Who? (1958)

I’m tempted to make fun of Algis Budrys for the title of his short novel. If it were up to me I would have called it The Man With the Metal Head. I would have insisted on it. But all right. What we have is a somewhat dubious Cold War story, ripped from the pages of Mad magazine’s Spy vs. Spy feature. For reasons that seems likely to be unreasonable, a top-secret weapons development program is doing its work near a border between the Allies and the Soviets. Something goes amiss in the calculations and there is an explosion. Soviet forces rush into the chaos and kidnap the top Allies scientist, Lucas Martino. He’s been seriously injured but they patch him up with evidently superior reconstructive technology, even as the Allies press for his return. Several months later the Soviets finally return him. His left arm and much of his head have been replaced in the fixups. The problem becomes confirming that he is actually Lucas Martino and not some Soviet replacement agent there to gather intel. The story is thus playing with ideas about the veracity of identity (as indicated in the title, to be fair). Everything the Soviets might have needed to know could have been pumped out of Martino. They had the time. The novel and its Lithuanian-American author refreshingly understand that torture works. The metal head obscures Martino’s most identifying feature, his face. Everything else, including fingerprints and maybe dental work (unmentioned), can evidently be fudged. DNA ID was of course unknown in 1958. I appreciated the brevity of this one, maybe 150 pages, because some characters were interesting but the big ideas about identity kind of fizzled and the ending was not very satisfying. But Martino, or his facsimile, was an interesting person, an outcast just from his Tin Man appearance. His long detention upon his return and the constant surveillance that followed make him sympathetic. The Cold War is deeply baked into all of it, a pervading reality imagined into the near future of the 1960s and beyond as never-ending. Which is much how it felt, even up to the time when it finally did end. This novel relies to a great extent on military spycraft, which makes it kind of ho-hum for me. But again, it’s over quickly and mostly enjoyable most of the way.

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

So Tough (1993)

Saint Etienne’s second album is something of a disappointment after the impressive Foxbase Alpha debut. Insert the hoary rock critic term “sophomore slump.” The elements are largely the same, but the emphasis has shifted away from more pure pop aesthetics and toward maddeningly vaporous experimental realms with sound collages, witty skits and audio clips from movies and TV ads, and hushed little semi-grooves under influence of ambient house figures of the moment such as the Orb. Saint Etienne is perfectly capable of the popsmithery I love them most for, later albums like Good Humor prove that out, and for that matter there’s a couple of winners at the very end of So Tough, “Who Do You Think You Are” and “Join Our Club.” For those studying versions of things as a hobby, those songs were released separately as singles and apparently included only in some (not all) US versions. It’s all actually quite complicated and I don’t have the heart to go into it for something that misfires more than not in my version. Those last two songs save the album for me, to the extent it is saved and to the degree you consider them part of the album, but set that aside. “Mario’s Café” starts things well, then “Railway Jam” follows with a certain template for much of the album: a witty audio clip, a droning train-on-the-tracks sound collage that goes more than a minute, and finally wisps of a song that sounds like it could be pretty cool. “Calico” and “Avenue” (5:12 and 7:34, respectively) similarly start out strong but ultimately go dithering off into ... stuff. I find it’s actually hard to specifically focus on this album as it plays, which might give it some utility as background music for dinner parties and such. The witty skits and audio clips are sure to be sources of conversation. Mix and match them with the sources listed at Wikipedia: “Peeping Tom, Billy Liar, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord of the Flies, and That'll Be the Day, as well as the television series The Family and the 1958 stereo demonstration album A Journey into Stereophonic Sound.” When I think of myself and witty skits and audio clips I think of Lou Grant from Mary Tyler Moore and spunk. I hate witty skits and audio clips. YMMV

La Notte (1961)

Italy / France, 122 minutes

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

Writers: Michelangelo Antonioni, Ennio Flaiano, Tonino Guerra

Photography: Gianni Di Venanzo

Music: Giorgio Gaslini

Editor: Eraldo Da Roma

Cast: Marcello Mastrolanni, Jeanne Moreau, Monica Vitti, Bernhard Wicki, Maria Pia Luzi, Gitt Magrini, Vincenzo Corbella, Rosy Mazzacurati, Umberto Eco

“Sometimes beauty can really be depressing” is a random line of dialogue earkt in La Notte, where, in fact, all the lines of dialogue can be taken as random. It could well represent the theme not only for this picture but for the larger “Trilogy of Incommunicability” of which it is the second part. Director and cowriter Michelangelo Antonioni’s project started with the much-decorated L’Avventura (1960), continued with La Notte, and finished on L’Eclisse (1962). As usually happens with three-packs like this, the second one tends to get shorted in terms of credit. For example, La Notte is presently ranked at #196 on the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? whereas L’Eclisse sits at #130 and L’Avventura is in the top 40 at #38.

I would call La Notte my favorite of the bunch, but I suspect it’s only because my long-term quarrels with the other two have been resolved by time and learning how to look at Antonioni movies. Just look. Don’t try to connect. Connections come unbidden. You see how thoroughly composed within the frames his shots are, the placement of objects, heads, and bodies, using techniques as needed such as deep focus for contrast and startling images. The narrative is in a dated style, out of self-conscious midcentury existential texts. It takes place in Milan, a bustling city with ongoing construction and traffic jams. The main couple here—the novelist Giovanni Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni) and his elaborately “alienated,” sometimes almost zombie-like wife Lidia (Jeanne Moreau)—wander this urban landscape aimlessly. Eventually we learn that, while Giovanni is a respected novelist with a new one just out, it is Lidia who has all the money and whatever control it might give her. They seem perfectly happy to spend their time going from place to place, seeing people, mingling, posing. Well, maybe not perfectly happy.

“The Woman in the Painting” (1993)

I liked a lot of things about this story by Lisa Goldstein. It’s old-fashioned in a way that is somehow fresh, not only focused on a mysterious witch monster shape-shifter, but told epistolary style, in a nicely done series of letters among three characters. It’s set in the 19th century too—1858 specifically, if it matters, and it might. It’s effective, a little bit hysterical, a little bit scary, and compulsively readable. I note that it’s not easy getting a handle on the shape of horror short fiction in the 1990s. Novels by then had replaced short stories as the essential product of horror literature. In a way this story represents a kind of nostalgia for those short stories, drawing on the traditional structure of correspondence among principals. Goldstein has been a prolific writer in the realm, ranging into fantasy as well as its subset horror. I would classify this particular story as closer to horror, but the genteel 19th-century approach may be more by way of the eclectic nature of what horror had become by 1993. Lots of writers prefer working in the shorter form (and not just horror writers), but publishers and the public at large had made it clear by then they’d rather look at novels. “The Woman in the Painting” feels more natural than contrarian, almost quaint as it takes care of its horror business. The scary parts feel modern, though they are also constrained by the historical context. The horror is in the uncertainty of what the monster is, or even at first whether it’s a monster at all. The uncertainty, the anxiety, is what feels modern. If it were actually 19th-century literature, it might, by contrast, focus rather on the certainty, both that it’s a monster and that it actually exists. So Goldstein pulls off a neat bit of almost uncanny ambivalence here. But it wouldn’t work at all if it weren’t done so engagingly in the first place, which makes me kind of hopeful I will run across more of her stuff. This story is boldly experimental in its retro way, with the epistolary strategy, which is exactly right. It’s a pretty good story all the way around.

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Seventh Annual Collection, ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
Story not available online.

Harry Nilsson, “You Can’t Do That” (1967)

[listen up!]

With this Nilsson throwaway, more stunt than song proper and often credited as the world’s first mash-up song, it’s not hard to see how he and it used flattery and songwriting chops to win the Beatles over to Nilsson’s side. They were impressed—in the late ‘60s, when they were still together and even touring, they regularly named Nilsson as their favorite US artist. The truth is I’m not even sure how much I like this song, though I suppose you have to give it to him on some level for pulling it off. Formally a slowed-down cover of the Beatles song found on the UK Hard Day’s Night LP (released in the US on The Beatles’ Second Album), this version of “You Can’t Do That” quickly unmoors itself and wanders into lines from some 18 more (per Wikipedia) Beatles songs—“Daytripper,” “Drive My Car,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “I’m Down,” “Paperback Writer,” “Yesterday,” etc. They’re all there, one or two lines at a time. The original is a John Lennon song in his tough-guy misogynist vein, the best example of which is the lamentable “Run for Your Life” on Rubber Soul. Nilsson’s exercise is the kind of brainy turn that seemed to fit best with Lennon’s sensibilities, though all the Beatles swore by Nilsson too. But Lennon was the one who caroused with Nilsson most, on his 18-month lost weekend in Los Angeles. I’m filing this under novelty. Most Beatles songs have their appeals for me, but this workup is so caught up in its own concept that it’s hard to enjoy for the musical pleasures found in the 18 or whatever Beatles songs it quotes.

Wick Is Pain (2025)

The John Wick franchise has been a boon for the careers of Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski as well as a boon for the action movie genre itself. It’s one of the best. Fortunately for us they have also been documenting their story as they go—“they” meaning Jeffrey Doe, director of this documentary, and whoever was shooting interviews and asking questions along the way. Wick Is Pain is on the long side for a documentary, running over two hours, and more than half of it focuses on behind-the-scenes drama getting the first movie made. It’s a familiar pile of anecdotes about options, properties, getting funding, losing funding, drilling screenplays throughs rounds of revisions (“notes,” they say). Honestly, I don’t know how anyone survives these agonies, which can go on for years. It’s great fun to learn how the Wick principals met and how deeply steeped Stahelski and co-director David Leitch are in martial arts choreography and the culture surrounding it (after the first John Wick they parted ways and Leitch went on to direct Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, and others). It’s even more fun to relive the chutzpah of breaking one of Hollywood’s strictest rules: never kill the dog (which gave rise to one of my favorite quotes imputed to Wick: “Be kind to animals or I’ll kill you”) (although apparently the actual original source is Morrissey). I learned—no doubt Wick fans already knew—that Wick’s style of action is sometimes called “gun fu.” Reeves is universally beloved in the kind of way that Betty White was and he cuts an interesting figure here, a kind of enthusiastic stoner who is wholly committed to his art. It sometimes feels like he is saying John Wick saved his life. The title comes from the reality of making the movies. As with professional wrestling, it’s all mostly scripted and choreographed playacting, but that doesn’t mean the people involved don’t get hurt doing it. We’re told Reeves does 90% of Wick’s stunt work and you can see, say in the hall of mirrors sequence in Chapter 2, that he’s being brutalized, thrown around and into things. I know there are safety guardrails for stunts on the set, but there’s only so much that can be done to minimize the danger of getting the shots and scenes they get. And besides, Reeves is obviously stoked by it. Wick Is Pain is an essential addendum to the franchise.

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1987)

I first read this Lester Bangs collection edited by Greil Marcus when it was published. At the time I was much closer in age to the Bangs who wrote these pieces and more sympathetic to the wild man style of rock criticism. The collection is framed by a great prank: two letters purporting to be from Bangs writing from heaven which open and close the book. One was sent to Dave Marsh and the other to Wayne Newton, to be forwarded to Marsh. They sound like Bangs, who is trying to figure out what MTV is. He says God doesn’t think he should know. Then, after Marcus’s gentle introduction to the work of his friend, the first piece bears the title of the collection, a piece Bangs worked on for years. It’s all over the place, as Bangs often was, devolving into a faux history of the Count Five, who scored a #5 hit in 1966 with “Psychotic Reaction.” They did not actually release most of the albums Bangs describes and ascribes to them. He made them up, but they do chart the early history of rock music (post-rock ‘n’ roll) in an interesting way. There are more flights like that here, but also a fair amount of workaday rock journalism. His taste is too slippery, eccentric, and/or perverse to put much stock in. Sad to say, some parts have aged badly. There are way too many N-words for me to be comfortable with now, and he’s not much better on women. But all that is forgivable—most of us thought racism was dying out then and fair game to mock openly (see also Randy Newman in the ‘60s and ‘70s). Coming back to Carburetor Dung wasn’t quite the thrill I was hoping for. Still, despite the occasional cringing and slogging, Bangs remains close enough to a force of nature to be reckoned with. This collection includes the titanic mid-‘70s face-off with Lou Reed, along with scads of record reviews, think pieces, feature articles, and extremely oddball fanzine or previously unpublished write-ups. He reminded me more of Hunter Thompson than he has before. He might have even put the thought in my head himself, from an early reference where he compares himself favorably to Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, and Thompson. That might be a window into where Bangs saw himself in the literary scene at large. This collection remains a must for anyone foolishly considering the pursuit of a career in rock criticism. It’s one of the landmarks.

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

The River (1951)

France / USA / India, 99 minutes

Director: Jean Renoir

Writers: Rumer Godden, Jean Renoir

Photography: Claude Renoir

Music: M.A. Partha Sarathy

Editor: George Gale

Cast: Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight, Thomas E. Breen, Patricia Walters, Arthur Shields, Adrienne Corri, Suprova Mukerjee, Radha

Director and cowriter Jean Renoir’s first color movie is something of a departure from his acclaimed pictures of the ‘30s, Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game, which in many ways set terms for European cinema to come. The River not only flashes with vivid technicolor but is set and was wholly shot in India. Heck, Satyajit Ray is even on the crew as an assistant director, speaking of the greater connections of cinema. The narrative style is familiar to Renoir, an easy-flowing stream of incidents, anecdotes, and storylines in the lives of British colonialists with their families. The main family has a patriarch (“Father,” Esmond Knight), a matriarch (“Mother,” the regally maternal Nora Swinburne), a boy, and four girls, plus Indian servants. The oldest girls, Valerie (Adrienne Corri) and especially Harriet (Patricia Walters), are as close as we get to main characters. It’s told from the point of view of Harriet as an adult, reminiscing, and it’s fair to call the overall picture a coming-of-age tale for both girls.

In my latter-day state of woke I was immediately uncomfortable with the spectacle of British patricians in India, however well meaning (debatable), with their Indian servants and attempts to understand Indian culture, especially via the point of view of white adolescent girls. Father, for example, operates a jute mill (“exploiting resources”—it’s hard not to see it glaringly that way). But Martin Scorsese, in an interview on the Criterion Channel, scoffed at the idea of looking at this movie through a colonial frame. It’s a movie that means a good deal to him personally, and as usual in his interviews he argues eloquently, even emotionally, for the picture. OK, maybe, I’m with him on Renoir, truly, but I could never entirely shake my misgivings even as, of course, The River stands up to all of Renoir’s films.

Sagittarius, “Hotel Indiscreet” (1967)

[listen up!]

Sagittarius coproducers and co-honchos Curt Boettcher and Gary Usher are primarily responsible for the Present Tense album that gives “Hotel Indiscreet” a home. The song was also released as a single that went nowhere. Boettcher and Usher are known for sunshine pop verging on a fork in the road: psychedelics in one direction and bubblegum in the other. They worked with the Association, the Millennium, Paul Revere & the Raiders, Tommy Roe, and many others. Sagittarius was their project—they got the recording deal on the strength of a band they had not yet put together, just the two of them at first. They wrote most of the songs but not this one, which is credited to future Bread-man Jimmy Griffin and his songwriting partner Michael Z. Gordon. It might be the best thing on the album, shimmering with bright harmonies, fizzy pop flourishes, soaring heights they seem able to hit at will. It’s easy to hear the Association connections, and the song can also sound like music for a montage in a movie made for TV. Yet it bears an undeniable pop swagger and beauty at the same time. It blows up into rounds of delicious ringing chants and fleet-foot runs up and down the scales. It grows mighty, something to behold, all hooks and cotton-candy sweetness. Most of it’s done with vocals but little extras like a muted cornet keep the mix frothy and delightful. The original single, a b-side, included a spoken-word skit by members of Firesign Theater, which I admit I prefer excised. Yes, it’s silly pop music, but with this level of purity it’s also utterly thrilling. At least it should have been a hit for sure, but maybe the implied adultery in the lyrics did that in.

The Death of the Heart (1938)

I’m really not sure what to make of this novel by Elizabeth Bowen. Her novel-of-manners approach fits and puts her in line with other writers such as Edith Wharton or Muriel Spark—just a little acerbic and cynical, with a fine finicky approach to sentences and word choice, along with a commitment to ambiguity and allusion. The story involves 16-year-old Portia Quayne, who moves to London to live with her half-brother Thomas after her mother dies—not Thomas’s, it is the father who they have in common. It’s a fractured family—17 years separate Thomas and Portia in age and Thomas never thought much of Portia’s mother after their father took up with her as a widower, after the death of Thomas’s mother. Thomas is married to Anna, a shallow socialite who controls everyone around her as much as she can. As the novel opens Anna is telling her unusual friend St. Quentin, a novelist who seems to be gay, how upset she is at what she found in Portia’s diary. Reading other people’s diaries this way tells us most of what we need to know about Anna. An example of Bowen’s somewhat exasperating ambiguity is that we never learn what Anna read in the diary. We can imagine, of course, but I think that gives us too much latitude. Because Portia is still too young to know herself yet, it’s hard to think what she might put in her diary. Portia is obviously a romantic victim waiting to happen, and soon enough there’s a man trying to take advantage of her, or something. Eddie is 23, works in Thomas’s marketing firm, and is a friend of Anna’s. We learn he has made a pass at Anna, and later this is some suggestion (more ambiguity) that they are having an affair. I enjoyed this novel all the way—again, Bowen is a very good writer—but I’m not entirely sure where it went. There are some great characters here, notably a clan at the seaside where Portia is sent to live with Anna’s former governess while Thomas and Anna vacation in Europe. Not taking Portia with them is another telling detail in a tale full of them. Bowen also had a reputation, like Edith Wharton, for writing ghost stories. Pursuing more of them is likely my next step with Bowen. I’ve already read one, though it didn’t make much impression. But I’m more curious about her now. As Bowens go in that realm, Marjorie is still the one to beat.

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

Memories of Underdevelopment (1968)

Memorias del subdesarrollo, Cuba, 97 minutes

Director: Tomas Gutierrez Alea

Writers: Edmundo Desnoes, Tomas Gutierrez Alea

Photography: Ramon F. Suarez

Music: Leo Brouwer

Editor: Nelson Rodriguez

Cast: Sergio Corrieri, Daisy Granados, Eslinda Nunez, Omar Valdes, Rene de la Cruz, Yolanda Farr, Jack Gelber, Ofelia Gonzalez

Memories of Underdevelopment came out in the globally tumultuous year of 1968, chipping in reports from Cuba less than 10 years after the Revolution. Indeed, the novel by Edmundo Desnoes that it is based on was published only in 1965. It bears a curious and interesting point of view in its main character, Sergio Carmona Mendoyo (Sergio Corrieri), a merchant capitalist who ran a “posh” furniture store he inherited from his father which has been destroyed or taken away by the new regime. Sergio is also owner of rental properties and retains an income stream there. The picture is set in 1961 and 1962. The first scenes show Sergio packing his mother and the rest of his family off to the US. He appears to be dubious about long-term prospects for the Revolution. He is staying and may join his family later. The picture is semi-documentary in style, with archival footage, and follows the suddenly aimless Sergio around, dealing with his girlfriend problems (he is divorced) even as he ponders, in voiceover, the finer points of “underdevelopment.”

His first and most problematic girlfriend is an evident example. “I try to live like a European,” he says. “[Elena] makes me feel underdevelopment with every step.” They are in a bookstore where he is purchasing a copy of Lolita. Elena (Daisy Granados) is scheming to force him into marriage, premised on their having sex, or, as they often say around here, “ruining” her. For his part, Sergio denies deceiving her and doesn’t think she was really a virgin, which of course does not help his situation. Eventually she enlists her brutal brother and parents into making a legal case of it. This situation is appallingly beneath a genteel man who would prefer to spend afternoons at the modern art museum. His allegiance to European culture is as bone-deep as Elena’s family’s is to old-world ways of blood honor and such, next stop clitorectomies. They could be closer to that than we would like to think or maybe Sergio and I are paranoid. It’s a real case of underdevelopment.

“The Affliction” (1995)

One thing you can say for sure about Joyce Carol Oates is that she’s both fearless and unrelenting about being gross when she wants to be. This includes posting pictures to social media, but here I am specifically talking about a story like this. The affliction of the title is a strange rash that also afflicts the young victim’s great-uncle. The doctors don’t know what it is or what to do about it, but the uncle does—it’s a matter of digging out biological “things” embedded under the skin, as he demonstrates. The highlights of the story are the descriptions of the “things”: “cobwebby strands of bloody mucus-matter, wormlike coils of puss, partly coagulated blood-clots.” Or, “The child had to be held as, with a deft hand, the uncle extracted the things, some of them no larger than a kernel of corn, some as large as a dime, throbbing with heat and of an odor of rankness, like an overripe peach. The operation took about forty minutes. The child screamed in pain and terror, thrashing in the tub.” Detailed scenes of the affliction feel like where Oates is most into it. They’re scattered all over the story. But then, as if to dignify an indulgence, the things become the source of the main character’s art. Over his lifetime—he’s in his 70s in the present time of the story—he becomes a great and renowned artist on the celebrity level, as I took it, of Picasso or Warhol. Oates is fascinated by art and the making of it, a frequent theme in her work. This story is making its metaphorical point obvious with the show of body horror: art is torn out of the artist, and it hurts. In this story art is organic in an unusually vivid way, the result of a process that doesn’t entirely involve consciousness. But it’s fair to say the story also exists to make us uncomfortable. The artist, in his 70s, is in the twilight of his career, fading. Remarkably, Oates does her horror work as a sideline project in an amazingly prolific career. This story, for any of its arguable flaws, is a prime example of one of the things she does best: shock, and more, shock with a purpose. The take on the agonies of art might be a little easy or overstated, but it’s real enough on its own terms. Art makes great demands of artists.

Joyce Carol Oates, The Collector of Hearts
Story not available online.

Damien Jurado, “A.M. AM” (2016)

[listen up!]

I can tell, when I pay a little more attention to the words than the vibe, that this is a fairly straightforward love song. “I was yours all along” x4 in the chorus, etc. But the title mystifies me down to the pronunciation (I’m going with “ay em am”), as does the song’s instant potent sway on me. I’ve had periods where I felt compelled to play it a lot most days. I’m not that much of one for pulling songs out of movies and TV shows—if the music is going to have oversize impact on me usually I know it beforehand—but I heard this first in the 2018 Netflix documentary miniseries Wild Wild Country, which is about the Rajneeshee cult that caused various bizarre political problems in Oregon circa 1981. The song plays at the high-point ending of one episode, when it seemed for a few flashing moments that things could work out in Oregon. I was transfixed, transported. I sat and listened to it, stunned, with the Rajneeshee events sinking in. It feels like music that could come from the time, with touches of new wave and synth-pop and a plodding tempo that serves up the overarching Simple Minds melancholy. Yet it feels deeply, profoundly joyful too, sacred even, full of life, in and of it. Jurado is a prolific Seattle native, born in 1972. His homely vocal bears all the contradictions that make the song work for me: sadness and bliss all at once, knowingness and the burden of it. I’ve checked in with more of his stuff, notably the album that is home to this song, Visions of Us on the Land, but haven’t yet found anything that hits like “A.M. AM.” Thanks to the producers of Wild Wild Country, a great show! Don’t miss it if you can!

The Naked Gun (2025)

Happy to note that the fourth installment in the Naked Gun franchise, 31 years in the making, carries on in the fine old Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker tradition, at least judging by how much I laughed sitting alone in my apartment. It’s a fast-paced barrage of dad jokes, bad puns, sight gags, slapstick, and outrageous dirty jokes. Random action such as fistfights between principals is often going on in the background. Mug shots are taken by fashion photographers. Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson) is always running over things when he drives. There’s even an OJ Simpson gag. If one bit doesn’t get you, there’s another one coming in about 20 seconds. Eventually, you just have to give in to this intense desire to amuse. I love how they mix up the styles and strategies, such as redundancy. Whenever Drebin Jr. shows up at a crime scene or the Police Squad headquarters, some underling is sure to hand him a latte cup of coffee. It just seems like another cop show cliché the first time but then it keeps happening, with slight variations. While he is driving, for example—a hand with a cup of coffee reaches into the window. Drebin Jr. is the son of Frank Drebin Sr. from the original franchise (Leslie Nielsen). Besides sharing initials, Neeson and Nielsen traveled similar screenway paths to fame, from romantic leads to roles as hard-bitten heavies into these surprising turns toward comedy—based in part on their previous sober personas (Z-A-Z did the same for Peter Graves, Robert Stack, and Lloyd Bridges, of course). Neeson does not quite have Nielsen’s deadpan genius, but he’s good enough here I’m willing to give him time to get it (meaning, yes, I hope there are further installments ... the Z-A-Z attack somehow remains reliably fresh). Neeson is good, and so is a game Pamela Anderson as Beth Davenport, Drebin Jr.’s love interest at the center of the murder story. Her brother has been killed using a Primordial Law of Toughness (PLOT) device, which turns rational human beings into savages under influence of their worst impulses. This short movie has a long, long credits reel with extras, including a tender and hilarious love song that Drebin Jr. sings (poorly) to Beth. I recommend sticking around for it.

“The Words That Count” (1976)

This Ramsey Campbell story is purely a gimmick story, but as it happens it’s a gimmick I’m a little susceptible to. It reminded me of a detail I liked in a story by Margaret Irvin, “The Book,” where a possessed man’s prayers come out backward, in reverse word order. In this story, as explicitly spelled out in the last paragraph, the first word in every paragraph is the Lord’s Prayer in reverse word order. So the first word of the story is, of course, “Amen.” The conceit entirely eluded me in a story that wasn’t entirely making sense anyway, so making that explicit at the end is important. It brings home a certain aspect of the story to explain it, but formally it also weakens the story. A lot of things are definitely awkward here, perhaps most notably the first three paragraphs, which read like throat-clearing. The story features a pamphlet, as it’s called, with recognizable words from the Lord’s Prayer (e.g., “trespassers”) and a bizarre fundamentalist patriarch. Mostly it’s muddled, but also desperate and unpleasant, as the pamphlet appears to hypnotize the first-person narrator, daughter of the patriarch. The story may also be another example of a sad case where people had no idea how bad conservative Christianity was going to get. It’s unsettling because it’s unpleasant and confusing, and it gets a nice charge of the uncanny (at least for me) with the revelation of the gimmick. Unfortunately, that does not come until the end of the story, which until then veers between a trite treatment of conservative Christianity and impenetrability. Under other circumstances I might have abandoned it as early as the first paragraphs, which are terrible, and it doesn’t get much better from there. But as I say I’m susceptible to the trick of prayers in reverse word order as a symptom of demon possession. The Margaret Irvin story is much better. Interestingly, the story Campbell compares it to is W.F. Harvey’s “August Heat.” I don’t read that story the same way Campbell does, but I think another story by Harvey, “The Beast With Five Fingers,” has similar effects, featuring a man’s left hand writing with pen and paper unbeknownst to the owner of that hand. Things like that are practically impossible to do, which is where the kick of the uncanny comes in for me. You probably know the Lord’s Prayer. Try saying it backward—“amen, evil, from,” etc. It’s harder than you might think. I don’t like to imagine that religion is part of the effect here, but I suppose it could be.

Masters of Darkness, ed. Dennis Etchison
Story not available online.

Thirteen (1993)

For a long time I knew Teenage Fanclub for Bandwagonesque and that was it. I didn’t even know they had a first album until last year and I didn’t know anything about Thirteen either or the rest of the catalog. Bandwagonesque was a handful for me—one of the best albums of that year, 1991, I was drawn to playing it repeatedly, because it’s good, but at the same time I was embarrassed for the abject aping of Big Star and Alex Chilton (a bit too close for me to the Replacements piling on the pyre of the Big Star legend circa 1987). I didn’t know how many agreed with me in 1993, for example slagging the album’s title as more of same (for the Big Star song “Thirteen”). But if the problem with Bandwagonesque has somehow worn off for me it never existed with Thirteen (which has 13 songs). I only arrived at it last year. Oh, I admit it took sitting with it a few times for the high points to assemble and register. But they are there. File under the slippery label “power pop,” with Teenage Fanclub and Thirteen further landing in the shambolics wing. Even as it comes rumbling in like bad weather with the exquisite five-minute opener, “Hang On,” when the singing starts it’s all homely heart, lovely melody, glowing harmonies, a flute, a lulling orchestra. It’s like that all the way. One of the secrets here is three songwriters, in singer guitarist Norman Blake, singer bassist Gerard Love, and singer other guitarist Raymond McGinley (plus drummer Brendan O’Hare contributes the 1:22 gem “Get Funky,” which comes complete with irresistible handclaps). I can’t say I’ve picked out anything distinct about any one of them. I’m more impressed with how the songwriting blends, like the singing, into something with its own distinct identity. I will say it’s Love who wrote the opener “Hang On” and the closer “Gene Clark,” which strike me as notably apt in their sequencing positions (although the latter has a somewhat annoying two minutes of silence at the end of the song. What’s up with that, streaming service?!). “Gene Clark” bears a worthy name-check by reputation, although I don’t know Clark well enough myself to know how well the song works as tribute. It’s nominally hard rock with an epic electric guitar solo leading the way into a fine round of righteous head-bobbing. Turn it up. Light that Bic. Get with the Teenage Fanclub.

Millennium Mambo (2001)

Qian xi man bo, Taiwan / France, 106 minutes

Director: Hsiao-Hsien Hou

Writer: T'ien-wen Chu

Photography: Ping Bin Lee

Music: Yoshihiro Hanno, Kai-yu Huang, Giong Lim

Editors: Ju-kuan Hsiao, Ching-Sung Liao

Cast: Shu Qi, Chun-hao Tuan, Jack Kao, Jun Takeuchi, Ko Takeuchi, Doze Niu, Pauline Chan, Rio Peng

This confusing but beautiful and often striking picture is the first I’ve seen by Taiwanese director Hsiao-Hsien Hou. My points to follow may thus (actually, as always) say more about me than the movie or any of its principals. It was released in 2001, and it is set in 2001 (perhaps to avoid arguments about which millennium the year 2000 belongs to), but the premise is that the events are memories of the main character, Vicky (Shu Qi), 10 years later, in 2011. It dwells in the Taipei rave scene, rife with drugs and lowlifes, crime, bad relationships. Vicky and her boyfriend, the overbearingly abusive Hao-Hao (Chun-hao Tuan), live together in a dump. They do drugs and try to get by. She works as a hostess in a popular night spot. They circle one another warily. They are never at ease together.

In a way it did not surprise me to learn that Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-wai were first offered the roles. Millennium Mambo reminded me a lot of the pictures of Wong Kar-Wai (In the Mood for Love, Chungking Express) and even more of Hou’s countrymen Edward Yang (Yi Yi, A Brighter Summer Day) and Tsai Ming-liang (What Time Is It There?). The camera is liquid, often in motion, images may be out of focus, amounting only to blotches of color, though often vivid and always expressive. The pace is slow, studied, deliberate. Hao-Hao is some kind of DJ, and EDM is a pulsing constant, even in the background as if from the next apartment. In Millennium Mambo—in many of these pictures—the style is in direct opposition to the terms of the narrative, which is explicitly, even wantonly, focused on squalor. As cognitive dissonance it is exquisite.

“His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood” (1990)

My first story by Poppy Z. Brite (aka William Joseph Martin) is a pretty good one, all things considered. It was published when he was only 23 but seems to be hardly his first—I’m seeing some 1987 publication dates, when he was 20. On ISFDB this story is classified as belonging to the “Cthulhu Mythos” series, which obviously has many H.P. Lovecraft stories as well as various by others. I did not get a Cthulhu hit off this story, but some of it reminded me of Lovecraft, macabre details like the grave-robbing, a main feature. Brite’s sense of sexuality is miles beyond the timid Lovecraft. Weird editors Ann & Jeff VanderMeer compare Brite to “Decadent-era French and English writers [more] than the contemporary horror scene.” That seems like a reasonable point—are we talking about Baudelaire, Rimbaud, de Quincey? The open perversions here are almost refreshing. Brite is a trans man and takes masculine pronouns, but he may be more nonbinary. I’m not sure. Sexuality is all over this but it’s also indeterminate. The first-person narrator is a man and so is his partner. They start out having sex with others, sometimes together, and end up having sex with one another. They drink absinthe they stole from a grave, which is partly responsible for inspiring them to rob more graves. Finally, apparently, they steal from the wrong grave, as one night a strange apparition of a beautiful boy appears at a nightclub. I love, by the way, how Brite integrates clubbing into the mise en scene of this story. And I like how it’s just out there in terms of “divine decadence” (my term by way of the movie Cabaret). It all comports with my sense of Brite—I’ve been meaning to look into him since the ‘90s—except it’s much better and more natural than I expected. It always sounded a little like a put-on and possibly it is. I still don’t know that much about him. I believe he has moved on from horror since the ‘90s, but I don’t know. This story, which is quite fine in its own right, even if I’m missing the specific Cthulhu elements, definitely makes me think he’s worth looking into further.

Poppy Z. Brite, Wormwood
The Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
Story not available online.

Lou Christie, “Lightnin’ Strikes” (1965)

[listen up!]

What have we here? Confessions of a kissing bandit, episodes in the career of a serial killer, or just plain old date rape? As values changed in the 1960s with the Sexual Revolution, Pittsburgh native Lou Christie (with his long-time songwriting partner Twyla Herbert) decided his best bet leaned toward sexual frenzy, orgasmic release, and his keening falsetto. He duly obtained the rewards. “Lightnin’ Strikes” went to #1 early in 1966 and the similarly minded follow-up, “Rhapsody in the Rain,” hit the top 20 later that year. It’s arguable that these songs haven’t aged well—“Nature’s taking over my one-track mind,” Christie explains himself—but it is equally arguable that they are irresistible. I danced to them madly in my bedroom as an 11-year-old, not really understanding the connotations (having looked at Mad Men recently, I’m not sure how many did in 1966). The hook, a rising crescendo of intensity, features a trio of chick singers crying “Stop!” to his “I can’t stop!” The scene is kicked off in various fashion: “When I see lipstick to be kissed,” “If she’s put together fine and she’s readin’ my mind,” “If she gives me a sign that she wants to make time.” Followed by “Stop! I can’t stop! Stop! Stop!” This three-minute little symphony for the kiddies (apologies to Phil Spector) then spirals off to its insular thrilling self-justifying fugue state in the chorus, with the chick singers and horns at full throttle and a twangy guitar solo too: “Lightning is striking, again and again and again,” etc. There you go. Blame it on the weather. This also applies to “Rhapsody in the Rain.” Not all radio stations were on board with Lou Christie and his swingin’ kinks, but enough to make them big hits. Because of the somewhat rancid lyrical points, we almost certainly have to classify Lou Christie songs now as guilty pleasure. Not that he would likely care much. The pleasure was purely the point with him, guilty or otherwise.

The Hill of Dreams (1907)

I’m probably way out of line to compare Arthur Machen’s short, semiautobiographical novel to James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Both come from outer precincts of Britain. Machen was about 20 years older. I have no idea where Joyce was on genre writing. Certainly his Portrait is more naturalistic than Machen’s Hill of Dreams. Machen is trying to ground the events he recounts here even though, as a mystic, he can’t seem to help some indulgence of the weird. His young man / artist, Lucian Taylor, is in his early to mid-20s here, raised in rural Wales and eventually moving to London as he begins more seriously to write. In Wales, he is always distracted by the deep woods and by the Roman architecture. He’s drawn to an old Roman fort, in a clearing in the woods, and something happens there. Machen supplies few specific details. It involves Lucian taking off all his clothes and falling into a deep sleep with strange dreams. I have an idea what happened here—masturbation, possibly for the first time. That’s likely more crude and bound to this plane than Machen intends, but there is plainly something sexual about it. Machen wrote this in the 1890s but it was not published until 1907. Surely the rules of the time regarding sexual propriety applied—in short, don’t ever talk about it. So Machen may have felt he had to be coy. Full disclosure, I’m not sure what happens in much of this novel, although it is usually interesting to see Lucian grow and change. In Wales, he writes a first novel. When he submits it for publication it is stolen by another author and published as by him. Incredibly, Lucian doesn’t seem to mind that much. He’s already at work on another. He moves to London to work on it. The woods and nature of his homeland worried and discomposed him but he misses them keenly in the big city. The Hill of Dreams, according to Wikipedia, is “Generally considered Machen’s masterpiece.” That’s news to me—I hear a lot more about “The Great God Pan” (or “The White People,” which is actually his masterpiece). I would not suggest starting on Machen with The Hill of Dreams. But it’s one to get to sooner rather than later if you’re into him.

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

Set the Twilight Reeling (1996)

Lou Reed’s 17th studio album was standard-issue for him at that point in his career—overarching fealty to the rock band 2 guitars bass drums array of sound, with generous bolts of feedback and other rude noise, Fernando Saunders on bass, homely vocals, and densely varying tones of lyrics. New York City references abound. The album opens on “Egg Cream” (“a cold beverage consisting of milk, carbonated water, and flavored syrup [typically chocolate or vanilla] ... [it] originated among Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jewish immigrants in New York City”) and follows with “NYC Man,” rife with twists on cliches, e.g., “I'm a New York City man, blink your eyes and I'll be gone.” “Hookywooky” is just for the infectious fun. The live “Sex With Your Parents (Motherfucker) Part II” (whither Part I?!) has him riffing on the outrage of Republican Party hypocrisy. Pretty good for 1996. He’s cracking jokes but he’s mad too. “Riptide” clocks in at 7:47 replete with howling feedback. For me the centerpiece and center of gravity to this album is the song “Trade In,” where Reed’s much vaunted emotional honesty might be shading over into cruelty. The singer is formally addressing someone he used to be. Namely, at least the way I hear it, the singer in “Heavenly Arms,” which credits Reed’s second wife, Sylvia Morales, with his most heartfelt redemption, calling her by name in an agonizingly beautiful passage. That was 1980. In 1994 they divorced, and Reed by then was already involved with Laurie Anderson. In “Trade In,” he refers to Anderson as “a woman with a thousand faces / And I want to make her my wife.” They married in 2008. I don’t take the song as deliberately malicious, though it veers close. The song has many powerful points, notably when the guitar comes in full, but I think what makes it work to the extent it does is that the singer seems as confused about his romantic reversals as anyone. Maybe he’s trying to atone for “Heavenly Arms,” whose own powerful moment is a little reduced by the failure of the marriage. The singer in “Trade In” is rueful and self-deprecating, saying he wants a “fourteenth chance at this life,” suggesting awareness of many previous mistakes. What feel like attacks on his former lover, and spouse—Reed does characterize the target in this song as a former self, so maybe that’s actually what the song is about ... I’m just spitballing here—are more often result of his own self-lacerations: “A child that is raised by an idiot and that idiot then becomes you / How could I believe in a movie? How could I believe in a book?” Nevertheless, he is stubbornly sticking to his guns. He wants a trade in. Amazing song on a pretty good album.

Belle de Jour (1967)

France / Italy, 100 minutes

Director: Luis Buñuel

Writers: Joseph Kessel, Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carriere

Photography: Sacha Vierny

Editor: Louisette Hautecoeur

Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli, Genevieve Page, Pierre Clementi, Iska Khan, Francoise Fabian, Maria Latour, Francisco Rabal, Marcel Charvey

Belle de Jour was sold in 1967 as director and cowriter Luis Buñuel’s “Masterpiece of Erotica.” Catherine Deneuve plays Severine, a young middle-class housewife who seems to be messed up about sex, likely the work once again, per Buñuel, of the Catholic Church. Severine’s sexual interests may or may not lie in taboo directions, BDSM, and degradation, but she has apparently decided her best bet is to present to the world as “frigid”—beautiful, and unattainable. Sha and her husband Pierre (Jean Sorel) sleep in separate beds and she repulses all his advances with sighs and sorrow, which he seems to accept with equanimity. He’s a certain model of ideal husband.

Severine finds an outlet for herself, drawn to it almost by forces beyond her will, as a high-end, “classy” prostitute. She works only in the afternoon, hence her prostitute name, Belle de Jour, literally “beauty of the day.” Presumably this is so she can be home in time to prepare her husband’s dinner. This particular operation takes place off the street, in apartments owned by the house madame Anais (Genevieve Page). No menacing pimps seem to be involved and it feels relatively safe. At first Severine resists the actual work—the undressing, showing her body, physical intimacy. Anais is gentle but firm with her, starting her with the more unobjectionable johns. The sex work seems to be what Severine wants or needs and soon she is a regular with two others, Charlotte (Francoise Fabian) and Mathilde (Maria Latour). We see a few scenes of the fetishes their johns are there to see served. It’s Buñuel and not surprisingly they are bizarre and often surreal, with BDSM themes. There’s even a flashback scene of Severine refusing communion. Ah, Buñuel and the Catholic Church! The eternal romance of opposites attracting.

Rebekah Del Rio, “No Stars” (2011)

[listen up! (7:20)]

I first heard this song (or first really heard it, that is, you know, as if for the very first time) on a bedtime playlist, or what was intended to be a bedtime playlist. My then-new streaming service helpfully kept adding songs to the mix so it played all night (later I figured out how to prevent that because I can’t sleep this way every night). I woke at 3 or 4 with this song playing, Rebekah Del Rio’s clarion, mellow, quasi-operatic vocal piercing the night and my sleep, with an aural vision of a lonesome universe and no stars in the sky. No stars, no stars. Never mind I live somewhere with cloud cover replicating that most nights. Del Rio’s vocal feels every ounce of that loneliness unto desolation in a universe with no light anymore, all winked out, especially when you wake up and don’t know what’s going on. She wrote this song with David Lynch and John Neff in 2001 and recorded it for her 2011 album Love Hurts Love Heals. It was used in the third season of Twin Peaks in 2017. Much like Del Rio’s appearance in Mulholland Dr. the sense of tragedy is at once affecting and slightly ridiculous. It is almost too deep, like a well that takes too long for the stone to hit something. It feels, in “No Stars,” as if the singer has spent a lifetime enduring pain and feeling love. They don’t cancel each other out but rather deepen the experience of both. The pain is palpable, on the long notes especially, which she can hold for a long time, but her love is equally profound, and you know from the grain that it is constant.

Him (2025)

Here’s an odd mashup of sports movie and horror show, carrying on another one of today’s genre-blending exercises that don’t even seem possible. Jordan Peele is an executive producer. The main problem here is that sports movies tend to build toward sentimental heroic upbeat triumphs whereas horror is more like the opposite. Here the sport under examination is pro football, with obvious similarities to the NFL but equally obvious (for legal reasons?) departures from it. The featured team is the San Antonio Saviors—the unlikely nickname captures well the strange vibe of Him. Do any sports teams bear the nicknames of holy figures? I’m drawing a blank. The Los Angeles Angels? New Orleans Saints? San Diego Padres? Not quite the same. We’ve got a veteran quarterback in Him, Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans). He’s the GOAT, the greatest of all time. He’s won eight of the picture’s Super Bowl equivalent, as opposed, you can see, to Tom Brady’s seven. Frankly, I’m tired of the whole GOAT discourse, but here we are. The Saviors have drafted a promising rookie QB, Cam Cade (Tyriq Withers). This worries Isaiah, as Brady was worried when the New England Patriots drafted Jimmy Garoppolo (and Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers and Jordan Love, etc.). Isaiah feels threatened and undermined as the starting QB, but shows he’s a good sport about it, in a way, voluntarily taking on mentorship of Cade. But is he really trying to help Cade? Really? It doesn’t seem that way. Things start to drift in strange directions at the remote training compound in the desert, where Isaiah comes on with the snarling drill sergeant style of turning boys into men by taunting and humiliating them. Cade is given transfusions of Isaiah’s blood. Things have been strange even before that, as some rando wearing a goat costume knocks Cade on the head, giving him a serious concussion and endangering his career. Him explores some of the psychedelic implications of concussions and brain injury, which can be visually striking, as in a showdown fight toward the end. But as the title suggests, however—this is not remotely like the movie Her, by the way—the capitalized “Him” is as much a religious reference as anything. Fans are worshippers and the movie goes spinning off to some majestically ridiculous Cthulhu type places in the end. The picture does not work, but it has its overheated moments along with a soundtrack that collects some nice jams. You could do worse.

Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1863)

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short travel book—“notes” and “impressions” in the title give fair warning that it is closer to a think piece the size of an essay—was written after his first visit to Europe in 1862. He didn’t stay long, perhaps two and a half months in total, a few weeks in Paris, barely more than a week in London. And he came with a certain amount of innate disdain for Europe. Some see this piece as the point where the second half of his career began. The conventional wisdom is that it’s Notes From Underground, which followed the next year. I’m more inclined to go with the latter judgment, if only because this is so much more rambling and unfocused than Notes (and, for that matter, “A Nasty Story” from the year before). Dostoevsky may have been less comfortable with nonfiction, but my hunch is he knew he didn’t have much of a leg to stand on with the actual travels. Instead we get a lot of prejudices, which may or may not be right. He did turn into a raging antisemite as he aged and he never liked Europe much. He was close to a Slavophile, a believer in Russia as such, and even more in the Eastern Orthodox Church. So much faith in one church is really where I depart from him. He gets into some of that here, including some of his boldest statements of (cockamamie) faith. In many ways this is so short because, perhaps, he knew he needed more depth and understanding. He still lets it rip when he wants, notably on the French, but he may understand he’s not very persuasive. He would make a more detailed case against Europe in the novels to come. Here we merely see how early he was committed to Europe being the problem. It’s probably a misnomer to call it a travel book at all as it does few of the things we expect from travel literature. Winter Notes on Summer Impressions probably has to be taken as relatively obscure, and reading it through I think I can see the reason why. File under I read it so you don’t have to. I found a standalone kindle version—note that it’s not included in the Delphi anthology where I read most of his stuff.

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

Chimes at Midnight (1965)

Campanadas a medianoche, Spain / Switzerland, 115 minutes

Director: Orson Welles

Writers: William Shakespeare, Raphael Holinshed, Orson Welles

Photography: Edmond Richard

Music: Angelo Francesco, Lavagnino

Editors: Elena Jaumandreu, Frederick Muller, Peter Parasheles

Cast: Orson Welles, Keith Baxter, John Gielgud, Margaret Rutherford, Jeanne Moreau, Norman Rodway, Alan Webb, Fernando Rey, Michael Aldridge

I was going to say I like director and cowriter Orson Welles as much as the next guy but maybe that’s not so true. I might be more of a dilettante. I love Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil and I like to look at The Magnificent Ambersons to grieve for what might have been (Booth Tarkington’s novel is surprisingly good too). After that it’s certain dazzling shots and moments in some of the others, at least as long as they don’t have very much to do with Shakespeare. My problem there—I’m not proud of it—is I’ve never had a Shakespeare phase, not even in college, and I don’t know his work well, though I generally admire everything I’ve seen or read.

For that matter, Chimes at Midnight is not just a Shakespeare adaptation, it is a reimagining and refocusing of Falstaff, a recurring Shakespeare character, along with his relationship with Prince Hal. Per Wikipedia, the script for Chimes at Midnight includes verbatim text from five of Shakespeare’s plays: Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; Richard II; Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. It is a deep dive into a pool where I don’t how to swim well. And it’s not the first time Welles did something like this. Besides previously making pictures based on Macbeth, Othello, and Twelfth Night, he mounted a stage production on Broadway in 1939, Five Kings, based on nine Shakespeare plays. In many ways Shakespeare was a theatrical medium itself that Welles worked in well, capable of working up pastiche for anyone who would have it.

“Travels With the Snow Queen” (1996)

This story by Kelly Link was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 1999 but ultimately lost to another of her stories, “The Specialist’s Hat.” “Travels With the Snow Queen” is one more example of a fairy tale retelling from the 1990s, a certifiable trend likely tracing back to Angela Carter’s work in the 1970s. But Link’s story is more having a go at what is expected of girls in fairy tales. The tone is jokey and ironic and there is a lot of broad winking about fairy tale tropes in general. It’s also told second-person present-tense, which I would have to count as a strike against it—“you do this,” “you see that,” etc. Seems gimmicky to me. YMMV. “You” is a girl on the move, barefoot and heading north. Perhaps the gist and important points of the story may be gleaned (in a way that I couldn’t) by way of the passages I found highlighted in my kindle edition of the Link collection. I realize I might be taking the easy way out for a story I didn’t entirely connect with, but here are three of those passages. “Where you are, where you are coming from, it is impossible to read a map made of paper. If it were that easy then everyone would be a traveler. You have heard of other travelers whose maps are bread-crumbs, whose maps are stones, whose maps are the four winds, whose maps are yellow bricks laid one after the other. You read your map with your foot, and behind you somewhere there must be another traveler whose map is the bloody footprints that you are leaving behind you” (54 readers highlighted). “You were going to travel for love, without shoes, or cloak, or common sense. This is one of the things a woman can do when her lover leaves her. It’s hard on the feet perhaps, but staying at home is hard on the heart, and you weren’t quite ready to give him up yet” (31 readers highlighted). “You’re sick and tired of traveling towards the happily ever after, whenever the fuck that is—you’d like the happily right now. Thank you very much” (32 readers highlighted). I don’t know the original Snow Queen fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, which no doubt put me at some disadvantage. Honestly I didn’t get much from this story. Someone on ISFDB gave it a 10 so maybe I am the one woefully off the mark here.

Kelly Link, Stranger Things Happen
The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror: Twelfth Annual Collection, ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
Read story online.
Listen to story online.

Suicide Commandos, “Try Again” (2017)

[listen up!]

The original Twin Cities punk-rockers, the Suicide Commandos ruled the nascent local scene in the second half of the 1970s, an irresistible live act built out of trash rock ‘n’ roll, heirs to the Trashmen, Monkees, New York Dolls, and others. They entered oblivion as the three principals moved and reinvented themselves in various ways. But punk-rock means never having to say you’re old again just because you’re living forever. Approximately 30 years later the trio reassembled to play comeback gigs, pick up the trash on a stretch of highway in Minnetonka, and, eventually, record another album, Time Bomb. They acquitted themselves well there, with all-original songs and an unmistakable dedication to the ideals of rock ‘n’ roll aging grizzled but still effective, with no overreach, like the old friend of a plainly well-used amplifier they put on the cover of the album. The whole thing is worth checking out. “Try Again” may be as good a place as any to enter in—perhaps one of the best. It’s tidy. It can feel almost effortless. And it sets its hooks deep. With only the preamble of a single drum hit by drummer Dave Ahl it locks into a throbbing groove guaranteed to set heads bobbing. You feel it right away. It bears the potential to grow into something much larger and more significant. The doggy yips no one could have expected only signal the freewheeling dedication to fun—complicated fun, the band’s calling card. “Try Again” is a simple exercise in rock, all sustained control, the singer stalking and riding the surging glides with an air of patience and persistence. Declarations of fidelity like this seem likely to last a lifetime, or at least for the three minutes this song goes. Chris Osgood’s squalling electric guitar answers any remaining questions about this song written by Steve Almaas, my old high school mate who died last week. R.I.P.

True Crime Addict (2016)

James Renner’s quasi-meta meditation on true-crime fascination generally, and specifically on the disappearance of Maura Murray in February 2004, is the most un-put-downable book I have read in some time. Renner personalizes his research and investigations, probing himself for the sources of his own interest. It sounds like this is not the first time he has done this. His first book, in 2006, Amy: My Search for Her Killer, is about the abduction and murder of Amy Mihaljevic in 1989 when she was 10. Renner is the same age as Mihaljevic and he was impressed with the case as a 10-year-old and has been ever since. The Maura Murray case is slightly different—a baffling disappearance that remains unsolved. True Crime Addict chronicles Renner’s efforts to solve it. I saw the episode of Disappeared about Murray (from that show’s first season) and was impressed and intrigued by the case. It’s tantalizing and mysterious in all kinds of ways. So among other things Renner’s book rekindled my interest in the case. And then Renner takes an interesting approach to his narrative—total transparency (seemingly). Because there are still so many unknowns to the case, Renner can’t structure it around a resolution. There is still not one, and many questions remain open. Renner works a day job as a college instructor, has extensive editorial experience, has written novels as well as nonfiction, and possesses the whole panoply of podcast(s), a blog, and a youtube channel. We learn of his personal experience with crime and abuse in the story of his predatory grandfather. In many ways Renner is on a righteous mission. He says confronting miscreants is one of his favorite parts of his work, allowing that that is also dangerous. We see a lot of doors slammed in his face and hear about a lot of messages he leaves that never get responses. He keeps the focus on the Murray case and pursues his avenues of information. I don’t know how far I’m going to go with this guy. I’m already checking out his podcast but that may not last long. I’m interested in another of his true-crime books and maybe even one of his novels. I really loved True Crime Addict.

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

Vagabond (1985)

Sans toit ni loi, France / UK, 105 minutes

Director/writer: Agnes Varda

Photography: Patrick Blossier

Music: Joanna Bruzdowicz

Editors: Patricia Mazuy, Agnes Varda

Cast: Sandrine Bonnaire, Macha Meril, Stephane Freiss, Laurence Cortadellas, Marthe Jarnias, Yolande Moreau, Joel Fosse

In some ways it feels like director and writer Agnes Varda grew more carefree and even whimsical over the course of her career. In this century she made gentle, freewheeling, perpetually curious documentaries like The Gleaners & I and Faces Places. By contrast, 1962’s Cleo From 5 to 7 is about a young woman awaiting results of a biopsy. Vagabond, between them, is about Mona (Sandrine Bonnaire), a runaway girl in rural France who finally dies of exposure—a sad and foredoomed story. Mona’s body is discovered at the beginning of the picture and the rest is flashback types of episodes. They follow the last months of her life as she hitchhiked from place to place, set up her tent, and lived her life as she could. These scenes are ostensibly based on journalistic interviews of those who interacted with and knew her—to the degree, of course, that anyone knew her. Varda’s instinct is often to go at least semi-documentary in tone.

We never see Mona in the home she ran away from. The picture is silent on her life before. We don’t hear from her family in these supposed interviews and we never hear why. Perhaps they just didn’t want to speak with interviewers, but it’s never explained. Varda is more interested purely in Mona’s life on her own and how she survives (and doesn’t) rather than potential details of domestic abuse and such. There is one scene here where it appears Mona is going to be assaulted at one of her campsites, but the picture quickly cuts away and we never hear anything of it again. It’s as if Varda wants us to know she’s aware of all the dangers of Mona’s life, but doesn’t want to dwell on them too much, doesn’t want the lurid details to distort what she wants us to see in Mona.

Silver Apples, “Oscillations” (1968)

[listen up!]

Here’s some early—and choice—pop electronica so far ahead of its time it takes some sorting out to get oriented. But the main point, as with Kraftwerk’s deadpan paeans to the PC, is the goofy pleasure of it. The drumming pattern recalls krautrock practically before there was krautrock. Silver Apples is just two guys alone in the studio with a producer. Dan Taylor beats that drum pattern and sings. Simeon works the oscillators and he sings too. They took their name from an album that came out the previous year by composer and electronics experimenter Morton Subotnick, Silver Apples of the Moon. Their self-titled debut LP opens with this song, as if the first order of business were to master the oscillator and now it is time for worship and celebration. The oscillator, Wikipedia tells me, “is an electronic circuit that produces a periodic, oscillating or alternating current (AC) signal, usually a sine wave, square wave or a triangle wave.” The song wobbles into existence on the angled-off tones, like some moist blind newborn amphibian. The drum pattern puts it in motion, granting it life and propulsion, redolent of a dark, throbbing place. A sound like a steam whistle, as the groove sets, lets us know it’s all in fun. The song trundles directly to your heart. Taylor and Simeon sound hypnotized, chanting, “Oscillations, oscillations / Electronic evocations of sound's reality / Spinning, magnetic fluctuations / Waves of wave configurations / That dance between the poles of sound / And bind my world to soul.” Gary Numan couldn’t have put it any better. Silver Apples was so far ahead of its time their patents still haven’t met yet.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026)

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one, a sequel shot at the same time as the original (28 Years Later, itself a sequel), directed by Nia DaCosta (Hedda, Candyman) rather than Danny Boyle. But the story was rarely less than interesting and that helped a lot. Screenwriter Alex Garland has written all the entries in the franchise so far except 28 Weeks Later. That’s good for continuity and he seems to know what he’s doing. Garland also wrote Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Men, which are also interesting and generally worth seeing, especially Annihilation. The violence here is predictably extreme, with lots of horrible screaming and torture and things you’ll want to look away from. Most of them involve a terrible rampaging gang of teens and a heavy Apocalypse Now vibe. Ralph Fiennes is back from 28 Years Later as Dr. Ian Kelson, a scientist making the best of the zombie armageddon and also the architect of the so-called bone temple, which he primly calls an ossuary as he calls the zombies “infecteds.” In his spare time Kelson enjoys listening to Duran Duran and Radiohead. He is working with opioids to civilize one of the new type of zombies, super-creatures he calls “alphas,” who are giant and powerful and quite dangerous. There’s a lingering sense in all this that we may be witnessing actual devolution. The terrible rampaging gang of teens is led by Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), who calls his various hooligan followers “fingers” and names them all “Jimmy” (or, for a young woman, “Jimmima”) They wear blonde wigs. One is our old friend the young boy Spike (Alfie Williams) from the first movie, an unwilling participant just doing what he has to to survive. This gang is pretty sure Kelson is actually Satan, a view he accommodates and affirms with a somewhat unlikely Iron Maiden interpretive dance set to “The Number of the Beast.” On the whole The Bone Temple is fairly predictable, including a big spectacle at the finish. But it was better than I expected. The end leaves wide open the option for further sequels. My bet would be on a first season of a TV series, but we’ll have to see how these movies do at the box office. I am as dubious about further sequels as I was about this one coming into it. But I admit The Bone Temple was entertaining and I have few regrets about seeing it.

“Dead Air” (1988)

There’s not much information online about Gregory Nicoll, author of this longish story, which has intriguing points—namely, rock ‘n’ roll and Jack the Ripper—in a fast-moving tale set in an isolated broadcasting building late at night. The DJ, Mary Clark, is new to the job but seems to be pretty good at it. It’s a classic rock station, so she’s playing things like a Blue Oyster Cult “superset” (we’re told that means at least four songs). The DJ from the previous night was named Mary Kelly, which is close to Mary Jane Kelly, the last victim of Jack the Ripper. The Ripper connection is strained. Really, the whole thing barely hangs together. Time dilates and a lot can happen in the space of a minute or two. The DJ and indeed the story are busy with incident and motion, not entirely believable. It’s influenced by a lot of Stephen King tricks designed to scare or thrill, lots of action and anxious interior dialogue. On the rock ‘n’ roll side it’s attempting to bring in Screaming Lord Sutch, a self-consciously outrageous British rocker of the early ‘60s under direct influence of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Among other things Sutch wrote a song called “Jack the Ripper” and also adopted a stage persona as Jack the Ripper. Here the song is referred to as “The Hands of Jack the Ripper” and it’s nearly 10 minutes long, which does not appear to be factual. This is thus another story suggesting that Jack the Ripper is some kind of immortal being. It appears that the radio station manager, Bert, is him, even as the story reaches its screaming climax. I like a lot of the elements here, but somehow the whole misfires for me. I was distracted by its strange sense of time, which felt like Nicoll trying to pack too much action into too little time more than an intentional effect. I wasn’t convinced the story knew what it wanted from rock ‘n’ roll or Jack the Ripper, except to invoke them for effect. They are there not so much to scare as to give the story a modern-day gloss. But I might be complaining too much. The story has flaws, it may not all add up, but it’s still a fun one to read.

The Year's Best Horror Stories XVII, ed. Karl Edward Wagner
Story not available online.

“The Poacher” (1992)

This interesting story by Ursula K. Le Guin rolls through fantasy all the way back to fairy tales, according to coeditor Terry Windling in her introduction in a Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthology. “The Poacher” is fantastic and vaguely allegorical, with a mysterious forest, a castle, a sleeping princess (actually a sleeping everyone), and much more. The main character, out foraging for mushrooms and berries, discovers a hedge in the forest so dense and tall it’s impossible to see beyond it. Then he discovers it is encircling a space and he sets out to hack his way through it with tools he steals, or poaches—he is a poacher in many different ways. Even reaching this interior space takes him something close to two years. “The hedge grew unnaturally fast, in season and out, even in midwinter thick, pale shoots would grow across my passageway, and in summer I had to spend some time every day clearing out new growth, thorny green sprays full of stinging sap.” The story takes its time getting to its points—if it takes years to enter the space, what he finds inside is fully and amply described: a castle, a full household of masters and servants busy at their tasks, except—they are all sleeping and remain asleep for as long as the main character is there, which at story’s end is decades. He discovers a princess sleeping in her chambers, and somehow knows that all this is her dream, that even touching her will awaken her with wholly unknown results, potentially including the end of everything. He’s taking no chances. The food replenishes every day, the weather is beautiful, the place is wonderful. He stays. Le Guin’s writing is patient and lovely, in no hurry at all, and thus her revelations are unforced and somehow believable. It reminds me of a 1964 story by Robert Aickman called “The School Friend,” which also concerns a mysterious space in the deep woods with fairy tale appointments. Aickman’s story at least leaves something of a line tracing back to reality but that’s much less the case in “The Poacher,” which seems to exist unconnected from anything we would call reality. We are verging on pure magic here, which Le Guin somehow keeps within range of suspended disbelief as we read, as if casting spells herself.

Ursula K. Le Guin, Unlocking the Air and Other Stories
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Seventh Annual Collection, ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
Story not available online.

Billy Nicholls, “Would You Believe” (1968)

[listen up!]

Some interesting names associated with Billy Nicholls and this luscious confection. The famous and infamous Andrew Loog Oldham hired Nicholls as a staff writer for his Immediate label and gave him an office. Del Shannon was a fan and recorded some of his songs. John Paul Jones plays bass. And the Small Faces are producers, notably with Steve Marriott bawling in the most swirling, dense, and wholly unexpected passages. Financial problems with Oldham’s Immediate label limited the original release and the album was shelved until Nicholls rereleased it on his own in 1998. Amazing that it could stay virtually hidden so long. It starts out barely there, then entertains a soothing lullaby mood by way of the Swingle Singers style, before ultimately exploding with the title line at about 0:45 in a song that runs 2:40. Nicholls’s vocal is clarion, fully aware of its utility as the primary irresistible hook. The title line anchors it from there. The song goes to it frequently, but it’s always good to return to. It might be where you are singing along. This hook does not seem capable of wearing out and they’re not afraid to pummel it. What’s more, the song has an equally beguiling second hook, a gorgeous wheedling violin figure. The rest is clouds of sparkling glitter. Here comes a ... banjo? A tuba? What? Then even more layers: someone calling urgently from a distance (Marriott?). A droning high note that seems to bear the meaning of everything. Finally the song leaves us approximately the way it arrived. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about it is that you can always listen to it again.