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The Ghosts of Movies Past–The Uninvited
I originally thought of this title for a series about old films some time ago and I guess the title came to me by way of memories of “A Christmas Carol.” But I waited long enough to begin, that it now fits the season of Halloween. By “ghosts” here, I mean mostly the former, the lingering effect of films, both in the minds of individuals and in the rather ephemeral but I think important national subconscious-at least the subconscious of movie fans. So I begin with two kinds of ghosts to talk about, the effect of a movie and the subject of the movie itself.
“The Uninvited(1944), is, technically, an American film but it sure seems like a British one. Set in Cornwall in the spring-summer of 1937, it concerns a brother and sister(Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey)who, while on vacation, discover a large, long deserted house and become determined to buy it. He is a London music critic and composer and she is, apparently, independently well to do. They pool their resources and succeed in getting the house, purchasing it from the owner, a crusty old carryover from Victorianism(Donald Crisp), and also come into contact with his overprotected and somewhat intimidated granddaughter, Stella(Gail Russell).
The film, like most at the time, and fortunately, I think, in this case, is in black and white. It begins with a wide-vision shot of the sea and the audience gets to see white caps as the waters come ashore on the rocks. They also get to hear the sound of this. Meanwhile, they hear Milland doing a voice-over regarding the coasts of lands that border this part of the sea and their propensity for providing a background for ghostly events. This all sets the scene nicely and puts the viewer in an agreeable tingly mood.
I will not go into the film in great detail here, but you need to know a little of what happens. The granddaughter, much against her Grandfather’s wishes, makes friends, barely, with the two Londoners. She and Milland seem to have a quick, closeness between them, and the stage seems set for romance, particularly when Milland writes her a song. But instead there is uncertainty and fear(“Stella By Starlight” became a jazz/Great American Songbook hit–you still might hear Miles Davis’s and other versions of it on Sirius “Real Jazz”)
On the first night brother and sister are together in their new home, Milland hears the sound of a woman sobbing. His sister explains that during the weeks he was cleaning up details in London and she was civilizing the house, she heard this several times, and no, it’s not Lizzie, the housekeeper, whose cat behaved oddly and refused to go upstairs. “It comes from everywhere and nowhere,” she says. Yes, indeed.
Without going into revealing details, I will merely say that this is the beginning of a tense and compelling ghost story that does not terrify you with nut cases running around with chainsaws, but may make your hair re-arrange itself a couple of times and send through you a couple of chills, so you feel as if you had just come inside on a cold winter day. Questions are asked and not, immediately, anyway, answered. The history of the house is studied and eventually, after quite a bit of tension and suspense, there are a number of ghostly manifestations(along with some explanations, too).
If you check this out on-line you will find many people praising it. But some regard it as weak stuff, nothing like today’s “shock” films with noise, blood and violence. This is, in my opinion, a good thing. This movie is not about physical violence. It is about subtle, spiritual and psychological haunting and the different but still chilling fear it can bring. It is way more sophisticated than the gross chop ’em to bits type. It is by far my favorite supernatural film–“The Haunting” from the 1960’s would be second, but for all its qualities it is not equal to this.
Part of the reason for this film’s excellence is found in the efforts of the director, Lewis Miller. Every scene seems to fit, to be an integral part of the story. The appearance and atmosphere of the house are allowed to play a significant role, but one you see or sense in the background, just part of the scenery of chills. When the manifestations do appear, they are not clear–they are foggy and indistinct, like something from a dream or a surrealist artist, as if telling us that this is not just a matter of other people, it’s other people from outside our reality, but real and perhaps threatening all the same.
Given the movie’s age you might expect to creak a little bit–and it does, but only slightly. Some of the romance is a bit contrived and the attempts at humor are clearly several decades behind the curve. But these count little, they are a small part of the overall story, maybe 5% or less of the movie. And there is the brief presence of the elegant and unusual Cornelia Otis Skinner who in a very busy life acted a little bit and maybe should have more. Her teacher/counsellor is a combination of authoritarianism and doubtful sanity that you won’t forget.
This is not a movie for people who want to be “shocked” by violence and mayhem and screaming. It is about the mystery and spookiness of encountering the supernatural and trying to figure it out, and being both afraid on one hand and anxious to learn on the other. It’s a film for people who like mystery in the most serious and meaningful sense of the term, the kind that sneaks up on you after midnight, and spooks your mind and soul rather than threatening your body. In an era where so many movies have the grossest violence with almost no subtlety at all, it is a reminder of civilized behavior and presumes it can exist among both those of flesh and blood and the wandering spirits. Try it, you might really like it.
(Other than the common title, this film has nothing to do with the one made in the late 2000’s, maybe 2009 or thereabouts. I watched about 20 or 25 minutes of it once which was enough to determine that 1) The stories are not connected and 2) I was wasting my time)
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Sin No More–(But Keep Your Balance Too, Folks)
“Sinners”–Directed by Ryan Coogler–starring Michael B Jordan and a lot of people I don’t know–just released
“The Hunt” by Faye Kellerman–copyright 2022–Harper Collins
I hardly know how to start this article. Maybe I’ll be better at ending it–maybe not. Maybe I’ll just make a fool of myself and display some of the issues that go with getting older. Maybe not–I guess we’ll see, or at least get to guess.
I heard about “Sinners” from several sources and I decided I wanted to see it. I’d never seen a Coogler or a Michael B Jordan movie before as far as I know, but it sounded interesting– a tale about black and white vampires in depression era Mississippi with a lot of good music(though I can’t remember for sure how much I heard about the music before I went and saw it). As a sometime fan of vampire movies and a frequent admirer of over-the-top stuff, it sounded at least interesting. Although I likely would have gone to see it anyway, the final decision was made by what I heard from Alyssa Farah Griffin.
For the uninitiated, Farah Griffin is the striking, long haired brunette who once worked(briefly)for Mike Pence and now is a frequent interviewee and political commentator on some of CNN’s many talk shows. Brought up with a
Republican and apparently very nearly extremist far right background, she seems to have had her eyes opened by her work experience. She now sounds like a skeptical, careful, moderate liberal, though this is my own interpretation only. Anyway, I have come to appreciate her intelligence and her calm, sophisticated and good natured articulation. Therefore, when on the (supposedly)half-minute per person comments at the end of one show, she said she had loved “Sinners” and she strongly recommended it, I took note.She has plenty of company. I checked Rotten Tomatoes and found it had an astounding positive 97% from the critics and 96% from the public. So the “liberal” movie site was strongly for it. “Worth It or Woke” was more divided and had at least one definite negative review but still it was split, and it is a conservative, though witty and aesthetically astute, site.
Manohla Dargis of the NYT(with whom I have agreed and disagreed on the same movie before)was close to ecstatic about it. –“A passionate, effusive praise song about life and love,” she said; she added “when a Black musician plays the blues at a juke joint, he isn’t performing for jubilant men and women. He is also singing to the history that flows through them from generations of ancestors to others not yet born.”
Now the trouble here is that just about everything she praises the movie for is correct. It does have good things in it and in a way(if you overlook a couple of thing’s I’ll try to get to)it’s well done. The music is very good. Coogler knows what he’s doing. What he may not know is what he is or is not valuing and herein lies the problem. It may be interesting to learn who agrees with me and why. By the way, it could also be mainly that he and I simply have extremely different values and they just don’t fit together.
I noticed when I was young that there seemed to be a tendency for older people to shy away from anything aesthetic–music, movies, etc–that had any aspect of the bizarre or unpleasant about it. I assumed when I was 22 that this was just because the were older. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that they were not only calendar-wise older, but that they had passed through different economic, political and social times than people of my age and that this might be an important factor too. I was fairly contemptuous of their attitude and to the extent that real contempt is ever an acceptable attitude towards others, I must say I still think I had a pretty good case.
But time passes and stuff changes and there are nuances. And now I find myself in the embarrassing position of having to justify myself to myself–and to you, given all those good reviews and opinions of “Sinners.” So here goes.
In the “yes” or “no” game on this movie you may put me down as a “no” and a pretty strong one. But wait and hear my reasoning, my comparisons and my exceptions. So far as I know, none of the critics have pointed this out, but “Poor Things,”(2 years ago), “The Substance,”(last year) and this film are in a sense three of a kind. You could put them together in a category I would describe as “having contempt for the human body.” And I would argue that this ultimately means contempt for human beings altogether if you follow it far enough. And I think that is a spiritual, intellectual and artistic dead end.
“Poor Things” was a very successful film, making money and winning a slew of awards. Emma Stone parlayed her role into a best acting Oscar. For a fuller description of my feelings about this movie, see my article on the 2023 Oscars done early last year. (It’s the last entry in the movie part of my book –see below). I admired much of the technical aspect of the movie and even credited it with what appeared to be a bit of raising of imaginative questions on maybe two occasions, neither one taken advantage of.
But I largely despised it for what seemed to be its casual acceptance of sexual excess and, even more, for its contempt for the human body and its celebration of violence toward it. This latter is shown in many scenes in which a mad doctor is apparently(never explained)doing experiments. There is blood all over the place and no point to it. I felt sickened by seeing this over and over, something apparently I was supposed to be well impressed with it. Well, I was impressed, but …not in that direction. I wondered what kind of morality, what kind of world view or aesthetic sense would make a person go for this, think it was admirable and expect people to be attracted by it.
What the answer to that question is I still don’t know, but clearly much of the audience disagreed with me. It was, as noted, a winner of many awards including the one for Emma. It just left me wondering what’s going on out there that I don’t understand, something that disgusts me with its contempt for the bodies we live in and its willingness to exploit gross attacks on them; and also apparently accepting destruction of them for the sake of ,well, I guess the term “cheap thrills” applies here.
About a year later along came “The Substance,” starring Demi Moore who failed to win an Oscar for it but did get nominated for best actress. The plot involves an aging actress offered the opportunity to have her body reborn in the form of her younger self. Her own body(original one)then goes to sleep and her consciousness is transferred to the new one. The transformation and changing of body parts are portrayed in gross and extreme detail. If such a thing actually were possible, maybe this is what it would look like. Maybe not, too-who would know?
As you may have already guessed this gets spectacularly screwed up and at one point she seems to, mentally occupy two bodies at one time. But as ridiculous as this may sound, by far the worst part is the body changing stuff and the director’s willingness to let the camera and the mic hover over it while it goes on. The audience gets to be a different kind of voyeur watching a different kind of pornography, a pornography of the body and soul or body and consciousness combined. And there is a lot of noise and screaming and grossness involved and I couldn’t help thinking at some point or other of “Poor Thngs.”
I remember, that, ironically, this seemed like PT as described above, but at first appeared, in its concentration of the Demi Moore character to have at least some internal integrity and to be granting some to its characters. Big mistake. As the changing and the noise and the grossness piled up it got worse and worse and I wound up thinking that this film had accomplished the oddly considerable feat of being more offensive than “Things.” And the offensiveness comes mainly from the ghastly and repeated scenes of body changing which manage to be horrible and boring at the same time.
Then we have “Sinners,” already largely described. Like PT it is a movie made by someone who knows about movies and there are technically some things to admire in it. The story-telling is a bit haphazard, but not over-the-top ludicrous or incompetent. And of course, as I have already said, the music is wonderful(at least if you like blues-gospel-folk)to hear.
But after the serious violence begins(there’s a bit from early on in the film)it descends into a nightmare of physical cruelty. Knifing, shootings and just plain beatings take place. As with the two above movies this is the constant theme of the last half hour or so and it hardly matters who is doing what to whom or why they’re doing it. It’s just a trip into violence for violence’s sake and the film’s possibly redeeming qualities are pulled down into a black hole of disgust with the violence.
I assure you that I am not suggesting any kind of censorship–freedom is freedom. But I am asking why this kind of thing is apparently now acceptable(and apparently desirable to some) on the screen and drawing enthusiasm from both critics and the public. I understand this is in a sense more a sociological than an aesthetic question, but I think it’s one to be asked. If anyone has an answer–well, I’m willing to wait patiently.
Now, I get to turn from complaining about the seemingly depressing way our society, or at least its expression through aesthetic means is going, to complaining about people who apparently won’t deal with change at all. I don’t know how many mystery novels I’ve read by The Kellermans(Johnathon and Faye)but I suppose about 15–maybe more, maybe less, and over a long stretch of time. All but one have been by Faye. I did try Johnathon once and I found him an acceptably entertaining and clever mystery writer, but his wife is–well, much better, to be frank.
Most of Faye’s novels, over 20 of them I believe, are about Rina and Stephen Decker. They meet in the first book, or at least an early one, and quickly fall in love when Peter is not busy solving crimes. He’s a cop and having a romance with an observant Jew when he is a fallen away Mississippi Baptist trying to catch a killer is a tough business. But they both know they’ve found the right person and go from there, and they get a great deal of help when the truth of Peter’s birth finally emerges. His mother was Jewish, a fact he did not have before, which makes him a birth right Jew and–well, I’ll bet you can take it from there.
Peter and Rina are one of the most attractive, inspiring, and lovable couples in mystery writing. While he is usually busy investigating horrible crimes(sometimes with help from Rina), they build a life and a family together and (aside from the husband and father’s occupation) they are an ordinary or better than ordinary upper middle class family, the kind you’d like to have your kids play with and have over for dinner and bridge. But they do have some unusual connections and one of these leads to their being the foster parents of Gabe, a leading character in this book.
Gabe is the biological son of a gangster named Donatti and Teresa McLaughlin. Dr. McLaughlin–she was once apparently good practitioner of medicine–is a friend of Peter and Rina and they took Gabe as their foster child during a rough time for his mother. He has formed close relationships with Rina’s and Peter’s children as if they were true siblings and he loves Rina and Peter. But he also loves his mother and wishes to help her when she’s in trouble.
Meanwhile, Peter is nearing retirement and working for a small police department in upstate NY. Three people, a man and two women who seem to have had a complicated relationship, are missing and it’s up to Peter and his partner, Tyler McAdams, a rising young cop, to sort. out the mess. The story of these three is in some ways a routine mystery plot, but interesting for all that as are several of the other characters the readers(and Peter and Tyler)meet along the way. It is, however, only about one third of the book. The rest is the story of Teresa, her own children, and her two husbands, current and ex.
One thing that is really different about this novel is that Teresa tells most of her part of the story(as opposed to Peter’s hunt)in the first person and it is very self revealing. A smart girl with big ambitions, she was nonetheless less victimized as a teenager by a boy named Donatti who was on the way to the top–in crime. He seduced her into sex and pregnancy and their son is Gabe. He also paid for her education until she became a doctor, able to earn her own living. He is also a killer and a psychopath, though one who can play the game in society and manages to pass himself off with many as a very wealthy NV businessman and investor.
Their relationship is described by Teresa in great detail, both physically and emotionally. It is both loving and abusive. He is sex addicted and insists on it almost constantly and is not above raping her on occasion. She hates this, but finds him exciting and attractive at times. And he has a small sliver of humanity in him–he can be kind and understanding sometimes and they have known their moments of happiness.
But at one of the not good times in the marriage Teresa got a divorce and wound up marrying an Indian doctor, Revel. He is talented and quite rich(though not to match Donatti’s wealth)and also a bit of a jerk and a man with troubles. He is a compulsive gambler who has gotten himself deeply in debt to people of Donatti’s type. He and Teresa have two children and she has taken the kids and fled India for NV and is in the process of divorcing Dev. Then one of her children is kidnapped, the other threatened and she herself is badly beaten, presumably by people connected to Dev.
This is about where we meet Teresa and she tells her story, the past and the part she is going through in the story. Donatti is back in her life again and as usual immensely generous with money–but still psychopathic and violent–and, confoundingly, still generous and loving at times–and as big a puzzle as ever. And where is this all going?
Well, I can’t reveal much about the rest of the story without betraying my honor as a reviewer of mystery writing. But I can tell you that this is the point where we begin to get very heavy doses of the private life of the recovering Teresa and the psychotic/violent/obsessive/jealous,/charming and occasionally loving ex-husband she divorced earlier and who now wants to marry her again.
Teresa’s feelings for him are, I think, as well delineated as they could be. I doubt if any truly sane person can really get all the way into the mind of a psychopath, but Kellerman does a pretty good job here of making him believable– believable and very, very seldom, sympathetic. But there does appear to be a very screwed up and reprehensible person hidden down there somewhere in his psyche.
We get some idea of something many of us have wondered. Why will a wife stay with an abusive husband?(Or, occasionally the other way around). There is no up front, “ah, here’s the answer” in this narrative, but there is this–Kellerman digs so deeply into Teresa’s mind and spirit, digs up her most intimate feelings, sexual, religious, whatever, that we can feel the process of loving and hating at the same time, of feeling desire and attraction for one who has beaten you and worse. Please note I am not admiring this kind of relationship, merely saying that it exists and that Faye Kellerman has done a very believable job of describing the whole thing. Whether it is accurate in real life I don’t know but she makes it plausible.
This relationship, particularly the sometimes violently sexual part of it, is what put off a lot of readers. If you look this up on the internet you will find that although quite a few people liked the book, there were many, many who criticized it and some who hated it. And of course, if you compare it to the relative comfort of the warm and loving family of the Deckers from the previous novels, the contrast is striking. It is indeed a relief to leave Teresa’s story behind and get back to Peter and Rina as Peter and his partner track down the answers in another odd case, but one that is more puzzling than degrading.
And this is where I part ways with the people who strongly criticized the book and who more or less attacked Faye Kellerman for writing it. I don’t know where she got here information–if she read abnormal psychology or talked to experts in the field or relied on her own observation–maybe she did all of them. But she created a strangely fascinating work and with her gift for telling a story in an irresistible way, she wrote a book that pulled me in and wouldn’t let go.
So I guess I am going to end this thing going the opposite direction that I did on “Sinners” and its predecessors. I fully grant the people who didn’t like this book their right to be put off by it. I even understand, I think, even though I don’t agree. It is a departure from her earlier books and those of us who love her writing hope her “retirement” will not be permanent and that that she will return with other stories about other people(or maybe even the Deckers?)
But in the meantime, let me say again, I suggest you try to separate your love for her earlier books or your love for the way of life portrayed in them from your feelings about “The Hunt; give the author room to wander into some new territory here. Many of the people in it are despicable, some to the extent that they seem hardly human. But in most of the characters, and behind the whole thing there IS a feeling of humanity, though not always the normal brand. But it is there, hiding somewhere, but affecting the world overall. To that extent this book and its people, therefore, are way beyond the insane and often over pessimistic drivel of “Poor Things,” “The Substance” and “Sinners.”
PS_Regarding my mention of “my book”–I have(self)published a collection of most(more than 90%)of my blogs from March, 2022 to about early May, 2024. If you’ve read my stuff from the beginning they should all be familiar to you, but somewhat enhanced by fancy(and expensive)publishing techniques. It is not yet available in stores or on-line but I hope it will be soon. If you just can’t wait email me a jnjcfloh@webtv.net to get a copy quickly.
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An Open Letter to Michael Smerconish
Dear Michael,
First of all, I am a fan who rarely misses one of your telecasts and who thinks the people who denounce you as being a toady of one side or the other are full of crap.
That established, I need to dissent from some–not all-you had to say about college education recently. For the moment I will mostly ignore AI which is obviously going to be a very big thing in the future–beginning about now–but which is not directly related to my complaint.
My dissents are mainly two, one small and one large. The small or at least smaller one is that the number of jobs where you don’t need college to earn a lot of money will never take up all the people who are not college educated. There will always be those who because of ability, intelligence or refusal/inability to learn will not qualify for those jobs. They have mostly gone into “laboring” jobs in the past, mostly industrial manufacturing over the last century or so. But despite Trump or anyone else those jobs are not coming back in large numbers. There may be a bounce back but not a big one So what about those people who aren’t college or technical material? By the way, I have no real answer on this, but I think it’s worth noting.
The bigger complaint and one I know a bit more about is this. One could listen to your pronouncements on college education and not realize that there are OTHER REASONS for going to college than learning to do a job that will earn you more money. No, you haven’t said that specifically, but it seems a reasonable assumption based upon your often correct, but wholly economic arguments.
And these can have a great influence on a society and indeed, may have some economic and/or social impact of their own, indirectly and later. Now what I mainly am trying to say is this. Suppose a young person enrolls in a good university and does a major in literature and a minor in philosophy. He(no, I won’t play the he, she, they game– you know I mean anyone of whatever sex)will not be able to step into a high paying job as easily as someone with a degree in engineering or computer science, etc. Of course he might get some good bucks in communications and/or publishing, but those jobs are admittedly fewer in number than the tech stuff.
Nonetheless, he will be a different person because of his education. He will be more civilized and “smoother.” He will have better manners. He will speak his native language much better and understand its meaning and nuances more easily than the less educated. He will, in short, be more “sophisticated.” and will even be able to pass for upper middle or upper class,(even if he is not) for a time in some circumstances. In other words his education based style will open doors for him.
I hope I am not a snob based on class or anything else, but I am also a realist, and hey, it’s easier to get into desirable places and social circles when you’re more civilized. This may be heresy today in our “everybody’s equal no matter how big a jerk he acts like” society, but I prefer the realistic view. The one that looks good coming through the door and treats the hostess with respect and dignity is going to come off a lot better. This is simply how it is.
To be sure some of our cultures, particularly some of our TV commercials, have been working hard to make slobbery behavior amusing and acceptable. This may be amusing to some people but I am not among them nor am I impressed by the implied suggestion that this makes and will make things better.
As the expense of sounding like a conservative–I’m not in the ordinarily accepted sense–ask me about my voting record–I still prefer to be in a restaurant where the customers dress, look, and act like Myrna Loy and Melvin Douglas–yeah, OK, I’m stuck on old movies, but so what? I do believe that in the long run their type of more civilized behavior is likely to win out. The tendency of recent decades to simplify and de-formalize everything did a lot of good at the beginning, when our society was too stiff and over-organized,. But it has gone way too far and as usual has thrown out the baby with the bath water. I would like to bring back the former, but not the latter.
I think that by teaching people to read, write and think–and not incidentally, also speak–in more civilized ways is an important kind of education. It’s lack has led our public manners to decline seriously in recent decades and has made the US a less pleasant place to be. Yes, to some extent it’s a world wide tendency, but I think we started it and maybe we can end it too.
Now I am perfectly aware that many who emphasize only the monetary advantages of education are well bred themselves and would likely agree with some of what I have said. This is by no means a simple or obvious issue. But I guess I’m calling on people to think–think seriously about this. I suggest that one thing they think about, could be this–after all my above rant about civilization and good behavior making a society more pleasant, I will add this. It may have economic advantages too. That guy at the cocktail party(uh, they still have them, don’t they?) may have liked Plato when he was at Harvard and be inclined to hire someone else who liked him assuming the other qualifications are correct. And, by the way, studying Plato just might teach a person to think and reason carefully and logically–and that might be a ticket to, well a job in a brokerage firm? A law degree? Hey, who knows?
But this is a complicated issue, and it deserves consideration. College IS to a large extent a matter of learning to ear a good salary. But it may be also a place to learn something to go with that–how to spend and save it, and how to spend it wisely. You never know.
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Osman Is Back–Sort of
If you google “Richard Osman novels–some reviews” you will get as the first entry the following, described as “AI overview”–“Richard Osman’s novels, particularly “The Thursday Murder Club” series and “We Solve Murders” are known for their charming characters, lighthearted humor, and cozy crime-solving elements,, often receiving praise for their heartwarming tone and engaging mysteries.”
This statement is a triumph of irony, presumably unintentional, as it is so very right, 100% right in many ways, but also so lacking in being a complete description of his work. I have read all four of the “Thursday” books so far published (a fifth is due later this year)and reviewed two of them. Check earlier in my blog for the reviews. I struggled with this issue of how his books come off in their effect, particularly with regard to the first one where I explained why I thought his books neither “cozy” nor “comedy mystery” though admittedly containing elements of both.
Many of the reviews and readers’ e-mails on “Solve” at times raise (and/or confuse)the same issues. So first I would like to say again, in slightly different words, that I think this is a very serious man with a great comedy talent. He has noticed the contradictions and sorrows, large and small, of the world around him and has chosen to write about them in a way that is often realistic but also slyly humorous. This is true of all the Thursday books I read and it is also true of “Solve,”
Osman often deals with matters of serious crime and even murder and sometimes with a touch of humor. But it is not the hard-nosed “black comedy” of past and present, nor is it frivolous. He can leave you laughing and weeping at the same time. He is a superb story-teller and a man of great insights into human character. I think it is the latter two traits that make him a good, perhaps great, writer, and that attract many of his fans(myself included), perhaps sometimes subconsciously.
If you read around the entries from professional critics and just plain readers on this book, you will likely get the impression that this is a fairly good book but not a match for the Thursday books. Well, there is further irony here, in that like the above quoted statement this is right and wrong at the same time. I have to agree–somewhat reluctantly–that this is not quite up to the Thursdays, but I did like it overall because of its strengths which I think clearly outweigh its weaknesses.
First of all, it is much like the Thursdays in that you have a fairly small group of main characters whom you know, or get to know well. This would be Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim and Ron in the Thursdays and Steve, Amy and Rosie in “Solve.” There there is another circle of characters whom you know fairly closely but not so much as the main ones. Outside them you will find a slew of other characters, often well described even if only on 2 or 3 pages.
All of the above fit into an overall plot which some are fomenting and some(our heroes)are trying to figure out and thwart. The plot starts out sounding as if it might be fairly simple once you get all the important facts. But it increases in complexity and breaks into different parts. The leading characters’ job then is to try to fit it all together, make sense of it and bring about some kind of justice.
This is true of all the Thursdays and of “Solve.” In the latter we have Steve, Amy and Rosie in the lead, playing the role Elizabeth and her friends do in the other books. Steve, presumably in his 60’s or 70’s is a retired detective. He is in mourning for his wife, Debbie, who was killed along with two others in a bizarre accident, and that loss never leaves him entirely. But he is determined to get on with life and he takes an occasional bit of private work to keep active. He has a cat and a favorite pub(he likes their trivia game) and a few friends and he is trying to put his life together.
The main element of Steve’s life is his daughter-in-law, Amy. Married to Steve’s son, Adam, she is tough, adventurous and contemptuous of ordinariness. She wants no family or house or garden or neighborhood, or whatever. She wants to be adventurous and effective and to enjoy herself,. She knows her job as a private company’s investigator is dangerous and is willing to take on the danger if she can have the adventure and the feelings of accomplishment.
Amy also wants Adam, and she agreed to marry him with the understanding that she is a free agent to come and go as necessary to do her job. Steve loves her back and is willing to agree. So she comes and goes and Adam waits and waits, though not impatiently. He loves her enough to put up with the separations and delays in their relationship, while he makes money.
Steve and Adam have one of those difficult parent-child relationships where they love each other but are uncomfortable in the presence of each other most of the time. Neither one knows what to say or how to act. But they now have Amy in common and this helps to bind them together. At one point Steve is asked if he has a daughter and says he does–then corrects himself, saying something like “Well, a daughter-in-law, actually, but it’s about the same.”
So take these three people(like all the main Thursday characters, all very likeable)and stick them into a mystery. Amy has been assigned by her company to protect Rosie D’Antonio, a bestselling author who writes mysteries, historical novels, etc. She is in her 70’s, still attractive, sexy and vibrant and thinking about a new book(and maybe a new man). She thinks a lot about men, having been married several times but also gone through divorces each time. She is charming and charismatic and it is impossible not to like her.
But Rosie now has a serious trouble of her own. Her most recent book satirized a Russian oligarch who didn’t think it funny. He has threatened to kill her and evidence suggests he has put people on her trail. The people posed as international money smugglers, but were after Rosie. And they were all murdered in various ways
Now things get even more interesting but more confusing and I will not, for reasons of spoilers and clarity, try to explain it all. I read a couple of reviews to see that I was getting it myself. I more or less was, but explanations were helpful. Anyhow, we meet Jeff, who is Amy’s boss, and Henk, Jeff’s former partner, now a rival and maybe an enemy; and, maybe, at the top(of something) and maybe a real person, someone who claims to be named Francois Loubet whose gender, nationality and reality are all in doubt. Loubet uses ChatGPT to communicate and commands it to take the persona of a “friendly English gentleman.” His messages, often dealing with hostile action up to and including death threats are delivered, therefore, in a manner that calls to mind a debate at Cambirdge or Oxford.
We follow most of the people I have mentioned and a few others as they dash around the world from London to the US to Ireland and Dubai. While traveling they are trying to protect the irrepressible and charming Rosie, and also to figure out what in the world is going on. As with the Thursday book style, the plot’s loose ends are (at least nearly)tied up before the book ends(Don’t you love the English language?)
I thought of one maybe inappropriate and certainly contradictory comparison to make. Many of Osman’s characters who are involved with serious crime such as money smuggling and murder often come off as almost moral and fairly good companion material when they’re not working. This reminded me in a way of Dennis Lehane’s “Small Mercies.” a great novel I reviewed in an old blog and which you might want to check out(It’s entitled “The Poet of the Mean Streets”) The two authors have very little in common other than writing about violence and showing(but not excusing)their cruelty, but also the almost hidden human that, at least in some cases, hides inside.
Much of the compulsive fun of Osman’s writing is following the characters through the story and watching them develop and interact. There is nearly always repartee of some kind, clever dialogue, irony, threats and a weird feeling that you’re getting an insight into a part of the world you don’t know but which seems plausible in some way. You also might feel you wanted to be in it more–at a distance.(As for me, I’ll just avoid it–except in good books and movies and so forth).
Once again, this book does just about everything the Thursday books do, but not quite as well. Osman invented characters in Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim and Ron that likely no one will ever quite equal–himself included. They are the main–perhaps the only– difference and this means that the Thursday books are likely a little better than “Solve” is–but only a little,
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Ohio Blows One
It is officially Senate Bill 1 but it may become Ohio’s mistake no 1. Passed recently by the State Legislature and signed by Gov Mike Dewine, the bill would do a number of things, some reasonable but most not, particularly the more important ones.
It grew out of(mostly, anyway)a dislike of DEI policies. Now I want to be clear on this. I have often criticized DEI myself. I came to dislike it because it had seemed to me to have done that thing well intentioned “liberal” groups often do(“Me Too,” for example). It had gone past just getting a fair break for all and getting rid of old prejudices in gender and sexual issues, immigration, ethnicity, etc. I agree with most of their early moves, but eventually DEI advocates came to be a pushy sounding minority which gave the impression, rightly or wrongly, of trying to take over or at least direct the Democratic agenda
DEI came to dominate at least the news coverage of liberal/Democratic thinking and intentions; it gave the impression that regular Democrats were in retreat and yielding to radical outsiders While no one seems quite certain what the Dems did wrong in the Presidential election last year, there is widespread agreement that it could have been run better. One thing was that an overemphasis on DEI distracted from the contrast in Dem and GOP economic ways and obscured what Trump had in mind(as I sit here in the library with the DJIA down a thousand points 2 days in a row, it is obvious what a chance we missed)
So I became disillusioned with DEI as both fanatic and suicidal. It would (and did, I would say)distract attention from Democratic advantages.. It is not that they were entirely wrong, but their wishes became too much at the forefront of the campaign and were often couched in terms which seemed to me almost calculated to drive away or keep away moderates who might have voted for Kamala or at least stayed neutral. Of course now, watching the markets collapse and friends abroad turn away, there’s not much to be done–for now. But I digress.
There were things wrong with DEI but there were(still are)good and bad ways of countering its excesses. OH chose mostly a bad one. Gov Dewine has been, I think, a fairly good governor in many ways. He led the state through the covid crisis with determination and effort and ranked almost equal with Andrew Cuomo of NY in his leadership among governors. He’s not quite as effective as a communicator, but obviously more honest.
He did have a tendency to toady up to Trump from time to time, but , hey, he’s a Republican governor–and his toadying always seemed forced and unenthusiastic. Late in his first term I was learning toward voting for him for a second term when the legislature passed a bill which made widespread availability of guns legal in OH. I decided that if he vetoed the bill (which I knew to be unlikely)I would send him $5.00 and become a Dewine supporter. He signed it and I stuck with the Dems.
I had very little hope he would veto Senate Bill 1, but I was in there hoping, And of course he signed it. So what does it do? Without, I hope, boring you with too much detail, here is a brief summation of it main points as summarized by USA Today–
“No training offices or scholarships based on (DEI)” Some of these programs are decades old, not the result of some recent radicalism. They were started to give access to college education to underrepresented groups. This seems to me to have been a proper use of government–to make things fair. Perhaps it was misused, but I think that was its intent. Perhaps now its issues cannot be used at all and many different groups will be disadvantaged, just as their grandparents were.
Faculty strikes will be banned. This one could be argued both ways, but I don’t think OH has been rife with unreasonable faculty strikes and I don’t see the need to deny teachers the right to try to improve their own lot. That will likely be the effect and may drive thousands of OH teachers to look elsewhere for work.
The power of tenure for college professors will be reduced. It will still be theoretically there but subject to being overridden by student surveys and colleagues’ opinions. No doubt tenure has been misused when professors could be let go only for “cause” and very little was “cause” enough. This will go the other way and make professors’ jobs subject to quick, possibly immature and ill-informed opinions of students and fellow teachers. Will they always be wrong? No, of course not–but there will be enough of a threat to drive OH college teachers to look elsewhere.
Higher education institutions will be forbidden the right to take positions on “controversial beliefs or policies,” that is such things as climate change, foreign policy, DEI, immigration, marriage and abortion.” While these issues may have been discussed on campus inadequately and unfairly in the past, that was perhaps better than not getting discussed at all. At least that seems the case to me and that is where this bill seems to point. This has not stopped some Republicans from trying to sell this as a freedom of expression bill.
–Eliminate undergraduate degrees if fewer than five students obtain degrees over three years. Now this sounds sensible in a way–it might eliminate spending money on a policy that benefits few. But would you place a bet on more traditional programs getting the axe as much as more recent and less popular ones?
–A ban on donations from and partnerships with the Chinese government–well, OK, I guess, but is it likely you would otherwise have a Chinese professor teaching a Political Science course at Bowling Green?
–Faculty syllabi would be required to be posted on line. It seems to me that we were already moving that direction at Kent State when the covid got rid of many people, me included. It may be a good idea, but what is it doing in this bill?–
A reduction in the tenure of of university trustees, political appointees who oversee universities, from nine to six years. Well, OK– sounds a good idea. Possibly they tossed it in here to give the whole thing a feeling of normality and sense. But it is of course, as is the syllabi posting thing, a very small matter when compared to the huge negative results of Senate Bill 1 and maybe calculated to give a misleading sense of balance to the bill.
Many liberal groups are maintaining that they will challenge this law in the courts and I believe many of them should. No doubt some of them will go too far for my taste and opinions. but I think it needs to be done anyway. Freda Levenson of the ACLU has already been quoted as saying very directly “This legislation is unconstitutional and cannot stand.”
For that piece of defiance, and really for this whole blog, we have USA Today to thank. The article reached me at the insistence of my wife, Joyce, who had read it in the pages of the local USA Today outlet, the once -proud Akron “Beacon Journal” which appears to have lost its independence and maybe more.
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Trump & the World
This is hardly a new topic. It has consumed US news commentators for about two months now and likely will continue to do so. I have, indeed, written about it a little bit. But today I find myself in the situation of needing to write (I dislike getting out of practice by going too long without writing), and also being presented with a wealth, if that term is not too ironic, of material.
I have often spoken of my admiration for “The Economist,” a British publication that was first published in 1843 and has, I believe, been in constant publication since. It identified itself as “liberal” during most of the 19th century and still tends to think of itself that way. Without going into great detail, I will merely point out that in the 19th century liberalism often meant something like 20th century conservatism, at least in economic affairs–it did not want much restriction on business and investment.
But the term was, I think, slightly different in the UK where there was a more concentrated understanding that liberalism did not necessarily mean high level intervention OR unrestricted capitalism(laissez faire in other words). And in the 20th and 21at centuruies it has become clear that while still “liberal” in many philosophical and political matters, it does not encompass “wokeness” or hysterical attacks on the right. What the “Economist” has usually sought is good sense and the public welfare with an understanding of the realities of class, wealth, and their complexities, along with an acceptance of different cultures and their ways. The Econ(I will call it now) tends to favor imagination and inventiveness in business and financial policy, but they insist(without saying it too often)that this does not mean license to leave people behind and/or living in miserable economic conditions.
The newest edition of this weekly is something everyone who wants to get a sane view of the world today should read, This is particularly true of the first few articles which always emphasize the biggest stories at the time, often as much or more political than strictly economic. You may explore these yourself on line, of course, but for those who don’t I wish to include a little of this publiation’s wit, insight and studious understanding of our world. I may have room for only one article or for two or three, but I wish to share with you to some degree, anyway, what they have to say.
The lead article, “America’s New Foreign Policy,” tells you about just that. And a new policy is what it seems to be. They begin with Ukraine and point out that the Trump Administration stopped sharing of intelligence with Ukraine, then abruptly restored it after Zelenskyy agreed to a 30-day truce. But at about the same time, the President increased tariffs on Canada to a sufficient degree that new Prime Minister, Mark Carney told his people the US wanted “our water, our land, our country.” On the other side of the world anxieties were raised when Trump questioned the usefulness of the US-Japanese defense treaty signed more than 60 years ago.
The Econ writers concede that Trump clearly is able to make a difference. But what difference at what cost? Financial markets, though up for the second straight day today(Wed the 19th) thanks to the Fed, are still uncertain. In both financial matters and other security issues, it appears that the leaders of more than 40 nations which have more or less accepted American leadership since WWII now are questioning it. Since the President is in many ways more independent and powerful in foreign affairs than domestic, they wonder what would happen in a real crisis. Would the Trump Administration actually stand with them in the long run?
In some ways the “administration’s economic nationalism and the repudiation of … global security” may do more and worse. Elon Musk hints(or says) the US should leave NATO. Trump remains(now) silent on the issue. Wall Street ponders obscure and peculiar actions on the dollar which of course might affect other nations’ currencies. What are our allies to think? Even more, perhaps, what about our non-allies?
The Econ writers see a threat I had not specifically considered for the Far East. If Trump is so willing to cooperate as Russia chews off parts of Ukraine, what might Asia think? Would he make similar deals with Russia, China, or North Koreas? Would Taiwan(and all of its chips)be more vulnerable? And what about nations that feel abandoned? Might they turn to Russia or China for assistance and alliances?
The writers point out that our current allies are in a difficult spot. And, it occurs to me, it could get worse fairly quickly. The allies, combined, may have a GDP larger than ours. But this is not what Econ calls “hard power.” And the temptation to turn to authoritarian regimes would still be there. And should the US actually back out of a leadership role and go for dominance on its own or with Russia as an ally(acknowledged or not) things could get diplomatically and economically very difficult.
The Econ suggests that America’s allies(they do not say just Europe) do need to build up their own military and economic “infrastructure”–which I gather means to build their own power and to find a way to do it with(perhaps considerably) reduced America assistance. The end of the article suggests that the way for our allies may end up being that old world diplomatic method, more alliances.–that they “should ‘seek strength in numbers.’ “
This would, they say, include a plan for a European take-over of NATO leadership. To an American of my generation this sounds nearly unbelievable, but there it is. They also suggest a joint European-East Asian alliance or at least understanding which would lead to more cooperation with Japan and South Korea. This would, they say, “preserve an alternative liberal order, albeit vastly inferior to the original.”
They also maintain that our former allies should be ready to welcome the US back into their plans when someone else is President. But they also note that by then this will have to be done when the “world will not be the same.” No, it won’t, not by a long distance. All of us should think of what that distance might be and of the difficulties inherent in overcoming it.
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Trump and Other Nations–What’s Next and Where Are We Going Now?
There is so much to say about the Trump Administration that I don’t know where to start. I guess I’ll begin with foreign policy or whatever we should call Trump’s actions to and words about other countries. Not that there’s not a lot to say about domestic issues, but let’s put that off–a little while.
I believe I have said before that my two favorite TV commentators on public matters are Michael Smerconish and Fareed Zakaria, both of CNN. In case I haven’t said it, please take a look at their names now. Smerconish is on Sat AM and Fareed a day later, repeated in the afternoon. I’m sure you can find them on podcasts or wherever if you want to check out older ones. If you have any interest in all this(and everyone should in my opinion)then you’ll find them interesting and honorable, two guys who may have their own opinions but try to stick to facts and reasonable interpretations and to avoid fanaticism and extremists. Michael is perhaps slightly the more opinionated of the two and Fareed the more accomplished scholar and careful historian. Both of them are well worth your time and attention.
Most of what I write this time will be inspired by and based on (but not entirely limited to) information gleaned from Fareed’s program earlier today, Sun, Mar 9.
American foreign affairs are messy and chaotic. Those who paid attention during the first Trump Administration–including political leaders around the world–are unlikely to be surprised. But many of them I think must be dismayed with the speed with which the new President changed so many things and particularly the depth of trouble possible from what he changed to.
First there are the tariffs. I will not even make an effort to run through the many different stances Trump has taken on our trade relations with Canada, Mexico and China in this space of about a week–if you’ve paid any attention to the news you already have a good idea. He has threatened to put hefty tariffs on all of them, then backed off a bit, then declared a one month break for Canada and Mexico on some important items. The sheer confusion of the challenging and contradictory information coming from the Administration is astounding and must be infuriating to deal with for leaders and policy makers in other countries. And not just the countries I’ve referred to–people in other countries must be wondering and waiting.
Now if the worst that comes out of this is confusion, that may be not too bad. Given some quiet, maybe this could be calmed down and straightened out, reasonable tariffs(or none)established and everything brought back to as near normal as possible after this dislocation. But the odds on that are poor. Like it won’t happen or at least not for a long time and after a fair amount of economic damage has been done. And that could spill over into–well, wait a minute for that.
If actual action is taken on the more important of the tariffs suggested–autos, steel, many agricultural produces, for example-then there is likely to be economic dislocation of some kind and it might come fairly quickly. The US puts tariffs on someone’s goods exported here and they put one on some of ours. This has already happened regarding at least one case. This means that their goods will cost more in the US and, wow, guess what, Americans will buy a lot fewer of them. In return the citizens of the other country, for the same reason, will buy fewer of ours. Very possibly there will be reductions in hours worked, perhaps layoffs in both cases if this goes on for long.
Meanwhile, some American companies may get a break for a little while. With limited competition(or none)on the goods in question, they might increase their prices. But many American companies are unhappy about this too. Whatever, their business, there is at least some chance with most that they import some of the parts of whatever they make from, let’s say, county “X,”, our example here. Those goods, will be more expensive or unavailable here. American companies will have trouble getting parts they need and/or will have to pay exorbitant prices for them. Their prices will, in many if not most cases, soon rise. Their profits will be squeezed and their employees will be worse off, facing higher prices and no or little pay increase. Layoffs could be a possibility.
This obviously could have that famous snowball effect. It will gather strength like a snowball rolling downhill and get strong and stronger until it reaches the bottom. How much actual trouble this will cause for the economy and people at large I don’t know. Likely not as much as the Great Recession(2008-2009), would be my guess, but I still think it could be substantial.
Now along with this buy/sell issue of prices and economic retaliation, there comes a mostly(at first, anyway)non-economic result. This would be resentments and mistrust. And these do not bode well for our relations with other countries, regardless of their involvement in the tariff mess. Once a person or a country gets a reputation for dishonesty or untrustworthiness, such a reputation might be hard to shake off. And it is my impression that Donald Trump is particularly accomplished at proving his untrustworthiness quickly and forcefully. And this spills over, now, into overall foreign relations and national security.
On Fareed’s program today there were interviews with a number of foreign leaders. I won’t bother mentioning most of them by name as many of the names are both hard to spell and unknown to the larger number of Americans. But there was a common theme. Our allies do not like the way things are going. It was pointed out by Fareed and by at least one of the leaders that something approaching peace and order has been USUALLY kept in Europe for about 80 years. This is true, to a somewhat lesser extent elsewhere, though obviously not in the Middle East.
It happened like this–At the end of World War II the army of the USSR swept over Eastern Europe like a Red Wave. The correctly despised Nazi legions of Hitler and his allies were driven back and by the spring of 1945 were close to being non-existent. Most of we now call “Eastern Europe” fell under the control, direct or indirect of this army and there was no reasonable alternative authority.
Over the next few years nearly all of Eastern Europe became staunchly allied to the Soviet Union. By political coup, military force or whatever, the Communists, using (rarely)honest elections, crooked elections, political maneuvering and always backed by the presence of Soviet arms took over. By 1948 Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania and Czechoslovakia were all in the Soviet bag. Germany was still divided as the US. Britain, France and the USSR tried to agree on how it should be put together and ruled.
The Soviets, with their huge army and now with six “satellite” nations as allies faced the rest of the continent (or the world)together and there was a genuine fear in the west that they might try to take Western Europe by force. Had they done so, they had so many troops, many of them battle veterans, that they could likely have taken western Europe to the English Channel in a matter of weeks.
I don’t know if anyone knows or will ever be able to say for certain what went through Stalin’s mind during this time, but there was at least one good reason that they didn’t strike. From 1945 to 1949 the US was the only nuclear power in the world and this meant Stalin would have risked bringing down the power of the US nuclear arsenal upon his country and they had no real defense against it nor any retaliatory threat to use.
Nonetheless, the US and its European allies were worried. The had watched for several years and one after another the states of Eastern Europe had gone Communist and become little USSR’s. Where would it stop? Also, France and Italy, two large European industrial countries had large communist parties who contested the legal and fair elections both countries had. They had not done so well as they had hoped yet, but they had done well enough and generated enough followers that there was real fear one or both of these countries might legitimately vote themselves communist. And if they did, what would their relation to the Soviet Union and it’s foreign policy ambitions be?
It is also likely that the West knew the USSR was working on an A Bomb and might soon have it. Perhaps they did not know when. In any event, a collective defense pact seemed the only way out and NATO was formed as an anti-Soviet alliance in the spring of 1949. It’s sole purpose was to deter the Soviets from attacking Western Europe and it stated–in its famous Article 5–that an attack on any one of the members of NATO would be considered an attack upon them all and all would respond.
The nuclear power the US had was assumed to be part of this and therefore served as a protection to our European allies. This came to be know as the “nuclear umbrella” which has been there for more than 70 years and is still no doubt a serious deterrent to the Russians. (As to the future, well…) But later in 1949 the USSR exploded its first nuclear device and since then each side has had the power to seriously damage or even destroy the other one. Doing so, of course, might imperil world civilization now.
I have explained this in some detail because it is relevant to the current situation. Trump’s foreign policy appears to be a mess;. He and Rubio are going to try to make some kind of deal with Putin by meeting in Saudi Arabia. What kind of deal my be offered or agreed upon is hard to predict.
Trump’s almost daily back and forth on tariffs has given an impression of disorder and confusion in the US and has done nothing to earn us respect anywhere. We have offended both Canada and Mexico, our two leading trading partners, to a very severe degree and neither one is sympathetic to us now. The Europeans too are mistrustful and held their own(without US participation)meeting on security a few days ago. Some European leaders, including the incoming German Chancellor, have said openly that the US seems to be changing sides; at least it appears that way from the way we are treating Ukraine. Consequently there are suggestions that the US “umbrella” will be withdrawn or has been already and that the Europeans must now go it alone against Russia with France and Britain using their own power to replace the American “umbrella.”
This is noble of them, our oldest ally and our mother country, but while I cannot quote you the exact figures, I can tell you that the combined French-British nuclear power comes nowhere near ours and this might be seen more a token rather than a real anti-Russian restraint.
I hope that Trump has not been foolish enough to decide to turn away from Western Europe. I hope he has not done anything already that might look like a permanent change. But if he has, then the world, and especially Europe, will have to live with it, perhaps for a long time. We can, of course, hope that the better angels of the Republican Party (and maybe the few Republicans with the political nerve to contradict Trump)will speak out and maybe prevent this. We hope the Democrats will find their energy and their purpose and join them. But we don’t know.
What we do know is that our foreign policy appears on the surface to be in a state of chaos, both inconsistent and sometimes incoherent. Our economy(watch the market), our influence in the world, our alliance system, our entire national security are all at risk. They could be made far safer by acts of common sense and restraint on the part of the Administration. It’s by no means too late. But they need to get on the right track and they need someone of common sense and with a sense of history and international politics to get on board with advice. I hope they don’t use Elon Musk for this. John Bolton would be a good choice. But somehow I doubt he will be asked.
Most likely they also won’t ask former NATO commander Gen Wesley Clark who was on CNN this afternoon(Mon Mar 10) talking to interviewer Brianna Keilar. He said that the Trump Administration had created a foreign policy which had alarmed Europe. He had talked to people from Ukraine and elswhere on the continent and “They’re afraid . . .They’re asking ‘How can the United States be neutral between an aggressor that stomps on human rights and all the principles of Western democracy and a country that’s been attacked?” Later he added “The American system of alliance basically kept the world away from. . . war for 80 years…This is a really scary departure for America to cast off our allies.” Thank you, General. I hope to hear from you on TV again. But don’t sit by the phone waiting for the Administration to get in touch.
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How About Mystery Other Than Political???
There’s enough mystery floating around out there about political things–international relations, international trade, Elon Musk’s grasp on reality etc. I think I’ll take a brief vacation from that and write about something I usually find more absorbing–mystery novels.
Now you will, maybe, remember that I’ve already remarked on two novels by Richard Osman, “The Thursday Murder Club” and “The Bullet That Missed.” These are his first and third and he is now up to five and rising. He looks like becoming a landmark British mystery writer, like Sayers or Christie. And he just may do it. His work is so obsessively entertaining(in the sense of seizing your interest, not just amusing you)that his book are, I think often truly hard to put down.
A brief rehash–“The Thursday Murder Club” is the title of his first book and also the name of a sort of club of residents at an expensive retirement home near London, Cooper Chase. There are 4 people in the club, Elizabeth, a retired MI-6 spy; Joyce, a retired nurse and inveterate and insightful diary keeper who gives us the only first person narrative in the books; Ibrahim, a compassionate and always curious retired psychiatrist, and Ron who has a history of labor politics and leftist rabble rousing, but seems to have no trouble fitting in–with the other three or with the larger community.
These four have agreed to get together and, using old files to which Elizabeth(if the group has a “leader” she’s it)has access, and try to solve old cases. It will surprise no one, I’m sure, to hear that they frequently wind up getting involved in a current day mystery, and we follow them and their friends(and sometimes rivals)Donna DeFreitas, a 20ish police woman and her professional partner and supervisor, Chris Hudson, a 40ish bachelor. But the emphasis is on our four residents at the Chase with Chris and Donna popping in sometimes, something which is likely to be of assistance or sometimes an annoyance.
These are the main characters, though some others appear on more than one book. One of the more interesting, if not admirable, is Connie Johnson who is making at least her second appearance in “The Last …. .” She is a drug dealer who couldn’t get out of serving some jail time, but, because she is attractive, intelligent and succesful manages to pretty much keep running her business from her cell while looking forward to getting out. She is sometimes helpful when it suits her own purposes.
These things are much the same in all of the books I’ve read so far, though there are differences too. But what does not change is the cooperation of these four retirees in doing justice and doing it with style when possible. Their friendship and their dedication are both remarkable.
When I reviewed the first of this series, simply entitled “The Thursday Murder Club,” I mentioned that I dissented from the views of some of the people who have reviewed it professionally or(more often)simply sent in internet comments. And I said that while I agreed with nearly all of them that it was a terrific book, I dissented with some people’s descriptions of it. There was a tendency to refer to it as a “cozy” or as a “comedy-mystery.” I objected to both of these terms, though admitting at it had elements of each, particularly the latter.
Without going into the details of these two types of mysteries(see the internet for explanations) I’ll just re-assert that Osman’s books have elements of the above two, but exist above them in that group of mystery novels which mainly please, well, mystery fans, but also take note of the human condition, usually as seen in some of the characters.
What only a few commented on was that there was an element of wistfulness or even sadness in Osman’s writing too and I strongly agreed. Although there are parts that are very funny, Osman often slips into a different mood and we get to explore-if we don’t already know–the other side of aging, the sense of loss as years go by, the awareness of mortality and time and the loss of things and people that we love. Even if we do know, the sharing of thoughts is somehow comforting and agreeable, particularly from such a talented, intelligent and youthful(54–barely out of adolescence)writer.
I think this may have increased a little in each book, but I’m really not sure of that one. What is clear to me is that in this, his 4th book, he goes further into it than before. Don’t worry–the mystery is still there. But the characters, particularly the two gentlemen, seem willing to share a bit more about themselves than before. And Joyce, that expert chronicler of other people’s behavior gives us more about her own feelings and what gladdens and saddens her heart as she ages.
But it is Elizabeth, always the dominant character of the four, who commands the most of our attention. I do not wish to go into her problem in great detail, for I feel I should let you search it out for yourselves. But I will say it has to do with her husband, Stephen, and with aging, particularly one aspect of it. How the leader, acknowledged or not, of the group handles this and what she goes through in her own heart but shares very little of with the others is close to devastating.
It is rare to see a hero of this stature in a mystery/suspense novel attain such altitudes of reflection and of revelation of pain. It makes this the most searching and the most emotionally bruising of these novels and, I would have to say, the best so far. But it would not be successful if it didn’t have a substantial and puzzling mystery to solve, one with both questions and emotions behind it. It serves doubly as the main plot of the book and therefore a sometimes needed escape from Elizabeth’s sadness, and as a diverting and often fascinating look at how a search for the apparently unknowable goes on and where it goes.
The plot itself has to do with a local shopkeeper, an immigrant know to the club, who runs an antique business. Early in the book he agrees to keep a box for a short time which someone else will later pick up. He will be paid well for this sleight of hand storage but will be killed if he doesn’t produce the box when asked. Shortly after that he is dead, shot while sitting in an automobile. It looks like a professional job and the authorities know nothing of it–at the beginning.
This leads both our friends in the club and their police buddies into an extensive chase of a missing box. It almost certainly, they believe, contained heroin or some other kind of drug and is worth millions But where is it and why did the shopkeeper get killed?
As you might guess this leads to a fascinating attempt to track down the truth. There are talks and interviews with various people on both sides of the law. One of them is Connie, who sees possible profit here and who is, predictably, charming, sexy and dangerous. There are others who belong on the periphery of the case but may have something important to add. And most interestingly, there is a search for how the box got to the UK and insights into the international illegal trade business, particularly in drug trafficking.
In the end the truth is finally untangled and justice of a sort, is done. I think you’ll enjoy finding out how it gets done and what transpires, with the case and also just with the people involved, along the way. Each of them has his own story to tell and they do that with style, insight, and the graceful, sophisticated confidence of people who know the score but keep on going. In a sense they’re similar to Anne Lamott who knows the facts , but says “Hallelujah Anyway.”
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Don’t Ask What’s Next–Please
Frankly I don’t want to know –yet. It will become clear to all Americans, to all the developed world soon enough. What I will do is to(briefly)comment on what’s going on in the Administration and on what the effects may be.
Previously, I commented some on Trump and domestic affairs. I was going to to do foreign policy next but I need to make a brief stop off here. Domestic matters have gotten worse and more and more they affect the issues of foreign policy and national security.
The biggest news of late is the further behavior of Elon Musk and the attempt by him and the President to more or less dismantle the federal government. As you no doubt know, a couple of days ago Musk ordered an e-mail message to ALL federal employees,. That is what reports are saying–ALL. That would mean Marco Rubio got one–well, maybe not but this “all”would include not just “probationary” employees who had already been taken on, but everyone who works in a federal office.
Musk’s message was that every employee should, no later than 11:59 PM EST tonight, send an answer to the government. They were supposed to delineate exactly what they had done at work in the week just ending and the powers-that-interfere would decide if they were necessary and should be kept. Also it was added that failure to send this message of self-justification to the top would be considered a resignation and mean automatic termination from their government job.
Remember that Musk and his unofficial DOGE had already “laid off” several million “probationary” employees, some of whom had to be hired back immediately because their jobs(looking after nuclear materials, for example)involved national security in the most immediate way.
Now I have a little knowledge of this myself. I am a retired federal employee. For 28 years I was a Claims Representative with the Social Security Administration. I worked in two Social Security Offices, mostly in Ravenna OH, about 20 miles from where I was born and raised, and a dozen miles or less from Kent State where I went to school. In other words I was not an “entrenched bureaucrat” in Washington. Like about 80% of federal employees I worked miles away from the DC area.
Now if I had gotten that e-mail asking me to report on what I’d just done I would have had several reactions to it. The first, I think, would have been that the President and whoever was helping with this had no idea what a Claim Rep did and what my job tasks were, and an effort to explain it to them would likely have been unsuccessful. I am sure that that is the case with Musk and Trump. They have no idea of what these people do, nothing in their background to help them relate to it and therefore no business pretending to be in a position to decide (or even supervise those deciding) who stays and who goes.
I would easily have put together an answer that would have been truthful as far as it went, and would also convey some of my feeling. I could have said something like,”I have several different tasks–every Claims Rep does–and we don’t keep a personal list of all of them. But with reasonable certainty I can tell you this–in the past work week I interviewed thirty, forty or more people. Some of these interviews were very short. Some took well over an hour, occasionally two hours. I took applications for Social Security benefits and I tried to explain to those approaching 65 what their Medicare would and wouldn’t cover;.
I would have explained to many dissatisfied and sometimes hostile people why their disability claims were denied and what we could do(file a Reconsideration Request)to purse the situation further. I answered the phone about an hour a day and during that time was responsible for answering all sorts of questions about all of the above matters and doing other things–particularly, I spent time explaining how to get or replace a Social Security card and doing changes of address or direct deposit for social security payments.
These would all have been legitimate answers and would have all been beyond the comprehension of most of our top officials, who dealt with POLICY rather than the practical implementation of policy. There is usually no reason why the people at the top need to know the details of such things as inputting a change of address. There is also no reason to think that my explanation would have given them an accurate idea of what it was like to work in a Social Security Office. One brief statement I could have made is that it seemed to be almost always a matter of being understaffed and short of time.
The main reason for opposing these threatening, unprecedented and I’m sure mostly illegal attempts to drive people out of their jobs is that they, without good reason and with apparently little if any forethought, would be stripping government employees of their rights and their livelihood. Another rather serious one is that they would be doing so, well illegally, as previously stated. Since these went to virtually every federal employee, there was no question of “probationary” or not involved here as far as I can tell. It’s just a naked attempt to get rid of employees without regard to the hardships it would impose on the employees and their families and even worse, no regard to the damage it would do to the US government, particularly in the matter of protecting our national security interests.
This is apparently dawning on some, even in the stiff-necked and usually leader adoring Trump administration. It was at least encouraging to hear earlier today that several Trump appointees to the cabinet were advising their employees not to reply. (One of them, interestingly, was Mr Patel at the FBI–Pete Hegseth was not among this group, however). It seems to be occurring to these people that we are on the verge of a national crisis, maybe several of them, including both domestic and foreign matters, both military and financial security, and perhaps the security of democracy itself.
The US could shortly find itself without a functioning government run by people who know what they’re doing. It could also wind up with fewer and fewer reliable allies in what looks very much like a crazier and more dangerous world. OK, I think that’s enough for now. I will, I hope, shortly have a few additions to make to this. Maybe I can work in a book or movie or two in between. It would be nice to be closer to a world where things made sense.
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The Way to the End
OK, you want to know. The end of what? Well, I’,m not sure. But the way of life, political life anyway, which affects many other aspects of living is already changed by the Trump Administration. There may be a pulling back from the recent harebrained extremes but I doubt if it will be full. Even if it is it may takde a long time.
One hardly knows where to begin. OK, I’ll begin with domestic policy and I won’t weigh this down with a lot of statistics. Maybe a few to make my points, The Administration has, using Elon Musk as its instrument, began a whole sale assult on the federal goernment and the assumptions we have had about its role in our country for near on a hundred years now, that is going back to about the New Deal. Some of them go back further than that. Then there’s foreign policy, but wait a minute. What’s Musk doing here at home?
The trouble is that much of what Musk has done, at the behest of Trump or at least beacuse Trump told him to tackle the feds and then gave him his head, is likely illegal/unconstitutional, at least about to be. The biggest single thing, which has to be broken down into smaller parts to grasp fully, is the fantastic reduction in the number of employees of the federal government.
Now like a lot of mistakes and excessive actions, this began with a slight modicum of truth. Likely the government is somewhat bloated and needs in ways to be reformed. I was a federal worker for 28 years before I retired(sometime ago now)and I remember that. But I remember other things as well. Like that most federal employees I knew gave a dollar’s worth(or more)of effort for a dollar’s pay. Like the dead-end nature of many of these jobs–relatively secure, to be sure, but easy to get stuck in. And I remember that at least where I worked, with the Social Security Administration, a bloated workforce was not part of the trouble.
The trouble was that we did not have, in my opinion ENOUGH people to do the job correctly and quickly. So nearly everyone felt behind in their work and was constantly hassled by this fact, regardless of whether the management pointed it out(which they frequently did, actually) So this is not a simple matter. If they were going to put people out of jobs, why didn’t they at least take a few weeks to have someone study the issue? Maybe have some people go to the offices or laboratories, or banks or wherever and learn something of the jobs, the work flow, the issues–the troubles and possible fixes for them. But they didn’t– they simply took an axe and started chopping.
This was done at first by offering functionally every federal employee a “buyout” opportunity. The deal was to stop work but get paid another 8 months without working and presumably still being on the payroll. Not enough people–not very close to enough–took this offer to come close to the Muskite requirements. So they proceeded with firings, just getting rid of people. Now there are two or three things to say about that.
First of all, it appears that for the most part, they went after people still in their probationary period, the year or two that a federal employee man be dismissed without cause, though presumably because they didn’t fit the job. But they MAY have wandered into the ranks of long employed people in some cases and as far as I’m concerned most of these firings WOULD BE simply illegal. Some such dismissals may have already occurred.
This is immensley irresponsible, particularly when you look at what happened with the NNSA(National Nuclear Security Administration)late last week. First of all, the NNSA is a smaller government entity and a lesser known one. But it is extremely important. It is part of the Dept of Energy and it is tasked with the job of overseeing and maintaining US nuclear power. I guess you could say that they have two overall responsibilities. One is to guarantee that US nuclear weapons and other working nuclear power are kept in order and are able to do their job–that is, to defend the country from potential adversaries, hopefully by intimidating them into never doing anything so stupid as launching an all out attack on the US.
It ‘s second duty is protect us from ourselvs in a sense. That is, they are to make certain nuclear materials are correctly stored and handled. They are to protect us from our defensive weapons becoming a danger to the homeland or to US personnel or materials anywhere.
The story I read on this was from the BBC which is not known for getting things wrong. Based on US media and perhaps other stories, the BBC concluded that approximately 300 probationary employees had been fired. The Energy Department claimed it was in the vicinity of 50. Eventually, the actual number may come clear.
But, whatever, the Trump Administration reversed itself within a day or two. It became apparent(or maybe was pointed out to them by someone)that they were imperiling national security. Without these employees the agency wouldn’t be able to keep track of and control its nuclear power. So the agerncy began, frantically, I imagine, to get back in touch with these people and tell them, “Hey, wait a minute–you’re not fired–come back to work!” But, the agency said, they were having trouble finding them.
Now I wish to raise three fairly simple but fascinating and likely important questions, after which I’ll be quiet for awhile. First, why does this most important agency have so few employees? And how many were there, really. who were dismissed? Secondly, who’s watching the nukes today? And finally, why can’t they find them? How about starting with the address, email, snail mail or whatever, to which they sent the termination notices? Oh, yes, and didn’t the personnel files have phone numbers in them? How about giving them a call.? Hey, maybe they all went to Greenland or Panama–still, it’s worth a try?
That’s all for now–think I’ll go stew awhile. I may have some foreign relations questions later.
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Brazil Takes on the World-At Least on Screen
Until some ads popped up on the website of our local art theatre, I had been only vaguely(if that)aware of “I’m Still Here.” But I thought it looked interesting from the ads and I pursued it a bit further and found it was not only an oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film but also Best Film of the Year. Having a foreign language film nominated for best picture is not unprecedented, but it is unusual, so I figured something worth learning about might be going on here. I was right.
In a year of apparent medicocrity and maybe one or two real losers, there are some movies to be proud of and happy about. “Sing Sing”–which should have been nominated for best picture in my opinion–but wasn’t, is one of them. “I’m Still Here,’ is another.
In a year where nominations have gone to films of much less ambition and/or talent and/or character, “Still Here” stands out, at least among the ones I’ve seen. Likely it stands out over the whole lot. It is a film of immense talent and wisdom, made which stunning care and attention to detail, particularly the details of love and attention within a family. It is beautifully done without a touch of hurriedness or carelessness, without any lacking of taking the time and making the effort to show you the faces, the reactions and the situations of the Paiva family. It is this that makes its portrayals of the family so heartbreaking and moving and make them grasp and hold us.
I did a very short review of Brazilian history on Wikipedia to get some back ground. I will not tire you with detials which I hardly know myself, but it is worth mentioning that this story, taking place mostly in the early-mid 1970’s but eventually covering nearly half a century, is a true one, based on the memoirs of the Paiva son.
One of the first things I thought of it was how American-like it was. That is, technically and socially, middle class(well Upper Middle Class in this case)Brazilians lived, worked and acted much like their North American counterparts. This is similar to my feelings about Pedro Aldomovar’s “Parallel Mothers” from 2021 or thereabouts. However, there are nuances which show differences too. Most of the small ones I’d say favor the Brazilians. But the biggest one, politics, shows not only their likeableness and dignity, but their misfortune in the rather important area of individual rights and human freedom.
Begainning with the early 1970’s Brazil seems to have been moving from a sort of democracy toward authoritarian if not out and out dictatorial rule. Ruben Paiva is an engineer by trade and a former congressman. He has chosen to return after a six year self-exile he took because he saw and disapproved of the way Brazilian politics seemed to be headed. Now he and his family live in a beautiful home in a desireable part of Rio. He does his daily work and he and his wife Eunice run their househokld and raise their 5 children, ranging from about 8 or 9 to nearly college age teenagers. Ruben and his family are happy with each other and outwardly thier lives are full, but he remains a supporter of expatriates who tend towards his political views.
Brazil seems to be in transition and a bit of confusion. Drifting toward dictatorship but publically still holding to at the very least the outward appearances of consitutional government, the country nonetheless is more and more affected by the military. And the civilian government is apparently unable to do much to stop this.
And as time passes the military influence grows and they began to arrest people on suspicion only and to imprison them and hold them at their will. Usually these people are released eventually, but sometimes not, and the feeling of a free society is disappearing.
Ruben disappears into the maw of the military in 1971 and this is a shock. The frantic Eunice demands to know where her husband is. As a result she and her oldest daughter, Eliana, are arrested. and held for days or weeks. They are questioned with a style that borders on violence, even subtle tortures. They are finally released . But now nothing is the same. Ruben is still missing, theirs is a house without a husband or a father, and their hearts are broken and their feelings now shattered. Eunice tries to keep on with the fight. She appeals to government friends and acquaintances and a friendly lawyer all of whom seem to be people of power. But none of them can help and the family and the country slip deeper and deeper into despair and tyranny,
Director Walter Salles has a way of making things move along without hurrying the pacing and without allowing the film to lapse into the tiresome, too long variety. The camera lingers over the house and the gardens, the children and the mother, the neighborhood and the neighbors. And a world is created here for us, a physically beautiful one of natural views and fine houses and contentment–but a short distance off is a world of anxiousness, and nerves as they all worry about Ruben. They have their little spats and outbursts, but mostly they love each other and get along, and their functioning as a loving family dealing with a long term crisis is one of the most moving things in the film, one of the things that keeps us hoping for Reuben, hoping for his return, and hoping the whiole family will be reunited,
And we experience this over several years as Eunice waits and struggles and tries, and finally does not give up, but begins to re-order her life She is a remarkable woman, one of intelligence, courage and love, but also of self respect. She decides eventually she will get on with it by herself and she will return to college. And as a matter of fact she did earn a law degree–at 48
We see in her 60’s, functioning as a successful, admirable professional, but one who still remembers what was and knows what won’t be. Then we see her once more, in her 80’s and surrounded by chldren and grandchildren. And there is a touching moment when this old lady, now losing the battle with age and decline, sees a picture of her husband, now gone more than 50 years–and she smiles.
And if you are inclined to cry at movies this might be one of the times. And hats off to director Walter Salles and his editors who made this long, elegant and remarkable film. Fernanda Torres as Eunice is nothing short of great. She is not beautiful but somehow immensely attractive anyway, a combination of looks, character and style and conveyed flawslessly by Ms Torres. And again a salute to Mr Salles, who I found referred to as one of Brazil’s greatest moive directors–I should think so. (He pulled off a real coup in another way–he got Ms Torres mother, Fernanada Montenegro, now 95 and renowned as the best Braziian actress of all time, to play Eunice in that last scene–no wonder she looked just right in the role).
With this movie Brazil might be said to be warning a world which in more and more places seems to be leaning toward authoritarianism, saying careful folks–see where this can lead. And Salles is also saying to the world, look, guys, this is what people, families, socieites can be at their best. And finally, Brazil is saying, great art is great for all of us. It makes us dream and maybe strive and maybe, succeed.
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john's thoughts 