Week in Seven Words #541

This covers the week of 5/31/20 - 6/6/20.

boarded

Many stores are getting boarded up, including a book store. The displays of books disappear behind the extra layer of defense against looters. (I don't know if looters would go for a book store when it's surrounded by more likely targets, the ones full of clothes, jewelry, and electronics.) Some restaurants and bars are boarded up too; some may already be out of business. 

curfew

There's a curfew on the city, reminding residents that it's easy for authorities to curtail and control.

defensively

Reasons for dishonesty are varied. Sometimes, it's all about shame. Shame and self-protection. Not about trying to hurt anyone or take anything away from other people.

imagined

Two girls are playing in an artificial stream cut into concrete. They carry pails and pretend they're at a beach fringed by a forest, where ocean water mingles with fresh water among the tree roots.

off
They've settled in a field in the park, but even an open field is off-limits. A guy in a motorized cart enjoys the sound of his own voice, amplified with a megaphone, as he orders everyone to leave.

twilit

The cloudy day feels like a 24-hour twilight. In the part of the park that we're cutting through, the buildings are unseen, the paths unmarked.

unfolded

An egret gliding like a white, unfolded napkin taken up by the wind.

Three Movies Showing the Grubby, Treacherous Side of Human Nature

Title: 5 Fingers (1952)

Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Language: English (with bits of other languages, like German)
Rating: Unrated

This movie is an excellent espionage thriller. The main character isn't a hero, and I wasn't rooting for him to succeed, but I still found the story gripping, with all the twists, the double-crossing and mistrust and bitterness and greed. Also, James Mason's performance is wonderful.

Mason's character, Ulysses Diello, works for the British ambassador in Turkey during WWII. I won't tell you what his job is, because finding out as you watch the movie will probably give you more enjoyment. It's a job that has taught him how to maintain a neutral expression, regardless of his personal feelings. And he'll need this quality to pull off his nefarious plan, which is to sell some confidential information to the Nazis and then flee with the cash to start a new life elsewhere.

Does he achieve his hoped for ending, a life of luxury? Even if you're guessing that no, he doesn't, it's worth watching how it doesn't happen. 

Title: The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)

Director: Peter Yates

Language: English
Rating: R

This movie ends with both a whimper and a bang. 

Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum) supplies weapons to bank robbers. He's also in contact with the feds, who want information about the higher-level gangsters he works with, part of an organized crime network in Massachusetts. Eddie is low on the organized crime totem pole, and he's in danger of going to jail for the rest of his life.

One thing I like about this movie is that it shows the sordid nature of crime. In other movies, criminal life often gets depicted as slick and daring. Here, it's a grubby world where people play against each other in the dark and scurry around to survive.

The shabbiness of Eddie's world also comes across in the shabby 70s atmosphere of coffee and pie in grubby diners, and cheap suits, and a gun dealer's loud yellow car.

The bank robberies in the movie are ugly and suspenseful. There's a real horror in them (starting with the masks the robbers wear), while at the same time everything about them is so shoddy and disgusting. Again, I like how there's no glamor given to crime.

Title: Pitfall (1948)
Director: André De Toth
Language: English
Rating: Not rated

This is a merciless sort of movie. The lead character, John Forbes (Dick Powell), gets to drive away at the end with his loyal wife, but it isn't a "happy ending." The outcomes for some of the characters show a lack of justice.

Forbes has a steady job and a loving wife and son. The movie gives a wry intelligence to his wife that makes the early depiction of their home life a little more interesting, and not just saccharine. But Forbes is bored of his life and – in the course of his work in insurance – starts an affair with a model, Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott). 

Mona is initially unaware of the fact that Forbes is married. Had she known, she wouldn't have started up with him. A surprising thing about Mona is that she isn't a conniving femme fatale. She isn't really a bad person at all, especially compared to the men around her. She attracts the attention of multiple distasteful men, including the dishonest Forbes, and – much worse – J.B. MacDonald (Raymond Burr), a private detective.

MacDonald is a gross, creepy stalker who's willing to coerce a woman into a sexual relationship. In a scene that's deeply uncomfortable, he shows up at Mona's workplace where she models clothes and has her try on different dresses while watching. Basically marking her as his property.

At the end, after various scenes of blackmail and violence, Forbes gets to coast back into his outwardly picture-perfect life. How does he live with what he's done? The ending has a bitter taste, but it's probably the ending best suited for this bleak movie.

Three Sherlock Holmes Stories to Read in Lockdown

This past weekend, I read a few Sherlock Holmes stories that I found strangely relaxing, even though at least one of them involves murder. Maybe because each story is like an orderly, manicured garden with well-defined paths. Holmes and Watson are ever the same, with Watson admiring the genius of his friend, and his friend saying that it's nothing at all, you just have to observe things. (In some cases, you also have to be able to distinguish between different kinds of cigar ash, topsoil, etc.) The endings aren't mystifying. Just take the route Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has laid out for you, and you'll be entertained.

(You can also amuse yourself imagining Holmes in lockdown. When not on a case, he enjoys being indoors, experimenting with chemicals, playing the violin, or getting a little coked up.)

All of these are from Sterling Publishing Co.'s volume, The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). You can also find the Adventures and the Memoirs online on Project Gutenberg. ("The Crooked Man" is in the Memoirs, and the last two stories in the Adventures.)

Title: The Crooked Man

Crookedness can refer to a physical characteristic or to a moral one. In this story, a man is dead after an argument with his wife, who has fainted away at the scene. There's also evidence that a third person was in the room. Holmes probes a little deeper and discovers a horrific betrayal from decades ago.

Title: A Scandal in Bohemia

Irene Adler is in this one, a woman who looks after herself capably and stays a step ahead of Holmes. Is she the villain of the story, or someone who has been wronged and is trying to protect herself? Holmes falters slightly in this one, I think because he bases his predictions on what a woman would typically do in Adler's situation, and she's unusual.

Title: The Speckled Band

This story involves a country house, a cruel stepfather, and an elaborate method of premeditated murder. What I liked most about it was the sense of dread that builds to the point where everything is revealed.

Friday the 13th Short Story Rec Roundup

I've done this sort of post twice before, to recommend some short stories that are twisted and dark, that depict people who suffer bad luck or make self-destructive choices.

Title: Before the Law
Author: Franz Kafka
Translators: Willa and Edwin Muir
Where I Read It: Legal Fictions

Before the Law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law.

It isn't clear what the Law refers to – maybe some deeper understanding of justice, answers about how the world or universe works, who knows. In the story, we never find out, because instead of the Law, what we see are three "f"s: fear, frustration, and failure. Should the petitioner have tried to push more forcefully past the doorkeeper, or ask different kinds of questions? Or would the petitioner have failed at any attempt to gain admittance? Let's add a fourth "f": futility.

Title: Forgotten
Author: Anne Mazer
Where I Read It: Sudden Flash Youth
Two children who have been playing out in the forest return home in expectation of warm food, their beds, and motherly attention. When they return, no one opens the door for them. They see their mother inside, absorbed with her baby, but she doesn't notice them. It's as if they're on another plane of existence, have become ghosts, or never existed to her. A child's nightmare.

Title: The Happiest Place
Author: Gordon McAlpine
Where I Read It: Orange County Noir
Most of the strength of the story comes from its narrator, a security guard at Disneyland in Anaheim. He gets fired after footage shows him apparently trailing a teenaged girl. But later, the head of security contacts him and asks him to investigate his third wife on a suspicion of infidelity. Is the narrator being set up? Or is he quite shady, unreliable, and possibly a murderer?

Title: In For a Penny
Author: Lawrence Block
Where I Read It: Manhattan Noir 2

Paul kept it very simple. That seemed to be the secret. You kept it simple, you drew firm lines and didn't cross them. You put one foot in front of the other, took it day by day, and let the days mount up.

An ex-con needs to find ways of filling up his free time and keeping certain temptations at bay. We eventually get a better idea of what these temptations are, and the fact that we don't fully learn what they are makes the revelations more chilling. On his way to work, he passes a nightclub and tries to avoid it in different ways, like crossing the street or changing his typical route. But like a tractor beam it pulls him in. The story does a good job depicting his attempts at resistance, and his surrender.

Title: The Long Sheet
Author: William Sansom
Where I Read It: The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
I recommended a Kafka story earlier in the post, and while this one isn't by Kafka, it's Kafkaesque (not in every respect, but in its depiction of a certain kind of imprisonment and futile labor). In "The Long Sheet," people are held in a long, doorless, metal room where there are skylights but no windows. They're divided up into cubicles, and through the cubicles runs a sheet that's thoroughly soaked. They need to wring it dry with their hands and not stop until it's completely free of dampness. In the meantime, their captors thwart them in different ways; for instance, they release bursts of steam.

The groups in the cubicles carry out their labor in different ways. In one group, the workers do enough to feel smug about their efforts, and their work remains insufficient. In another, the people give up and see the task as hopeless. In the third, they're out of sync and some are trapped in their own neuroses or foibles – one is afraid of sheets because of a childhood incident, another fumbles because he gets distracted, another tries to cheat, and a fourth works well but goes unnoticed. In the last cubicle, the one with the greatest chance of success, the people surpass the limitations of the other cubicles and keep their object – freedom – in mind.

'Unproductive? The long sheet a senseless drudgery? Yes - but why not? In whatever other sphere of labour could we ever have produced ultimately anything? It is not the production that counts, but the life lived in the spirit during production... Let the hands weave, but at the same time let the spirit search. Give the long sheet its rightful place - and concentrate on a better understanding of the freedom that is our real object.' At the same time, they saw to it that the sheet was wrung efficiently.

What happens when they succeed at their task? Do they obtain the freedom they seek, or do the captors peering through the skylights have a different conception of freedom? It's a sharp, bleak story depicting how different people try to deal with what may be a futile struggle.

Title: Mr. Millcroft’s Birthday
Author: P.D. James (Phyllis Dorothy James)
Where I Read It: Sleep No More
Nobody here is nice. Not the elderly father and not his grasping son and daughter. He tricks them into moving him to a more expensive nursing home in this dark, funny story that may contain murder.

Title: Smoke Ghost
Author: Fritz Leiber
Where I Read It: The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
An advertising executive has a disturbing conversation with his secretary on what a modern-era ghost would look like. "I don't think it would seem white or wispy or favour graveyards. It wouldn't moan. But it would mutter unintelligibly, and twitch at your sleeve." He imagines it as "grimy" and "sordid," reflecting all the terrible things of modern life, from neuroses to soulless industrial jobs to people living in terror of being bombed in their homes.

In the story, an apparition of this sort stalks him. What does it want from him? At the end, he says he'll worship it, give himself over to it, but is it really appeased? (And how will he keep it appeased?)

Title: The Terrible Screaming
Author: Janet Frame
Where I Read It: Prizes
I'm ambivalent about the way this one ends, but it's still worth reading. The story depicts a city where there's a screaming heard all over, but no one wants to admit to hearing it. They're afraid of looking crazy, so they rationalize what the screaming might be (a product of tiredness or an overactive imagination). When a distinguished visitor arrives and asks about it, the official who welcomes him gently informs him that there's no screaming, and the assistant to the official is afraid of speaking up and losing his job. Also, a specialist is on hand to give people private care and rest from what they think they're hearing.

There's an atmosphere of quiet terror in the story, and I like how the author depicts a society where people are creating a collective sense of denial, a civilized falsehood to mask a haunting truth.

Title: You Are Now Entering the Human Heart
Author: Janet Frame
Where I Read It: Prizes
This one is set in the science museum in Philadelphia (the Franklin Institute) and mentions an exhibit I've been to: the giant replica of the human heart, which you can walk through. A visitor considers experiencing the giant heart, but winds up first going to another exhibit where kids on a field trip are being shown a snake. The purpose of exposing them to the snake is to ease their fears and decrease the chances that they'll kill a non-venomous one. The guy running the demonstration ropes the teacher into it and wraps the snake around her. Her terror wars with her need to appear calm and dignified before her students. What will triumph – her intense fear of snakes, or her fear of what the students will think if they discover what a tenuous grip she has on her composure?

Five Short Stories Highlighting a Socioeconomic Divide

Title: Enough to Lose
Author: RS Deeren
Where I Read It: Tales of Two Americas

Three months in with Secured Properties, mowing lawns for bank repossessions at ten bucks a pop, and I had inhaled more grass clippings, caked my eyes in more dust, and ridden more backroads than I had known were in Tip County.

The narrator is a man on a financial treadmill that will be going only faster in a post-recession US. At any time he can be flung off. His wife, who has found some dubious work through a multi-level marketing scheme, wants to have a baby. They already gave up a baby to adoption years ago for lack of means to care for him. Now they aren't teenagers anymore, but their financial situation is still precarious. Having a kid is a hopeful step; the narrator is worried that it's unrealistically hopeful.

The narrator's work partner is a gruff man who had "probably been some kind of stupid at some point in his life" and now just wants to get each job done cleanly and quickly with not a minute wasted. During their work, they encounter a man who is still trying to live on his repossessed property; he's desperate not to let it go, to admit that his hope for a home is lost for a good long while (probably permanently). The narrator sees what could happen to him and his wife – the loss of everything they're barely holding onto, the meager chance of having enough money to raise a kid, the lack of well-paying job opportunities, the need to turn into an emotionally closed off machine to make barely enough money. The story wraps the reader in layers of tension.

Title: The Gully
Author: Russell Banks
Where I Read It: Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar
From what I remember, "The Gully" starts out in a very poor neighborhood on an island nation. Three men commit acts of vigilantism. Soon they pool their resources and offer their services in justice (like killing robbers) for a fee. Over time, they make enough money to leave their violent, impoverished neighborhood. They outsource their work to others and extract money from people as they see fit. The story ends with them regarding their old home with contempt, as if they have forgotten where they came from and what they did to leave. How many times has this type of story played out in real life?

Title: The House Behind
Author: Lydia Davis
Where I Read It: The Art of the Story
The two homes in this story could exist anywhere. The one in front is wealthier and more elegant. The one in back is shabbier. A courtyard divides them, where the residents of both homes throw out their trash. It's the one place where they interact. The narrator, who lives in the house in back, says:

“Curiously enough, many pairs of houses in the city suffer from bad relations like ours: there is usually an uneasy truce between the two houses until some incident explodes the situation and it begins deteriorating. The people in the front houses become locked in their cold dignity and the people in the back houses lose confidence, their faces gray with shame.”

Here, the exploding incident is murder.

Some people are illuminated in beautiful prose in this story, but they're never really developed as individuals. They're representatives of different places and classes. Those in the front home react largely as a group, and so do those in the house behind, which strengthens the impression that these relationships and actions will be replicated many times between different sets of strangers. The details will run together and fade, and will anyone care to learn anything or change anything? Each house, front and back, seems to exert a relentless influence on the behavior of its occupants.

Title: The Lesson
Author: Toni Cade Bambara
Where I Read It: American Short Stories Since 1945
At the start of the story, a group of kids in a poor, predominantly black neighborhood in New York City have their own contained world – a certain friend group, places they're familiar with, things they're used to doing. They don't know much about the world beyond, not in a concrete way, until the well-educated Miss Moore takes them on a trip to F.A.O. Schwarz, where the toys are well beyond their means, and where they feel completely out of place.

The main character, Sylvia, doesn't take to this lesson in social and racial divide without disgruntlement or questioning. The field trip to the super-expensive toy store rattles the way she sees herself and her place in the world. What she makes of the trip – how she interprets it and how it will affect her life – isn't clear. She may see herself as neither a warrior nor a victim of circumstance. Her choice at the end, to give more thought to what she has seen, may not be all that Miss Moore intends for her to do, but thinking things over is better than either pretending ignorance or swallowing what you're told without question.

I don't think the lesson Miss Moore delivers is even one lesson. It's a starting point, perhaps an initial spur to get the kids to... do what? Perhaps work hard, think more, gain an education, help enrich their own neighborhoods. Possibly take political collective action at some point. Her approach may also backfire and become a discouraging shock that makes the kids want to ignore what they saw and stick to their familiar turf; they're not exactly receptive to Miss Moore to begin with. One thing I like about the story is that the kids aren't tractable. Their reactions are realistic and individual, including Sylvia's need to consider what she'll make of this new awareness that her world is not just the world of her neighborhood, and that she can cross the boundaries of her neighborhood, though at the price of greater struggle and discomfort.

Title: Morocco Junction 90210
Author: Patt Morrison
Where I Read It: Los Angeles Noir
There are some interesting tidbits about Beverly Hills history in this story, which highlights class divides in a wealthy community. Minerva, the narrator, isn't rich, but her dad worked in security for some of the big movie and TV studios and was well-respected. Through his connections, she has found work helping actors prepare for roles and interviews. She lives on the edge of a glamorous world, a sad world in a number of ways, as many people are desperate to protect damaging secrets and shore up shaky reputations.

Minerva likes to gather information about people – not necessarily for any purpose, nefarious or otherwise, but out of curiosity. After a woman is found dead, Minerva figures out something about the woman's past and the reason she had been selling off her jewelry. The motive of wanting to spare a family from disgrace, and the way residents experience social divisions between old and new Beverly Hills, give the story some echoes of Edith Wharton. The society has its largely unspoken codes – what you can get away with, and what you can't bring yourself to even admit.

Six Fun Movies to Watch During the Holiday Season

A few years ago, I made a similar post, which will give you several more recommendations. These movies aren't themed for the winter holidays, but they're fun to watch on a cold night with a warm drink, like hot apple cider with rum, and they're (mostly) family-friendly. (Yes, even The Maltese Falcon can be fun for the whole family... why not.)

Title: Cinderella (1997)
Director: Robert Iscove
Language: English
Rating: G

This is a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical adaptation of Cinderella, set in a pretty Disney version of a European town. The stepmother's house looks like it's made of stained glass and melted crayons. I like how vivid all the colors are in this one, including the lush blues and purples of the ballroom scene.

The cast is vibrant. Whitney Houston plays the fairy godmother, Bernadette Peters is the stepmother, Whoopi Goldberg is the queen (an opinionated lady who makes squeaking noises of dismay), and Jason Alexander (best known as George Costanza on Seinfeld) is a royal servant with an Italian-ish accent and a song-and-dance number about the upcoming ball.

Paolo Montalban is cute as the prince, and Brandy Norwood plays a lovely, fragile-looking, and sometimes vacant-looking Cinderella. I like how, even before the prince finds her at the end, she decides to leave home, knowing that she deserves a better life than the one she has with her stepmother and stepsisters.

Title: How to Steal a Million (1966)
Director: William Wyler
Language: English and some French
Rating: Not rated

This movie has the absurdity of a screwball comedy. The leads, Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole, associate under highly improbable circumstances and look beautiful while doing so. (O'Toole is so damn charming here. Reminds me a little of Peter Wimsey - intelligent, doesn't appear to take much seriously, but is more serious than he appears.)

Anyway, Hepburn plays Nicole, the daughter of an art forger who passes himself off as an art collector. He's a Wizard of Oz type of scoundrel. One thing leads to another, and Nicole realizes that to keep her father's crimes from being discovered, she'll have to steal a statue he loaned to a museum. Simon (Peter O'Toole's character) arrives on the scene as a burglar who may be able to help her. Or so she thinks.

Nine Short Stories With Major Betrayals

Title: Dosas
Author: Edwidge Danticat
Where I read it: Tales of Two Americas

Elsie, a Haitian immigrant who works in the U.S. providing home health care, gets an urgent call from her ex-husband. Apparently, his girlfriend has been kidnapped in Port-Au-Prince. Elsie has already been betrayed by her husband and his girlfriend before, so she could just hang up on him. Instead, she hears him out and agrees to help.

As an immigrant, Elsie would have hoped to find a community she can rely on, with people she can trust. But she's pretty much on her own. In the course of her job, she helps another Haitian immigrant suffering from renal failure, but he's wealthy, and any sympathy he or his daughter feel for her is limited. Already, she has suffered profound betrayal in her personal life. Maybe she's willing to risk a lot to stay connected to people, because the alternative, a life of mistrust and loneliness, isn't bearable to her; she's already profoundly lonely. By the end of the story, she seems like someone baring her neck to vampires. And there are true vampires in this story, draining her.

Title: Family Man
Author: Annie Proulx
Where I read it: Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3

What's the legacy you've been left with, and what legacy do you leave to others? The main character is spending his final years in a nursing home, among people who watch a lot of TV and paint their faces. He comes across people he once knew, or thought he knew, but they've changed from how he remembers them. Who were they, and who is he?

In the course of the story, his granddaughter visits him and expresses an interest in his life. What he shares with her isn't inspirational, not the kind of story you're eager to pass from one generation to the next. His past contains a deep betrayal by his father. I don't want to spoil it all here. Suffice it to say that he had discovered a shattering lie that showed him how little he was seen as a person worthy of love and respect, and how much he had missed of the father-son bond a boy craves – to be uniquely his father's son and carry his father's name proudly.

Two Short Stories Involving Girls Suppressing a Memory of Betrayal

Title: The Girl Who Loved Graveyards
Author: P.D. James (Phyllis Dorothy James)
Where I Read It: Sleep No More: Six Murderous Tales

It was to be another warm day, and over the serried rows of headstones lay a thin haze pierced by the occasional obelisk and by the wing tips of marble angels whose disembodied heads seemed to be floating on particles of shimmering light. And as she watched, motionless in an absorbed enchantment, the mist began to rise and the whole cemetery was revealed to her, a miracle of stone and marble, bright grass and summer-laden trees, flower-bedecked graves and intersecting paths as far as the eye could see.

This is a quiet, brutal story. It ends with the main character going on a journey to uncover her past, only to find a great gaping nothing. What awaits her is the recognition of a guilt and loss that have already hollowed out her life.

The story begins when she moves in with her aunt and uncle around her 10th birthday. She has been told that her father and grandmother both died of the flu. Until she becomes an adult, her main pleasure in life is to take refuge in a local graveyard. She feels most at home among the dead.

Her aunt and uncle aren't affectionate, and she doesn't have friends. The one relic from her life before her aunt and uncle's house is a cat, and she doesn't even like it. Although she has stifled her memories of her earlier childhood, the events she doesn't remember have left their stamp on her and her relationship with everyone and everything around her.

Those first ten years were a void, unsubstantial as a dream that had faded but that had left on her mind a scar of unarticulated childish anxiety and fear.

The part of the story when she rediscovers these events is horrifying. Memories spring to life, bringing clarity but no hope.

It seemed to her that she had passed through a barrier of fear as a tortured victim might pass through a pain barrier into a kind of peace.

Title: Lavender Lady
Author: Barbara Callahan
Where I Read It: Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives

A folk singer has written a song about a nanny who watched over her as a child. The song speaks of love, devotion, and sudden loss. But when she sings it, she becomes overwhelmed with sadness and fatigue, as if the song demands an extraordinary amount of energy to complete.

The story is a good example of the mind's denials betrayed by the body's truth. The singer doesn't want to examine the beautiful lies she's spun around her former nanny. Her conscious mind can't accept the truth. Her body, however, betrays the presence of a dark memory.

Four Very Different Short Stories Focusing on a Female Character

Title: Comforter of the Afflicted
Author: F.H. Batacan (Maria Felisa H. Batacan)
Where I Read It: Manila Noir
This story is set in Manila and centers on the investigation into the murder of Olivia Delgado ("Libby"), who was helping abused women escape from their violent partners. Although she is dead, Delgado remains a living presence, solitary and tenacious. She had channeled her anger into a lifelong struggle within a system where abusers usually have significant advantages, not least because victims are often conditioned (both by the abuse and by wider social mores) to bear the abuse without complaint.

The story becomes an unsentimental tribute to her and her life spent putting up a mighty fight, starting when she was young and attempting to protect her mother from her father. Delgado died fighting also. In spite of how it all ends, the struggle was worth it.

Title: Edie: A Life
Author: Harriet Doerr
Where I Read It: American Voices
A story about a nanny, and it isn't twee or in the least romantic. The writing has a wryness steeped in melancholy. The nanny works for a family where the father was only really in love with his first wife, who died. His subsequent wives aren't suitable. It's not that they're "evil stepmothers;" they just don't really fit into the household.

The nanny, meanwhile, can't serve as a replacement mother. However, she gives some kind of stability to the children and space on her wall for their eerie pictures. What happens when the children grow up? Is she forgotten, having never been a part of the family in a way they recognize? She has worked at the heart of the family but remains at its margins.

Title: Ruminations in an Alien Tongue
Author: Vandana Singh
Where I Read It: Other Worlds Than These

"To understand the aliens I became a mathematician and a musician. After that, those three things are one thing in my mind: the aliens, the mathematics, the music."

I found this story enthralling. It's lovely to see a story that combines math, music, and language, instead of rigidly dividing up the disciplines. The main character, Birha, is a professor on another world who has unlocked an alien outpost and studied the alien tongue (acoustical scripts and poeticas, a kind of instrument). There's also an alien artifact that changes the probabilities of events.

The story comes in waves and spirals. There are meditations on love and self and time. I think of this story as a journey that I went through wide-eyed and bewildered.

"I am myself and yet not so. I contain multitudes and am a part of something larger; I am a cell the size of a planet, swimming in the void of the night."

Title: Tits-Up in a Ditch
Author: Annie Proulx
Where I Read It: Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3
Raised by her grandparents, a girl grows up unloved and unvalued in Wyoming ranch country, in a story that deftly renders an entire society, the way it's changing, and everyone's status in it. Proulx shows the girl's life unfold from childhood to an early marriage and a stint in the military during the 2003 Iraq War.

I like when an author shows the ways an individual life is enmeshed in a particular culture and shaped by family dynamics. There's a degree of inevitability in this story's depressing ending. Not that people are utterly powerless or are merely a passive product of their environment. I've seen a tendency, however, to greatly underestimate the effects of upbringing and culture on the choices people make and the possibilities in their lives. The imagery of cattle in this story is tied to how the main character is pushed along certain paths.

Week in Seven Words #406

costuming
She dresses up as a flower and fits her small, black dog into a bumblebee costume. Then she holds him in her arms for most of the evening.

disturb
On my way to a meeting, I walk by a display window and see a T.V. with a news chyron displaying a report of shots fired downtown. I keep walking, wondering but not wanting to know, not yet.

frappé
His own little rebellion against having to do grammar exercises is to try to include the word 'frappé' in each sentence he writes.

glossy
These are cold streets full of rectangles of steel and glossy items on display in rows of windows. It's like walking through a catalogue.

insufficiency
He has lost the thread of his lecture. Forty-five minutes in, he's still giving us the introduction. Meanwhile, the audience has started taking over. They don't just ask questions; they begin to share personal anecdotes that aren't always relevant. The lecturer limits himself to echoing their thoughts.

sporting
Basketball players in a congratulatory bundle fill the train car with laughter.

uncanny
The park is awash in a deep pink sunset, the color of cheap candy or cough medicine. A rat climbs a soldiers' monument where usually only people and pigeons roost.

Five Short Stories About Terribly Dysfunctional Marriages

This is a fruitful topic for short fiction.

Title: Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree
Author: Helen Nielsen
Where I Read It: Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives
The main character thinks she's past the point of making terrible mistakes with men, that her life is stable now, but she's wrong. Her husband makes her feel that she needs to be on a pedestal - and then ultimately prove that she's like all other women by falling off it. It's that sort of relationship pattern. In any case, she starts getting calls from someone in her past. She assumes she's being blackmailed or stalked. She's smart and careful in general, but not about the people close to her. This story has murder and betrayal.

Title: Her Three Days
Author: Sembène Ousmane
Translator: Len Ortzen
Where I Read It: The Anchor Book of Modern African Stories
The story is set in a culture with polygamous marriages, and the main character is one of four wives. She's awaiting the three days her husband is meant to spend with her and recognizes that she's falling out of favor with him. I remember her observation about the pretenses in her marriage, the lies she needs to tell to make the marriage seem worthwhile. She has to pretend that her husband is a good man, because her identity is bound to his stature and character. If she has submitted to a man who isn't worthy of respect, what does this say about the meaning of her life and its worth?

Two old movies with false preachers

Title: The Miracle Woman (1931)
Director: Frank Capra
Language: English
Rating: Unrated

It's Barbara Stanwyck's performance and screen presence that make this movie worth watching. She convincingly plays all shades of emotion, from righteous fury to tenderness to despair. She subtly expresses conflicted feelings and moments of doubt.

Her character, Florence Fallon, is the daughter of a minister. At the start of the movie, she delivers a tirade from the pulpit of her late father's church, because the congregation had treated him callously. After the congregants leave her to her anger and grief, a con artist (played by Sam Hardy) takes advantage of her in her vulnerable state and persuades her to enact a revenge against all the falsely pious people out there. He launches her into stardom as a fake faith healer, and she travels around giving fiery speeches and tricking people into giving up their money.

Even though Florence has become a false preacher, her words still have power in a way that sometimes does good. John Carson (David Manners), who lives alone and is blind, is convinced not to kill himself when he hears her over the radio. Although he's skeptical about faith healing and the spectacle surrounding her preaching, he's still moved by her and attends one of her shows to find out more. Florence herself is starting to get tired of her false preaching, and meeting John gives her a further push towards an honest life.

There are things the movie could have done without, namely the over-use of a ventriloquist dummy. But I liked how it shows faith and love struggling to find a way out and take root, in spite of everything that tries to cloak, choke, or impede them.

Title: The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Director: Charles Laughton
Language: English
Rating: Unrated

The Night of the Hunter has the landscape of a dark folk tale. A river at night where young children escape by boat from a frenzied murderer. The murderer standing over the children's mother in a cramped and shadowed bedroom. The silhouette of an old woman with a gun held across her lap as she defends a house full of children from the murderer. During that scene, the old woman, Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish) sings a hymn, and the murderer, a false preacher named Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), joins in from where he sits outside in the dark. The words he uses are a little different from hers.

Powell is able to pass as a preacher not only thanks to his charisma but because he taps into some twisted beliefs that already resonate in the communities he cons. He exploits existing unhealthy ideas about female sexuality and marriage. He's good at finding the places where love and compassion are lacking. Like other predators, he also hones in on vulnerable people: lonely widows, girls raised without love, children who lack the protection of reliable adults.

These are some of the psychological insights that emerge in this riveting and disturbing movie. The movie is also sensitive to the behavior of children who have been hurt, abused, or betrayed. For instance, John (Billy Chapin), the young boy who flees the murderer with his sister, Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce), receives a great gift from Rachel Cooper when she believes him that Powell is a dangerous man. John wasn't expecting to be believed when it was his word against the word of an adult. In another scene, he winds up beating Powell with a doll, and it's really a moment when he's raging against his birth dad, who stole the money that led Powell to appear and win over the children's mother, Willa (Shelley Winters). In another scene, Ruby (Gloria Castillo), one of the vulnerable children in Rachel Cooper's house, admits to sneaking out at night. Rachel responds by holding her and talking to her about the difference between real love and the kind of superficial (and potentially dangerous) attention Ruby gets from boys and men, which she has mistakenly confused for love.

The movie is richer for all of these moments. But it's also worth watching just for Mitchum's performance as a superficially charming terror, a real nightmare figure who can smooth talk in one scene and hunt children like a beast in another.

Five Short Stories Set on Staten Island

Staten Island is an underrated borough, sometimes talked about as if it's basically a landfill with some homes. However, there are beautiful places on the island, like these:





And there are plenty of interesting stories to be told there. The ones here are from a collection called Staten Island Noir (part of the Akashic Books noir series, which collects stories about crime and mystery from around the world...). So all of the stories here are dark in nature. A couple are quite funny though. And yes, a landfill plays an important role in a couple of them too (that's inevitable, for Staten Island).

Two 1940s movies with WWII vets struggling in post-war life

Title: Act of Violence (1949)
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Language: English
Rating: Unrated

At first, Act of Violence seems like a straightforward crime thriller set in post-war suburbia. Joe Parkson (Robert Ryan) is a stalker menacing a peaceful home. He carries a gun and looks like he could use it without flinching. But Joe isn't a criminal, though he may become a murderer by the movie's end.

The man he is after is Frank Enley (Van Heflin). They served together in the war and spent time in a German POW camp. Frank now has a wife, Edith (Janet Leigh), and a baby son. He's well-respected in his community; people consider him a war hero. To Joe, Frank's cheerful, prosperous life is an injustice. Joe remembers what Frank did in the POW camp, and what his fellow POWs suffered for it. Joe is permanently injured and easily written off as crazy, but at least he survived and will now have his vengeance.

Act of Violence should be a better known movie for its strong acting, the tone of uneasiness throughout, and the difficult questions it raises. What would you do to stay alive? How do you manage to live with yourself, if you've either deliberately committed evil or made a terrible mistake? Are things you did under extraordinary circumstances reflective of your everyday character?

Joe and Frank wrestle with these questions post-war. As do the women in their lives - Edith, who learns disturbing information about her husband; Ann (Phyllis Thaxter), who as Joe's girlfriend tries to persuade him to abandon his revenge mission; and an aging prostitute, Pat (Mary Astor), who finds Frank when he's trying to hide from Joe. The movie doesn't make the mistake of turning Joe into a righteous hero and Frank into a full-fledged villain; Frank's reasons for acting as he did during the war are muddled, and Joe is so consumed by anger that he's becoming less of a person and more of a destructive force that will burn itself out.

Three Billy Wilder Films on Self-Respect

Much goes on in these movies directed by Billy Wilder, but an important theme in each is self-respect.

Title: The Apartment (1960)
Language: English
Rating: Not rated

The main characters in The Apartment are commodities, useful to the executives in the company they work for. C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a corporate drone who lets the higher-ups use his apartment for extra-marital hookups. Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) is an elevator girl who has made terrible relationship choices. One executive in particular, Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), has them living in the palm of his hand. They look to him to make their lives better, even though he's a major source of their problems.

By the end of The Apartment, both Baxter and Kubelik gain some self-respect. The movie plays out as a comedy sometimes, a drama too (with MacLaine's performance really holding the movie together and giving it its emotional weight). It's also a romance, though I didn't care much about Baxter and Kubelik getting together. They break free of Sheldrake, and the movie ends with a card game, which struck me as a reminder that they've now entered a chancier sort of life. They've lost some security in their future. Before, life played out predictably. Their increased self-respect is worth it, but it's risky. At least now they're stronger and can bear those risks.

Turgenev, narrating an event he says he has no right to witness

When living in Paris in the late 19th century, Ivan Turgenev got invited to a behind-the-scenes look at a public execution. “The Execution of Tropmann” is what he wrote in response. (And what I recently read for Deal Me in 2017.)

The essay ultimately questions the use of capital punishment - and, more strongly, capital punishment carried out in front of a public audience.

But Turgenev tries not to hammer readers with his point-of-view. His approach is to lay out a narrative of the hours leading up to the execution.

Two film noirs where hitch-hiking goes horribly wrong

Title: Detour (1945)
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Language: English
Rating: Unrated

Detour was made on a shoestring budget, which works for its overall mood. A musician, Al Roberts (Tom Neal), hitch-hikes across the US to get to his fiancée in California. She represents the sort of life that a schlimazel and, ultimately, murderer like him will never enjoy. He's not only unlucky, but wallows in his unluckiness, seems to rush out to meet opportunities that will further make him unlucky. One of the best shots is of his face, full of stubble and despair, as he sits in a diner.

The only time he seems to struggle against his character and fate is when he plays piano. The music feels like a protest against his worst impulses.

Most memorable of all is Vera, a woman Al meets on the road. Ann Savage plays Vera as a wildly creepy sexual hellcat, full of rage and bitterness. Her eyes alone promise torment. She could have been one of the Furies in a Greek tragedy. I like how Savage's performance evokes both a particular woman and vengeance incarnate. Al is almost definitely not the worst man Vera has ever had to deal with, but he's there, in her path, ready to embrace unluckiness.

Title: The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
Director: Ida Lupino
Language: English and some Spanish
Rating: Unrated

Two men on a fishing trip pick up a stranded motorist. He's Emmett Myers (William Talman), a psychotic criminal who has escaped from prison. One of his eyes never fully closes, so even when his victims think he might have fallen asleep (and they can maybe make a break for it), they aren't sure if he's watching them.

The filmmakers maintain strong psychological tension throughout the movie. Roy (Edmond O'Brien) and Gilbert (Frank Lovejoy), the fishing trip buddies, know that at some point Emmett will kill them. They just don't know when. (A fact that he torments them with.) Subtle contrasts emerge between them, in how they react to their likely fate, while struggling to stick together, stay sane, and find an opportunity to fight back.

There's an excellent use of music in this film, including some classical music in a scene out in a desert by a well where a killer may be disposed to drop bodies. There's also light Mexican folk music in a moment where Roy and Gilbert may very well die. The suspense is especially strong during one scene involving a long walk on a dock through shadows.

Part of the movie is set in Baja California, and notably it portrays the locals as people, not as caricatures of another culture. Another impression the movie made on me is how it never gets melodramatic. It just lets the tension stretch out, the feelings churn and from time to time erupt.

Five Short Stories Set in Haiti

Title: The Blue Hill
Author: Rodney Saint-Éloi
Translator: Nicole Ball
Where I Read It: Haiti Noir
With the government's permission, toxic garbage gets dumped near a village. It renders the dirt an unnatural blue and covers people in blue pustules. The story is basically the ravings of a local detective. Sick from the toxins, he lies in bed gripped by visions. And what he shares is compelling: apocalyptic and poetic, with historic flavors and images of dragons and demons. It's a cry in the dark, at once futile and necessary. ("We will at least have the elegance to bear witness.") A story written as a prolonged fit may have dragged or come across as belabored. But it's powerful, and it pulls the reader along through hellish landscapes and images of a battle that the broken people, like the detective, don't have the health or power to engage in physically. It's their souls sending up a cry that no other person hears.

Title: Claire of the Sea Light
Author: Edwidge Danticat
Where I Read It: Haiti Noir
Claire is a young girl whose mother died giving birth to her. After she spends a few years with her mother's relatives, her father takes her back. She wants to stay with him, but he's more ambivalent. He cares for her but feels he can't properly raise her. As a fisherman, he knows he might die at sea or have to move elsewhere at a moment's notice for work. What will happen to her then?

The story is told from his point of view, but still shows some of what Claire experiences, not knowing where she belongs and whether or not her dad wants her. He's holding her at arm's length, because he doesn't know what to do. Along with the fear of being lost to her, I also got the sense that he fears becoming too attached to her, after having lost her mother. (The mother is very much present in her absence.) To Claire, her father's ambivalence may come across as rejection, especially when a wealthy fabric vendor who lost her own daughter expresses interest in taking her in.

There's a beautiful scene in the story, set before Claire's birth, where her mother is swimming among glowing fish in the ocean as Claire's father looks on with concern and wonder. Claire's strongest ties may be to her mother, who in being dead can be safely loved with the assurance that, in a way, she isn't going anywhere.

Spotlight (2015): A Look at Abuse Dynamics

Title: Spotlight
Director: Tom McCarthy
Language: English
Rating: R (language, descriptions of sexual crimes)

Spotlight is low-key and intense. Based on a true story, it shows the methodical, plodding, emotionally draining work put in by a team of investigative reporters from The Boston Globe, as they revealed a widespread coverup of child sexual abuse in their city's Catholic church hierarchy.

The movie stays respectful of its subject matter. There's no mindless grandstanding or sensationalism. It presents disturbing details in a straightforward way.

Though the movie focuses on one major religious organization, it highlights some general characteristics of abuse and institutional coverups:

Six Short Stories About Children Dealing With Injustice

Title: The Balek Scales
Author: Heinrich Böll
Translator: Leila Vennewitz
Where I Read It: A Walk in My World
"The Balek Scales" reads like a folk tale. It's set in an area of European countryside ruled by the wealthy Balek family. By law, only the Baleks are allowed to own a set of scales. Local villagers bring produce and what they've found foraging, like mushrooms, to the Balek scales and receive payment based on weight.

A boy (the narrator's grandfather) discovers that the scales are rigged. The villagers' response feels like a scale tipping. They've accepted a certain amount of injustice in their lives, but this uncovered lie tips them over into outrage. What changes for the villagers after the lie gets exposed?

The villagers can apparently cope with little money for lots of hard work, as long as they enjoy some pride and some faith in the order of things. The Balek family didn't just injure them materially with the rigged scales. They wounded the villagers' dignity. They also degraded their own image. The discovery of their cheap, mean dishonesty broke their power over the villagers' minds. It also makes sense that a child discovers the rigged scales. A child who still plays and is still only learning how to do things the way things have always been done.