Spike Lee: 'BlacKkKlansman' (2018)

When all the smoke clears from our current Trump era, Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman (2018) will endure as a cultural document, a permanent indictment of White Power racism and other forms of atrocious stupidity. At some point, Trump will be long gone and the world will be looking back aghast and in amazement. In the meantime, this film is well-worth seeing on the big screen for maximum impact here and now.

With BlacKkKlansman, there's a lot to respond to, but for the time being, here are only a few observations. One is digging the way Lee shows consciousness raising in the 1970s. During a Black Power meeting featuring Kwame Ture (aka Stokeley Carmichael, played by Corey Hawkins), we see "floating faces" absorbing Ture's incisive analysis of race relations and power imbalances. In its sequel, Stallworth (John David Washington) and Dumas (Laura Harrier) advance in the direction of a burning cross, pistols drawn, ready for direct action as needed. (I've seen the latter technique referred to as a "People Mover" shot).

Also, we see a range of White Power behavior, institutional (as Ture termed it) within the Colorado Springs Police Department and personal; we also see a range of intensity of commitment and engagement in both the White Power and Black Power movements. Within the KKK, there's a local men's club figurehead, a clown, and a terrifying psycho (played by Ryan Eggold, Paul Walter Hauser and Jasper Pääkkönen, respectively). Somewhere in between these three at the national level is David Duke (Topher Grace). There are other characters to consider, too, such as the one played by Adam Driver (Flip Zimmerman). Dig it! 

Today's Rune: Possessions. 

Michael Schultz: 'Cooley High' (1975)

Cooley High (1975). Directed by Michael Schultz, who also directed Car Wash (1976), covered here last month. Here's a link. 

The setting for Cooley High is Chicago in the year 1964. A fairly low-budget film, it was a hit in the mid-1970s, an exciting time for cultural offerings. Scripted by Eric Monte, who also worked on What's Happening!! (which shifted the Cooley High setting to Los Angeles). 

Main actors include Glynn Turman as Preach, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs as Cochise, Cynthia Davis as Brenda and Garret Morris as Mr. Mason, a teacher-mentor who looks out for them. Hilton-Jacobs was also in Welcome Back, Kotter, a 1970s series that co-starred John Travolta. 

Preach shows the initially dubious Brenda that they have a shared interest in poetry. He's got a sort of Thelonius Monk-Dizzy Gillespie-Spike Lee kind of look with those glasses and, when roaming around, his cap. 

Cooley High isn't all fun and games. There's a sense of mortality hovering in the background, with a couple of poignant drinking salutes to the dead -- a custom with which I am quite familiar.

Cooley High is also nicely enriched with a Motown-powered soundtrack.

Today's Rune: Partnership.    

Jan Němec: 'A Report on the Party and the Guests' (1966)

Jan Němec's O slavnosti a hostech  / A Report on the Party and [the] Guests / The Party and the Guests (1966).  Banned in Czechoslovakia! Director exiled! Such facts make this film all the more compelling. In 2018, brutish leaders are in style again, randomness rules, and all bets are off. In short, this film breathes surrealism with a touch of parable concerning social expectations, management, fear and control. 

A small group of friends are enjoying a picnic in the country. They see a wedding party pass by. Then, a group of men led by an apparent psychopath arrive and make them do absurd things, until a higher up appears and next directs them to a lakeside celebration. However, one of the guests prefers not to stay. He escapes, and is then hunted by a mob while some guests remain at table, putting out candles. 

There's an eerie, unsettling feeling watching this film, the kind you might get reading Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Jan Klusák as Rudolf (pictured above) is the most effective actor, projecting volatile menace through buffoonery. He reminds me of the Rip Torn character in Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), an adaption of the Tennessee Williams play, as well as "The Misfit."

Today's Rune: The Self. 

Jaroslav Hašek, 'The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War,' Part 1

Jaroslav Hašek, The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War / Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války / aka The Good Soldier Švejk (1921-1923).

Told largely from the perspective of Švejk, a Czech soldier in the service of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the Great War of 1914-1918, Hašek shows The War to be a stupid squander and Life to be Absurd. In the words of a certain Sex Pistols song, "God save this mad parade!"

I read the Penguin Books translation years ago, but last night finished the newer translation by Zdeněk "Zenny" Sadloň (entire set, 2000-2009) and Emmett M. Joyce (Book One only), which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Švejk (rhymes with Bake) falls in and out of trouble constantly. About a third of the way into Book One, he's examined by a panel of military doctors. Is he an idiot or "a scoundrel . . . mak[ing] light of the military service?"

Does Švejk think for himself or not, the Command Chief Physician* wants to know. Not, Švejk answers. Why not?

Švejk's answer: "I dutifully report that . . . it is forbidden for soldiers in the military to think. When I was with the 91st Regiment years ago, our captain would always say, 'A soldier must not think on his own. His superiors think for him. As soon as a soldier starts thinking, then he's not a soldier anymore, but some kind of mangy civilian. Thinking doesn't lead . . ."   

~~ Jaroslav Hašek, The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War, Book One. The Samizdat edition of the new English rendition, translated by Zdeněk "Zenny" Sadloň and Emmett M. Joyce, 1st Books Library, 2000, page 78.

Little does the officer corps realize that the entire empire will collapse by war's end, and that meanwhile, nearly all they think and do is ridiculous.

Today's Rune: Movement.

*Senior staff doctor in the Cecil Parrott translation. 

The Lais of Marie de France (circa 1150-1215 A.D.)

The Lais of Marie de France, translated with an introduction by Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby. Second edition with two further lais in the original Old French. London: Penguin Books, 1999.

Marie de France (circa 1150-1215) accomplished two projects in one: she saved old tales from oblivion while putting her own stamp on their retelling. The results are terse, interesting and revealing. Wherein romance is the main game, human psychology remains the same. 

"Equitan" leaps out as a tale of amour fou, or crazy love. Equitan, the Lord of Nantes, is smitten by the wife of his seneschal (in today's parlance, his chief of staff or main lieutenant).

Poor Equitan! "Love admitted him into her service and let fly in his direction an arrow which left a very deep wound in him. It was launched at his heart and there it became firmly fixed. Wisdom and understanding were of no avail . . . Unable to withstand its power, he was forced to give Love his full attention . . ." (page 57).

Soon Equitan is "dying" from love, enough so that he proposes to "the lady" (who is never named) that she either "bring comfort to him or cause his death." (page 58).

She listens, and considers. She then counters with pragmatic musing. "Love is not honourable" she notes, "unless it is based on equality." And, as true today as it was 800 years ago: "If anyone places his [or her] love higher than is appropriate for his [or her] station in life, he [or she] must fear all manner of things." (page 58). 

Nonetheless, they take the plunge, to hell with the consequences. Amour fou!

It is for her insights into human psychology, both individual and social, that Marie de France resonates. Her cultural preservation of olden tales is like tasty icing on the cake.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.  

Akira Kurosawa: 'The Bad Sleep Well' / 悪い奴ほどよく眠る (1960)

In The Bad Sleep Well / 悪い奴ほどよく眠る (1960), Akira Kurosawa tackles a still very contemporary theme: institutional greed and corruption, cover-up. and behind-the-scenes machinations.

Shot in black and white (with elements of silent films -- like special emphasis on faces and gestures), the movie's basic set-up is thus: Nishi (Toshiro Mifune) plans to take revenge on his corporate father's tormentors. 

The film is developed in waves, with a grand wedding, reporters asking questions, corruption investigations, and much unspooling intrigue. 

The Bad Sleep Well twists along to include an attempted suicide at the mouth of a (real) live volcano, clandestine night meetings, and semi-hostages secreted in the ruins of a (real) munitions factory bombed by the Allies during World War II.  

Admirers of Alfred Hitchcock and the Coen brothers will especially dig this production. 

Those even barely attuned to what's going on today, from Trumpian America to Brazil to South Korea, from Fukushima Japan to around the globe, will surely grok the enduring connections across time and space between egotistical organizational chess pieces bound up in graft, greed and sheer folly, so well-depicted in this film.

The Criterion Collection includes added bonus materials with its DVDs, including a relevant chunk of Akira Kurosawa: It is Wonderful to Create (2002). 

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Anita Nair: 'Ladies Coupé' (2001)

Anita Nair's Ladies Coupé (2001) gives readers a glimpse into some of the workings and manners of India in the late twentieth century. It's really a series of tales related by different women traveling on a train to Kanyakumari.  They are interrelated but could also work as stand-alone stories. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Reminds me somewhat of Tosin Otitoju's Three Sisters (2015) which can be found via here.

Akhila, the main character in Ladies Coupé, has been a primary caregiver for her family. Now in her mid-forties, she's philosophical about life. On the train early on, she chats with a fellow passenger: "'As far as I'm concerned, marriage is unimportant. Companionship, yes . . . The problem is, I wish to live by myself but everyone tells me that a woman can't live alone. What do you think? Can a woman live by herself?'" (page 21). In this way, Anita Nair, the author, also happens to be directly engaging her readers with interesting questions like these. 

Akhila's friend Margaret at one point says: "'Akhila, if there is one virtue I have, it is immunity to what people think of me. Naturally this makes them dislike me even more. People don't like to think that their opinion of someone means nothing to that person. And when it is a woman . . . the thought is intolerable" (page 136).

A couple more quips. "Often Akhila had to remind herself that this woman who gnawed at her nerves like a relentless mouse was her sister" (page 160).

"It seems to me more and more that I know nothing" (page 190).

Given the sometimes long names and nicknames of people, places and things, including foods, I found it helpful to jot down notes to more easily keep track of everything. Now I'd like to eat some Tamil food and think about social expectations and reincarnation. Cool beans!

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

Sarah Bakewell: 'At the Existentialist Café' (2016): Part Two

Photo by Alberto Korda: March 5, 1960, Havana.

Finished a first read-through of Sarah Bakewell's At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others (New York: Other Press, 2016).

Let's pick it up with Jean-Paul Sartre. Though he loved to be free, “[i]t seemed that Sartre would rarely be as relaxed and happy again as he had been as a prisoner of war” (page 143). Think about that! And this: he escaped the POW camp and made his way back to Paris. 

As for Simone de Beauvoir, she “seemed more sensitive than Sartre to . . . subtle interzones in human life. The Second Sex was almost entirely occupied with the complex territory where free choice, biology and social and cultural factors meet and mingle to create a human being who gradually becomes set in her ways as life goes on. Moreover, she had explored this territory more directly in a short treatise of 1947, The Ethics of Ambiguity” (page 228). To backtrack a little, “existentialism is always a philosophy of freedom in situation” (page 228).
 

We make our choices within given circumstances, and we also make them within historical time. If we lived in North Korea now or the American South in 1840, our options (even our imagined options) would be different. Much depends on our socio-economic position – including literacy and knowledge of alternate possibilities. In both cases, powerful obstacles would block many of our choices in life.  

Our physical condition will also help determine the limit of our options within a spectrum of finite possibilities. 
 

What is our gender identification, what is our age? 

Throw in revolution, war, famine and pestilence and all bets are off. 

Today's Rune: Movement. 

Sofia Coppola: 'Marie Antoinette' (2006)

Kirsten Dunst is so good as Peggy Blumquist in the latest season of FX's Fargo that I finally got around to seeing her play the lead role in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006).  

What to make of the movie overall? Visually, it's a knockout. Coppola plunges us into the fashions and elaborate protocols of the Ancien Régime of France. But we know the end is nigh. We don't actually see any guillotines, but we know they're somewhere over the rainbow.

Besides the dazzle and pop of its visuals, Marie Antoinette departs from the more common earnest approach to costume drama in its choice of music. There is period music, but Coppola links the life and times of Marie Antoinette to the 1980s with songs by such dark luminaries as Gang of Four, Siouxsie and the Banshees, New Order, The Cure, Bow Wow Wow and Adam & the Ants. This keeps things lively, certainly, with a modern sense of urgency behind the supremely foolish and decadent One Percenter lifestyle depicted throughout Marie Antoinette. 

Sofia Coppola also seems to be suggesting of Marie and her attendant choices, "Don't hate the playa, hate the game." 

Love the choice of casting in Marie Antoinette. The most endearing to me are Rip Torn as Louis XV and Asia Argento as Madame du Barry; they have a genuine affection for each other, yet Madame du Barry is looked down upon as something less than legitimate.

Lots of great players: Steve Coogan as Florimond Claude, Comte de Mercy-Argenteau; Marianne Faithfull as Empress Maria Theresa; Judy Davis, Danny Huston, Molly Shannon and so forth. Jason Schwartzman is so convincing in making Louis XVI a hapless buffoon that it seems natural to him. 

Overall, what you get with Marie Antoinette is ambiance, helping us empathize with the character Marie Antoinette as played by Kirsten Dunst, though it's also easy to see why in reality the status quo will be destroyed by the French Revolution.

Today's Rune: Joy. 

Black Swans of History in the Year of the Fire Monkey: Bernie Sanders

The USA hasn't seen a serious national political campaign mounted by a Socialist since the 1920 presidential election. Ahead of the 2016 election, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an Independent and Democratic Socialist, is running as one of the two major Democratic candidates seeking the presidency, all the while generating a lot of excitement and energy.

A hundred years ago, the Socialists ran as a third party and garnered 3% of the popular vote. In Oklahoma, the Socialists in 1916 brought in 15.5% of the vote - a sharp contrast with the last couple of cycles (2008 and 2012), which went heavily Republican and even more heavily Conservative/Tea Party Republican. In 1912, Oklahoma had gone 16% for Eugene Debs, in 1908, 8.5%, and in 1920, 5.3%.  Recall also that women could only vote in some states and couldn't vote nationwide until the 1920 election -- less than a hundred years ago.  

During the 2016 Democratic Primaries, Bernie Sanders  (b. September 8, 1941, Brooklyn) has outright won in New Hampshire and tied in Iowa. Even in very conservative places, he's exceeded 20% of the popular vote among Democrats.

Feel the Bern! 

What is Bernie Sanders' appeal?  He is direct, dramatic and endearing, going after "Wall Street," "Big Banks" and billionaires. These are particularly good targets in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008. 

Sanders seeks to bring a "Revolution" to Washington, making health care universal, a college education tuition free, and the environment better protected, among other things. If anyone wondered what happened to the Occupy Wall Street movement, "Feel the Bern" may well represent its aspirations. 

In 1979, Bernie Sanders wrote and narrated Eugene V. Debs: Trade Unionist, Socialist, Revolutionary, 1855-1926. He knows history well.

In my own family, there were several coal miners laboring away during the late 1800s and early 1900s. At least one miner from both my maternal and paternal lines died in a mining accident (in Pennsylvania and Illinois, respectively), and others died fairly young from the impact of terrible working conditions on their health. Several of my ancestors were active members of the Progressive Miners of America aka Progressive Mine Workers of America. 

Personally, I've been a Socialist since age 23. I support social spaces and concepts  -- libraries, parks large and small, mass transit, and universal health care, etc. -- and a well-defined separation of church and state. 

I'm also a pragmatist. While Sanders has certainly shaken up the race as a Democratic Black Swan foil to Donald J. Trump in the Republican field, the reality is that Hillary Clinton remains the front runner for the Democrats.  

The chances of a Socialist "Revolution" taking charge of the conservative so-called "Center Right" USA, let alone withstanding a savage "Counter-Revolution" from the "Trumpenproletariat," Big Business, Tea Party brutes and evangelicals, is highly unlikely. 

Refer to the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 for an inkling of what kind of nastiness this would entail, and multiply the population involved by fifteen times. 

The biggest challenge for Socialism is continued involvement and engagement. Americans tend to be able to keep interested in big things for maybe two to eight years tops (the range of all the big American wars). Then American folks move on to something else, or become something else. 

In the USA, there is no mass Socialist Party infrastructure. 

Socialists do fine within the framework of multi-party parliamentary systems in countries that are not overwhelmed by theocratic tendencies. 

In the USA, the two party system continues to dominate all national elections -- whether folks like it or not. 

When will you join the Revolution? 

Today's Rune: Wholeness. Happy Leap Year!

Volker Schlöndorff: 'Der junge Törless' / 'Young Törless' (1966)

Volker Schlöndorff's first movie, in stark black and white -- Der junge Törless / Young Törless (1966) -- is set in and around the Prinz Eugen military school in the Austro-Hungarian Empire before the First World War (1914-1918). It's an excellent film in every detail. Perhaps most importantly, it serves as a kind of parable for the rise of fascism and, indeed, provides insight into contemporary phenomena like the increased popularity of the National Front in France and Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in the United States. In this way and more, Young Törless is concerned with how social psychology works as a psychic battleground between mass contagion and individual choice. 

Here we have Törless (seated), the rather twisted Beineberg (smoking) and Bozena, their amorous acquaintance. 

A good deal of the plot of Young Törless involves the scapegoating of Basini, another, weaker student, for sadistic fun. Here, three of the cadets plot further amusement in "the Attic," a secret night meeting place. Think Lord of the Flies.  

Young Törless is grounded in a 1906 novel, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß / The Confusions of Young Törless, by Robert Musil (1880-1942), "the Austrian Proust." 

In the arc of the story, the title character sees how people can be drawn into increasingly depraved acts without any apparent brakes on their conduct. In his case, he is able to depart freely, after seeing more than enough. Here, Törless may be a stand-in for exiles and refugees; certainly he is someone who bears witness to human nastiness, coming away with some dirt on his own hands.

Such deep explorations of human psychology in action continue in Volker Schlöndorff's later work, in films such as Der Fangschuß / Coup de Grâce (1976), Die Blechtrommel / The Tin Drum (1979), Un amour de Swann / Swann in Love (1984), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), and others. 

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

Woody Allen: 'Irrational Man' (2015)

Through the scrim of an entertaining little story, Woody Allen's Irrational Man (2015) covers the basics of existentialist philosophy. This movie is more dramatic than comedic, but given its setting in academia (specifically here, a fictional college in Rhode Island), there's plenty of fun to be made on that score. There always is.

Enter the Nutty Visiting Philosophy Professor (played with some restraint by Joaquin Phoenix, though seeing him in action often inspires chuckles no matter what he does or says). Take his ennui, combine with a yearning for Spain in another professor (Parker Posey, also smile-inducing), add a curiosity-driven student (Emma Stone), connect with a Dostoyevsky-inspired triggering moment, and presto -- that's the basic set-up. Let the fun begin. 

 Wanna get existential? You betcha!

An added bonus: connect cleverly embedded references in Woody Allen's Irrational Man with William Barrett's nonfiction work, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (Anchor Books, 1990; originally published by Doubleday in 1958). 

By the way, I still have a fifth avatar of this book, having given away four other copies over the years.

The beautiful thing about existentialism is that -- like the concept of karma -- it works with or without a religious framework. That is to say, you can be an agnostic, a Catholic, an atheist or whatever else, and its ideas still apply, so long as one believes in the core ideas of free will and choice. 

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

Frederick Wiseman: 'The Store' (1983)

On the one hand (the rich or pretend rich hand): Prada, Saks Fifth Avenue, Escada, Vera Wang, Oscar de la Renta, Dolce & Gabbana, Georgio Armani, Nordstrom, Barneys New York, Bloomingdale's, Net-A-Porter, A'maree's, Bottega Veneta®, Morris & Sons -- Neiman Marcus, and so forth (see also El Corte Inglés in Madrid and Lisbon).

On the other hand (the poor or working class not pretending hand): The Dollar Store, Dollar Tree, Dollar General.

In between, you name it.

All of the above share being stores or product lines, their owners desiring and needing to sell merchandise. All share having customers who in turn desire, want or need to buy stuff with cash money or credit. 

Given this, Frederick Wiseman's in color "observational cinema" documentary The Store (1983) serves as a microcosmic look at all such stores, from the most expensive to the least. 

The Store, along with numerous other Wiseman films, plus a couple of books, is available directly from Zipporah Films -- which is where I acquired a DVD version. Link here: http://www.zipporah.com/

Zipporah's description of The Store: 

'THE STORE is a film about the main Neiman-Marcus store and corporate headquarters in Dallas. The sequences in the film include the selection, presentation, marketing, pricing, advertising and selling of a vast array of consumer products including designer clothes and furs, jewelry, perfumes, shoes, electronic products, sportswear, china and porcelain and many other goods. The internal management and organizational aspects of a large corporation are shown, i.e., sales meetings, development of marketing and advertising strategies, training, personnel practices and sales techniques.'

Let me add: The Store is also about the architecture and design of massive department stores (rarer now in smaller cities) vs. those of other retailers; anxiety; identity; conspicuous consumption; ennui; desolation; labor; weird, prissy shoppers; changing mores (smoking allowed inside) and fashions (including hideous 1980s outfits, then "the cutting edge" of fashion); depressing store lighting and flooring (the lap of luxury?); the battle for hearts, minds and moolah; and let's not forget The Zodiac® restaurant. 

With no overarching narration and no clear "heroes" to follow, The Store is all the more fascinating to behold.

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.  

Of "Tipping Points" and "Black Swan Events"

Started in on Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007, 2010+) and am thinking how it seems to dovetail in some ways with Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000) and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005). Love this stuff. I'm not the only one by a long shot. In San Francisco, for example, had a fun discussion with a shrewd Filipino taxi driver about his favorite book -- Blink.

Initial response. A couple of recent watershed moments seem like the culmination of long slogging culminating in sudden shifts: LGBT marriage rights (in the USA and globally) and the removal of the Confederate battleflag from government buildings in the USA. These are the result of tipping points -- not complete shocks, but still surprising after seeing only incremental change  over many years.

Black Swan Events seem more "out of the blue." Two examples: one, the sudden plunge in gasoline/petrol prices in late 2014 from which such prices still have yet to "recover;" two, the sudden end to a depressing five year drought in Texas just this past May (2015). 

The drop in gas prices was wild. The follow-up question is, how did various people and groups respond to this change? 

The wild spike in rain in Texas was an even bigger surprise. True, climate change models have long suggested wild fluctuations in historical climate patterns, locally and regionally. However, no one to my knowledge could or did predict with any exactness what happened in the large area in and around Texas. Indeed, it was called a "one in two thousand year event" (when in fact, due to climate change, it may become a one in two year event -- maybe). 

Late spring flooding in Texas was a disaster for many, but overall, such heavy rains suddenly providing a dramatic reprieve to drought conditions is worth noting and remembering in the future. Here, it's generally better to have too much "fresh" water than not enough. There is some general prediction that California might also be rained out because of the formation of El Niño, which if it materializes would provide a tipping point against the current drought, if not (because of fairly detailed models) exactly a Black Swan Event. 

Cool to ponder. What other kinds of tipping points and Black Swan Events have people noticed lately?

Today's Rune: The Self. 

Malcolm Cowley: 'Exile's Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s' (Take II)

In Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s, there's a lot about Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Hart Crane -- though nothing much about the twists and turns of Cowley's relationship with Peggy Baird (1890-1970), nor hers with Hart Crane (1899-1932) before the latter jumped from the deck of the SS Orizaba into el golfo de México, never to be seen again. Alas.     

What Cowley was thinking about in the 1920s: "I was violently opposed to what I called 'the fallacy of contraction.' 'Writers,' I observed in my notebook, 'often speak of 'saving their energy,' as if each . . . were given a nickel's worth of it . . . at liberty to spend -- one cent on Love, one cent on Livelihood, two cents on Art . . . and the remainder on a big red apple . . .  To me, the mind of a poet resembles Fortunatus's purse: the more spent, the more it supplies. . ."  ~ Malcolm Cowley, Exile's Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s (Penguin Books, 1986 reprint of the 1956 Viking Press edition; original edition published in 1934), page 161.

"'There are many writers who deliberately contract the circle of their interests. They refuse to participate in the public life of their time, or even in discussion of social questions. They avoid general ideas, are 'bored' by this, 'not concerned' with that. They confine themselves to literary matters -- in the end, to literary gossip. And they neglect the work of expanding the human mind to its extremist limits of thought and feeling -- which, as I take it, is the aim of literature.'" ~ Malcolm Cowley, Exile's Return, page 161. 

Today's Rune: Movement. 

You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows

James Lee Burke spices up his novels with asides that inspire additional consideration. For instance, this snippet from Wayfaring Stranger: A Novel (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), page 332:

"Green glanced up at the sky . . . 'You know what they say about Texas. If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes.'"  

And indeed, I've heard this said in Texas many times. Sometimes it's "wait fifteen minutes."

"'It was Missouri,' she said. . . 'Mark Twain said that about Missouri, not Texas. It's funny how people get a quotation wrong, and then the misquote takes on a life of its own. It's a bit like most relationships. We never get it quite right. The fabrication becomes the reality.'
Green nodded as though he understood . . ."

What may be even stranger is this: Burke's "she" gets the details wrong, too.

Here's the original quotation by Mark Twain, dated December 22, 1876: "If you don't like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes."

(Documented in Hugh Rawson and Margaret Miner, The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations, Oxford University Press, 2006, page 472).

"You know what they say about [this state or locale]: if you don't like the weather . . ." 

Whenever someone begins with this old-timey routine, I'm thinking: let me guess how this ends. Is there anything new under the sun?

Furthermore, why do people think that each state (or province or territory) has its own weather? Does anyone really believe that weather respects imaginary borderlines? 

Laura Poitras: 'Citizenfour' (2014)

Laura Poitras' Citizenfour (2014) is well worth seeing and thinking about. And discussing. Saw it on HBO. 

That's all for now, folks. The rest is up to you. 

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed).