The Blue Hour

Ok, let's just say that this biography of Jean Rhys (1890-1979) by Lillian Pizzichini was hard for me to put down.  Having read one of her novels already (After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie), I read this in conjunction with some of her early short stories and I've quickly become a fan of Ms Rhys.  Her art definitely mirrored her life.  As a young woman she had the good fortune to be in Paris in the 1920's and became a part of that literary scene.  Ford Maddox Ford helped by encouraging her writing style and their relationship provided fodder for at least one novel and several short stories and Hemingway helped her on with her coat one night, we are told.  But that was as far as that went. 

Jean Rhys led a troubled life.  She had a fondness for men and for alcohol and she learned very early to rely on men for financial reasons, and on the alcohol to help her get through the rough patches.  There was something needful in her that appealed to certain men who made if their business to look after her and whenever she was in desperate straights these men would appear.   And she certainly had no compunction about asking men, even ex-lovers, for money if need be.  

If you like the writing of Jean Rhys then you will be interested in this book, not to learn more about her troubled life, but her ability to create stories of these incidents.  And it's not that these stories are so clever in themselves, but it is in their telling and Ms. Rhys' use of language that makes them magical.

  

An Unlikely Couple...Tiger Woods and Jean Rhys

I don't know what would possess someone to combine these two unlikely personalities  into an animated video.  But I can't help finding this amusing...

Peter Warlock and D.H. Lawrence

Peter Warlock was a composer and music critic whose real name was Philip Hesltine,.  He had changed his name because he had alienatated the musical community that had initially greeted him as a prodigy.

From THE BLUE HOUR, by Lilian Pizzichini 

Ok, I have to admit I had never heard of Peter Warlock until I read about him in The Blue Hour, Lilian Pizzichini's fascinating autobiography of Jean Rhys, but it seems Ms. Rhys wasn't the only one to base a fictional character on this charismatic personality.  According to Lilian Pizzichini:

In Women In Love D.H. Lawrence described Warlock as a "heavy, broken beauty'...As well as appearing as Halliday in Women In Love and in Jean's short story, Peter would feature in other friends' novels.  He is Coleman in Aldous Huxley's Antic Hay, and Giles Revelstoke in Roberson Davies' A Mixture of Frailties.  Osbert Sitwell gave him a walk-on part in one of his novels.

An example of his unique behavior, according to Lilian Pizzichini:

Peter liked to shock people.  Adrian [Allinson] told a story about him spotting a Salvation Army officer walking up the street with a begging cup.  She was knocking on his neighbours' doors.  He swiftly undressed and answered her knock at the door naked.  He was holding a chamber pot with the same supplicatory gesture.  He enlivened his guests stay in the countryside by taking a motorbike ride at great speed around the village in the middle of the night, naked.  

Me and Ms. Rhys

After ignoring her for a year, I am back with her again.  Poor Jean, but that seems to be the way men have treated her.  They take up with her and then when the time is ripe (at least for them) they drop her.  And I am proving no exception.  But I am glad to be back in her life again.  Her biography The Blue Hour provides an insight into where she gets the material for her stories from and I am thoroughly enjoying it.

The Spider's House

Thoughts and impressions after reading THE SPIDER HOUSE by Paul Bowles...

You tell me you are going to Fez.

Now, if you say you are going to Fez,

That means you are not going.

But I happen to know that you are going to Fez.

Why have you lied to me, you who are my friend?

                                                                            Moroccan saying

The saying above is quoted from the beginning of Part Two of The Spider's House and reveals how some of the Moroccans think and act in Paul Bowles' 1955 novel.  At first we are introduced to 15 year old Amar, living in Fez, Morocco with his family.  This was in the early 1950s, during the time of the French occupation.  Revolution is in the air and Amar's naive view of the world is slowly starting to change as he comes of age.

He would offer no information except that explicitly demanded by Benani, and then he would confuse him by telling the truth.  Nothing could be more upsetting, because one always judiciously mixed false statements in with the true, the game being to tell which were which.  It was axiomatic that a certain percentage of what everyone said had to be disbelieved.  If he made nothing but strictly true statements, Amar told himself, Benani would necessarily be at a disadvantage, for he would be bound to doubt some of them.

 Also living in Fez are two Englishmen and an expatriate American writer, John Stenham.  Into this mix comes  Lee Veyron, a spirited and adventurous young woman, separated from her husband and traveling on her own.  A relationship of sorts develops between Stenham and Veyron, and the young Amar, set against a backdrop of a changing society.

Stenham and the Englishman, Alain Moss, have some engaging conversations from which I pluck this "jewel."

"The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment.  And perhaps even more than that, it's having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels." 

 Stenham and Veyron have opposing opinions on what is best for Morocco, while Amar believes it all is in the hands of Allah.  Stenham regrets to see any change in the Morocco he knows and Veyron is eager to see the Moroccans get their country back.  If this makes the book sound a little overly political, it doesn't read that way, although the political situation in Morocco does set the backdrop for the story.  It also provides valuable insight into the thinking of the Muslim mind, making it relevant for today.

For a while the banter between Stenham and Veyron plays like a Bogart/Bacall movie.  Stenham is, if nothing else, opinionated, while at the same time regrets that Veyron should have any opinions, or at least not express them:

It was too bad she had to have opinions; she had been so agreeable to be with before she had started to express them.  And then, the terrible truth was that neither she nor he was right.  It would not help the Moslems or the Hindus or anyone else to go ahead, nor, even if it were possible, would it do them any good to stay as they were.  It did not really matter whether they worshipped Allah or carburetors--they were lost in any case.  In the end, it was his own preferences which concerned him.  He would have liked to prolong the status quo because the decor that went with it suited his personal taste.

Paul Bowles knows whereof he writes, an American expatriate writer himself, he lived in Morocco for more than 50 years, from 1947 until his death in 1999.  Having previously read Bowles' THE SHELTERING SKY, I was a little worried that this story was not going to end well for the characters and that they had their fates mapped out for them.  But the story kind of fades away in the end...like real life.

The smells and tastes and culture of Morocco come alive in this book.  Bowles was a musician and a translator as well as a prolific writer of short stories.  I have a couple of his short story collections on my bookshelf waiting for me and I am willing to follow Mr. Bowles on whatever distant journey he may take me.  

Anna Karenina (the movie)

Speaking of movies...last night we went to see the newest and latest film version of Anna Karenina.  We got to our seats 20 minutes before the scheduled movie time and had to suffer through some annoying audio adds being hurled at us from the blank movie screen.  Did I say say "annoying"?  Make that blaring. Whatever it was, it was designed specially to annoy theatre goers, interspersed with interludes disguised as  entertainment.  Naturally we are viewed as a captive audience and God knows we wouldn't want to engage in conversation.  Then the theatre darkened and we were further subjected to a further 10 minutes of tv commercials.  Of course, this is nothing new, but by the time the movie started we had been sitting there for half an hour.  And we actually had to pay for this privilege.   When we were kids we would have hurled our popcorn and candy bar wrappers at the screen, but now we are adults so we sit there and take it. And this seems to be getting worse each time you go.  Eventually someone will get the idea that they could charge us a little more and we could only get the movie.  Oh yes, the movie.

What can be said of this new version of Anna Karenina?  Bold?  Daring?  Assertive?  Yes, all of that, but was it really necessary to dress up this old tale in new clothing?  Can't we get the definitive version?  Has there ever been a definitive version?  Other than various TV versions, we might have to go all the way back to Greta Garbo in 1935 to find anything approaching definitive.

This new version of Anna Karenina is a little difficult to describe.  Starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law and with a screenplay by Tom Stoppard, the movie literally swirls on the screen.  It's not quite a film of a play, but more a play of a film.  My daughter thought it was like a circus, with props changing and costumes being changed right on the screen.  Sometimes the characters are walking along the catwalks above the stage and the stage lights are often present.  Yes it was daring and imaginative, but definitely not for everyone's taste.  (End rant here.)  My advice: read the book instead.

The Storytelling Animal

A trailer for a book!  Now there's a novel idea (no pun intended).  But how refreshing it would be to go to a movie and see a few trailers on some of the latest books.  With the state movies these days this might be a good idea.  Maybe with a message like, "Why are you wasting your time in this theatre watching a movie like this...better idea, go home and read a book."

The Stranger

I am a stranger to my own blog, which has lain idle for over a year.  I just might not be a person who has whatever it is that bloggers have to be consistant.  So maybe I'll just be an inconsistant blogger.  Maybe by saying that it will take some pressure off.

Last April we were on a walking tour in the south of France and found ourselves in the village of Lourmarin.  It was here that the French writer/philosopher Albert Camus lived for a short period of his life before his death in 1960 at the age of 46.  Two years before he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

Village of Lourmarin

Camus was born in Algeria to poor white French colonists.  He was raised in the slums of Algiers, but with an intellectual mind he went on to the University of Algiers and left with an equivalent of a Master's Degree.

As a political writer and journalist he joined the Resistance in France during World War II and covered the liberation of Paris for the underground paper, Resistance, which he was the editor of.

Camus is probably best known for his two novels, "The Stranger" (sometimes translated as "The Outsider") and "The Plague", and for his social/political writing.  Like George Orwell he bore warnings against totalitarianism and communism.  It is been many years since I read "The Stranger" but perhaps a reread is in store for me.  I still have the book on my shelves.

  He was in Paris shortly before his death and was due to take the train south for his return to Lourmarin, but decided to travel by car with his publisher.  He was killed in the subsequent car crash.  His train ticket was still in his pocket. While in Lourmarin we visited the gravesite of Camus.