Saturday, May 05, 2018
Be Scared and enjoy it
BACK FROM PARIS, FRANCE, WITH THREE LITERARY NIGHTMARES
CORMAC McCARTHY – ALL THE PRETTY HORSES – 1992
A very fascinating book of western suspense as thick and dense as a summer thunderstorm.
The style and the language are perfect both when the author uses his own words and when he uses the words of his Texan heroes, but also when he uses the Mexican words of the Mexican characters or of the Texans who can speak Mexican. And there are plenty of Mexicans, both in Mexico of course and in Texas. And these Spanish words are not always translated. The Texan dialect is no problem. The Mexican discourse is more evanescent for readers who do not speak Spanish, but it is rather easy with a little bit of linguistic imagination.
But what is best in this novel is the real depth of the characters. They are deeply contradictory and mostly always true, even when they are going to die. They do not tell themselves lies even when they don’t tell others the whole truth. It is mostly men, young men, and older men, but the two female characters of some importance are also built on the same pattern. They are all real flesh, and real ethics, and real mind, and real vice. And when a uniformed person is vicious, he is vicious right through to the end of it, and it is mostly a characteristic of all Mexican officers of the law. Only the county judge in Texas is fair and honest, though yes he has his own doubts about a young man he sent to the electric chair in his younger years, and yet if he had to do it again he would do it again, so he says at least.
The plot is superb though frankly anti-Mexican. True enough, there are some good Mexicans but the main Mexican characters are vicious, corrupted, violent, totally inhumane, etc. But beyond this trait typical of 1947, when the action takes place, it explains the deep rivalry between Mexicans and Americans, though it is only Texans on the American side. The hostility, this romantic attraction and total rejection of Mexicans by Texans, is the deep feeling a certain Trump is playing with when he deals with his wall and this anti-Mexican and anti-Latino feeling of too many Caucasian Americans.
The final power of the text I want to insist on is the superbly dense and frenetic tempo of the story. There is only one episode that is too slow: when the Mexican aunt tells John Grady her own past experience. Then this is a moralistic slow episode that is maybe necessary but it slows down the story.
But the most mysterious page is the final page where John Grady is riding alone through a semi-desertic landscape. He is being watched from afar by some Indians who he does not see and with no communication between the two sides, and the sun is setting turning the whole landscape into a red fiery wasteland. That vision of the Indians living unseen and primitive – which is not exactly right – in this reddish wasteland crossed by a Caucasian Texan, on a horse, who does not even establish any mental contact with this reality, is pathetic. America has forgotten its origins. True enough these Indians have been genocided. But even so. . .
ANDY MUSHIETTI – STEPHEN KING – IT – 2017
This new production of this IT novel by Stephen King is only the adaptation of the first older part of the story when the main characters are children, hence twenty-seven years before the present time. And as such, it is a refreshing approach to the novel. Let’s hope the second chapter of it will come sometime soon.
So we have here no flashbacks about the past but a direct story about the past, of the past. The monster is very clearly and mainly associated with the clown, though it can change shape and appear under different likenesses. It is in no way revealed what kind of real monster it is or hardly. The clown form is obviously effective with the bunch of kids he has to fight against, though he also for one little moment take the form of dead Georgy to confuse the brother of this Georgy who has never accepted his death.
The film is also clear about the existence of a band of bullies in the community who attack and harass children, girls or boys, at school, of course since school is a bully stadium, and outside in the city at large, often with no one saying nothing at all and just passing their way as if they were passing water in their private outhouse. These bullies though seem to have a particular attraction for blacks. There are not many blacks in this community but there is one in the band of kids, one who is pure and simple saved from being lynched by the bullies thanks to the girl who is not yet in the band, and the band she is going to be opted into straight away.
Note the gay bashing that opens the novel is not mentioned and the entering door of the clown is seen as some kind of sewage well in the underground section of an old abandoned and of course haunted house. The haunted house is a common theme with Stephen King.
The research of one of the boys about the cyclical episodes of disappearing kids and other catastrophes in factories is clearly documented and we know then this monster appears every twenty-seven years. The present cycle is broken up and defeated by the band of kids we are speaking of and that includes a girl, a Jewish boy, a black boy and an overweight if not obese boy, plus three more boys who are in no way exceptional. Seven altogether and this number is fundamental in meaning and references:
1- the Holy Week;
2- the creation of the world;
3- the seven planets of the Babylonian astrologers;
4- the seven days of the week;
5- the seventh month of September;
6- the seventh day of the Jewish week which is, in fact, the starting day of the week before the six others (first to sixth), namely Sabbath;
7- the seven churches to which the Book of Revelation is dedicated;
8- the seven colors of the rainbow as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet;
9- the opposite sides of a dice always equal the number seven when added;
10- the seven dwarfs of Snow White: Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy;
11- the seven Lucky Gods of Japan: Hotei, Jurojin, Fukurokuju, Bishamonten, Benzaiten, Daikokuten, Ebisu;
12- the seven Cherokee clans;
13- the seven people privately beheaded on Tower Green within the walls of the Tower of London: William Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings, June 13, 1483 – Anne Boleyn,2nd wife of King Henry VIII, May 19, 1536 – Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, May 27, 1541 – Catherine Howard, 5th wife of King Henry VIII, February 13, 1542 – Jane Boleyn, sister-in-law of Anne Boleyn, February13, 1542 – Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Day Queen, February 12, 1554 – Robert Devereux,2nd Earl of Essex, November 10, 1601 (this last execution was turned into an opera by Benjamin Britten);
14- the Seven Sacraments in the Catholic Church set by the Council of Trent (1545-63): Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance, Anointing of the sick, Holy Orders, Matrimony;
15- the Seven Deadly Sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, Pride that are behing Dante’s Inferno and the film Sev7n;
16- and so many others.
There is a universal dimension of the number seven in the world and in all civilizations. Note the number twenty-seven is also important since it is close to what we call a generation. It contains seven and it is three times nine, hence 9+9+9 (or 3x3x3), the beast in the Book of Revelation in a way or another.
Stephen King in this first chapter of his story is trying to frighten us with traditional children’s fears because children are haunted at times by what they love best, clowns for instance, and clowns are the best trap for children to make them do what they know they are not supposed to do. Who does not like a clown? And yet who is not frightened by what we love best, clowns among other things. The best friends of man can often become their most frightening monsters. Stephen King has exploited this ambiguity so often with cats, dogs, cars, grandfathers and so many others.
This first chapter is, of course, admirable because of the seven kids, in fact, eight with Georgy. They are perfectly managed and directed in circumstances and scenes that are supposed to frighten the audience, that are extreme. We assume these scenes must have been great fun for those kids. At least they could do exactly what they know they are not supposed to do in everyday life. The cinema is a tool of freedom.
MIKHAIL KUZMIN – WINGS – 1906-2007
Kuzmin was a Russian poet who died in the 1930s under the Soviet rule he supported. This novella is important in many ways because it is easier to read than poetry, but yet the main theme is that of Kuzmin’s poetry, love in all possible forms.
A good man, “Vanya, Ваня, a unisex diminutive of the Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian and other Slavic given name Ivan. It is the Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian and other Slavic form of John, itself derived from a Hebrew name, meaning "God is gracious" or "Gracious gift of God".” (Wikipedia)
It is the story of a young man just stepping out of his teenage years, attracted by older men but unable at first to sort out what this attraction is all about. He has a fixation on a certain Larion Dmitriyevich, aka Stroop, but this man is openly gay and has an affair with a servant, Fyodor, who Vanya is jealous of. This affair causes the suicide of Ida Golberg who was in love with Stroop too.
At the same time Vanya hesitates because he lives on a religious and philosophical, as well as poetical but founded on ancient Greek poetry mainly, vision of love as a totally immaterial dimension whereas the physical nature of the “act” is seen as sinful, dirty, evil, etc., particularly on the side of clerics, Orthodox at times but mainly Catholic, with whom Vanya associates.
He is confronted to what is, in fact, aggressive approaches from women, older women, including what could have become a rape if he had not been forceful in pushing the women away who was already on top of him. He gets advice from his Greek teacher, and many friends, mostly artists, who lead him to the idea that the act itself is not anything worth even speaking or thinking of it since it is nothing but a mechanical response of the body to some attraction, appeal, or even simple hormonal impulse. The act only gets any value of any sort from the motivations, the feelings, the passion that can become its goal or target.
That’s how he finally steps into the shoes that are going to lead him to his love affair with Stroop, a love affair that was planned and announced from the very start but that had to overcome all the obstacles on its road, and there were quite a few, I mean quite many.
A very sensitive and well-balanced story about love that has many forms and all forms of love are admirable, beautiful and to be accepted without any restraint. The real problem is for any person to accept this love, which means giving one’s mind, soul or even being to another person who is supposed to do the same reciprocally. And this gift is often turned into possession of some kind.
This century-old Russian novella is refreshing in our times of unrestrained physical and hormonal promiscuity seen as freedom, a freedom that is being pushed back as male domination by the #MeToo movement against the harassment of women that implies on the side a similar harassment of men, though less openly considered.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 1:15 PM 
