What Are You Reading

[Fading Fast]

The Philadelphian by Richard Powell, originally published in 1957

Book themes and styles have a vogue; today, for example, almost every new fiction book I read has a strong female character(s) defeating arrogant, sexist men; in the '50s, multi-generational family sagas were popular. Often, they would start with an immigrant coming to America and would proceed to track the family's advancement as several generations "climb" the social and economic ladder until they either have arrived at/near the top where their new status is threatened or they are just about to break into the top ranks but are being thwarted by "the old guard."

The Philadelphian is a darn fine example of the latter. A strong-willed young Irish girl arrives in Philadelphia in the middle of the 19th Century and, after finding employment as a maid in one of Philly's "finest" families, swears to herself that her son will be raised to join the ranks of Philly's elite.

For a 1950's view of a mid-1800s woman, Maggie is a heroine - she takes responsibilities for her actions, won't play victim (to a consensual sexual encounter with her employer's son) and fights to keep her child without taking charity. However, if written today, she wouldn't be seen as one, as she passionately wants a son. She understood that a son, in her era, would have a better chance of climbing up the ladder and she accepts some help from men along the way. Not that this 1950s' view of the 1850s was pure of biases, but it is revealing to see how much a character in the 1850s would change if written to meet today's heroine standards, especially since the 1850s themselves haven't change.

It takes a few more generations than Maggie hoped for her family to climb nearly to the top of the ladder, but her dreams and the novel's narrative really take off when her great grandson, Anthony, graduates from law school and begins apprenticing at one of Philly's old-line white shoe firms.

Powell clearly knows Philly's history and, in particular, the nuances and sinews of power that its ruling class used to keep its position. Anthony, her son, leverages his smarts at both law and people (once you have the former, the latter is the real key to entering the top of the social strata) to position himself to be valuable and acceptable to Philly's elite.

His hard, but overall, not-too-bumpy rise to the top becomes threatened as he is recruited - in highly mannered but protecting-itself fashion - by Philly's business and social leaders to defend one of its own errant sons from murder charges with the unstated (and immoral by the legal community's standards) goal of not besmirching the family even if the wayward progeny has to go down. The good of the many of Philly's elite outweighs the needs of its few or, even, one - it's a cold world.

The way Anthony navigates these dangerous waters is the climax of the book and worth the read alone, but the entire book is a high-end soap-opera page turner - something '50's era American writers all but perfected. And after you finish this fun trip through the American story / dream, you can look for its movie version, The Young Philadelphians, which was truncated by the demands and limits of Hollywood, but is still an enjoyable saponaceous indulgence.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Twilight At The World Of Tomorrow: Genius, Madness, and Murder and the 1939 World's Fair," by James Mauro.

With the New York World's Fair having just wrapped up its first season in the "Era Day By Day" thread, I found myself wondering if there was any really comprehensive, scholarly history of that decade-defining exposition. There really isn't -- there are lots of picture/nostalgia books, there are a couple of well-regarded novels, and there are plenty of essays and articles speculating on what it was all supposed to mean. But there really isn't a defnitive historical study of the Fair -- the closest is probably this book, published in 2010.

Mauro takes as his theme the convergence of several personalities whose trajectories led them to Flushing Meadow -- Grover Whalen, the impresario who became the Fair's top-hatted public face, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, the boisterous, dynamic personification of New York City, Robert Moses, the Dark Prince behind the scenes, Albert Einstein, who turned up as the living embodiment, for better or worse, of The World Of Tomorrow, and two ordinary New York City cops, Joe Lynch and Freddy Socha -- who were killed by a terrorist bomb outside the British Pavilion on July 4, 1940. The lives of these, and other important figures in the story, weave in and out of the narrative as the Fair evolves, occurs, and finally fades away.

There's a lot going on here, obviously. The Fair was an uneasy partnership between the idealistic social optimism of the New Deal era and the Boys From Marketing at their most crass, with Whalen, LaGuardia, and Moses all pulling in different directions toward their own specific purposes, and despite the cultural splash it made, the Fair was a financial flop, with attendance falling far short of projections. The backstage politics of the Fair dominate the narrative -- the spats-wearing, glossy-haired Whalen and his high-minded purposes versus LaGuardia's impetuous populism, Moses' idea of the Fair as little more stepping-stone toward his long-range vision for Flushing, and the bean-counting, dollar-uber-alles mentality of Harvey D. Gibson, who pushed Whalen into a figurehead job and took over, once it became clear that no one was going to make any money out of the Fair.

It's the tension between all these parties, and especially between Whalen and Gibson that gives the story some of its most entertaining moments, with Whalen watching in horror as Gibson turns the 1940 season into a New York version of a hick-town country fair, personified by a pork-bellied Midwestern hayseed character named Elmer, who roams the grounds slapping unsuspecting patrons on the back and bellowing HELLO FOLKS. The funniest moment in all this comes when the actor brought in to play this mascot character excitedly declares at a press conference that it's the best job he's had since he posed for a political poster as Joseph Stalin.

The story of Lynch and Socha, however, is coldly sobering -- with the attack on the British Pavilion flying in the face of the 1940 theme of "For Peace and Freedom," and the gruesomeness of the deaths of the two officers -- while the Fair hijinks go on without pausing -- is an unfortunate foreshadowing of the real "World Of Tomorrow." That bombing was blamed on everyone from the Nazis to the Irish Republican Army -- but seventy-nine years later, it remains unsolved.

This isn't the book to read if you want a description of the actual Fair -- Mauro touches on the various exhibits and attractions, commening on the weird juxtaposition of self-consicously highbrow educational presentations alongside topless girlie acts, carnival rides, and freak shows -- but there isn't really a detailed breakdown of everything the Fair had to offer. Nor are there very many pictures. Instead, what you get here is an attempt to put the whole phantasmagorica into some kind of context -- an effort which isn't always successful. Maybe that's the point -- the Fair tried to be so many things to so many people for so many reasons that there really isn't any one context you can put it into. But until a definitive history comes along, this one is a decent effort in that direction.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And here's Elmer himself, aka Leslie Ostrander, aka Joseph Stalin, introducing himself to Harvey D. Gibson...

HELLO FOLKS!

 

[Harp]

I need a scuffed, dog-eared, margin marked second-hand Clinton Rossiter Federalist Papers edition.
Bookie's may have one waiting for me tomorrow.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Re-reading parts of "Schlachtschiff Bismarck" by survivor Burkard Freiherr von Müllenheim-Rechberg (4th artillery officer).

 

[Tiki Tom]

Re-reading parts of "Schlachtschiff Bismarck" by survivor Burkard Freiherr von Müllenheim-Rechberg (4th artillery officer).

My father was a big fan of Graf von Luckner and his anachronistic exploits under sail during WWI.

On another topic altogether:

“The travel writer, once compared to James Bond and Indiana Jones, made a seaside villa in the Mani region his home away from Britain.”

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/travel-guide/a29390952/patrick-leigh-fermor-house-greece/

A couple of years ago, I went through an intense Patrick Leigh Fermor phase. I read everything he wrote, took long cross-country walks, and visited his beloved Crete. My enthusiasm has since cooled a bit, but he nonetheless harkens back to a certain type of old school scholar/adventurer who hardly exists any more. Shame.

 

[Harp]

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/travel-guide/a29390952/patrick-leigh-fermor-house-greece/

A couple of years ago, I went through an intense Patrick Leigh Fermor phase. I read everything he wrote, took long cross-country walks, and visited his beloved Crete. My enthusiasm has since cooled a bit, but he nonetheless harkens back to a certain type of old school scholar/adventurer who hardly exists any more. Shame.

The classical old school SAS/OSS breed was indeed a breed apart.
Fermor's wartime account of speaking ancient Greek with a captured German officer remains memorable.

 

[Harp]

I started an online New York Times subscription, and considered printing DC Circuit robe Jackson's
opinion pro subpoena this morning; however at 120 pages long, with the gist of her spiel indicating astigmatism
instead of clear constitutional focus, I backed off squeezing the trigger.

 

[Fading Fast]

Forbidden Hollywood: The Pre-Code Era (1930-1934): When Sin Ruled the Movies
By Mark Vieira

Published in 2019 as (as best as I can tell) part of a series of books sponsored by Turner Classic Movies

I love the movies from this period of Hollywood as they are shockingly modern in their subjects and reveal, if you can adjust your movie-watching meter for early '30s style and cultural differences. Casual sex, marital affairs, divorce, alcohol and drug use and abuse (yes, drug use and abuse), gambling, bootlegging, abortion, rape, very scantily clad women who have and enjoy sex, homosexuality and more - basically, all the things once considered "sins" (the fun ones and the bad ones) and challenges of real life are on display in this four-year window from when Hollywood started making "the talkies" until the existing censorship code was enforced with teeth at the end of '34.

Forbidden Hollywood is a mashup of a coffee table book with a solid historic overview of the forces at play pushing for and (with growing strength) against this realism in movies. And to the former, the book is worth it just for its beautiful - on heavy paper stock and in crystal-clear black and white - photographs of early '30s Hollywood. Sure, you can (I guess) Google most of them today, but sometimes sitting with a book, not a computer, and flipping pages, not clicking through screens, is a more pleasurable way to let pictures take you back in time.

As to the history, Vieira knows his 1930's Hollywood as he reveals the studios' ongoing fight to keep "sin" in movies - for artistic and, more so, financial reasons (people will pay to see other people doing fun and bad things) - against the censors' (from local community groups to national religious organizations including, most prominently, the Catholic Church) desire to "clean up" the movies. While the '30-'34 period is referred to as "pre-code" Hollywood, the reality is the code that would neuter pictures by the end of '34, was technically in effect from '29 on, but was, mainly, lightly and inconsistently enforced throughout.

The result is a period of very realistic films, but not the no-holds-barred gratuitousness that we see today as the studios had to bow somewhat to censorship pressures during those four years. It's this give and take - this push and pull - between the studios and the various censorship boards that drives the text. If there is a weakness in the book, it's that this narrative would be a bit hard to follow if you didn't already have some knowledge of Hollywood history from the period. To be sure, you'd get it, but the combination of coffee table book with historical account results in a few gaps in the story and some awkward jumping around - a mixed result that usually happens whenever there is more than one goal for a project.

That said, even a newbie would find it enjoyable as an overview of the period, while old hands will love having their memories constantly jarred. Plus, there are all the beautiful photographs. My new project is to keep an eye on TCM, as there are several pre-code movies mentioned in the book that I haven't yet - and, now, really want to - see.

And some bonus pics:

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Completed our read-aloud of The Magnificent Ambersons.
It was overlapping slightly with the current read, a biography of Lady Almina, who was the Countess of Carnavon, residing at Highclere Castle, the inspiration for the Downton Abbey television series. Engagingly written by the current Countess of Carnavon.

 

[Fading Fast]

World's Fair by E L Doctorow

Set in the '30s, this historical fiction is almost a time capsule of a certain type of childhood - that of a young boy growing up in New York in what turned out to be a downwardly-mobile family whose parents struggle to hold their finances and marriage together.

The child, Edgar, brings a mix of a precocious boy's view and an adult's perspective to growing up in the 1930s - playing with the dog his mother doesn't want but grudgingly comes to love, listening to his radio heroes like the Shadow (whom he fears could be killed by an enfilading machine gun), trips to crowded near-city beaches, seeing his father as family hero at times and, perspicaciously, as a man who feels constrained by the responsibilities of a family.

It's like a '30s cultural-curio store come to life in book form as washboards, slingshots, subways, coal-delivery trucks, glass milk bottles, kids dressed up for pictures, old ice boxes, new refrigerators and so on, all play a part in Edgar's world. Edgar also senses all the adult tensions - sick relatives, failing businesses, unfaithful spouses, overwhelming bills, etc. - through a smart child's eye that pulls the reader back to his or her own childhood efforts to make sense of the adult world.

While titled "World's Fair," the actual '39 World's Fair serves more as an Oz-like, futuristic dream world to an optimistic young boy in a spiraling-down family than the center of the story. His dad has promised to take them, but time, life distractions and money are obstacles. And yes, the point is that everyday life is the real World's Fair. But the actual '39 Fair does make a not-at-all-disappointing appearance toward the end. By this point in the story, we see the Fair's wonders of the future from a 1930s perspective. But, like insightful Edgar, we also see some of the flimflam and hucksterism behind it.

Half a fictional memoir that rattles around the 1930s and half an account of the timeless impressions and impact of childhood, Doctorow packs a lot of punch and insight into a odd package that is not easily categorized, but is, overall, a fun-and-moving page turner.

 

[LizzieMaine]

THat's a great book. Highly recommended. Young Edgar reminds me a lot of Herbie Bookbinder, Herman Wouk's childhood avatar in "The City Boy."

 

[Fading Fast]

THat's a great book. Highly recommended. Young Edgar reminds me a lot of Herbie Bookbinder, Herman Wouk's childhood avatar in "The City Boy."

Bought the book awhile back based on your recommendation and my love of Wouk, but have been saving it as I am that sure I'm going to love it.

 

[Harp]

Culled internet fare: Dissecting Bret Kavanaugh's 'Supreme Ambition' by Adam Cohen, The New York Times, 1202
a review of Ruth Marcus' Supreme Ambition; Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover

The post mortem continues inside the liberal labyrinth but I've enjoyed reading Marcus and might give this a go.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"The Testaments," by Margaret Atwood.

I've never seen the all-the-rage TV adaptation of "The Handmaid's Tale," but I've read the book, and was enthusiastic when I heard that Atwood, thirty years after the release of the original, was working on a sequel. And I'm pretty satisfied with it.

This book picks up fifteen years after the ambiguous finish of the first book -- with the theo-fascist Republic of Gilead trying to stem the flow of refugees into Canada, while at the same time searching for a long-lost child who's been turned into a propaganda figure by the arch-clerics of the Regime. That child turns out to be the long-lost daughter of Offred, the "Handmaid" at the center of the first book, now a sulky teenager living with foster parents in Toronto and completely unaware of her true identity. She becomes aware pretty quick, though, when Gilead agents murder said foster parents with a car bomb, and she's drawn into the complex world of the anti-Gilead resistance.

Meanwhile, another possible daughter of Offred is growing up in Gilead as the child of a high-ranking official of the regime, and at thirteen, is about to be married off to an elderly Founder of Gilead under the Old Testament-influenced laws of the regime. The circumstances of the two half-sisters will inevitably cross.

Threaded amidst the stories of the two young women are the reminiscences of Aunt Lydia -- a key figure in the first book who tells how she came to be involved in Gilead -- she was a judge in the old United States who was tortured into compliance with the new regime, and ended up in full charge of "the women's sphere." What she does with this position makes for some surprising revelations.

I was hoping, going into this book, for a bit more nuts-and-bolts about exactly how Gilead came to be -- the origins of the regime were touched upon in the first book, and while Aunt Lydia's reminiscences offer a few additional details, what turns out to be even more interesting are her refelections on how she became who she is following the formation of the Gilead state. "What would *you* have done?" is the constant unspoken question here, and it makes for a strong challenge to contemporary readers. Gilead happens not only because a group of powerful men exploit the desperate and the credulous by creating a fraudulent "scriptural" religious structure to justify their blind lust for power -- but because too many people are willing to look the other way until it's too late.

I probably won't watch the TV show, so this is probably it for me unless Atwood writes a third volume -- which she probably won't. I'd relish reading a full account of the collapse and overthrow of Gilead, but until then the hints dropped here as to the inevitable fate of any man-made "theocracy" will have to suffice.

 

[Fading Fast]

After the Party by Cressida Connolly published in 2018

Set mainly in late 1930s England, the author of this work of historical fiction wrote a book about three sisters involved in a famous/infamous political movement - The British Union of Fascists (BUF) - while somehow avoiding most of the politics of the movement. Even though the sisters' story is a pretty good one, it's still disappointing overall as skimming and skirting the politics of this one just doesn't work (as in a "how was the play otherwise Mrs. Lincoln" failing).

Yes, the three sisters have compelling, if by-the-number stories - the "good" girl who follows a conventional middle-class path, the "rebel" who goes for adventure and says the heck with social conventions and the "social climber" who, in this case, marries for money and position - but it's their odd coming together as adults who support the BUF and the outcome of that association that engages the reader.

But that's also why it is, ultimately, unsatisfying. We never fully understand the sisters' reasons for joining and the depth of their commitment to the BUF as the politics are elided. Maybe author Connolly was trying to keep the story focussed on the personal by keeping the to this day still controversial politics at arm's length and perhaps that would work with a story set in ancient Rome where the political passions of that era are truly history. But you can't write about World War II and be agnostic to even the British version of fascism.

There is some good time travel to the '30s in After the Party and, as noted, it's an engaging enough story about a family blasted apart by politics and realities of war, but that's also it's core weakness as it isn't confident enough to address the cause of the destruction.

 

[Harp]

Considered running the Inspector General's report but opted instead to stick with the New York Times coverage.
Barr and Durham have some differences with Horowitz; whose findings were somewhat predictable.
Horowitz tends to pull his punches.

 

[belfastboy]

Taleb's newest..."Skin in the Game". As usual an interesting read from a great thinker. Not his best work but still worth a read.

 

[crawlinkingsnake]

The Confederate Reader: How the South Saw the War by Richard Barksdale Harwell (1976). A series of short stories generally in chronological order as the war progressed. Interesting view points; some more than others, from the civilian population of the Confederate states.

 

[Harp]

The Articles of Impeachment

Said resolution cites abuse of power; obstruction of Congress.
The objective/subjective element of which is held within Article II of the Constitution.
Quite a tenuous reach.
______________

Read somewhere today that McConnell intends for a Senate trial, not simply a threshold motion.