Inky Horizons

Evan Lewis writes mysteries, westerns and historical fiction. He has a new story coming up in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 2010. He also has a blog called  Davy Crockett's Almanack of Mystery, Adventure and the Wild West that I check out on a regular basis. 

He has lots of good stuff, including posts about old Detective and Cowboy magazines including their covers. He has a real love for these magazines that set the standards of today and it shows. Check out his blog if you can, I think you will like it.  :)

Davy Crockett's Almanack of Mystery, Adventure and the Wild West

If you haven't seen this phenomenal silent film then by all means do. It's a Swedish film about witchcraft and the frenzied denials and condemnations that surrounded it during the Middle Ages, and up until the present. Well, 1922, anyway, which is when this film was made.

The visuals of Haxan are astounding, on a par with any CGI magic you see today. These pics only represent a fraction of what is in the film. It's an absolutely gorgeous piece of art and seriously, if you haven't seen it, try. You will not be disappointed.

Wyeth's passing has upset me more than I would have thought possible. I think because in my mind he was the quintessential artist. When you see his work you know you're looking at an artist. As a writer that moves me in no small degree.

Partly it's because I have such a strong emotional tie to Christina's World. I know what that's like, being outside and looking in. How that feels. That painting has always touched me in a deeply personal way and I don't mind admitting it. And when the Helga paintings came to light I knew what that was about, too, and why he had done it. I always felt an emotional connection to his work, which I suppose most people did, which is why he was so great.

Anyway, he was special to me.

I learned he died today at the age of 80. I really loved the TV series "The Prisoner"  and thought it was one of the best things I've EVER seen on television.  Funny that I posted a link to this series just a few days ago, too. He was also very good in Ice Station Zebra (he often played the same type of character) and the series "Secret Agent" which was one of the few believable cold war spy shows on TV. 

He'll be missed by me. I liked him a lot.

Here it is, the most famous Gunsmoke radio episode ever aired. It has everything, all the characters, the taut writing, the superb acting, the sound effects and the heart-rending pathos.  Written by John Meston it was the No. 1 favorite of fans.  If you listen you'll know why.

It's true after the first five minutes you'll also know how this old time radio episode is going to end. It doesn't take anything away from the story, believe me.  You're supposed to know how it ends before it ends.  That was John Meston's genius.  Fate drives Matt toward his destiny and there's not a damn thing he can do about it. Even he knows it and he can't stop himself or do anything to stop the events from unfolding to their horrific conclusion.

Click on the link and find Episode #115 entitled "Hack Prine" (1954-07-05). Click on that and your RealPlayer or whatever should open up the file. I looked for a way to embed just the one episode, but all I could find was a link to embed all 480 of them! I thought that was a bit much so let's try it this way if you're curious.

This is Gunsmoke at its best.  This is the episode. I hope you like it.

HACK PRINE

One thing I get a kick out of are these crazy commercials you hear during the Gunsmoke episodes.  (The episodes themselves are more awesome than I previously thought, btw. More on that later.)  My God, some things never change, and crass commercialism is one of them. One of the funniest commercials is the one about Sugar Krinkles cereal.  They go on and on about how Sugar Krinkles is sprinkled with just the right amount of sugar so Mom will approve -- and then they tell you to buy three or four boxes because it makes a great snack!  LOL!  And then they tell you there's a free sample of Charms candy in every box...just in case that single box of Sugar Krinkles isn't sugary enough for you, I guess.  Pretty damn funny.

Another thing are the public service announcements.  Look around you today. The world is a shit hole. Guess what? It wasn't any better in 1953.  They were jabbering about national security and national awareness back then, too. Some things never change, I guess. Or more likely...some people never learn.

One of the funniest PSA's I heard was from the mayor of Dodge City. Now you have to remember these radio shows are nothing like the television programs.  They are filled with brutal rape, cold-blooded murder, riots, extortion, horse thieves and shotgun blasts to the head. And that's on a good day in Dodge. I figure the producers of the radio show must have been catching hell from the city planners of Dodge City, circa 1952, because the mayor came on and gave a little speech about how much the citizens of Dodge sure did enjoy this radio program but that the Dodge of today was a safe and prosperous place to raise your family. 

One facet about these radio programs is how they treat Native Americans.  Okay, they called them Indians back then, but you can't kick about that much. It's early 1950s. Still, I have yet to hear an episode in which the Native Americans weren't treated with dignity and respect. Mostly, the shows are about how the Indians interact with Whitey and end up getting screwed. There are lots of shows like that.

In one program a buffalo hunter goes nuts and starts killing buffalo and doesn't take their hides. He's just a crazy white man who went prairie happy. Indians on the plains begin to starve. Dillon tracks him down -- Dodge City is losing money.  But the Indians get to the buffalo hunter first, stake him out, torture him, scalp him, and generally fuck him up six ways to Sunday. Dillon comes upon him, tries not to puke, and puts a bullet into him to ease his suffering.  He then goes back to Dodge to have a drink with Miss Kitty without hunting down the Native Americans who killed the buffalo hunter.

This is 1953, folks. Ain't no Hayes Production Code that I can see in effect here.  In another episode, some cowboys play a cruel trick on a Native American living in Dodge. He gets killed.  Dillon goads one of the cowboys into drawing his gun so he can kill him in return.  Then he goes fishing with Chester.  Case closed.

Dillon is supposed to be the Marshal of Dodge City, in case you've forgotten.

Amazing.  In yet another episode a rumor starts that Dodge is going to be attacked by the Pawnee.  All the white folks in town panic and Dillon has his hands full.  The Native Americans, who have no intention of attacking Dodge, and never did, are standing around like, WTF?

Forget everything you know, or think you know, about Matt Dillon and Kitty and Doc.  This radio series which ran for nine years was meant to be an adult-oriented western that broke the mold and challenged the archetypal Western hero.  The creators, Norman MacDonnell and John Meston wanted to shatter all Western stereotypes.  They were successful.

The result was Gunsmoke.

The first audition was a hardboiled detective story set in the West. The main character was "Mark Dillon."  The second audition was more Western-oriented but then the project sat on the shelf for two years.  Eventually, a radio actor named William Conrad read for the part and was immediately hired as the show moved into production. 

Everybody has an idea of the kind of man Matt Dillon is. Whether it be from the television show or national iconic status, everybody knows what kind of man he is and what he believes in and how he deals with other people.  Forget all that. In the radio program Matt Dillon is damn near a psychopath.  He's as hard and brutal as the violent men who pass through Dodge City from the cow trails.  He's acerbic and bitter and when his gun hand moves, it moves in a blur. 

The writing portrays this all the time. In one episode a man comes up to Dillon out of the dark.  "Some night I'll get drunk enough to pull on you you, Dillon."

Long pause, and delivered with conviction:  "Then that's the night you're gonna die."

Or:

Chester, his addle-brained sidekick, shouts, "Look out, Mr. Dillon, he's drawing his gun."

BANG!  *thump*

"Wrong, Chester.  He only had a mind to."

Or:

"If you're figuring to draw on me, don't."

"Why not, Matt?"

"I've seen you in action. You're not fast enough."

And Dillon is always shouting at the rubbernecking crowds, telling them to shut up or he'll club them to death, or threatening them he will NOT tolerate a disturbance, or asking with clenched teeth when they don't disperse fast enough, "Who wants to die first?"

 Yeah, he's a psychopath barely holding himself together, nerves made of barbed wire and a soul made out of scarred leather.  And the radio establishes this at the beginning.  Dillon is a violent man who has moved West with the violence.  He is hard and brutal; life, and his job, made him that way.  Completely different from the television program.

And Kitty?  It was never implied on the television series she was a prostitute.  But if you knew anything about the West you knew what she did for a living.  The radio show is very different.  Kitty's not a prostitute.  She's a whore. I find this incredible.  You're talking about 1952 and it's cut and dried: Kitty sells herself to other men and Dillon is in love with her. And if you say something bad about her, well, you'd better start digging your grave.  Fascinating with what they got away with on radio, but couldn't even touch, or allude to, on television.

Doc?  He's a gibbering ghoul who rubs his hands over a corpse because he's going to be paid an autopsy fee. He was played by Howard McNear, the same guy who played Floyd the Barber on The Andy Griffith Show.  His soft spoken voice and gleeful nature as he pokes and prods at a cadaver is very disturbing.

Sound effects are essential in radio.  Gunsmoke was famous for layering sound to create the emptiness of the prairie, the dust-filled streets of Dodge, the cold wind blowing through the stunted trees, the sound of the night train coming into Dodge.  When you hear a gunshot on the radio program that's not two boards slapped together -- it's an authentic weapon: carbine, six gun, scatter gun.  It's all authentic, even the animal life.

As the show progresses it begins to concentrate on the human relationships between the principal characters with violence and adult sex as an undercurrent.  But as good as it is, the acting, the emotive voices, the incredible sound effects, the stark characterization...nothing beats the writing itself.

John Meston wrote about 25% of the episodes. He accurately portrays the harsh brutality of what life was likein an unforgettably graphic manner.  And Dillon doesn't always win through in the end. In one episode he amputates the leg of a man to save him from blood poisoning.  The man dies anyway. In another, a girl is raped by four men.  She becomes a prostitute.  Sometimes the bad guy gets away completely.  One family is slaughtered and the wife kicked to death.  Dillon finds her daughter in a copse of trees, raped and killed and scalped.  These aren't feel good stories, they're stories.  And therein lies their power.

I've been paying attention to how the stories themselves are structured.  I like to think I know something about writing. But I've learned more in the past several days about how stories are structured than in the ten years I've been writing professionally.  Maybe that says something about me, but I think it speaks more about the power of these stories and what they reveal about human nature.

If you want to learn how to write, if you are a writer and want to learn more about theory and characterization and stark dialog, I strongly urge you to give some of these episodes a listen.  You won't be disappointed, that I can promise you.

Gunsmoke MP3  (All episodes.  Click on the links for the separate pages. Sometimes page 01 is unavailable, but keep trying and it'll load.)

Gunsmoke Real Player   (All episodes)

I'm still listening to old radio programs on teh Innerwebs and I've found a classic science fiction series called X Minus One. Okay, some of the stories are hokey. You're going to get hokey from some 1950s science fiction; it comes with the territory.  But many of the stories are also classics from Bradbury, Heinlein, Asimov and others. 

There was a good SF radio show called Dimension X that predates X Minus One, but the latter is a little more polished, imo, with an awesome intro.  Dimension X had classic SF stories, too, don't get me wrong, but many of them were later redone for X Minus One.  Each episode is half an hour long. Check 'em out, I think you'll like listening to them.  And I know many of my SF-oriented friends will immediately recognize both the show titles and original authors on several of the episodes.

X MINUS ONE in MP3 Format.

X MINUS ONE in Real Player


DIMENSION X in MP3 Format

DIMENSION X in Real Player

But as good as these programs are both from a story and acting viewpoint, they literally pale in comparison to another radio program....

Unfortunately, most of what the public knows about Tarzan comes from the Johnny Weissmuller movies: a grunting caveman who has to be taught his own name. Okay, I'm not saying the movies don't have some things going for them. Maureen O'Sullivan is hot.  And there's...well, Maureen O'Sullivan is hot.  But there's so much else that's downright stupid about these movies: Boy, Cheetah, that crazy tree house.  That's not Tarzan, that's a cartoon.

So here are some little known facts about Tarzan you might not know. I admit I'm picky about Tarzan. (And physics.) I think this stems from being a writer and feeling irked when I see someone's creation warped and twisted into caricature. Anyhoo, here are some facts about Tarzan you can bring out and amaze your friends with the next time you're sitting around knocking back a few cold ones....

The word "Tarzan" means white skin in the language of the Great Apes, and the accent is on the second syllable, not the first.

Tarzan has a scar on his forehead  from when he fought Bolgani the gorilla as a boy. When he's angry, it flames red. He used his knife for the first time to kill Bolgani. If you confront Tarzan and you see his scar turn red -- you're screwed.

Tarzan doesn't laugh.  He rarely smiles. A wry grin is about all you ever get out of him.

While Tarzan likes the knife (a hunting knife from his dead father) he always admits his most deadly weapon is his grass rope.  I know, hard to believe because we're brought up with the iconic imagery of Tarzan and his knife. 

Tarzan knows he is the child of Lord and Lady Greystoke, but as far as he's concerned the only mother he ever had is Kala. "I don't remember my father," he admits. Jane gives him hell all the time for this.  He just stand there stoically.  Tarzan isn't pussy-whipped.

Tarzan prefers raw, bloody meat. He likes it better when it's been buried in the ground for a while to tenderize it.

Tarzan can communicate (after a fashion) with any animal that has some limited intelligence -- except predators.

His favorite animal to hang around with is Tantor the elephant.  He also has a little monkey called Manu which hangs around with him sometimes. The animal he despises the most is Dango, the Hyena.

Tarzan LOVES Jane Porter. Half-naked women are always throwing themselves at him in the novels, but he is loyal to Jane. I guess this isn't surprising, or news, but it's a good character description.

Tarzan LIKES to kill. He isn't one of these morose people who kill only because they have to and then obsesses about it afterward. He actually enjoys killing. Man or animal, he doesn't really care. You cross him -- you're dead. His idea of  a joke is to slip his grass rope around your neck, pull you up into the trees out of the safari, then throw your body down through the branches upon the horrified people below. He thinks this is funny and he does it all the time in the novels.  He feels he's making a point.

Tarzan's English speech has a French accent. Few people know this, but it's because he learned his English from D'Arnot.

Tarzan was a spy for a while, working for D'Arnot. He was also a soldier.  He, Jane, Korak (their son), and little Manu the monkey are immortal because Tarzan found a potion that would keep them forever young.  He likes to drink absinthe because it's the only drink that can impact his superior senses.

Tarzan's favorite way to defeat someone in a fight is grab them and shake them back and forth like a rag doll until they're about to faint and puke.  He doesn't thrown haymakers or jabs or anything like that. He just shakes you until you're about to fall to pieces.

Tarzan likes the Gomangani (black people) more than he likes the Tarmangani (white people.)  But he prefers the company of the Mangani -- the Great Apes, to either.

And finally....

Tarzan is a lousy businessman. (Edgar Rice Burroughs was a lousy businessman, too.)  He's always losing his fortune and has to return to Opar to steal more jewels when he's out of money. And since La the half-naked Priestess is always there waiting....

I'm not one for nostalgia. I prefer looking ahead to looking backward.  But lately I've been listening to these old radio programs provided on the Internet for free. And one of the programs I've been listening to is Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

When the movie with Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O'Sullivan came out it was a huge success.  Radio was the obvious next step. These programs are pretty good, too. They are an accurate reproduction of the original story with Joan Burroughs, ERB's own daughter, as Jane Porter, and her husband, Jim Pierce, in the role as the Lord of the Jungle.

These radio programs weren't recorded live, but on phonograph in a studio so jungle sounds could be incorporated into the story. I admit it  starts off a little slow, and sometimes there are some uncomfortable racial comments that clank in our modern ears. I'm not going to lie. Some of it is racist and ignorant.  But if you stick with it, remember the context and the era in which it was written and created, and give it a chance as story, then it starts to rock.

Tarzan is good and so is Jane. They have to be or the story fails completely.  This Jane is a good screamer, too.  It heightens the atavism.  And all kinds of little stuff from the original novel that give the story depth and meaning are included: The Locket.  The Little Bugs. S-H-E. The baby ape skeleton in the crib. The Dum-Dum. All the classic ERB touches. 

One thing: Tarzan's victory cry of the bull ape takes getting used to. But to be fair it's hard to translate something like this from the books. The cry of the bull ape is supposed to freeze your blood, make the jungle silent for miles around. This doesn't do that. But at least it's not a Swiss yodel, which is what most people are used to from the Weismuller films.  This Tarzan is what ERB envisioned: he's smart and not an ignorant caveman who communicates with monosyllabic grunts and needs to be taught his own name.   This Tarzan isn't a cartoonish creation; it's living, breathing reality.

These radio stories are tightly written, have good hooks and develop the characters with realistic emotion and broad intelligence.  And it's violent. When Terkoz the Ape decides he wants Jane -- and it's not to play tiddly-winks  -- Tarzan flies through the jungle in a rage. In a word: he fucks that ape up. (Episode 21, 1932 if you want to hear it.) And the later interaction between Tarzan and Jane is sexy, too. The gentle moments between Tarzan and Jane are authentic, probably because they are played by husband and wife in real life. Either way it's great.  And once everyone settles into their roles, well, like I said, it rocks.

Check it out. If you like Tarzan, the real Tarzan and not a washed out Hollywood version, you'll like this a lot.

TARZAN OF THE APES ON RADIO

And if you want to check out the other programs, then follow this next link. There's a ton of stuff here from comedies to mysteries to science fiction. Lot's of  MP3 fun.

Radiolovers.com

And another good site with even more shows:

Old Time Radio Network

It is impossible to review Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged without critiquing the underlying philosophical principle of Objectivism.  Now, before you misunderstand me, there are some principles of Objectivism I believe strongly in.  Some people can be and are heroic figures.  Facts do outweigh fantasy.  Reason does trump faith and religion.  I also agree with some of the sexual tenets of Objectivism.  (As an aside, and to give her credit, Rand often gets a bad rap on homosexuality.  Though she found their behavior personally disgusting she supported their ineluctable right to practice their lifestyle.)  But even as far as the sexual elements go Rand is far too timid to bring the male-female dynamic to its inevitable conclusion re: Objectivism in Atlas Shrugged.  She stands on the edge of the chasm, but she never has the courage to leap.

But the novel really begins with Rand's mistaken conceit.  She writes in the forward she believes she is doing something new, in a new way, through the publication of this novel.  Uh, no.  You see, Rand knows fuck-all about science fiction, and there are a lot of SFnal elements in Atlas Shrugged from the super-strong lightweight Rearden Metal to the eponymous science fiction motor that draws static electricity from the atmosphere and converts it to kinetic energy.  She's not doing anything new here, trust me.  No matter how she tries to spin it, presenting sharply drawn philosophical concepts in literary form is not "ground-breaking."  Ask Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley if you doubt my word.

Atlas Shrugged is filled with heroic men, and women, who are always described as "severe," "austere," "hard," or "lonely."  But what kind of people are they, really?  Well, she says, they are human beings with free will.  Rand believes every man has the potential to be good or evil.  He must decide which he shall be and the decision will affect only him. 

This is where Rand shows the depth of her naivete.    It is, in essence, a total repudiation not only of human history but of human emotion.  Astonishing.

But what kind of people are these heroic figures?  They are by and large powerful industrialists who don't give a fuck about the public.  Rand believed people like this were the pinnacle of humanity.  But her slavish devotion to their unchecked power, her unabashed admiration of their "greed is good" philosophy does cause her to kneel (whether she wants to admit it or not, and despite the anti-spiritual principles of Objectivism) before an altar.  The altar of the Dollar Sign.

There's a lot of trickle-down theory in Atlas Shrugged.  While that shit didn't work in the Reagan Years, it has smooth sailing in the pages of this over-written novel.  But surely I'm exaggerating, you say.  Um, in a word, no.  Rand believed that altruism in all its forms was a sin.  She would not have supported nor understood on any human fundamental level why Milton Hershey provided his employees with free medical care and paid off the mortgage of every church in town during the Depression.  But is she aware that altruism also manifests itself in the action of a mother throwing her body in front of a bus to save her child?  Rand does not think on this intimately human level.  As one of her characters remarks in the novel, "The public be damned!"

That means you and me. And whether Rand realizes it or not, it means her, too.

There are other, more stupefying passages that in today's world seem not just old-fashioned but dangerously simplistic.  In one passage the two lovers, Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggert, are driving through unblemished, untouched Nature.  Rearden remarks, "What I'd like to see is a billboard."

In another passage Dagny is talking to a scientist about the motor:

"So you're doing research work on your own?"
"That's right."
"For what purpose?"
"My own pleasure."
"What do you intend to do, if you discover something of scientific importance or commercial value?  Do you intend to put it to some public use?"
"I don't know.  I don't think so."
"Haven't you any desire to be of service to humanity?"
"I don't talk that kind of language, Miss Taggert.  I don't think you do, either."

Finally, on the last page of this 1200+ page novel, her eponymous hero, John Galt, draws a dollar sign in the air.

Now, okay.  There's nothing inherently wrong with any of this.  I mean, if I can read Robert Heinlein's I Will Fear No Evil then I can read damn near anything without choking up bile.  But it goes on, like I said, for 1200 pages!  People sit around and tell each other what they already know, what they already believe, what they've already done and why they did it. Rand sets up strawmen so her heroes can knock them down.  Again, nothing wrong.  That's what these kind of novels do and if you approach it from that viewpoint then Atlas Shrugged works admirably.

So how is the writing?  Well, it's clunky at times, and at other times it's awkward. There's a lot of empty spaces being described and little humans who are dwarfed by towering skyscrapers or standing around in awe of huge roaring machines.  But there's other things, too, that should be mentioned.  Rand is a marvel when it comes to delineating human gesture and movement.  Her metier, despite the grand philosophical themes she plays with here, are the descriptive passages that hang with you.  She paints with pinpoint precision, using words to emote truth and power about people, and that's a beauty -- and a pleasure -- to read.

However, aside from all that?  Well, aside from the preachiness and the naive (I would argue dangerously simplistic)  way Rand views the world, the biggest flaw of the novel is its inability to uphold the suspension of disbelief.  --And, no, I'm not talking about her motor that defies the Second Law of Thermodynamics, either.

Remember, the CEOs and industrialists and powerful businessmen who look only upon profit as the single necessary human motive, these are her heroes.  When laws and other governmental obstacles get in their way of making a profit they go into hiding to teach the world a lesson.  To teach humanity that we can't get along without them.

You've got to be kidding me.  All right.  To be fair to Rand this was written pre-Enron and pre-multi-million dollar gold parachute and 300-million dollar severance packages for CEOs.  But, c'mon, get real.  Do you really want to argue the world wouldn't have stood up and cheered if Ken Lay was taken out in shackles, made to kneel on a sidewalk while lots were drawn by the people he duped so they could press a small-caliber pistol to his skull?  Is Rand so jaw-dropping naive she thinks the world would really stop spinning on its axis if every fat pigfucking executive who lives for nothing but profit were to go into hiding?  To teach us a lesson?  They'd be doing the world, and the people in it, a goddamn favor.  And trust me, the world wouldn't stop spinning on its axis.  These Atlases can shrug all they want.  Those human beings currently being ground into dust via the modern CEOs maniacal blood-grab for profit would be far better off without their putrefying existence.  Yes, please.  Do us all a favor and go on strike.  Feel free.

Again, I must stress this, Rand sets up her heroes to be a different kind of man than the money-grubbing soul-destroying monster we suffer from today. Except, when everything is all said and done, they're really not.  One of her Oil Executives sets fire to his wells before going into hiding, leaving behind a note saying the public can have them back the way he found them.  But he didn't find these oil wells on fire.  He did that out of a sense of pique, like a spoiled brat.  And it's really difficult, no matter what your political or social demographic, to get past the "fuck the public, masturbate with the dollar" philosophy that runs rampant throughout this novel.

So.  Having said all that.  Should you read Atlas Shrugged?

Yes.  Absolutely.  And here's why.  Despite being flawed this is an important novel.  There are themes which do resonate, like the theme of standing up for yourself and for what you believe in.  Like the fact reason is more important than the unsupportable nonsense of religion.  Like the fact science is more grounded in reality than faith.

Atlas Shrugged is a strange, at times unbelievable, novel.  It's one of those books I'm not necessarily happy to have read, but it was necessary for me to read.  I guess it's hard to explain. I can neither recommend nor dismiss this work of art (and it is art, no question) created by Ayn Rand.

You, like everyone else, will simply have to read the novel and make your own judgment.  In the end, that's what Rand want us to do anyway with every aspect of our life.  And within that very narrow framework she succeeds admirably in getting that sense of dignity across in Atlas Shrugged.

I finished reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo for the second time.  The first time I read it was in high school.  I liked it then, I love it now.

I guess everyone knows about Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread and being pursued by Javert.  But, my God, does this book ever deserve its title. Everyone is wretched, in one way or another, in this novel.  How can we ever forget the grinding poverty and dehumanization of Fantine?  And how Cosette, her little girl, must live as a slave under the monstrous Thenardier family? 

There are enduring images which have survived over the centuries.  Fantine selling her front teeth so Cosette has enough to eat,  the fight on the barricade, the flight through the sewers.  This is a huge book in more ways than one.  The writing is fantastic and there are little "Hugoisms" sprinkled throughout that make you put the book down and marvel either at the turn of phrase or the beauty of the writing itself.  Like these:

"Gravediggers die.  By dint of digging graves for others, they open their own."

"There is a moment when girls bloom out in a twinkling and become roses all at once.  Yesterday we left them children, to-day we find them dangerous."

"Hunger comes with love."

"Humanity is identity.  All men are the same clay."

"Women play with their beauty as children do with their knives.  They wound themselves with it."

"When we are at the end of life, to die means to go away; when we are at the beginning, to go away means to die."

"Then he heard his soul, again become terrible, give a sullen roar in the darkness."

"Certain flames can only come from certain souls; the eye, that window of the thought, blazes with it; spectacles hide nothing; you might as well put a glass over hell."

"Robber, assassin....these words fell upon him like  a shower of ice."

One of the main ingredients of this novel is the depth of human emotion.  It's never overdone, which is an easy thing to do.  We are often moved, such as the scene when Cosette marries and Jean Valjean must disappear from her life to protect her from his past.  He goes home, takes out the little dress she used to wear as a child, and pressing it against his face sobs uncontrollably.  And I challenge anyone to read Valjean's monologue at the end of the novel and not get a little weepy.  Strong stuff.  Memorable.

This is a great book.  I'm glad I reread it.  It might be one of those books I read again in twenty years or so, we'll see.  But I'm a better person for reading it, that's for sure.

If you haven't read this novel, you should.  If you have, do so again.  It's great.

Horror is a visceral medium.  And when it comes to movies, horror can be very visceral indeed.  I tend to love the old Universal monsters, mainly for personal reasons.  They are my favorite.  And when it comes to other horror movies I lean towards surrealism like the excellent Suspiria by Dario Argento.

But there are other movies that, after you see them, change you in some way -- and not always for the better.   I Spit on Your Grave is such a movie, along with Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, and The Hills Have Eyes.  Though a slick mainstream movie, I would place The Exorcist in that same category.

House of 1000 Corpses is another one.

This is a movie written and directed by Rob Zombie.  There's a ton of in-jokes and black humor sprinkled throughout this film like lost spatters of black blood topped with candy sprinkles.  The comedy is dark, very dark.  But there's fun here, too. The main characters are named Captain Spaulding, Otis Driftwood and Rufus Firefly.  All names from Groucho Marx characters.  Plus, Karen Black plays the matriarch of the Firefly family with outright verve and gusto. Hell, that's a selling point in its favor right there. 

Zombie wanted this to be an homage to the horror films of the '70s.   Early on he wanted to make the film with the same equipment and technology available to directors at that time, but money and creative pressure got in his way.  There's still a lot here to entertain.  And despite the body count and the buckets of gore, this film is entertaining. Quick cuts of old black and white horror movie hosts and off screen monologues by principle characters a la Natural Born Killers keeps us confused and riveted.  Judicious use of sound, color, and a fantastic music track make the experience memorable. 

The movie starts with four teenagers are on a road trip across America writing about weird places tourists might want to visit.  In a shithole of a town in the Deep South they learn of a local legend called Dr. Satan.  In the interim they stumble across a family of freaks.  Oh, and it's Hallowe'en Eve. So far it's your normal horror-type movie fare, right?  Wrong. 

Dead wrong.

From the candlelit dinner to the tortured cheerleaders upstairs to the ersatz floor show we are now on a mind-numbing roller coaster ride...and it's getting more claustrophobic with each twist and turn.  The police show up.  They're whacked by the freaks, and one of the deputies is killed in what has to be the longest suspenseful pauses in moviedom as the action reverts to slow motion, the camera flies away in the sky, yet  we cannot turn from what we know is going to happen.   It is the distance from which Zombie forces us to watch, not the murder, that is the true horror.

But what of our four young friends?  Well, it doesn't look good.  One of the male characters is asked by Baby to guess who her favorite movie actress is. Oh, and she's holding a straight razor at the time.   He guesses Marilyn Monroe.  Nope, it's Bette Davis.  Fitting she would choose such a notorious man-eater. Baby commences to scalp the young lad while she giggles.  That's not something you see everyday.

The other poor fellow, well, let's just say  "Fish Boy" and leave it at that.  The two girls are then dressed in bunny suits, along with our scalped friend, and taken outside on Halloween night for more fun and frivolity.  Teenagers dressed as bunnies on a night when they are to be tortured and murdered.  That's not something you see everyday, either.

One of the girls runs.  She's chased down by Baby and stabbed.  Baby licks her knife under the light of a full moon. The other two are thrown in a casket and lowered into a well.  The tortured victims from the past who are living down there reach out of the black water and drag them out, but one girl escapes.  She finds a tunnel and, still wearing her bunny suit, goes deeper into the black earth.

Shades of Alice in Wonderland...except what she's found is a labyrinth of 1000 corpses, more past victims of the Firefly family. She loses her bunny suit and stumbles into the lair of Dr. Satan.  Wow, he's not a legend after all, who would have guessed?  But he's deeply involved in an "experiment."  She escapes his axe-wielding associate, crawls out into the daylight and a car comes down a dirt road to pick her up.

The denouement is typical, and most horror movies would end the shenanigans right there.  But Zombie isn't done with us quite yet.  Our heroine awakens --  only to find herself strapped to Dr. Satan's table, ready to be his next "experiment."  The final thirty seconds when she awakens and realizes where she is just might be the scariest thirty seconds I've ever witnessed in any horror film.  We don't see anything, just her face, but that's more than enough.

This movie weathered a lot of controversy when it was released in 1997.  Much of it came from young adults who think Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer are the only models available for horror movies.  But this isn't the cartoonish efforts of serial movies like Friday the 13th and the one-liner ridden and outlandish Nightmare on Elm Streets.  Rob Zombie knows what horror, real horror, is all about.  Yes, there is black comedy and there is camp in House of 1000 Corpses, but there's film-making here as well. Zombie isn't phoning it in.  This movie wasn't written by a tube worm, as evidenced by the deliciously black comedic elements of naming people after Groucho Marx  characters and having teenagers abused whilst wearing cute bunny suits.  Horror, on any level, rarely gets any better than that.

Time has been kind to Corpses.  A decade has mellowed much of the original criticism it received, and Zombie made a sequel, The Devil's Rejects, which continued the bloody antics of the Firefly family.  The latter movie even made money and garnered some critical acclaim. 

If you're looking for something different, a horror film that breaks the mold, if you want to feel the walls close in on you, rent House of 1000 Corpses.  Then turn out the lights and hang onto a friend.

Nathanial Bumppo, otherwise known as Leatherstocking, Deerslayer, and Long Rifle, is without a doubt the quintessential American version of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan.  To be sure, James Fenimore Cooper's frontier character saw print long before Burroughs's creation did in 1912.  This in no way invalidates the creation of ERB, but it does give more literary impact to a wholly American character who appears in what can only be defined, if one is truthful, as wholly flawed novels.

The five novels which feature Bumppo were written by Cooper out of sequence.  This doesn't necessarily impair the fictive underpinnings of the stories themselves, but it does give rise to certain elements which writhe like a murky thread throughout the main arc. 

We will, as expected, consider the best known, at least as far as the general public goes, work of Cooper, that being The Last of the Mohicans and examine just what makes this novel tick, and why you should read it.

Cooper believed that Indian culture must needs be crushed by the Anglo Saxon wheels of religion and technology.  He saw no other way around this inevitability.  Though he wasn't himself racist by the definitions which we adhere to today, he did have certain beliefs of superiority of his own culture which "dark-skinned" individuals had to bow down to.  Mohicans, with its poignant idea that there will come a time the "last" of this noble race will pass from the ken of men (that is to say the ken of White Men), has through this very self-same literary device carved for itself a spot of prominence within American literature.

Not everyone liked Cooper's work.  He was always viewed much more favorably in Europe than by home-grown American authors.  Mark Twain famously savaged Cooper's novels and the savagery resonates even to this day.  Yet, something about the novels, especially Mohicans, endures.  Perhaps it is the idea of a race of men passing, the wide landscape of virgin forests and pure lakes blessed by God, the savagery and brutality of life on the frontier, the fog of war, the blood-curdling violence.  Whatever the reason for its longevity, and Twain notwithstanding, this book endures...and thank God for that.

As one might expect there is very little of this book that is recognizable in the 1992 film remake of the same name. In fact, the film stole much of the story line which was rewritten in the 1920 silent film.  In the modern film Hawk-eye, at the height of his powers, is taciturn to a fault but still capable of a normal sexual relationship. In the novel, Natty Bumppo is not only naive sexually, he won't shut up, period.  He discourses on everything, even to the halt of the action being described around him. Leaning on his rifle he has no problem detailing, to infinite exhaustion, his opinion on events around him.

Another big difference, aside from the often awkward descriptions, stereotypes of women and just plain ignorance of Native American ethnicities, is the fact a major character dies in the novel yet is allowed to survive in film.  I suppose this would come as a shock to someone who saw the movie first, but there it is.  Cooper has no problem dispatching that which, if allowed to live, would intercede in the future life of Hawk-eye.  Natty Bumppo, in Cooper's estimation, must remain pure. He must be allowed to view and accept nature as a powerful motivation than the intimate love of another human being.  This loneliness is his past, it is his destiny.  He is akin to the figure of Greek tragedy in this way.  He has a duty to perform and he will accomplish it, but he himself cannot lose the connection he has to the pristine land he loves and calls home.

I highly recommend this book, though the new reader must approach it with a few caveats and not a little caution.  Cooper is simply not that great a writer.  I am not the first to say that nor will I be the last.  Many of the passages go on far too long and the long-winded philosophies of Bumppo grate, not to mention the embarrassing stereotypes.  Nevertheless, there is power here, grounded with pathos, grandeur, and yes, love -- though it's love on Bumppo's, and Cooper's, own terms.

Despite its many flaws this is a major American novel by any definition.  If you like adventure, and don't mind a little (okay, a lot) lagging, I think you will enjoy reading The Last of the Mohicans.

WWII gets all the good ink.  I suppose it's not surprising.  You have a lot to work with there.  Pure evil.  Genocide.  A world at war.  Man and machine working together for the total eradication of other nations.  The final cataclysm that ushered in a new age.

Pretty cool stuff from a writer's viewpoint.  Lots to work with and you don't have to dig too hard.

But I've always been more enamored with WWI than its younger, and more violent, brother.  I know the War to End All Wars (that's a selling point right there) isn't as well known or as well documented...but I think pound for pound it's the better war to write about.

Everything was so new to the people involved.  Airplanes.  Submarines.  Better artillery.  Machine-guns.  Land mines. Tanks. Poison gas. The bombing of cities.  Zeppelins. (Zeppelins for God's sake!)  Trench warfare.  Revolutions.  Dreadnoughts.  The first Aces.  The collapse and utter annihilation of mounted cavalry. The profligate waste of life.  Historically, this war is relegated to a dress rehearsal for the Second World War...but what a dress rehearsal!

The events even shocked H. G. Wells, and he predicted something like this would happen.

I had been meaning to read Barbara W. Tuchman's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Guns of August for many, many years.  I'm glad I finally got around to it.  Although Tuchman concentrates on the first month of the war which began in 1914, the writing, the exquisite detail, the beautifully constructed characterizations, all make this one memorable read.   And the first line of the book is one that from the day of publication made history both for its inherent word beauty and ability to evoke strong emotion.

Even if you're not big on reading about war, if you're just a writer, especially a writer with an eye towards working in the non-fiction field, this is a must-read.  Give it a peek.

I've just finished reading L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

And I didn't like it.

As a writer I thought it was dry, devoid of humor and little more than a patchwork of poorly executed ideas.  As a reader I liked it ...and I didn't like it at the same time.  I suppose part of the problem stems from the fact Oz tries to be the quintessential American fairy tale.  America is good at a lot of things, but our culture isn't geared for generating fairy tales along the quality of Arabian Nights, Grimm's or Wonderland and Looking Glass. (Though, to be fair, Carroll was a certified genius, so it's not fair to Baum to compare the adventures his Dorothy to Carroll's Alice.)

I'm certain I didn't let my knowledge (and love) of the 1939 movie version influence my critique of Baum's novel.  There were some elements of the novel I liked, like how science and scientific concepts played a (small!) part in the plot, and his repeated use of color. Baum did a good job with that, seeing as how he wrote Oz in 1900 and was tapping into the deep-rooted American philosophies of pragmatism.  Apparently a whole slew of sequels followed, but I won't be reading them, thank you.  Overall this just wasn't very good (poorly written and poor characterization) and I don't recommend it--unless you want to write fairy tales in which case Oz is still considered a benchmark...of sorts .

Otherwise, forget this book.  Watch the film instead. 

I like werewolf movies.  No, let me rephrase that.  I like good werewolf movies.  My favorite is The Wolfman (1941) with Lon Chaney, Jr.  And from a writerly perspective it gives me a tickle to know the writer of that film, Curt Siodmak, made most of the werewolf tropes out of whole cloth.  But they're as accepted today as any legend.  And it's hard to pass up a late night showing on TCM with Chaney's tour de force  performance in Frankensteim Meets the Wofman (1943).  That final scene of the dam breaking and flooding Frankenstein's lab while the fur flies is one of the best in the genre.  Not to mention the fact Maria Ouspenskaya appears in both films; she's always a treat to watch with her heavy accent and sorrowful, brooding manner.  Great fun.

 But last year I came across a trilogy and had a chance to review them again recently, and, boy, are they great.

It's the Ginger Snaps trilogy.  Never heard of it?  I'm not surprised.  They were indies shot in Canada which gives them a different feel both in tone and emotional texture than the slickly produced cartoonish efforts we see out of Hollywood.

The first movie, Ginger Snaps, dwells on two sisters who decide that if one of them dies the other will kill herself.  There's the usual teenage angst and sexual awakening you would expect to see in a film about  a 16 and 15 year old sisters.  But Ginger Snaps ties those deep and powerful emotions into a stylish reworking of the werewolf mythos.   So when Ginger gets the bite, her sister, Brigitte, must do everything she can to protect her.  It's a stylish film with a look and dialogue that really pushes the limits both in context and what we thought we knew about werewolves.  And you won't need a silver bullet to whack one, because as Brigitte observes, a big knife will do since "they aren't superheroes."  Classic.

Of course, things start going downhill fast for the sisters.  Dogs start disappearing.  Ginger suddenly has a huge craving for meat.  When a tail appears she and Brigitte have to duct-tape it to her leg.  Well, no one ever said being a wolf-girl was easy.

The second movie is called Ginger Snaps: Unleashed.  Here's where the trilogy takes a very unexpected turn.  Ordinarily, there would just be much more blood-spattering and chomping in a sequel like this.  Not so with the Ginger movies.  Now Brigitte is in an insane asylum, waiting for the curse to take hold of her while she wrestles with a horrific decision she had to make in the original film.  This movie dwells more on the psychological aspect of wolfdom than the usual crunching of bone by the light of a silvery moon.  Oh, and there's a male werewolf out there who  wants to mate with Brigitte if she would just hurry up and let the transformation take its natural course.

Just when you think you're safe, the third movie, Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning is actually a prequel to the other two.  Better yet, you aren't sure if this is a parallel universe, an alternate history, or the beginning of an eternal curse involving these two young women.  Maybe it's all three.  It doesn't matter because the sisters are together again in 19th Century Canada in the dead of winter and they've come upon a fort while packs of hungry wolves roam the frozen countryside.  Hang on tight to a friend when you watch this one because it's a doozy.

The Ginger Snaps movies.   You should check them out even if you're not a werewolf fan.  It's great story arc filled with pathos and sharp humor and biting (pun intended) dialogue.  Give 'em a peek if you have the time....