Wisdom from books and comics

Daniel Defoe in Robinson Crusoe

I now began to consider seriously my condition, and the circumstances I was reduced to; and I drew up the state of my affairs in writing, not so much to leave them to any that were to come after me - for I was likely to have but few heirs—as to deliver my thoughts from daily poring over them, and afflicting my mind; and as my reason began now to master my despondency, I began to comfort myself as well as I could, and to set the good against the evil, that I might have something to distinguish my case from worse; and I stated very impartially, like debtor and creditor, the comforts I enjoyed against the miseries I suffered, thus:

Evil: I am cast upon a horrible, desolate island, void of all hope of recovery.

Good: But I am alive; and not drowned, as all my ship's company were.

Evil: I am singled out and separated, as it were, from all the world, to be miserable.

Good: But I am singled out, too, from all the ship's crew, to be spared from death; and He that miraculously saved me from death can deliver me from this condition.

Evil: I am divided from mankind - a solitaire; one banished from human society.

Good: But I am not starved, and perishing on a barren place, affording no sustenance.

Evil: I have no clothes to cover me.

Good: But I am in a hot climate, where, if I had clothes, I could hardly wear them.

Evil: I am without any defence, or means to resist any violence of man or beast.

Good: But I am cast on an island where I see no wild beasts to hurt me, as I saw on the coast of Africa; and what if I had been shipwrecked there?

Evil: I have no soul to speak to or relieve me.

Good: But God wonderfully sent the ship in near enough to the shore, that I have got out as many necessary things as will either supply my wants or enable me to supply myself, even as long as I live.

Upon the whole, here was an undoubted testimony that there was scarce any condition in the world so miserable but there was something negative or something positive to be thankful for in it; and let this stand as a direction from the experience of the most miserable of all conditions in this world: that we may always find in it something to comfort ourselves from, and to set, in the description of good and evil, on the credit side of the account.

A lot of comedy and a little fiction

Present Laughter: An Anthology of Modern Comic Fiction, edited by well-known English author Malcolm Bradbury, in 1994, is a collection of 29 of the best comic short stories written by some of the world’s finest humourists and satirists. Most of the outstanding comic fiction, written in the late 20th century, represents “the cream of humour” – so you have “farce by Beryl Bainbridge, parody by Jorge Luis Borges, folk humour by Garrison Keillor, black humour by Margaret Atwood, gentle confusion from John Updike and strange fantasy from Angela Carter.”

I have not read all 29 stories, having acquired this wonderful anthology quite recently, but my own favourite is the sf-fantasy The Kugelmass Episode by Woody Allen who wrote it for The New Yorker in 1977. Since then, The Kugelmass Episode has attained a cult status of sorts.

 About the story The New Yorker says: “Kugelmass, a humanities professor at City College, was unhappily married for the second time and up to his neck in alimony to his first wife. He wants to have a discreet affair. Persky, a magician from Brooklyn, introduces Kugelmass to his magical cabinet. All Kugel mass has to do is choose a novel, climb into the cabinet, and he will be projected into the novel. He chooses "Madame Bovary," and in no time is having an affair with Emma. He reverses the procedure and brings Emma to New York, but has trouble when he tries to return her to France. Persky fixes the cabinet and Kugelmass swears he'll never cheat on his wife again. Three weeks later, he appears at Persky's. He wants to be projected into "Portnoy's Complaint," but instead, the cabinet explodes. Persky dies of a heart attack, and Kugelmass is projected into a Spanish grammar where he is pursued by the verb "to have.”

Here’s why Woody Allen is a sparkling writer as well as an exceptional filmmaker: To quote the last paragraph of his hugely funny story, “Kugelmass, unaware of this catastrophe, had his own problems. He had not been thrust into Portnoy’s Complaint, or into any other novel, for that matter. He had been projected into an old textbook, Remedial Spanish, and was running for his life over a barren, rocky terrain as the word tener (‘to have’) – a large and hairy irregular verb – raced after him on its spindly legs.”

The 29 delectable comic short stories in this anthology are:

  1. The Tillotson Banquet by Aldous Huxley
  2. The Waltz by Dorothy Parker
  3. Excursion in Reality by Evelyn Waugh
  4. Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote by Jorge Luis Borges
  5. The Assistant Producer by Vladimir Nabokov
  6. Gimpel the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer
  7. The Wrong Set by Angus Wilson
  8. The Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
  9. Interesting Things by Kingsley Amis
10. A Member of the Family by Muriel Spark
11. The Bulgarian Poetess by John Updike
12. My Vocation by Mary Lavin
13. To London and Rome by Donald Barthelme
14. Uncle Vlad by Clive Sinclair
15. Nobody Will Laugh by Milan Kundera
16. The Longstop by Beryl Bainbridge
17. American Dreams by Peter Carey
18. The Kitchen Child by Angela Carter
19. The Kugelmass Episode by Woody Allen
20. Lantern Lecture by Adam Mars-Jones
21. Lives of the Poets by Margaret Atwood
22. The Royal Family by Garrison Keillor
23. Modern Love by T. Coraghessan Boyle
24. The Stolen Child by Clare Boylan
25. The New Baboon by Andrew Davies
26. An Outer London Childhood by Suzannah Dunn
27. Schoom by Jonathan Wilson
28. Career Move by Martin Amis
29. A Short History of the English Novel by Will Self

“The fact remains that, both as a reader and as a writer, I have always taken comedy with a good deal of (ever delighted) seriousness. Indeed, it is hard to think about the art of fiction without thinking about the art of comedy, for the two have always gone together, hand in hand,” Bradbury says in the introduction to the anthology.

Present Laughter: An Anthology of Modern Comic Fiction delivers exactly what it claims to offer readers: “Wit, wildness and hours of escape from the solemn side of life.” Highly recommended.

Cover Jacket: © Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London

JUKE BOX

Strangers in the Night by Frank Sinatra

Was Frank Sinatra a better actor or singer? Now what kind of a trick question is that! He excelled in both. He acted in some fine movies alongside fine actors like Cary Grant, Marlon Brando, Dean Martin, and Steve McQueen. I'll always remember one of America's most popular crooners for his performance in From Here to Eternity with Burt Lancaster and On the Town with Gene Kelly.

But this post is not about Sinatra's films; it's about his songs, in particular Strangers in the Night, the title song from his 1966 album Strangers in the Night. Since then no one has sung this song as well as Sinatra. It's a beautiful love song and it makes your day...

Strangers in the night, exchanging glances
Wond'ring in the night
What were the chances, we'd be sharing love
Before the night was through.

Something in your eyes, was so inviting
Something in your smile, was so exciting
Something in my heart
Told me I must have you.

Strangers in the night, two lonely people
We were strangers in the night
Up to the moment
When we said our first hello.
Little did we know

Love was just a glance away
A warm embracing dance away

And

Ever since that night we've been together
Lovers at first sight, in love forever
It turned out so right
For strangers in the night.

Love was just a glance away
A warm embracing dance away

Ever since that night we've been together
Lovers at first sight, in love forever
It turned out so right
For strangers in the night

Do dody doby do

do doo de la
da da da da ya

#3 Ode to Life

Let me but live my life from year to year, 

With forward face and unreluctant soul;
Not hurrying to, nor turning from the goal;
Not mourning for the things that disappear
In the dim past, nor holding back in fear
From what the future veils; but with a whole
And happy heart, that pays its toll.

To Youth and Age, and travels on with cheer.
So let the way wind up the hill or down,
O'er rough or smooth, the journey will be joy:
Still seeking what I sought when but a boy,
New friendship, high adventure, and a crown,
My heart will keep the courage of the quest,
And hope the road's last turn will be the best.
— Henry van Dyke, US author, educator and clergyman

© Methuen

'Not racist'

With less than 72 hours to go before the worldwide release of Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin comes news that a Belgian prosecutor has recommended to the country's courts to reject an application to have Tintin in the Congo banned for racism.

According to a Reuters report, Belgian prosecutor Valery de Theux de Meylandt, whose opinion is requested and typically followed by the court, advised judges in a written statement to rule against campaigner Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo's application to have Tintin in the Congo banned for racism.

Meylandt said in the document that Tintin author Georges Remi (better known as Herge) did not intend to incite racial hatred when he depicted his cartoon hero on an adventure in the former Belgian colony in a 1931 work that was updated in 1946.

"The representations (of African people) by Herge are a reflection of his time," Meylandt wrote.

Intention is a key criteria in substantiating a charge of racism, the Reuters report said, adding, the court was expected to deliver a judgment early next year rejecting or accepting Mondondo's argument that the book's depiction of Africans was racist.

Tintin in the Congo was one of a series of comic books about the adventures of a boy journalist and his dog Snowy, which were first published in 1931. Mondondo has taken aim at the modern version of the updated 1946 book.

The application deserves to be crumpled into a ball and tossed into the trash can. Now let's sit back and enjoy the film.

I've got mom, you see!

Deewaar (The Wall in Hindi) is the mother of all movies and has the mother of all dialogues. The Bollywood blockbuster, produced by Gulshan Rai and directed by Yash Chopra in 1975, is the tragic story of two brothers, Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) and Ravi (Shashi Kapoor), whose ideals take them in diametrically opposite directions.

The eldest, Vijay, grows up to become a boot polisher-turned-dock worker-turned underworld kingpin while his younger brother, Ravi, becomes an honest and upright police officer who eventually kills his sibling and proves that the law is equal for everyone, bhayya (brother) or badmaash (scoundrel).

Torn between the two warring brothers is the helpless and weeping mother, Sumitra Devi (Nirupa Roy, the eternal celluloid mom), whose heart and conscience are in conflict throughout the 175-minute long movie. While she loves both her sons equally, she is forced to choose in the end, and predictably, she chooses Ravi over Vijay, virtue over vice.

Deewaar is the mother of all movies (though some might argue it's Mother India, 1957) because Sumitra Devi is a single mother who suffers immense hardship and humiliation as she raises her sons through a strict moral code. It works and doesn't work. While Bollywood films are replete with single-mother themes, nowhere is her role more intense and captivating than in Deewaar (though others might argue it's still Mother India), which celebrates Indian womanhood and motherhood on a grand scale.

Deewaar also has the mother of all dialogues because of the following conversation between the two brothers, a line that has become the tagline of the film.

Bachchan (right) and Kapoor face off in Deewaar

Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) paraphrasing: Your principles? Where have your principles got you? What have they given you? a two-bit police job? A change of uniform? A rundown police jeep? Now look at me: I have a bungalow, a car, money. What do you have?

Ravi (Shashi Kapoor) feelingly: I have mother!

What Ravi actually says, in Hindi, is: "Mere paas maa hai!" Translated literally, it means "I have got mom!" He utters just those four magical words and in one fell swoop demolishes his crooked brother's misplaced pride and his earthly possessions. Poor Vijay knows he has lost everything. But did he own anything?

HOT OFF THE PRESS

P.D. James adds dark twist to Pride and Prejudice

Best-selling British novelist P.D. James has written a new book that picks up where Pride and Prejudice left off and introduces a decidedly sinister twist to the Jane Austen classic: a deadly crime. Death Comes to Pemberley will be published by Knopf on December 6, the publishing company announced in a news release.

© Knopfdoubleday

Set in 1803 at Pemberley, the Darcy family estate, five years after Austen concluded her original story, James’ new novel finds Elizabeth and Darcy happily married, with two fine sons, and enjoying regular visits from Elizabeth’s sister Jane and her husband Bingley. There is talk about the prospect of marriage for Darcy’s sister Georgiana, lingering resentment over the elopement of Elizabeth’s sister Lydia with the dishonourable Wickham, and rumours that war will soon break out between England and France.

Still, life continues at Pemberley, and preparations are being made for the annual ball. But on the evening before it is to take place, the idyll is suddenly shattered. There are gunshots and screams, a body is discovered in the woods, and all at once the story evolves into a murder mystery—one recognisable as P.D. James at her best, yet conveyed with all the charm and wit of Jane Austen.

"I have to apologise to Jane Austen," says James, "for involving her beloved Elizabeth in a murder investigation. It has been a joy to revisit Pride and Prejudice and to discover, as one always does, new delight and fresh insights. This fusion of my two enthusiasms—for the novels of Jane Austen and for writing detective novels–has given me great pleasure."

P.D. James is the author of 20 previous books, most of which have been filmed and broadcast on television in the US and other countries. She spent 30 years in various departments of the British Civil Service, including the Police and Criminal Law Departments of Great Britain’s Home Office, and in 1991, she was named Baroness James of Holland Park.

Knopf has set a first printing of 300,000 copies for Death Comes to Pemberley. It will also be published as an e-book and available in audio from Random House.

Source: www.doubleday.knopfdoubleday.com