American Tabloid - post III

There are some of the scenes in Oliver Stone’s JFK where the back story about the mob and Cuba is pieced together that reminds you of the territory that Ellroy is heading into in American Tabloid.

There are numerous characters that are on the extreme end of the spectrum and maybe it was the inability to suppress all of their different demands that meant something dramatic in the 1960s was inevitable.

Those of us not living in the US often think of the 1960s as Kennedy, Johnson, the great society and Vietnam. We tend to forget Cuba and the impact that Castro had. But for those involved with crime Castro was bad news and for politicians talking tough about the Red threat having one on the doorstep was also difficult to swallow.

So although this is heading into a Bay of Pigs history lesson this is a part of the Kennedy story that most people would be least familiar with and that makes the 500 plus pages journey one that is slightly easier to go on with.

American Tabloid - post II

In some respects the story starts to become more complicated but the overall pace and direction clearer. This might on one level be about the Teamsters and Hoffa and corruption. But on another it is about the Kennedy brothers and their plans to shake things up.

In that relationship Bobby is the more determined to change the world with Jack happy to skip between beds of women he takes a fancy too and not too particular about talking with mobsters.

At the top of the tree the Kennedy's exist in a world with Howard Hughes and Hoover but underneath, and not too far below, there are those they rely on to kill, punish and secure favours on their behalf. It is the ability to mix in both of those strata that makes American Tabloid so gripping and so believable.

book review - The Human Factor

There is a something about Graham Greene that can best be described as a voice. Every book of his I have so far come across has the same rhythm and gives off a sense of having been written with confidence.

This book starts with you under the impression that it might well be a humorous reaction to the world of Ian Fleming and glamorous spies as it focuses on a couple of men working in an African sub-section of the Foreign Office.

But the humour evaporates as a leak is discovered in the department and the finger of suspicion points not at the older man Castle but at his younger frustrated and bored colleague Davis.

The jokes about glamour and Bond are a clever counterpoint to the bungling class based decisions that are taken to eradicate Davis and then play further games to smoke out the real leak.

But this is against a background of the cold war defections that gained headlines and embarrassed the establishment. Castle is playing for high stakes and fails to understand that principles are not honoured in this war of information. In the end he loses all that really matters to him, his wife and adopted son, and without his protection the world they live in looks bleak in the extreme.

As the wheels of government, class and espionage turn in between the cogs are the normal men and women who are victims. Some like Castle believe that there are higher principles at play here but in reality it is a rather pathetic game of trying to trump the opposition.

Defectors are pawns in a game they don’t really understand and operating in a system that despite relying so much on people has no understanding or place for the human factor.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter one and all. Hope you have a day enjoying some reading.

book review - The Interrogation

There is no point trying to pretend that the Nobel Prize awarded to J.M.G Le Clezio did not influence the purchase of this book. You always want to find out for yourself if the plaudits are worth it and so it was with a half open mind, you expect to be stirred by a Nobel winner, that I set out on the Interrogation.

In some respects it reminded me of The Stranger by Albert Camus because of the central figure's detached view of the world. But there is something here about the danger of solitude and the impact on the mind of someone who has time to delve deep into themselves.

As he walks around a seaside town Adam Pollo cuts n odd figure following dogs, putting himself into the mind of rats and living a life of sunbathing, thinking and begging money from his girlfriend. But nothing is ever clear. For instance did Adam desert from the army or end up being discharged because of a psychiatric problem? Then there is the relationship with his girlfriend. Did he rape/assault her or was that an exaggeration and a joke between them?

What is sure is that after deciding to stand up in the middle of the promenade and start sharing his views of the world he winds up in a mental hospital where he is dragged in front of a bunch of students for the interrogation to begin. They have made up their minds what is wrong with him but he shows them through his various opportunities to answer questions that not only is making judgements a difficult art but the power is in his own hands as to whether or not he pulls himself through.

He seems to decide that he is going to opt for a slow slide into a dream like state of embracing the institution of the hospital and those students that are questioning him for the most part seem unaware they are witnessing the moment when an individual decides to switch their mind onto a course set for a semi-vegetative state. What is disturbing is the message that the book implies about the consequences for individualism and the inability for society to cope or understand anyone different from the norm. Adam could try to make them understand but in the face of the futility of that he makes the sane choice and opts for winning the battle in his own head rather than in a room filled with medical students and doctors.

book review - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

F. Scott Fitzgerald was a very competent short story writer and this collection, which takes it's title from a the story that has inspired the recent Brad Pitt film, shows off his skill.

In one sense it is amazing that the title story, a mere 25 pages or so, can lead to a film that ;last for hours. But at the heart of the Curious case of Benjamin Button is the simple idea exploring what it is like for a man to live his life backwards.

The result is age discrimination of a completely different order. But it also shows that those with knowledge and determination can achieve a great deal and perhaps those of us growing old slowly fail to grasps the opportunities as they come believing wrongly that there will be other moments later on.

But as well as the story of a 70 year old baby there are cursed beauties in the The Cut-Glass Bowl where a woman who has been given a cut-glass bowl by a former lover because it describes her as being cold, see through and beautiful to look at starts to suffer ill fortune. The bowl is always involved and as her fortunes dip the curse seems to stretch to her family and they are maimed by the bowl and the news of their death via telegram is inevitably put in the bowl for safe keeping.

This is dark and the element of the supernatural slightly disturbing. This is a dark tale and all it needs is to add some more macabre details about the house, heavy blood red curtains etc and some howling wind and it wouldn’t sit too uncomfortably in a Poe collection.

But one of the enduring themes of Fitzgerald's work is not so much the supernatural but the sense of fate that divides rich and poor. In May Day a number of characters from both sides of the tracks are weaved together. One is almost destitute and has lost pride, employment and almost all hope, another is a wealthy young man who has avoided the same mistakes and the final element is a former girlfriend of the first. They meet and fail to help each other leaving the stricken destitute former Yale man to take the ultimate step.

What it tells you is that in the world of all night parties, champagne and hotels those without the necessary funds were finished and locked out of that world. Equally they had nothing to offer other social groups so they end up alienated and isolated.

For those looking in, in this case two soldiers, they might be invited into the ball to have a drink by a drunk but once things have sobered up they are firmly back on the other side of the class divide and reminded of it.

This reminds me in places of the Great Gatsby because the same vacuous existence is being played out here by characters that with one slip could so easily fall from their life of luxury.

In some sense these questions ask you the same question: who deserves pity? Even those who appear to have everything, from Yale men to film directors, suffer from a hollowness that is even worse because they are aware of it. Put this alongside something like Sister Carrie and you start to paint a picture of an America that might have enjoyed money but failed to have security and depth.

book review - The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

This is one of the books that manages to cross over from teenage fiction into the adult category. Indeed it was a friend who recommended John Boyne's book as something worth reading.

In many respects it takes a reader to come to this with a knowledge of the holocaust for it to work with complete effectiveness. The story of Bruno and his family moving to a concentration camp is full of gaps that an informed reader will fill in. Not just about the reason for his father going to become commander at Auschwitz but also the affair between a young prison guard and Bruno's mother.

But where it works well is the central story about Bruno and his friendship with the boy in the striped pyjamas. Because his parents have told him almost nothing about what is going on - the view of the world with the gaps left unfilled - he makes a fatal mistake based on complete ignorance.

The ending of the book is one that has real power as does the aftermath with a hint that one of Hitler's loyal stormtroopers has become disillusioned by the realisation that what they happily did to millions might have been done to one of their own.

In many ways some of the devices used get tiresome towards the end but if the aim of this is to get a child to ask you as a parent what is happening then getting the chance to answer that question is perhaps valuable in itself. No doubt the film, which I haven't seen, is more expansive and slightly more literal in terms of spelling it out.

Just as with the only other crossover book I have read, The Curious Incident..by Mark Haddon, this is sometimes too obvious for an adult reader. But it is worth getting through because if nothing else it reminds you of the horrors of history and reinforces the memory which makes it harder for something as horrific as the final solution to happen again.

The bookshelves are not elastic

It's time to face up to facts and have a bit of a book clearout. For a long time I have been fighting reality believing that the books piled up in the house were not a problem.

So understanding the true situation means that the next few weeks will involve making some tough decisions. But it is about time something was done. So here goes...

American Tabloid - post I

There is something about the stoccato style that works against a background of the early 1960s and an America of Hoover and the Kennedys.

With the battle between the Kennedy brothers and those not too keen on them getting into the White House there is an ex cop and an FBI agent that are caught in the middle. That makes the tension work straight off on two levels. But what really adds to it is the backdrop of America, a glamorous US.

More soon...

book review - Crabwalk

This story echoes some of the same themes of The Reader about the war and guilt but is more of a modern parable of our times. The problem with writing about the internet is that there is already a slighty dated feel to the online world Gunter Grass describes.

The big questions he is trying to answer are around the idea of guilt and responsibility. In war is the sinking of a ship carrying refugees something that can be mourned over in the same way that some of the losses on the sides of victors are commemorated? Does the wartime generation have a responsibility to the way that history is passed down and interpreted by their children?

The background against how those questions are mulled over is the story of a father who has lost the respect of his mother and son. The old woman is able to influence the son and in her tales as a survivor of the sinking if the refugee ship she creates a fledgling Nazi. Her grandson uses the Internet and modern technology to refight the battles of the past. He is fighting his battles against another teenager who picks up the mantle of the Jewish sideof the debate.

Meanwhile the father can see what is happening with the son but is unable to reach him. The ultimate battle between the two teenagers playing at representing the past in the present ends in death and imprisonment.

To a certain degree the blame is squarely on the shoulders of those that propogate the lies from the past with the grandmother, who remains unrepentant. But the father is also useless in the face of the past and unable to correct the path his son is taking.

In one way if the idea of the book was to make you think about the past then it works. But if it was also taking a swipe at the Internet and the way it can be exploited by extremists then it fails because it already feels simplistic and out of date. Still it can provoke some thoughts and that is what good literature should do.

The Damned United - post V

You knew that things were always going to end one way, because let's face it the ending has not been a secret. But what you are left trying to work out is about the character of Clough the man.

The problem with this, although a post story bibliography makes it clear it is incredibly well researched, you are not quite sure whether or not the Clough presented here is the real thing. There is also a line or two about Forest but nothing really to expand on the most successful years of his career or his pivotal relationship[ with Taylor.

No one really comes out of it with honours with the players as guilty of immaturity as their manager. What seems to have defeated Clough more than the results, the players and the ghost of Don Revie is Leeds itself and that is very much in keeping with Peace's other books. Yorkshire is the real enemy and the only survivor.

A review will come soon...

The Damned United - post IV

Clough loses his job at derby and in the present it goes from bad to worse with Leeds. These twin histories provide a glimpse into someone almost unable to appreciate an opposite point if view. You might be able to get away with it when the results are going your way but not when you are losing.

Living in hotels finding hostility everywhere starts to make it almost impossible for clough to settle. He is also haunted by failure and the hated be still feels for don revie. It starts to unhonge him and you can see a collision coming with board and players even before it begins.

This is all against a background of a grim yorkshire sketched out by peace. But he could gave let the landvape talk more like he does in red riding.

More soon...

The Damned United - post III

In some respects you have to feel sorry for brian clough as he constantly teeters ok the knife edge between success and disaster. Even when derby win the title he is still plagued with doubt and happy to self destruct friendships and good working relationships.

Underneath there is amazing self belief but with a blindness to his drink problem and an unwillingness to accept the true importance of his sidekick peter taylor he is doomed to make mistakes.

One of the biggest as the history if his loathing for Leeds emerges is to happily burn his bridges to settle his own scores. Words and views that come back to haunt him later on.

More tomorrow...

1983 - post IV

Not planning to give away the ending but it is pretty safe to say that you have to be concentrating right until the last word.

Things never really end the people involved just disappear or die and you are left wondering whether or not the corruption that gripped the police force has ever really left. Those who appeared to have won were plagued by bad dreams and memories and those who lost in a way had an early release from the hell.

The concluding chapters push your ability to remember the names and places from the first three books to the limit but it is worth it and the final pieces of the jigsaw are still slotting together in my mind.

Over the entire series there has been a palpable grimness that is created by the rain, darkness and the bleakness of most of the locations. Even the homes of the wealthy and corrupt are prisons of despair and hotel rooms and bars have all been poisoned by the fear and death from the past.

In the sense of poetically weaving a nightmare landscape where Rippers walks and angels are destroyed Peace brings that off brilliantly.

A review will follow at some point…

1983 - post III

No jokes today reading 1983.

As the extent and ambition of the police corruption starts to become clear you not only understand why certain things happened in the past but get a brutal insight into why Peter Hunter was never going to be able to get very far in Yorkshire.

You are still undecided as to wether or not Jobson, the Owl, is fully signed up to the corruption but as a third strand of narrative is added to the mix with BJ giving an insight into why him and Claire Strachan were hunted down its obvious that the Owl was not able to stop events.

Meanwhile Piggot is being sucked into a world of bad memories which become even worse when he understands that hand in glove with the police were some members of the legal profession.

His search for the truth, just like Hunter’s, is starting to push him to the edge of sanity. For readers trying to make the connections the idea that Jack Whitehead might have hooked up again with Eddie Dunford seems to linger with the Viva being sighted near the Redbeck but what are dreams and what is reality?