it and too often still think of it as It Takes a Thief. I understood the title as a reference to the US election of 2000, but I was confused why that would matter to Radiohead, being Brits. Perhaps I think reference to a jazzy 1960s TV spy show makes more sense. Or maybe, like most of the rest of the world, Radiohead had a problem with the US / Iraq War II. Can’t blame them. Anyway, I bought the album new, played it a lot, enjoyed it, and eventually put it away. But when I pulled it out earlier this year I found myself puzzled again. As with the usual pattern of this survey, only parts of some songs sounded all right. The album as a whole was alienating. In 2003 it was considered by fans to be something of a return to form after time in the WTF wilderness with Kid A and Amnesiac. It’s true it might bear more electronic effects and textures than before generally. A poll in my app asked for favorite songs on the album but I had no idea—“2 + 2 = 5” was the overwhelming winner but it doesn’t sound notably better to me than anything else here. “We Suck Young Blood” is all slo-mo handclaps and mounting chaos. But such an overstated title. “There, There” brings a nice ringing charge in service of a dramatic buildup and appears to be one of the favorites on the album. In “I Will” singer Thom Yorke puts on a clinic in mumbling, but you can sing strong with the chorus. “A Punch Up at a Wedding” has a great title. “Myxomatosis” does not. The medical term means “a highly contagious and often fatal viral disease primarily affecting rabbits.” Not sure I even want to know where that comes from out of the minds of Radiohead, but the tune has a great hook, like some maniac semitruck bearing down on you. Hail to the Thief might be the unusual album whose second half is better than the first, but as usual I’m all mixed up and listening to it more only confuses me further. Last note from yesterday: “Oh fuck I really liked the whole thing on ‘one more listen.’” As always, go figure.

“Mother Hag” (1987)

This story by Steve Rasnic Tem is not my usual cup of tea, but there’s little denying how effective it is. It basically works like a fairy tale, with orphans and a stepmother and various magical effects. What I like is that it feels like a pretty good approximation of a fairy tale, with modern sensibilities kept at bay—not entirely, but to a respectable degree. I also like the vision of the witch. Interestingly, I haven’t really found that many witches in this horror short story project of mine. But this story is very witchy: “Mother Hag was described, depending on who you talked to, so tall she rose to the ceiling, so small she was quite invisible and treacherous; black, pale, or quite blue; covered with warts or scabs; wide as a barnyard, narrow as a crack; naked as the winter fields, cloaked in midnight; fingers of clay or fingers of red-iron; drinks blood, tar, or wine; has pointed or blunt teeth, clean-shaven or whiskers, sunken or bulging eyes, wrinkled or gigantic breasts, cracked or a haunting, deep voice.” Now that’s a witch! It reminds me of the way the movie The Blair Witch Project makes its witch compellingly terrifying. Yet the story also undercuts itself a little with the fairy tale tone and events, such as a peddler’s bag as vast as a cave. On the other hand, witches are practically fairy tale stuff by definition. I’m willing to give Tem the benefit of the doubt to some degree. And things get extreme in various ways toward the end. Mother Hag starts to look like she might be all persons and all things. Vast and deep levels of incest are casually introduced. Things happen that are not pleasant. There’s a kind of Hansel and Gretel brother and sister who are strong supporting characters, if not main players. The boy comes to an end he doesn’t deserve and, if I’m reading this right, the sister’s fate is even more weird. It feels to me like the story goes further than it should have, but that’s OK too. It is richly dark like I always hope fairy tales will be but rarely are. “Mother Hag” is more like an ironic “fairy tale” than the real thing—you know it’s modern, you pretty much always do—but nevertheless it works very well.

Tales by Moonlight II, ed. Jessica Amanda Salmonson (out of print)
Story not available online.

Uncle’s Dream (1859)

This short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky was his first in more than 10 years, the first since his imprisonment on political charges and 10 years of exile to Siberia. He opposed the serf system and associated with an activist group, and along with imprisonment and exile he suffered a mock execution, a form of torture. Uncle’s Dream is short enough to classify as novella and works as a story of manners, perhaps as only Dostoevsky could do it. There’s a matriarch and her attractive 23-year-old daughter. And there is a prince of the realm, ancient and doddering—BUT presently unmarried. The matriarch has her eye on him for her daughter. The matriarch blames all the world’s ills, or perhaps just her own, on Shakespeare, which strikes me as singularly Dostoevskian. As the story goes along it appears it is Romeo and Juliet that she specifically objects to. Her daughter has other suitors, one of whom is the nephew of the prince. The prince is a wonderful character. He stammers (one of the least annoying I’ve seen in literature, it even gets to be kind of fun) and he melts into reflexive lust whenever a young woman is nearby. At one point there’s a lot of whisking around as the matriarch schemes to get her daughter alone with the prince to manipulate a proposal. They pull it off, but to get him out of it the nephew and others scheme to make him think it was all a dream. The prince is mostly oblivious. The others are trying to bluff the matriarch and her daughter out of forcing the issue. The prince seems willing to marry her if that’s how it has to be, but after a point the daughter can’t stand the humiliation any longer of all this intriguing. The ending is strange, dragging in a new character for no apparent reason, although the finish beyond that, a long view of the daughter and matriarch, is inspired. This has all the stuff I like and expect from Dostoevsky, with the outraged and the indignant sputtering their rages past one another. I am already inclined toward these marriage-seeking stories, which tell us so much about the way people behave. I love the Shakespeare detail, and the prince is a perfect example of Dostoevsky’s contempt (laced with envy) for the aristocracy. Welcome back from Siberia, Fyodor.

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

Batman (1989)

USA / UK, 126 minutes

Director: Tim Burton

Writers: Bob Kane, Sam Hamm, Warren Skaaren

Photography: Roger Pratt

Music: Danny Elfman, Prince

Editor: Ray Lovejoy

Cast: Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger, Robert Wuhl, Pat Hingle, Billy Dee Williams, Michael Gough, Jack Palance, Jerry Hall, Tracey Walter, Lee Wallace, Hugo Blick

Director Tim Burton’s Batman was not the first Batman movie. Two were made in the 1940s and of course we can’t forget the 1966 extravaganza with Adam West, Burt Ward, Lee Meriwether, Cesar Romero, and all the rest. But this Batman was the first after Frank Miller’s graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, which returned Batman to his vaguely sick and dark creature of the night origins, nursing traumas and taking retribution as he could out of the hides of criminals. Miller’s Batman was not vaguely sick. He was explicitly sick. He needed to be put away, old and bitter and beginning to fail physically, committed only to the vigilante ethic. Compare Marvel’s Punisher.

The Miller treatment turned out to be a big hit. When word came that a movie was being made, it was the kind of Batman we were hoping for. But I don’t believe anyone making a Batman movie has yet matched Miller’s vision. What, you want an NC-17 Batman? Full disclosure, yes, but that’s me and even I know how unlikely it is to happen. Burton was a good enough choice, with his own quirky style that often flirts with the dark side (Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Corpse Bride, etc.). The problem was that Burton’s instincts tend equally toward the cartoony and the loony (Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks!, etc.). It’s not grim enough for the Batman a lot of us were looking for.

Under the Net (1954)

I got a kick our of Iris Murdoch’s first novel, a picaresque farce about a struggling (“hack”) writer in London scraping along on his wits. There are many sideline characters and their dalliances, which resolve neatly if not always satisfyingly. The connective tissue involves a lot of unlikely coincidences and eavesdropping. All in a day’s work for a farce, though I rolled my eyes at some of the prolongations. At the center of it are Hugo Belfounder, the narrator’s strange friendship with him, and what comes of it. They meet as subjects in a study of the common cold, systematically infected with viruses and their reactions recorded. Under the Net is full of great details like that. Hugo and Jake Donaghue, the narrator, begin a conversation that lasts for weeks and months, philosophical stuff about language and reality. Jake keeps notes and finds himself idly working them up into a book format, which he circulates and ultimately finds a publisher for. All this seemed increasingly unlikely to me, but Murdoch also had a foot in the world of academic philosophy, so maybe. And at a certain point “unlikely” came to be not very important here. I just gave in to the sequence of events, which can be equally funny and imaginative. Her writing style as Jake is roguish and raw. Both Jake and Hugo are larger than life and hugely entertaining. It is a farce but a very clever one. Murdoch continued to publish books of philosophy as well as some two dozen novels, plus a handful of plays and two collections of poetry. Prolific! I thought it was interesting that the Modern Library list of the 100 Best 20th-Century Novels included this debut—rather low, at #95—over any other title by her, some of which are at least vaguely familiar to me (e.g., The Sea, The Sea, a 1978 Booker Prize winner). Lots of good stuff here. Hugo is an interesting “genius” character, inventor of “set piece fireworks,” an amateur philosopher, and eventually a film magnate. A dog named Mars gets mixed up in the action, a one-time star of the screen like Rin Tin Tin. It’s always good when there’s room for a dog. “Under the net” is a term of impromptu philosophy whose explanation you’ll have to read for yourself to understand. True confession: I’m still not quite getting it.

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

Kid A (2000)

It may be a little perverse, but if I had to stack-rank Radiohead albums Kid A would be #2 after only OK Computer. The context may be different. They’re playing different instruments, with different arrangements. But it’s still Radiohead—couldn’t, for example, “In Limbo” fit on practically any of their albums? But then there is the controversy, which I saw split two ways: 1) I knew people who were literally mad at Radiohead, thinking this album meant they had been played for fools somehow. It reminds me of the way people can be convinced David Lynch or the Coen brothers are mocking them personally in their movies. 2) Others went a different direction, mulishly declaring Kid A the best Radiohead album and the only one they liked even remotely. Which reminds me that I never did get around to the follow-up album from the same sessions, Amnesiac—just not interested enough—so I feel it’s fair to say I’m somewhat more in the middle. I like Kid A in the same way I like the others—in fragments of the songs, rarely entire songs, and apparently depending on my mood when I sit down to listen. Do the snow-capped mountain peaks and/or icebergs on the cover of Kid A give us a clue to what we’re in for? All Radiohead music is cold at some level. Lyrics and lead vocals by Thom Yorke are the usual enigmas, when they can even be made out. But there are high points to Kid A if you’re willing to let them come to you. “Everything in Its Right Place,” led by an electric piano that will be ubiquitous on this album, is not just a great opener but apparently also the most popular track on the album. “How to Disappear Completely” carries a strange and beautiful musical figure that comes creasing in to haunt you. It might be under some influence of Ennio Morricone. “The National Anthem” has trace elements of free jazz, “Optimistic” offers up a nice clanking disquieting groove, and “Motion Picture Soundtrack” sounds like it could be, notably given that guitarist Jonny Greenwood was about to embark on a Hollywood career providing movie scores. He started with 2003’s Bodysong and his credits, mostly working with director and writer Paul Thomas Anderson, include There Will Be Blood, The Master, Phantom Thread, The Power of the Dog, and more. These guys have clearly got it busting out all over.

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Tonari no Totoro, Japan, 86 minutes

Director/writer: Hayao Miyazaki

Photography: Mark Henley (English version), Hisao Shirai

Music: Joe Hisaishi

Editor: Takeshi Seyama

Cast/voices (English version): Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning, Tim Daly, Pat Carroll, Lea Salonga, Frank Walker, Paul Butcher

My Neighbor Totoro, a Studio Ghibli production written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke), has been steadily growing in critical regard over the nearly 40 years since its release. Entering the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? in the lower echelons of the top 500, My Neighbor Totoro has risen steadily since then to its present position at #161. It is well ahead of another Ghibli movie released the same year, Grave of the Fireflies, which is presently at #462. That’s nearly that movie’s high point on the list, when it leapt up from #750. I think Grave of the Fireflies is the better picture overall—I tend to give extra points to movies that make me cry as hard as it does—but it's easy enough to see why Totoro is the more beloved picture.

I’m not even sure Grave of the Fireflies is entirely suitable for kids in the first place, whereas Totoro most assuredly is. It’s a gentle fantasy that focuses on two sisters, Satsuki age 10 and Mei age 4, and it’s emotionally grounded the way old ‘60s US sitcoms used to do it—the mother is mostly offstage, either dead or, as in this case, in the hospital with an unexplained, long-term, and possibly life-threatening condition. She’s supposed to be home soon, but this family has heard that before. The father is an archeology professor who moves the family to the country to be closer to the hospital. He’s a great Dad, always in a good mood and trying to help his kids any way he can, but his job is demanding even without the single-parent pressures. Fortunately, the neighbors in their new digs are supportive, helpful—and unusual.