First and last for In the Cut

The last is already in the last post but anyways--

First:

I don't usually go to a bar with one of my students. It is almost always a mistake. But Cornelius was having trouble with irony.

Last:



She knows the poem.

Great lines from In the Cut

Read almost as a joke but the joke's on me as I dug this book. Even if the end fucked me up a bit.


The introduction to our protagonist, a linguaphile and NYU (? presumably) professor who is also nameless, which I'm sure is on purpose but I'm not sure what it means. Here she discusses her class:

But irony terrifies them. To begin with, they don't understand it. It's not easy to explain irony. Either you get it or you don't. I am reduced to giving examples, like the baby who is saved from death only to be hit by a bus on the way home. That helps a little. Cornelius said that he preferred realism to irony because irony turned conceived wisdom on its head. Whether he meant to say conventional wisdom or received wisdom, I don't know. I was so distracted by an image of wisdom being turned on its head that I simply nodded and let him go on. Irony is like ranking someone or something, he said, but no one knows for sure you're doing it. 

On getting home and finding Detective Malloy's card in her mailbox and why she doesn't plan on calling him:

I used to keep a shopping bag full of the things that had been left on the stoop or pushed into my mailbox until the bag finally ripped at the sides. It had in it, among other things, a demo cassette of an elderly Welsh poet reciting eighteenth-century Cockney rhymes; a nude barbie doll bound and gagged that my landlord brought upstairs to give to me-it had been on the Greek Revival doorstep all afternoon, he said warily, was it mine?-and a box of condoms, each one engraved or, more accurately, embossed with my name, the letter i dotted with a heart, a gift which I knew was meant for me, which I could not with absolute certainty say about the other gifts, and which I assumed had been left by someone I'd once dated.


So, needless to say, I threw Detective Malloy's card away.

I admire the economy of words in the book, how much Moore is able to get across about the protagonist while saying so little. This is one of the few times she mentions her mother yet it tells you volumes:

He looked at the jade hairpins again, each a different shape. They had belonged to a Chinese maid in my grandmother's house in San Francicso, whom I think of tenderly as the only person, as far as I know, that my mother ever loved. 

Alas, the hairpins will later be stolen by her student Cornelius following a failed, awkward sexual encounter. 

On her first encounter with Malloy:

He sighed in dismissal and stood up, the chair swaying beneath him. "My ex-wife collects dolls," he said. He put the hairpins back on the table, lining them up absentmindedly, and I suddenly wondered if he was neat. I imagined that he, too, had a collection of dolls. Lined up neatly.

The poetry on the subway is a running theme. This line will turn up later, significantly:

I noticed that the Poetry in Motion poem was new. An excerpt from "The Passionate Man's Pilgrimage." Walter Raleigh. "Give me my Scallop shell of quiet."

BTW, the poem's text is here (and I'm sure, many places.) It was written around 1603. The first stanza goes:

GIVE me my scallop-shell of quiet,
    My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
    My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope's true gage ;
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.

It sounded better out of context. 

I love this scene where she leaves Pauline's apartment to find her student Cornelius waiting for her outside which manages to be funny and disturbing, like many parts of the book:

"Well," I said slowly, "I think that there is. Something wrong with that."

"I got words for you and shit."

I did not necessarily disbelieve him, but I still did not think it a good idea that he had followed me. And waited for me. Three hours. To give me words.

"You might not want them 'cause they be words for--you know," he said slyly.

"What?" I asked.

"You know."

"I don't know. What are you talking about?"

"Words for that. What you calls sex."

 I wanted to ask him what he called it.

More Subway poetry and creeping dread:

As I walked home, I thought about the new poem in the Number Four subway. I have become so paranoid in the last month that I believe that the Poetry in Motion placards are messages for me. Not in a metaphorical sense, but literally selected for me by someone who has managed to gain influence over the Transit Authority Selection Committee. The new poem is a haiku by Yosano Akiko. "Come at last to this point/I look back on my passion/And realize that I/have been like a blind man/Who is unafraid of the dark." For me, right?

.......

I'm getting better. I don't assume that every man with a moustache, wearing a suit, is a detective. I do not think the new poem in the subway is meant for me. It is a Seneca Indian song. "It's off in the distance. It came into the room." Clearly not for me.

After finding Pauline, so revealing in the way your mind reconfigures itself after a tragedy:

I was so ashamed by the things that used to make me unhappy. That I was upset because he lied to me about his wife and then went on vacation with her. That Yale University won't give me permission to use the letters of C.K. Whitney. That my father forgot me in Geneva.

And the ending which shocked me, partly because I'd seen the shitty movie and partly because, damn. Spoilers if anyone is actually reading and cares:

My face. My throat. My breasts. My breastesses. Malloy would know when he saw my hands. My arms. he would know. How I fought.

He lifted himself from me. I heard him unlock the door. For a moment, I felt the cool air from the river, smelling of fish. Smelling of Eve [reference to the old, unfunny joke Rodriguez told her a page ago about God never getting the smell out of the fish.] It made me shudder. I was cold.

There is an essay on the language of the dying. The dying sometimes speak of themselves in the third person. I was not speaking that way. I said: I am bleeding. I am going to bleed to death. And I will be lucky if I die before he returns.

Give me my Scallop shell of quiet.

You know, they did not print the whole of the Indian song in the subway. Only a few lines. But I know the poem.

"It's off in the distance. It came into the room. It's here in the circle."

I know the poem.

She knows the poem.

 

I also loved the McGuffin with the rubber hand someone left below her mailbox. The killer takes souvenirs. She (and the reader) think, hands? It's a message? Nope, he takes something else, something worse. What did the hand mean, then? Dunno but sufficiently diverting and disquieting.

In the Cut research

So, In the Cut. While the movie is doltish and embarrassing to watch (for all the wrong reasons), the book is kind of good.

Some random things I looked up--

The narrator-do they ever mention her name?-mentions that Pauline is wearing a Japanese Happi coat. They are traditionally worn only for festivals in Japan, however you can buy them online (beware, the website has an annoying midi file) for wearing anytime and I admit, I kinda want one. Here's a sample image:

Good excuse to learn some NYC geography. The narrator lives on Washington Square Park. This puts her in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan, near NYU. Although Moore makes the area sound seedy, the Wiki article says the crime rate is very low (although maybe someone from the Mayor's office writes for Wikipedia.) Does this mean no bars with 13 year olds with fake id's? (one of the credulity straining parts of the book. Surely no bar in a major American city is that brazen.)

Our nameless narrator mentions that the tenor of the neighborhood grows more boho below 14th street. Here is one of the better maps I found from a cursory search:

There's also a good Manhattan neighborhood map here.

Maybe I need to look through seedier listings but out of curiosity, I searched apartments in the Village and the cheapest I found (a studio) was $1695 a month.

Some basic Manhattan geography: the Hudson River and New Jersey are to the west. The East River, Queens and Brooklyn are to the east. Brooklyn is to the southeast and Staten Island is due south. It's the most densely populated of NYC's five boroughs although the borough with the largest population is Brooklyn, with Queens a close second. Only Manhattan is in New York County (actually each borough is in its own county.) When New Yorkers speak of going to the city, they generally mean going to Manhattan.

From Greenwich Village, you can take the Holland Tunnel under the Hudson River to scenic Jersey City. One of the many routes into the island that earns commuters the moniker "Bridge and Tunnel people."

Finalt thoughts and First/Last for The Winter Queen

I still want to look up the order of St. Valdimir and the crisis in the Balkans they referred to (the year is 1876.)

This is kind of a schizophrenic book. A cozy mystery with a typically complicated plot (tricking someone into suicide, pretending to be a ghost, a vast worldwide orphan conspiracy) that with few modifications could be Steampunk. But then there's that surprising turn at the end that reminds you, hey a Russian did write this. Poor Erast. Poor Lizanka's arm-nevermind the rest of her. I'll probably read more of this eventually although really, I'm kind of wanting to boo and throw tomatoes at that last chapter. I'm curious to see where the series goes from here and what happens to Erast. I'm guessing the tone of the next novel must be different.

First:

On Monday the thirteenth of May in the year 1876, between the hours of two and three in the afternoon on a day that combined the freshness of spring with the warmth of summer, numerous individuals in Moscow's Alexander Gardens unexpectedly found themselves eyewitnesses to the perpetration of an outrage that flagrantly transgressed the bounds of common decency.

Last:

No, the attention of those he encountered, especially the ladies, was attracted by one particularly intriguing feature of his appearance: despite his obvious youth the bon vivant's temples were a stark white, as if they were thickly coated with hoarfrost.

what I've looked up thus far for The Winter Queen

I love how this book opens:

On Monday the thirteenth of May in the year 1876, between the hours of two and three in the afternoon...numerous individuals in Moscow's Alexander Gardens...

Poetic, no. But perfect in its geo/temporal data. It's Moscow, 1876. The rule of Romanov Tsar Alexander II (he would be assassinated in 1881 after decades of various attempts on his life. He was famous for freeing the serfs but was a bastard to Poland and the Baltic States. However, he encouraged Finnish autonomy and language so they like him there. The poor son of a bitch died after escaping a bombing attempt on his carriage. A second bomber threw a bomb at his feet. There was a third bomber waiting in the crowd. They really wanted him dead, in little pieces.) He was followed by only two more Tsars: Alexander III and then Nicholas II.

The book opens at any rate with a suspicious suicide in the Alexander Gardens in Moscow. This was one of Moscow's first public parks. It was built from 1819-1823 in commemoration of the defeat of Napoleon at the request (or, probably I should say "request") of Alexander I, the uncle of the ill-fated Alexander II. The Gardens are adjacent to Red Square and the western wall of the Kremlin.

Here is the gate that commemorates victory in the Napoleonic Wars:

It was built on the site of a the former riverbed of the Neglinnaya River (the flow was diverted underground.)

Enjoy this Wikimap of the layout.

The book references a "Table of Ranks" at the back to show the standing of the protagonist, Collegiate Registrar Erast Fandorin, rank 14, as compared with others. It's a convoluted system established by Peter the Great in 1722. Among other things, it correlates military ranks with the civilian equivalents.

Many streets in Moscow are mentioned so, once again, I would have liked a map to be available. Fandorin travels up Mokhovaya Street a number of times. Here is what it would have looked like then:

It literally means "Moss Street" and was named for a market. It is still a major thoroughfare in Moscow. It's part of the ring road that circles the Kremlin area.

I believe the university he mentions visiting is Moscow State, purported to be the oldest university in Russia. Here is what it would have looked like about a century before:

I think the "yellow building" that Fandorin goes to is what is now called, factually, the Old Building. It was built in 1783. Here's what it looks like now:

Old, yellow. Those Russians get right to the point. Today, the journalism faculty and Oriental studies are located there.

Interestingly, after the October Revolution in 1917, anyone could be admitted (well, technically) and tuition fees were abolished in 1919. Now all you had to do was avoid studying or teaching the wrong thing and being sent to Vorkuta.

This site has an archive of historical maps. Here is one of 19th century Moskva.

Near the end, the book mentions there is trouble in the Balkans that is distracting the leadership. I think they are referring to the Balkan/Turkish crisis. The Balkans, including Greece, were under Ottoman rule at the time. The Slavs all hated each other but they hated the Turks more so they banded together in the Bulgarian Uprising in April of 1876 where Turkish troops killed up to 15,000 people (it's controversial-apparently the troops weren't regular Turkish army.) It was nasty business at any rate-people taking refuge in churches and being burned alive- and things snowball, the world gets wind of the Bulgarian massacre, the Russians are still pissed about the Crimean War, Slav nationalism flares up and by June Serbia and Montenegro have declared war on the Turks.

The Russians proposed a peace agreement in 1877 called the London Convention (Austria-Hungary are involved too) but the Turks rejected it. Now the Russians declare war. The bottom line is the Turks, being neither the first nor last to do so, severely underestimate the Russians and finally in 1878 peace is declared with some intervention from the British as the fear of Pan-Slavic fervor spreads through the rest of Europe. At the Congress of Berlin, the Balkans get re-diced with Bulgaria split into 3 pieces and Austria granted the right to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina. All of this pisses Russia off because they want the Balkans for themselves. A Second Balkan Crisis will follow in 1885 and, of course, there will be more.

Incidentally, this conflict also led to the Red Cross/Red Crescent split which continues today.

At the end of the book, before everything goes to hell for Erast, he is awarded the order of St. Vladimir. Naturally, there is a website dedicated to Russian medals. Here is an example of what it looked like:

It was awarded for life-saving acts or famine relief (it was also awarded for military valor during the Crimean War.) There are different degrees of the order which can be seen in the Wikipedia article.

Great lines from The Sun Also Rises

Damn you, Paris Wife. Now I have to re-read this book which I barely remember from 20 years ago (also to re-read: A Moveable Feast although that's not in the cards in the immediate future.) I want to read more of Hemingway actually and since I plan to eschew anything that involves slaughtering bulls or African wild life, I think the list should be quite manageable.

One of my favorite literary scenes from a movie, btw, was in Peggy Sue Got Married when teen Peggy asked the local beatnik guy why he was so enamored with Jack Kerouac. He said "He [Hemingway] is the perfect American author: fat, violent and drunk.....Jack Kerouac doesn't have to KILL a BULL to have something to write about." I fell a little in love with that guy then, even if I have no intention of ever reading On the Road and do like me some Papa now and again.

Here's an article about the real life inspirations for the characters. The Paris Wife also goes into some detail on the trip to Spain that inspired this novel. Interestingly, Ernest was married to Hadley at the time but she does not appear in it. According to McLain's book, Ernest said this was because she was the only well-behaved person on the trip and was too above the muck to include in the story.

And here is a study guide with further links, courtesy of Grand Valley State.

Great lines:

On the writer Robert Cohn (he was someone in Hem's circle named Harold Loeb who slept with Duff-Lady Brett in the book-and went insane with jealousy when she slept with someone else):

Then there was another thing. He had been reading W. H. Hudson. That sounds like an innocent occupation, but Cohn had read and read "The Purple Land." "The Purple Land" is a very sinister book if read too late in life. It recounts splendid imaginary amorous adventures of a perfect English gentleman in an intensely romantic land, the scenery of which is very well described. For a man to take it as thirty-four as a guide book to what life holds is about as safe as it would be for a man of the same age to enter Wall Street direct from a Paris convent, equipped with a complete set of the more practical Alger books. Cohn, I believe took every word of "The Purple Land" as literally as though it had been an R.G. Dun report. You understand me, he made some reservations, but on the whole the book to him was sound. It was all that was needed to set him off. 

(this was a real 19th century novel, btw. Borges called it the best example of "gaucho literature." It involves an Englishman's misadventures in Uruguay. R.G. Dun is the predecessor of Dun and Bradstreet.)

On Lady Brett's early morning visit:

This was Brett, that I had felt like crying about. Then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little while I felt like hell again. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

On the bad vibes of certain streets:

It was like a certain stretch on the PLM between Fontainbleau and Montereau that always made me feel bored and dead and dull until it was over. I suppose it is some association of ideas that makes those dead places in a journey. There are other streets in Paris as ugly as the Boulevard Raspail......Perhaps I had read something about it once. That was the way Robert Cohn was about all of Paris. I wondered where Cohn got that incapacity to enjoy Paris. Possibly from Mencken. Mencken hates Paris, I believe. So many young men get their likes and dislikes from Mencken.

Final thoughts on Horns, + first and last

Well, nothing to look up for this book. Ok, not exactly true. The book takes place in the fictional town of Gideon, NH near Portsmouth so I looked up a map of NH. It's right across the bay from Maine actually so I wondered if the reference to Derry might have been a shout-out to his dear old Dad's Derry, Maine. Evidently though, there is a very real Derrry, NH so just as likely not. Especially since the name Pennywise didn't come up.

JB had said this book was good, if blasphemous. I guess I can see someone thinking it's blasphemous, although the only part that bothered me was the animal cruelty (too many gruesome snake killings-especially the poor rat snake who gets tricked into swimming into the killer's gullet.) We all have our bailiwicks. I wonder was it the scene where the newly demonic Ig gives a loopy speech to a forest full of snakes:

"I see God now as an unimaginative writer of popular fictions, someone who builds stories around sadistic and graceless plots, narratives that exist only to express His terror of a woman's power to choose who and how to love, to redefine love as she sees fit, not as God thinks it ought to be. the author is unworthy of His own characters. The devil is first a literary critic, who delivers this untalented scribbler the public flaying He deserves."

Well, this goes on for pages. Or maybe it was the remark Ig made near the end about why wasn't the devil the hero of the Bible since he rescued Adam and Eve from a bucolic prison run by a megalomaniac? That actually was kinda funny. Or maybe it was just that the devil isn't nearly as bad as some people in this book.

Anyways, this is good but for scares, nothing can top his short story "Twittering From the Circus of the Damned." It's crazy that a story told in Twitter format worked for starters, nevermind that is is piss your pants scary.

First:

Ignatius Martin Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things.

Last:

"Poor devil," Terry said before he got into his rent-a-car and drove away.