their eyes were watching god by Zora Neale Hurston

The African-American argot is not a problem for me, although I wouldn’t recommend this book to those who don’t have a language-dexterity capability.  Hurston keeps the reader from straining by switching periodically to an omniscient narrator, who uses well-educated English.  This narrator is a brilliant poet and an artist, who paints beautiful, lively visions, captured momentarily in words.

This is an old book (1937).  I’m almost done - the reading seems to go fast, but these days Hollywood film [2005, Halle Berry] captures events in 3-4 minutes.  It’s a 200-page book, so the essence is in front of me, and I relish the read.  The author fully embraces a passion for life.  She appears to a keen awareness of all life surrounding her.  She is a guru of her times.

Once you’ve trained your BabelFish to handle Ebonics, the dialogue is just sometimes tedious; but the anticipation of the author’s true thoughts is worth the wait.  It’s a melodic love story spanning the protagonist’s lifetime.  Not quite a “coming of age” story; more of a “Let me grow in order to find myself” movie.

Is it racist?  Well, there aren’t many American books that use the argot of Boston Wasps or the Georgia Klan, but recently some authors have used New York and Chicago ghetto talk.  Nobody complains when the British perform Shakespeare with “as written” language.

Possibly she was just writing, in memoir style, about her own upbringing and using the language of those neighbors and family, close and dear to her.  She was smart enough, and well-educated sufficiently to see the arc of history and thus feel a need to document the vernacular of her birth place, before it disappeared.

The One From the Other by Philip Kerr

In my opinion, this is his best yet.  I would yield to Pat Nolan in these matters, if necessary.  Kerr covers ground that is far more interesting to “Amis” [Americans]: specifically “the Jewish problem”, Ami-support of post-war Nazis, and the Communist menace.

I might also add that Gunther is far more a Chandler-esque detective in this book than the pre-war tough guy.  I can’t imagine the Krippo cop, before the war, turning in the ubiquitous gorgeous blonde after he may have sullied her reputation: post-50’s, he’s capable of shooting her if she warrants it.

This is clearly not modern and not now: Bernie would be 119 years old, so dial it back 70 years to 1949, when Bernie Gunther has turned 40.  He buries a second wife; can’t remember how many women he’s had; or men he has killed: a jaded, cynical man.

In true noir form, he’s continually sapped and has his money stolen.  I loved every page of it.  He covers a lot of territory; and runs into a lot of “top” Nazis.  This turns out to be a hodge-podge of good short stories, linked together, skillfully, by a good author, who has come into his seniority.

Hey, he’s playing to his audience, and succeeding, he’s good.  But we’re getting to the end of the saga.  Bernie is now closing in on sixty.  For you and me, these days, that’s still young.  But through experiences as a cop with KRIPO, a private detective in Berlin, and as an SS “specialist”; Bernie is no longer to be played by Matt Damon in the movies, maybe, at best, Clint Eastwood, and that’s if Clint is bank-rolling the picture.

What makes it worth the read, is that Clint [or Bernie] really has American values and doesn’t know it: resists it.  He hates the Amis as much as the Ivans; he’s German through and through:

 alt-Deutsche, not Hoch-Deutsche, more like Weimar Deutsche.

Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch

This is a good read.  A translation from the Dutch 2011 book, “Zomerhuis met zwembad”.

The stream of consciousness narrative is from Doctor Marc Schlosser, a GP.  He is a GP who has taken the easier pathways presented to him: no post-school specialty; and he has customized his clientèle to wealthier people who want to be coddled.  He looks the other way at excesses in drinking and smoking.  He is free with drug prescriptions; after all they’re adults who can make up their own minds.  He’s a very conservative and almost prudish man.  He’s married with two young girls. 

He ventures slightly over the edge when his mid-life flirtation with a patient’s wife begins to obsess him.  This comes to fruition at a two week summer holiday shared between his family and the other couple, who have two teen-age boys; all at the eponymous rental house. 

The writing is solid and Marc’s thought processes are fascinating and realistic from a male point of view.  The author isn’t afraid to delve into taboo topics that receive more circumspect coverage in most novels: pedophilia, homosexuality, and philandering.  There is a time he is prepping to do a prostate examination, but goes off into a mental review of his Med-School Professor’s philosophy, and when he snaps back to present time, he says to the patient, “Maybe another day”, removing his gloves.

Dr. Schlosser is a fallible man in a fallible world.

Wild the Movie by Cheryl Strayed

Well,

Right up front,
I hated this movie.

I was so looking forward to this movie.

I thought it would be an uplifting resurrection from drug oblivion to healthy, normalcy.
 
Redemption – the right path – beautiful panoramas with a moral at the end – a modern Jimmy Stewart movie.

This was part of my December miasma of depression, regret, and various rationales for committing suicide. 

The cinematography and direction were confused, piecemeal, very disappointing.  There was lots of potential here: the trail; a great actress, an interesting story.  All of this seemed to be lost on the director.  Jean-Marc Vallée was obsessed with tine-slicing; past plot references; and symbolic “moments”. 

This resulted in a confusing presentation of what should have been a simple plot.  Maybe he was pressured to stick close to the book’s plot development.  If so, that’s always a big mistake.  Movies have to have a fairly simple plot arc, unlike books, which, these days, have three or more concurrent plots and development of a dozen characters.  Doing that in a movie requires seeing the movie twice {good marketing gimmick} to understand what the director was “saying”.  This film was so confusing that I wouldn’t see it a second time if you paid me to do it.

The bright point of the movie was the performance of Laura Dern.

She gave a creditable portrayal of Cheryl’s mother.  It was easier to follow her time-line, and so, the flash-backs weren’t as confusing as Cheryl’s.

 

 

 

I didn’t think {or was unaware} that Cheryl had accomplished anything by this 1,000 mile journey.  Her character was still messed up, and from my experience would be back on drugs with months.

Nothing about the journey encouraged me to try one on my own.