What Are You Reading

[Alex Oviatt]

Currently reading Larson's The Splendid and the Vile, an interesting look at Churchill.

 

[Harp]

Currently reading Larson's The Splendid and the Vile, an interesting look at Churchill.

Ever read Manchester's The Last Lion? Atop my desk for years. Manchester's best, still, quite the slog.

 

[Fading Fast]

Currently reading Larson's The Splendid and the Vile, an interesting look at Churchill.

Read it last year and agree, an interesting look at Churchill. My comments on it here: #8369.

 

[Fading Fast]

Love in the Afternoon by Claude Anet originally published in France in 1924


"They persisted in proving to themselves that they were not in love, that between them stood nothing but an episode in which pleasure was the beginning and the end." - Claude Anet, Love in the Afternoon

"The lies we tell ourselves are the most subtle of all lies." - Lewis B. Smedes


I found my way to this short novel via the 1957 Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper movie Love in the Afternoon based on the book. Very loosely based on the book would be more accurate as you can see some of the book's outline in the movie, but it's much easier to note the many differences.

Set in pre-Revolutionary Russia (versus 1950s Paris, as in the movie), this 1924 novel has a surprisingly modern feel as the heroine - young, beautiful, scholastically brilliant and fiercely independent Ariane Nicolaevna - is the kind of heroine modern period writers love to create.

But modern writers, in their virtue-signalling glee, can't control themselves and often create a two-dimensional character who is more out of time than of their period. The intention of these modern writers is to have the character check every in-vogue progressive box versus creating a real, living, breathing and flawed human from a historical era.

Ariane Nicolaevna, though, is of pre-revolutionary Russia if famous 19th century Russian novelists accurately represented their country's views toward women, society and sexual freedom.

While hardly as libertine and out loud as our anything-goes 2021 world, 19th century Russia allowed a lot of sexual escapades to take place if handled with discretion and within the unwritten rules that kept "proper" society still looking, well, proper.

Ariane Nicolaevna, by the time she is a high school senior, is the cynosure of her provisional town as men of all ages so covet her that they shower Ariane with attention and gifts, often, in return for nothing more than the opportunity to be seen in public with her. That is an odd foreshadowing of our present-day social media age in this 19th century Russian village.

When her father denies her request for funds to go to university and the aunt who raised her attaches strings to her offer of tuition dollars, Ariane, very business like, obtains the funds from an older admirer in return for sex.

Sure, we're in the realm of the famous quote about having already established what a particular woman is with only the price left to discuss, but with limited options and done with cold detachment, Ariane comes out looking like a calculating woman in control of her situation.

It's now off to Moscow and university, where Ariane meets Constantin Michel, a man several years her senior. He's a successful and worldly businessman who is the first lover Ariane has wanted for pure passion and not for what she can obtain from him.

Yet, she still approaches her relationship with him in a detached manner often telling him this will be just a short affair. That aligns nicely with globe-trotting Constantin who avers he is an old pro at this and equally happy to have a quick affair before moving on.

Pause for a moment on the moderness of this 1924 novel looking back a decade or more from there to pre-Revolutionary Russia. But nothing then or now is ever easy.

We have two people who enjoy casual dalliances, not love affairs, getting together. What could go wrong? Well, one or both could fall in love and ruin the equanimity of their relationship. What if they both fall in love, but deny it to themselves and each other? What if they try so hard to deny it to themselves and each other they end up brutally hurting the person they love?

That is, basically, the last third of the novel. Two people who have designed their lives and psyches not to fall in love - who mock and dismiss it - begin falling in love and repeatedly cycle through the five stages of grief trying to deny it.

They lash out at each other, do petty things to hurt each other, talk about their other lovers (some real, some made up) or what they are going to do when their affair is over. Yet when they are not brutally hurting each other, they can't help falling in love.

(Spoiler alert) Literally, right at the end, they drop their guard and kinda, sorta admit their love or, at least, that they are going to stay together - end of novel. Yet it's only a somewhat happy ending as you wonder if these two can really do the hard work of sustaining a long-term relationship when they are so good at finding and indulging in casual affairs.

Love in the Afternoon has an incredibly modern feel to it, adjusted for time and place. Movies and novels before and since have been exploring its same theme: can two people turn casual sex into a life-long monogamous love. The human condition is eternal.

What oddly makes Anet's novel fresh is its 1924 publication date; a time when a women having casual sex openly and without guilt was a statement. It's libertine attitude is recognizable to us today, yet also, thankfully free of our modern obsessive politics. Love in the Afternoon is a short, entertaining trip to pre-Revolutionary Russia with a surprisingly open take on sex, love and relationships.

 

[Harp]

Love in the Afternoon by Claude Anet originally published in France in 1924


"They persisted in proving to themselves that they were not in love, that between them stood nothing but an episode in which pleasure was the beginning and the end." - Claude Anet, Love in the Afternoon

"The lies we tell ourselves are the most subtle of all lies." - Lewis B. Smedes

Neither book nor film have I acquainted-will read Anet but cannot bear watching Audrey and Cooper-
it's like Sabrina with her and Bogie. Badly cast too long the tooth... (A college wine & cheese party
fondly recall, Audrey's love of her life was William Holden, trouwaz he had had a Vaze, no kids.)

The late American author James Salter penned a splendid spin christened A Sport and a Pastime
which I hardly had begun before I lateralled it over to a gal pal for her feminist Hyde Park book club's
salacious consider in a moment of fiendish vicarious delight. This was during the Kavanaugh hearings
when I tried explaining nuanced cross examination to a hard core feminist physician and physicist,
failed utterly over lunch by critique or crook to prove predonderant evidentiary lack; so I bade toss
this literary Molotov cocktail with an excellent restaurant recommendation for her post Opera girls
night out that weekend. Salter's an intellectual panty twister, caught the feminist gals off guard
with his lecherous narrative. They loved it.

 

[Fading Fast]

Neither book nor film have I acquainted-will read Anet but cannot bear watching Audrey and Cooper-
it's like Sabrina with her and Bogie. Badly cast too long the tooth... (A college wine & cheese party
fondly recall, Audrey's love of her life was William Holden, trouwaz he had had a Vaze, no kids.)

The late American author James Salter penned a splendid spin christened A Sport and a Pastime
which I hardly had begun before I lateralled it over to a gal pal for her feminist Hyde Park book club's
salacious consider in a moment of fiendish vicarious delight. This was during the Kavanaugh hearings
when I tried explaining nuanced cross examination to a hard core feminist physician and physicist,
failed utterly over lunch by critique or crook to prove predonderant evidentiary lack; so I bade toss
this literary Molotov cocktail with an excellent restaurant recommendation for her post Opera girls
night out that weekend. Salter's an intellectual panty twister, caught the feminist gals off guard
with his lecherous narrative. They loved it.

You sold me on it. I just ordered a copy of "A Sport and a Pastime."

 

[Harp]

You sold me on it. I just ordered a copy of "A Sport and a Pastime."

Salter's The Hunters; and Burning The Days are two selections from his literary canon worth reading.

A West Point graduate circa Second World War era, Salter entered the Air Force and flew Sabre fighters
during Korea, wrote The Hunters, resigned his commission and spent the rest of his life pursuing the
writer's craft. His style is ill disciplined but sufficiently taut, neither Hemingway nor Fitzgerald but a
distant relative of recognizable familiarity yet his own man with a distinct approach and sure touch.

The Hunters became a film starring Robert Mitchum but failed to capture the book's true essence.
Salter turned his hand to Hollywood scripting, wrote Robert Redford's film Downhill Racer, and scribbled
a memoir of his youth and Hollywood tenure in his Burning The Days.

A discernible character flaw mars Salter, his work bears a cynicical take too pronounced to ignore.
In some ways he repels, and comparison to others such as Fitzgerald are valid but only up to a
certain fixed marker before the bet gets called off. Worth a winter stock up with some titles
and short stories easily found.

 

[Alex Oviatt]

Just acquired a 1956 first edition of Esquire's Drink Book and fascinating reading/drinking it makes. Sits nicely next to my Savoy Cocktail first edition and others. Off to The Smoke House tonight so will have to have a vintage-inspired cocktail....

 

[Fading Fast]

Butterfield 8 by John O'Hara originally published in 1935


"...she was thinking that the only thing she wanted was to be with Liggett, lying in bed or on the floor or anywhere, drunk as hell, taking dope, doing anything he wanted."

- Gloria Wandrous thinking about sex with her illicit lover Weston Liggett


Twenty-three years before Truman Capote created Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's, John O'Hara had created a harder core New York City party girl slash high-priced somewhat prostitute in Butterfield 8's Gloria Wandrous.

If Ms. Golightly shocked 1950s America, then Ms. Wandrous should have blasted American into orbit back in the 1930s. While the sex is palliated in Breakfast at Tiffany's, you need a scorecard to keep track of Wandrous' between-the-sheets adventures in Butterfield 8, so much so, even she admits they are too numerous to remember.

Yet, as with explicit pre-code 1930s movies, it seems America in that decade was more willing to be exposed to life's realities than in the 1950s - at least on the surface. Booze, drugs (cocaine), affairs, prostitution, gambling, divorce, childhood sexual abuse, lesbianism, dirty cops: it's all there in this 1935 bestseller that makes 1958's "shocking" offering from Capote look tame.

Protagonist Gloria Wandrous, not subtle, but O'Hara had fun with that name, apparently was the author's fictional take on the life of, also wonderfully named, real-life Manhattan party girl Starr Faithfull. Faithfull, born Marian Starr Wyman - then her mother divorced and married Stanley Faithfull - was found washed up dead on a Long Island beach in 1931.

When we meet Gloria, she's waking up in a wealthy married man's apartment. He's gone, so she wanders around looking at all the nice things, takes a shower, has a drink, steals the wife's mink coat and heads down to Greenwich Village to meet a friend.

Beautiful Gloria seems to float through Manhattan's nightlife of speakeasies, clubs, bars, drugs, men, hotels with an almost blasé aloofness supported by her mother and uncle who still have some of their upper-middle-class money from before the Depression. Gloria also picks up some extra cash from the "kindness" of the men she sleeps with.

But Weston Liggett, the man whose apartment she woke up in and with whom she had, what she thought would be, a one-night stand, has affected her in an unsettling way. Ms. Gloria Wanderous might be in love, whatever that means in her mixed-up mind and mixed-up life.

LIggett is a wealthy, proper, society and business man. He's married to the "right" kind of woman, has two charming daughters, belongs to the "better" clubs and has social-registry friends. Basically, he seems to have a life to envy.

Yet he is either having a midlife crisis or, like Gloria, is falling in love. But, despite his outward appearance of success and control, his mind and life are no less mixed up than hers; so, we have two very unstable people smashing into each other.

Gloria is more than "mixed up" because she was molested at the age of eleven by a close adult male family friend who kissed and touched her inappropriately, but did not rape her. That, even in a novel, had to be a shocking reveal for its day. From that moment on, Gloria' personality changed and, it's assumed, explains her wanton adult lifestyle.

Individually, Gloria and Liggett are well-drawn characters, but you struggle to feel and believe in their love for each other. Maybe that's intentional as both are really looking for a lifeboat from their unhappiness with their love affair being more an escape than the real thing.

But the wreckage the affair does to both their lives is a real thing as Liggett confesses all to his wife, which starts the we're-getting-a-divorce ball rolling. He didn't have to do this, as his wife was happy to keep the marriage going under a don't-ask-don't-tell policy, but maybe for love, maybe for anger, maybe for stupidity, Liggett wanted to blow it all up.

Gloria, comparing her life to Liggett's proper married life, can no longer go on playing the carefree party girl as she's beginning to disgust herself. But she also can't quite see her future with Liggett really working out.

The conclusion (spoiler alert) has Gloria killed in either a suicide or accident similar to her real-life inspiration Starr Faithfull. But Butterfield 8 is not a plot-driven book as it's hard to care about Liggett and Gloria's affair. Neither of them are mature enough to feel true love for anyone besides themselves.

The real power, exposition and fun of Butterfield 8 is Gloria Wanderous' very New York City nightlife existence, which has a very strong echo in New York City's disco and drug zeitgeist of the 1970s (or its 1980s cocaine-fueled sequel). Proving, once again, that little is new as the past had all of our modern vices.

It's also pretty amazing that Truman Capote's fictional Holly Golightly created such a stir in 1958 when her darker antecedent, Gloria Wandrous, had already shown America the sex, drugs and rock-and-roll lifestyle of a New York City party girl a couple of decades earlier.


N.B. Butterfield 8 was turned into a pretty good movie in 1960, comments here: #29042.

 

[Harp]

I had no idea O'Hara wrote Butterfield 8. Should have caught Bd8 in college.
Happy Jack was the maverick loner scribe, bit of an outcast clung to him, and more the author who
needed to be sought out. Always preferred him to Henry Miller, can recall a long college weekend
reading Baldwin's Giovanni's Room with some Celine, and Miller, and O'Hara. Jack drew the short straw
for some reason and I think it was Bd8 passed over. Saw some snips of the film on television,
really just to see La Liz.. After reading above review she was perfect for the role.

 

[RBH]

Just finished "Bound By Steel And Stone'' by our very own Hatted Professor Brad Bowers.
A very well written and entertaining read. It is about the Colorado-Kansas Railway in Colorado from about 1890-1960.

Great job Mr. Bowers, great job!!!!

 

[Trenchfriend]

Nordlicht Krimi by Anette Hinrichs

"Die Tote im Küstenfeuer" (2021)

Danish-german manhunt. Sønderborg/Flensburg.

 

[Fading Fast]

Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth, published in 1959


Philip Roth is an author whose writing talents I respect, but whose politics and philosophical views usually turn me off so much that I'm annoyed reading his books. Hence, I've read only four or five Roth novels over the years despite his double-digit output.

However, having recently caught a blurb about Goodbye, Columbus being his first novel, I was intrigued as it's interesting to read a famous novelist at the beginning of his or her career. Plus, I guessed (fortunately, correctly) that the politics would be light in this one.

In Goodbye, Columbus, Neil Klugman is a young Jewish man who graduated from Rutgers Newark (relevant NJ factoid: Rutgers Newark is an orphaned-sister college within Rutgers University) who lives with his aunt and uncle in a small apartment in lower-middle-class Newark, NJ. He meets and begins dating very upper-middle-class Jewish Radcliffe college student Brenda Patimkin of the pretty, spacious and wealthy nearby suburb of Short Hills.

Goodbye, Columbus is an inside-Jewish baseball story, but it took me a bit to realize this as I was waiting for the typical Roth interfaith-sexual-fascination tic to appear. But nope, this is all about a poor Jewish boy dating a rich Jewish girl, yet, even intra-faith, the cultural divide is pretty darn wide.

The attraction between these two kids from different worlds is the usual: he/she is intriguing because he/she is not like the other boys/girls in his/her world. For Neil, the fun is coming to Brenda's much-more-comfortable locale of country clubs, big houses, new cars, pools, private golf courses, etc., as her family welcomes him despite their reservations. For her, she gets to "rebel" safely by bringing a not-too-dangerous "outsider" inside her protected sphere.

While Brenda takes all the expensive stuff for granted, Neil is amazed at seeing a world of extra and well-stocked basement refrigerators, in-house bars with every liquor conceivable, sporting equipment casually lying around and money for whatever comes up.

In what was a big deal in that day, Neil and Brenda quickly become sexually active with Neil sneaking into Brenda's room each night when he stays over. In another ahead-of-its-time move, Brenda is the more aggressive one sexually. But the story is less about their sexual relationship than how they can bridge their two oddly distant worlds.

While they believe they are in love and try, somewhat, to figure out how to keep the relationship going after the summer when Brenda will be back at Radcliffe and Neil back at his dead-end job at the Newark public library, we know before they do (spoiler alert) that this was a fling, not a love affair for the ages.

Rumbling in the background of the Neil-Brenda drama is the gulf between the "successful" Jews of Short Hills and the struggling ones of Newark. Usually, the struggling ones would be presented as heroic and morally bound by older values not compatible with success in capitalist America; whereas, the successful ones would be presented as sellouts for money and acceptance.

Yet here, most of the Jews are presented as "gonifs" (small cheats or schemers) who all want to succeed, but some (the Short Hills ones) are just better at it than the others (the Newark ones).

It's an unflattering picture all around that, my guess, was only able to be shown because author Roth is Jewish. Having worked in New York City for over three decades, it doesn't gel at all with my experience, which is that all groups have their good people and "gonifs." However, this young author didn't flinch from expressing his scathing view of his own people.

Roth, who one can't help feeling identified with somewhat-autobiographical Neil, also didn't flinch at limning an unlikable lead character. Neil has a chip on his shoulder about everything Newark, constantly goads Brenda and her family about their wealth and, in general, does small selfish things, yet you don't outright hate the guy. Not that Brenda is any prize herself, as she's basically spoiled and a, umm, what's that word that starts with the letter B and rhymes with witch?

Kudos to, at the time, newbie author Roth for keeping the reader engaged in this short novel with two unlikable lead characters as that's not easy to do. So it is no surprise Goodbye, Columbus is an award winning book, showing that, right out of the shoot, Roth's talent was recognized.

 

[TREEMAN]

Just received The Iliad this week… hopefully I will start reading it tomorrow…

 

[Harp]

Just received The Iliad this week… hopefully I will start reading it tomorrow…

I had a classics prof at UIC/Illinois-Chicago who assigned both Illiad and Odyssey same term. He would say at
class end, "Read the Il to page---for Wednesday" meaning half the book. Loved that immensely. Other students
were aghast, complained....but I had spent two years in Greece and just adored country and its classical canon.
Put the bourbon down and grab a bottle of Greek Domestica to sip while reading.

 

[Harp]

I spent Friday afternoon stuffed with pizza after an office party and surfed the net instead
of working for any available CRT law review articles; found Fenigold's Chicago Law Review piece
titled "All Poor Lives Matter": How Class-Not Race Logic Reinscribes Race and Class Privilege;
along with some Columbia University examin culled earlier but still unread.

And the New Criterion October issue wherein Victor David Hanson's Classical patricide was there
for the taking, which I took with a dozen or so related articles on classical decline today.
Of note, Hanson is or was a Lounger, recall a post or comment by him a few years back if I am
not mistaken, been some time ago.

 

[Harp]

View attachment 369497
Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth, published in 1959


Philip Roth is an author whose writing talents I respect, but whose politics and philosophical views usually turn me off so much that I'm annoyed reading his books. Hence, I've read only four or five Roth novels over the years despite his double-digit output.

However, having recently caught a blurb about Goodbye, Columbus being his first novel, I was intrigued as it's interesting to read a famous novelist at the beginning of his or her career. Plus, I guessed (fortunately, correctly) that the politics would be light in this one.

In Goodbye, Columbus, Neil Klugman is a young Jewish man who graduated from Rutgers Newark (relevant NJ factoid: Rutgers Newark is an orphaned-sister college within Rutgers University) who lives with his aunt and uncle in a small apartment in lower-middle-class Newark, NJ. He meets and begins dating very upper-middle-class Jewish Radcliffe college student Brenda Patimkin of the pretty, spacious and wealthy nearby suburb of Short Hills.

Goodbye, Columbus is an inside-Jewish baseball story, but it took me a bit to realize this as I was waiting for the typical Roth interfaith-sexual-fascination tic to appear. But nope, this is all about a poor Jewish boy dating a rich Jewish girl, yet, even intra-faith, the cultural divide is pretty darn wide.

The attraction between these two kids from different worlds is the usual: he/she is intriguing because he/she is not like the other boys/girls in his/her world. For Neil, the fun is coming to Brenda's much-more-comfortable locale of country clubs, big houses, new cars, pools, private golf courses, etc., as her family welcomes him despite their reservations. For her, she gets to "rebel" safely by bringing a not-too-dangerous "outsider" inside her protected sphere.

While Brenda takes all the expensive stuff for granted, Neil is amazed at seeing a world of extra and well-stocked basement refrigerators, in-house bars with every liquor conceivable, sporting equipment casually lying around and money for whatever comes up.

In what was a big deal in that day, Neil and Brenda quickly become sexually active with Neil sneaking into Brenda's room each night when he stays over. In another ahead-of-its-time move, Brenda is the more aggressive one sexually. But the story is less about their sexual relationship than how they can bridge their two oddly distant worlds.

While they believe they are in love and try, somewhat, to figure out how to keep the relationship going after the summer when Brenda will be back at Radcliffe and Neil back at his dead-end job at the Newark public library, we know before they do (spoiler alert) that this was a fling, not a love affair for the ages.

Rumbling in the background of the Neil-Brenda drama is the gulf between the "successful" Jews of Short Hills and the struggling ones of Newark. Usually, the struggling ones would be presented as heroic and morally bound by older values not compatible with success in capitalist America; whereas, the successful ones would be presented as sellouts for money and acceptance.

Yet here, most of the Jews are presented as "gonifs" (small cheats or schemers) who all want to succeed, but some (the Short Hills ones) are just better at it than the others (the Newark ones).

It's an unflattering picture all around that, my guess, was only able to be shown because author Roth is Jewish. Having worked in New York City for over three decades, it doesn't gel at all with my experience, which is that all groups have their good people and "gonifs." However, this young author didn't flinch from expressing his scathing view of his own people.

Roth, who one can't help feeling identified with somewhat-autobiographical Neil, also didn't flinch at limning an unlikable lead character. Neil has a chip on his shoulder about everything Newark, constantly goads Brenda and her family about their wealth and, in general, does small selfish things, yet you don't outright hate the guy. Not that Brenda is any prize herself, as she's basically spoiled and a, umm, what's that word that starts with the letter B and rhymes with witch?

Kudos to, at the time, newbie author Roth for keeping the reader engaged in this short novel with two unlikable lead characters as that's not easy to do. So it is no surprise Goodbye, Columbus is an award winning book, showing that, right out of the shoot, Roth's talent was recognized.

...Vaguely recall a Playboy excerpt while in college, Roth's book quickly read or flipped through,
and a film version with Richard Benjamin and I think Paula Prentiss. Portnoy's Complaint
also jumbled inside mixed memory. Roth I largely eschewed for reasons cannot remember.

 

[tombrownny]

I am reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
I need it to work LegalFiles

 

[Harp]

I am reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
I need it to work LegalFiles

Forget LegalFiles and all other law software; stick to paper law records and hold Prosser close to your heart;
all the while drinking the smoke from the scholar's lamp; since lawyers, like the vampires they are, never sleep at night.

 

[byrne77]

I am reading an article on Use of Vitamin B12 and B9 in goli gummies because I am a fitness freak. It is always hard to find a natural fruit that contains both vitamins but I found goli gummies very useful to fulfill our body's need for vitamins