Books

ELEPHANTS CAN REMEMBER (1972)

May 1, 2021

Seven years after I read my first — the first — Poirot novel, THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES, upon reading ELEPHANTS CAN REMEMBER I can say I’ve finally read every Poirot novel, roughly forty of them. I still have a handful of short stories saved up for a rainy day, but it’s the end of a long journey.

ELEPHANTS CAN REMEMBER is far from Christie’s best, but it does feature copious scenes with Christie stand-in Ariadne Oliver, who gets in a few quality digs about being a recognizable crime author. While it’s a mystery concerned with memory and recollection, there are some basic mistakes that can’t necessarily be attributed to the theme or intentional unreliable narration. Additionally, the mystery is laughably transparent. I rarely try to actively solve the mystery when reading detective fiction, but it was so obvious that I couldn’t help but do so.

It’s worth noting that, based on the theme of memory with ELEPHANTS CAN REMEMBER, as well as some of the previously listed inaccuracies and errors, a number of folks believe that, by this time in life, Christie was suffering from dementia, possibly Alzheimer’s disease, and writing through it. (For more information, see this NPR article.)

It’s still an entertaining read, and has a handful of intriguing characters to keep your interest. Again, it’s far from the heights of early and mid-career Christie, but it’s still a Poirot novel, with Mrs. Oliver as his sidekick, and while it’s not quite an undiscovered late-in-life marvel of a work, it’s still good fun.

https://www.agathachristie.com/stories/elephants-can-remember

PROFESSOR UNRAT/THE BLUE ANGEL (1905)

April 26, 2021

A few years ago, my wife bought me a English copy of Heinrich Mann’s PROFESSOR UNRAT (retitled as THE BLUE ANGEL by the publisher), a 1979 edition which was also bundled with notes from THE BLUE ANGEL director Joseph von Sternberg, as well as a transcribed copy of THE BLUE ANGEL’s screenplay (which Sternberg immediately undercuts in his notes, as he specifies that they improvised the bulk of the dialogue and he doesn’t see the point of the transcription endeavor). Anyway, I didn’t get around to reading it until recently.

I thought that the novel wouldn’t have many surprises — I assumed that the film hewed pretty closely to the source material — but I was dead wrong. It’s as if Sternberg read the first forty pages, then skipped to the end and filled in the rest on his own, resulting in a radically different work than the film. (To Sternberg’s credit, he allegedly discussed his changes with Mann and Mann wholeheartedly endorsed them, adding that he wished he’d thought of the ending himself which, uh, -does not track- as Sternberg’s ending wouldn’t work at all for Mann’s novel.)

PROFESSOR UNRAT is the story of a poorly respected, older professor — Professor Mut, often referred to as ‘Mud’ or ‘Old Mud’ (in the original German, his name is Professor Unrat — it’s literally the title of the book — which I believe more translates to ‘Unclean’ or ‘Garbage’), who falls in love with Rosa, a tawdry song-and-dance actor who is known for shoeless Greek dances. However, unlike the film, the novel is the story of a bully, a man who utilizes his wife to bring ruin to an entire town full of prior students he felt had slighted him.

To be reductive, Mann’s PROFESSOR UNRAT feels closer to BREAKING BAD as opposed to the fallen man melodrama of Sternberg’s THE BLUE ANGEL.

One last thing: the translation I read was from 1932. The 1979 edition didn’t bother to re-transcribe it. As far as I know, there isn’t a newer translation which is a shame because, frankly, this translation seems suspect for the reasons noted above, but it also just seems sloppy in general. There’s a lot of poor syntax and, frankly, it’s often a clumsy, awkward read, and I’m pretty sure that’s not due to Mann’s writing. Don’t get me wrong: it’s still a fascinating text, especially if you’re familiar with the adaptation, but it’s worth reading on its own merit.

https://www.goodreads.com/ro/book/show/442181.The_Blue_Angel

AFTERLAND (2020)

April 23, 2021

I pre-ordered Lauren Beukes’ AFTERLAND before lockdown without knowing anything about the book. I’ve been a fan of hers for years — ZOO CITY, THE SHINING GIRLS * and BROKEN MONSTERS are all worth your time — so I was very excited for her new book. Unfortunately, AFTERLAND didn’t hit my local bookstore until late July.

Around August I glanced at the summary on the slipcover and saw it was a post-pandemic thriller and I immediately shoved it to the bottom of my to-read queue because, for obvious reasons, I didn’t need that at that time.

April rolls around and folks are getting vaccinated. I’ve re-watched 12 MONKEYS (the TV show), THE LEFTOVERS, read and watched SPONTANEOUS, and given the fact that all three of those pieces deal with pandemics and/or the collective grief of dealing with unknown, uncountable deaths, I thought: “Hey, maybe I’m ready to read AFTERLAND now!”

I was not. The book jumps back-and-forth in time, starting with the post-pandemic present, then back to the unknown of the pandemic: a virus that only affects men with a single-Y chromosome which then induces a particularly aggressive, deadly type of prostate cancer. Beukes absolutely nails a lot of the details of living within a pandemic, the uncertainty, the hysterical actions some take, the social fallout.

I imagine that sort of exactitude is a cold comfort for Beukes, as I doubt sales were strong because of the material, which is a damn shame. I’m tempted to say that she read Brian K. Vaughan’s Y THE LAST MAN and exclaimed: ‘This is bullshit! Women wouldn’t act like that!’ and decided to pen her own version. (Given Beukes’ experience in comics, I’m doubtful AFTERLAND was so reactionary, but she does allude to Vaughan’s series.)

Once you can get over the haunting foretelling of Beukes’ pandemic, you can revel in the compelling characters in AFTERLAND, all women except for protagonist Cole’s son, Miles. Cole is one flawed mother, but AFTERLAND seems to give Beukes permission to write absolute shit-heel women, which is exactly what Billie, Cole’s sister, is. There’s a fantastic familial push-and-pull that weaves its way through the novel’s cat-and-mouse game.

It’s great, character-forward speculative fiction that, while it’s a rough read in these times — and probably will be for some time — if you can stomach it, you’ll be rewarded.

Afterland
  • THE SHINING GIRLS is slated to be an Apple TV+ mini-series starring Elisabeth Moss, although I haven’t heard whether it’s entered production yet.

THIRD GIRL (1966)

April 7, 2021

This was the second-to-last Poirot book I had yet to read and, well, it’s perfectly fine. Sadly, that’s a bit of a disappointment because it features crime author Ariadne Oliver as the sidekick, and she’s is always a lot of fun when she pops up. While her presence in it is far more prominent than most of her prior Poirot appearances, and she has a number of clever quips and turns, she’s missing a bit of the depth that she had in say, HALLOWE’EN PARTY.

Concerning Poirot, he’s surprisingly foregrounded and often spends far too much time in his head chewing over the mystery, which I found unusual for a late Poirot book. If it weren’t for the counter-culture facets and drug use, I’d even suspect it of being a previously-discarded draft from the 40s or 50s.

Yes, THIRD GIRL feels a bit padded and routine, but the resolution to the mystery is quite satisfying, except for one potentially creepy aspect that I can’t reveal without spoiling matters. You’ll know it when Christie inserts it into the last few pages.

At least it’s not the last Ariadne novel I have left to read: she’s featured in ELEPHANTS CAN REMEMBER — the final Poirot novel I have left to read — as well as the Poirot-less THE PALE HORSE, currently collecting dust on my over-stacked to-read table.

https://www.agathachristie.com/stories/third-girl

GLAMOUR GHOUL – THE PASSIONS AND PAIN OF THE REAL VAMPIRA, MAILA NURMI (2021)

March 29, 2021

I don’t read many biographies, but this one interested me because, come on, it’s Vampira. If you aren’t familiar with Vampira, well, here. She was literally the proto-Elvira (more on that in a bit). However, Maila was also the nexus of a certain part of late 40s/50s Hollywood, something I didn’t know at all.

  • She was involved with Orson Welles shortly before he married Rita Hayworth and, allegedly had his child and gave him up for adoption. (I’ll note that there’s really no proof here regarding the kid.)
  • Disney hired her to be the visual ‘source material’ for Maleficent in SLEEPING BEAUTY
  • She had a very long, very complicated relationship with Marlon Brando
  • She was thick-as-thieves with James Dean
  • She struck up a friendship with — and maybe fucked — Elvis when he was in Vegas
  • She and Anthony Perkins had an intense hot-and-cold friendship
  • She wanted Patricia Morrison (SISTERS OF MERCY) to take up the role of Vampira when talk of restarting the Vampira show began
  • Elvira is the direct result of Maila spurning the Vampira reboot. Maila was supposed to hand-pick the next Vampira and they chose Cassandra Peterson without consulting her, and Maila then refused to sign the contract allowing them to use the name, so she became Elvira instead.

I knew this was a bio from a blood relative, from Maila’s niece Sandra Niemi, so I was skeptical as to some of these stories which, admittedly come from Maila’s own pen, but uh, there are plenty of photos and pre-existing proof. Maila knew misfit talent when she saw it — herself being similarly minded. While the bio is a bit clunky, it’s stuffed full of stories that entertain and enthrall, and paint the picture of a very complex woman, a woman with a brilliantly creative, often hilariously filthy, mind. Sadly, she was often mercurial, and her luck was rotten and, despite everything she gave to the world and her friends, she often lived in poverty, because it’s fucking Hollywood.

I do want to underscore that, despite all of the stars that pop up, it’s very much a story about deviants and misfits trying to get by in Hollywood. It’s a classic Hollywood tale, but not the classic Hollywood tale most want to hear. But hey, if you’re a goth and you want to know where your media roots stem from, you should read it.

https://bookshop.org/books/glamour-ghoul-the-passions-and-pain-of-the-real-vampira-maila-nurmi/9781627311007

THE CLOCKS (1963)

March 21, 2021

One could say it was an academic exercise on Christie’s behalf, to pen a Poirot tale in which he solves everything from his apartment, or perhaps it started off as something else, and she opted to insert Poirot in it, just to show that Poirot could still deduce without investigating. (He is, quite literally, an armchair detective here.)

I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone but the biggest Christie fans, but there is a lot in it for those willing to pick it up: the town is lushly built out, the espionage details are deftly — albeit stodgily — handled, but most importantly: she — via Poirot, of course — opines quite a bit on the history of detective fiction, and weaves quite a bit of her favorite trappings it into the tale. While reading it, I fully realized I was missing out on about half of the neatly dropped references.

Again, only for the hardcore, but I found it both intriguing and illuminating.

I have two more Poirot novels left to read: THIRD GIRL and ELEPHANTS CAN REMEMBER, but I plan to cap this seven-year endeavor off with a re-read of the ‘final’ Poirot novel, CURTAIN.

https://www.agathachristie.com/stories/the-clocks

NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THIS (2021)

March 10, 2021

While I wouldn’t say I’m extremely online, I’m certainly more online than most people I know. Patricia Lockwood’s novel — which is primarily concerned with self-reflecting on being extremely online, until it isn’t — may come across as utterly obnoxious to anyone who isn’t familiar with the litany of terms, memes, and bluntness that being ‘extremely online’ entails, but I’d like to think that her artful prose and peculiar framing supersedes the need for that sort of knowledge. It’s an array of vignettes that weave in and out of each other, until her sister’s unborn child tips the balance. I loved it but, as you may guess, I have a high tolerance for extremely online behavior, and I don’t mind sad tales about babies, two factors that you should consider before picking it up.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/634158/no-one-is-talking-about-this-by-patricia-lockwood/

MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION (2018)

November 16, 2020

Finished Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which I came to by way of her prior novella Eileen, which I quite enjoyed (despite it not turning into the Hitchcockian tale the summary insinuated). If Candace Bushnell by way of Sylvia Plath intrigues you, I’d recommend it. I identified with it more than I’d like to admit.

https://slate.com/culture/2018/07/my-year-of-rest-and-relaxation-by-ottessa-moshfegh-reviewed.html

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/561517/my-year-of-rest-and-relaxation-by-ottessa-moshfegh/

DEATH IN HER HANDS (2020)

July 24, 2020

Finished reading Ottessa Moshfegh’s DEATH IN HER HANDS. It reminded me of David Robert Mitchell’s second film UNDER THE SILVER LAKE, but the protagonist is modeled after Miss Marple instead of a young Marlowe, and all of the clues are authors and word snippets and character studies instead of video games, and it doesn’t end with male gratification. In other words: I loved it.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612693/death-in-her-hands-by-ottessa-moshfegh/