BOOK REVIEW

The Ninth Configuration (1978)
by William Peter Blatty

It's not easy to read an entire book every week and review it every Friday but I try not to miss out on Friday's Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott's blog Pattinase. Here's my modest offering for the week that coincides with the release of Skyfall across India. People say it's the best Bond film ever but as someone on the train said, “How is that possible? Craig is so short, just two inches taller than me.”

“Robert Browning had the clap and he caught it from Charlotte and Emily Bronte.”
A second man, angry, bellowed, “Cutshaw, shut your mouth!”
“He caught it from both of them.”
“Shut up, you crazy bastard!”
“You don’t want to hear the truth.”
“Krebs, sound Assembly!” the angry man ordered.

My tattered copy of the book

Over the past fortnight, I couldn't finish even one of the three books I’m currently reading because of personal, albeit non-critical, issues. I'm thirty-eight pages into A Son of the Circus by John Irving, a little over half into the 146-page The Ninth Configuration by William Peter Blatty, the author of The Exorcist (1971), and I have just read the opening pages of a virtually unknown suspense novel I hope to review next Friday.

In a post on October 14 I’d mentioned that I would finish Blatty’s short fiction in another two days. Since then, however, I have managed to read only a dozen pages. That means, technically, I've no book to review for FFB this week. Of course, I could write about any one of the many novels I read over the past few months, or even years, but I'd have to scour the internet to refresh my wafer-thin memory. That's no fun. So what I'm going to try and do is give you a partial review of Blatty’s psychological thriller mixed with a strong dose of philosophy. I know that’s not much fun either but at least it’s something.

The Ninth Configuration, originally written by Blatty as Twinkle, Twinkle, “Killer” Kane! in 1966, is the outrageous story of twenty-seven decorated military officers who are interned by the Pentagon in a secret installation, “a grotesque rotting mansion,” in the remote forests of the Pacific Northwest. All the men are seemingly crazy for no apparent reason and when they talk sense and nonsense at the same time, you can’t help wonder if they really are mad or if they are only pretending.

In walks Colonel Hudson Stephen Kane, a brilliant Marine Corps psychiatrist, who is assigned by the Pentagon to treat the patients at Center Eighteen. Kane is cool as a cucumber as some of the inmates—the lead characters in the story and particularly the highly animated former astronaut Captain Billy Thomas Cutshaw—unleash their verbal missiles at the new commanding officer in his office and in his quarters. He refuses to keep the doors locked because “ They've got to be able to see me whenever they need to.” 

Kane studies their case files and listens attentively to their crazy voices, each increasingly making less sense than the next, and you don’t know who is humouring whom.

Here are some instances…

When Colonel Richard Fell, the medic, walks into the office without wearing his trousers, Kane asks him, “Do you plan to get dressed?” To which Fell replies, “How the hell can I get dressed when Lieutenant Fromme won’t surrender my pants? You don’t want me to rip them off!”

Or when Kane asks Cutshaw why he aborted his moon mission, the ex-astronaut answers: “Why should I? What the hell’s up there? When Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain, did he ever dream that he’d find America? All he ever dreamed about was compasses. Idiot starts out looking for India and then plants the flag on Pismo Beach.”

Lieutenant David Reno is adapting Shakespeare’s plays for dogs including his own, called Irresponsible, which bolts into Kane’s room and starts licking his shoe. When Kane asks Reno if it’s his dog, the latter shouts back, “Does he look like my zebra? Christ, what the hell’s wrong with you people?” He looks at the dog and says, “He’s ten minutes late for rehearsal. Now out!”

When Kane asks another inmate, Price, why he wants his flying belt back, Price says with acid hostility, “I want to play Tinker Bell in drag in a fungoid production of Peter Pan, All right? Are you happy? Now, where the hell is it?”

Blatty tells us that the forerunner to these delusional military personnel and their delusional rants is Nammack, a captain in the USAF, who, while piloting a B-52 on a bombing run over Hanoi, abruptly stands up in the cockpit and claims he is superman with superhuman powers. Nammack cannot be cured without Kryptonite, it would seem, and he is soon followed by scores of officers who manifest sudden mental disturbance even though none of them has a history of mental or emotional imbalance.

If the inmates of Center Eighteen are absolutely crazy, as you are given to understand, their commanding officer is not above suspicion either. In fact, there’s something decidedly fishy, and chilling, about Colonel Kane: it involves a recurring nightmare about his past, something that happened in Vietnam, possibly a nervous breakdown he suffered during the war, and involving a person by the name of Killer Kane.

Cutshaw may be a loony himself but he is convinced that Kane is more crazy than he is. 

The Ninth Configuration, which received critical acclaim, starts out as a farcical comedy but the plot soon gathers a serious tone as Kane’s past catches up with him. I have enjoyed the book so far because of the strong element of humour, however whacky, not to mention the philosophical debate that Kane has with Cutshaw over the idea of God and the divine plan. It’s a well-written novel and the initial dialogues between Kane and the “mad” officers will make you laugh as you visualise the absurdity of the comic situations.

I’m hoping to read the rest of the book this weekend and find out why the twenty-seven men are behaving like lunatics or what secret Kane has up his sleeve. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, though. Now, did I say a partial review!

Incidentally, William Peter Blatty wrote, directed and produced the film The Ninth Configuration in 1980 where Stacy Keach (known for his Mike Hammer roles) is Colonel Kane and Scott Wilson (of In the Heat of the Night and In Cold Blood fame) plays Capt. Billy Cutshaw. I haven’t seen the film but my natural choice for Cutshaw’s role would have been John Cassavetes or Telly Savalas. Get the picture?

FILM REVIEW 

'Allo 'Allo! (BBC One, 1982-1992)

For this week’s Overlooked/Forgotten Films and Television over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom, I have written about the "little-known" British sitcom 'Allo 'Allo! one of the funniest serials I saw in the 1990s.

British sitcoms lack the finesse and the glamour that American serials usually have but they more than make up for it with an abundance of humour, especially dark comedy, and a caboodle of oddball characters and their eccentricities that are quite enjoyable.

’Allo ’Allo! created by producer David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd and broadcast on BBC One from 1982 through 1992 is one such sitcom that looks at the funny side of Nazi occupation of France through the eyes and ears of its rather bizarre characters, albeit with an unmistakeable undertone of reality that isn’t lost on viewers.

René François Artois (Gorden Kaye) is the squint-eyed owner of the town café who manages it with his wife Edith Melba Artois (Carmen Silvera), a cabaret performer, her mother Madame Fanny La Fan (Rose Hill) who lives out of an attic above the inn, and two young waitress, Yvette Carte-Blanche (Vicki Michelle) and Maria Recamier (Francesca Gonshaw), who are both in love with René. There are a few other interesting characters too.

In one of the serial’s many ludicrous moments, Edith often catches René in an awkward embrace with one or the other girl but forgives her husband as soon as he makes a farce of an apology. 

René (Gorden Kaye) and his wife Edith (Carmen Silvera).

That’s just a small aspect of the serial. Actually, the café, located in a small village, is the hub of secret activity on both sides of World War II, the Nazis and the French resistance, and its a glum-faced René’s job to pretend that he’s on both their sides; of course, they don’t know it, but the truth is that the inn-keeper is the reluctant hero of the French resistance. He even has a codename, Nighthawk.

The only way René can keep his head above water and his café running successfully is by ensuring that both the German officers and the French partisans are happy. It’s not an easy task as the Nazis and a ridiculous looking Gestapo chief on one hand and the French rebels and an Italian captain on the other troop in and out of the restaurant throughout the day. The German officers often catch René up to something but they quickly forget what he’s up to as René charms his way out of the situation. 

René and the waitresses

Like I said earlier ’Allo ’Allo! is full of absurd moments. For instance, the German officers use the inn to hide stolen paintings, often from one another, while the French resistance uses it to hide RAF pilots shot down over France and plan their next move with René who, in reality, wants no part of it. The floorboard under ma-in-law’s bed up in the attic is where the resistance movement hides its radio and despatches secret messages. 

René serves the Germans.

’Allo ’Allo! is a parody of the German occupation of France and the French resistance to the Nazi invasion. In reality, René would have been terrified of both the Nazis and the Partisans and probably buckled under the pressure of staying true to either side. Yet, hundreds and thousands of ordinary citizens in German-occupied Europe must have done exactly what the innkeeper did, fought the invaders with a brave face, a smile on the lips, and some dark humour to boot.

I’m currently watching the reruns on BBC Entertainment and I’m enjoying the serial as much as I did the first time I saw it. Highly recommended.

MUSIC & LYRICS

Lay All Your Love On Me by ABBA

I was listening to this song even as I decided to do a post on it. Actually, the hit song playing in my ears was the inspiration for writing about Lay All Your Love On Me by Swedish pop group ABBA. It's part of their 1981 album Super Trouper and has been my favourite song by ABBA to this day. I like most of their love songs, some more than others, but this one I like the most. ABBA made good music with effective lyrics. 

Many of the ABBA songs can pass off as disco numbers but to me the single most defining feature of ABBA is the way their music and lyrics blend with each other. Every song will have you humming the tune and your feet tapping to the beat.

I wasn't jealous before we met 

Now every woman I see is a potential threat 

And I'm possessive, it isn't nice 

You've heard me saying that smoking was my only vice 

But now it isn't true 

Now everything is new 

And all I've learned has overturned 

I beg of you... 

Don't go wasting your emotion 

Lay all your love on me...

For previous Music & Lyrics look under Labels

BOOK BUYS

When good books sell cheap

There is no spectacle that is as terrifying as the sight of a guest in your house whom you catch staring at your books.

— Attributed to Roger Rosenblatt, American journalist, author, playwright and teacher

A couple of days ago, I visited the popular Crossword bookstore located within the sprawling Inorbit Mall in Malad, a northwest suburb of Bombay, and glanced through the wall-to-wall section on fiction. I was looking for the novels of three well-known authors—John le Carré, Tom Clancy and John Irving—and found them jostling for space on a couple of shelves.

While many of their books were there, each priced at Rs.299 ($6), I was looking for specific titles like The Constant Gardener and The Tailor of Panama by le Carré, a few Op Centre novels by Clancy, and The Cider House Rules and A Son of the Circus by Irving. 

I'd no intention of buying any. All I wanted to do was compare their prices with those I'd bought recently from the secondhand bookstore I frequent, like a drunk going into his favourite hooch joint on the dot of six in the evening.

The price difference between the new and used books mentioned above was Rs.279 ($5.60). I bought three of the four novels by le Carré and Irving and a couple of Op Centres by Clancy for a measly Rs.20 each (less than 50 cents), which was as good as free.

All my books were in mint condition and some of the covers were the same as the ones I saw at Crossword. I might as well have bought them from the new bookstore.

The only book I didn't pick up for Rs.20 was A Son of the Circus. That particular novel cost me Rs.100 ($2) at another bookstore in central Bombay. I was poorer by Rs.80 ($1.6) but it was still a good bargain.

This is where I feel for authors, publishers, distributors and sellers who have every right to think they have been ripped off; screwed, in fact.

I know what you're thinking: if you feel so bad about this, then why did you buy the "used" books in the first place? It’s one way of looking at it. 

The Inorbit Mall at Malad in northwest Bombay.

Here’s how I look at it.

I bought the books secondhand because ordinarily I’d never buy them from a new bookstore as I seldom buy new books. I have plenty to read as it were, nearly a hundred used books on last count, not to mention dozens and dozens of copyright-free ebooks, short stories, comic-books, and magazines and anthologies. I have gone from being an earnest reader to a mean hoarder of books.

Two, I cannot afford to pay Rs.299 ($6) and more for each new book by every popular author just because I enjoy their work. I like reading fiction by John le Carré, Tom Clancy and John Irving and would love to read every book they have written. Now how many of their books can I possibly buy? Not many. But I can buy most of their novels for as little as Rs.20 or Rs.50 ($1) and try and read all their books. 

Three, for all my love of books I would be loath to spend money on a new book when I can put it to better use on the home front. There’s always something that needs fixing or replacing. New books can wait. Yet, I do occasionally purchase those I won’t find secondhand; for instance, The Complete Prose of Woody Allen, The Master of Petersburg by J.M. Coetzee, and Flint by Louis L’Amour, a favourite.

Four, a swanky bookstore always leaves me confused. I rarely know what to buy even if a wad of currency is sticking out of my pocket and I can spend it as I like.

I blame it on my ten-year affliction, secondhand books syndrome, and it’s not going to go away soon.

For more Book Buys see under Labels.

VINTAGE PICTURES

Where Next?

Where Next?: The gentleman in the picture is employed in a global banking firm that has forced him to go on a thirty-day privilege leave failing which he forfeits it, a company regulation. So he and his wife are pouring over a world map to decide where to go next on their annual vacation. The woman looks as if she has picked out a destination, perhaps the Maldives or Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. In his Where Next art, I’m not sure if English landscape painter Edward Frederick Brewtnall (1846-1902) meant for the couple to visit either of the archipelagos. But just look at that backdrop! Do they really need to go anywhere when the sea is coming right in to meet them?

Source: Wikimedia Commons

BOOK REVIEW

The Murder on the Links (1923) by Agatha Christie

The hangover from last week’s Agatha Christie Week continues well into this one with a look at the mystery writer’s third novel for Friday’s Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

‘Yes,’ said Poirot doubtfully. ‘No one who knew would bury a body there unless they wanted it to be discovered. And that is clearly absurd, is it not?’ 

The Murder on the Links is considered to be one of the most gripping mysteries written by the Queen of Crime. Just when you thought you’d wrapped up the murder of wealthy businessman Paul Renauld and nailed the murderer, the Belgian detective works his “little grey cells, always the little grey cells” and produces a real humdinger—the history behind the mystery we’re reading and nothing is ever the same again. And all it takes Hercule Poirot is a little trip to Paris and Coventry.

Poirot and his friend, Captain Hastings, rush to France soon after receiving a distress letter from Monsieur Renauld who claims he is in imminent danger on account of a secret he possesses and requires the services of the veteran detective. Instead of greeting him in his study at Villa Genevieve, Merlinville, they greet his dead body lying face down in a grave on a golf course, a small paper knife sticking out of his back.

‘Mon ami, two people rarely see the same thing. You, for instance, saw a goddess. I—‘ He hesitated.

‘Yes?’

‘I saw only a girl with anxious eyes,’ said Poirot gravely. 

The suspects are many, from Renauld’s wife Eloise and son Jack, to housekeeper Francoise and maids Denie and Leonie, both sisters, to neighbours Madame Daubreuil and her daughter Marthe, to his secretary Gabriel Stonor and the gardener, Auguste.

The sleuths investigating the murder are equally so, from Monsieur Hautet, the examining magistrate, and Monsieur Lucien Bex, the commissary of police, to Monsieur Giraud from the Paris Surete, to Poirot and Hastings. 

Giraud is a “famous” detective, albeit a cocky and arrogant one. His obvious hostility towards Poirot and a ridiculous desire to be one up over the Belgian sleuth causes him to jump the gun and arrest the wrong man. Not for long, though, as Poirot, the ever-seasoned private eye, is on hand to lay bare the shocking truth behind Renauld’s brutal murder—read mistress and blackmail—and the discovery of a second dead body that was never a part of the original crime.

Poirot’s brilliant deductions open a Pandora’s Box as Renauld’s past life that included murder, a conviction, evasion, tragic love, and a new life all come tumbling out of the closet. A murder that was remarkably similar to his own.

‘A crime almost precisely similar had been committed before. That, when you have two crimes precisely similar in design and execution, you find the same brain behind them both.’ 

My copy of the book

You can’t review Agatha Christie’s books without mentioning a few spoilers and that’s just not right considering that her mysteries are peppered with spoilers from page one. 

I liked The Murder on the Links for the little gems that Christie’s novels are delightfully notorious for.

For instance, in this story Hastings actually falls in love with a mysterious woman known to him only as Cinderella, whom he meets right in the beginning, someone with a seemingly ulterior motive, one that you’d never guess till Poirot reveals "her" role in the Renauld mystery. 

Interestingly, this is the only Christie book I've read where Poirot and Hastings fall out, in a gentlemanly sort of way, over the latter's desperate attempt to shield Cinderella from the probing mind of Poirot and possible suspicion and prosecution for the murder of Monsieur Renauld. To me, this was the surprise element of the mystery. 

‘Because I love you, Cinderella.’ 

She bent her head down, as though ashamed, and muttered in a broken voice, ‘You can’t—you can’t—not if you knew—‘ And then, as though rallying herself, she faced me squarely, and asked, ‘What do you know then?’

The other bit I liked about this novel is the humour. A lot of readers and reviewers of the Dame’s books usually focus on her mysteries and rarely on her funny bone, intelligent and original in its scope. 

Here’s a delectable line: ‘Some of the greatest criminals I have known had the faces of angels,’ remarked Poirot cheerfully. ‘A malfunction of the grey cells may coincide quite easily with the face of a Madonna.’ 

Or the time when he needles Hastings for his roving eye: 'Yesterday it was Mademoiselle Daubreuil, today it is Mademoiselle—Cinderella! Decidedly you have the heart of a Turk, Hastings! You should establish a harem!'

Agatha Christie outshines herself with each successive novel. With The Murder on the Links she outperforms herself many times over. What amazes me about Christie’s writing is her train of thought, her power of deduction, her ability to mystify the reader with intrigues, the placing of clues that are so obvious as to miss them altogether, the subplots that are more fascinating than the main plot, and her mysterious characters, each with his or her own little secret, all leading up to a cracking mystery that leaves you satiated by the end.

Christie is a generous writer: she helps you along with the clues as you read but expects you to sniff them out on your own and lay them out in a logical sequence, just as Poirot expects of Hastings, 'You have a little idea, I see, mon ami! Capital. We progress.'

'Still, one must take crimes as one finds them, not as one would like them to be.'

Doordarshan and The Old Fox (Der Alte)

For this week’s Overlooked/Forgotten Films and Television over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom, I’m going to let you have a peek into India’s 53-year old national television broadcaster and, as a bonus, one of its earliest English serials. 

Doordarshan logo with Hindi lettering

Television has been around in India since 1959 but the government-owned Doordarshan, or Far Sight, made real inroads into Indian households only in 1982, when DD, as it is known, changed from a transmitter-driven makeshift studio to a national broadcaster that took satellite television from the initial six or seven cities to the entire country.

It was also the year colour television came to India. However, most Indians couldn't afford TV let alone colour TV until mid-1980. Till then, people without their own television invaded the privacy of their neighbours who did, usually at dinner time, and sat huddled around their black-and-white TV sets to watch primetime shows between 8 and 10 pm.

The television set was usually encased in a dark, and sometimes printed, wooden cabinet with sliding doors and supported on four legs, each at a slight angle. It wasn't easy to watch television in those days for the screen would suddenly go all wonky. Thick black stripes zigzagged across it and the only way to straighten out the screen was by banging the side of the television set or switching the power on-off in rapid succession.

The prestigious shows included a popular word-building programme called What’s the Good Word? on Monday, a half-hour telecast of songs from Hindi films every Thursday night, and the weekly Hindi feature film on Sunday evenings. Everyone used to be so excited. Dinner could wait. Those who couldn't let it wait, ate and watched at the same time.

In the 70s and 80s, television in India brought disparate communities together and, no doubt, played a significant role in preserving communal harmony among its teeming millions.

Those were early days but Doordarshan was, surprisingly, swift-footed in bringing foreign television content to India. These were mainly low-budget programmes from Europe, particularly sitcoms from Britain and tele-matches (or tele-games) from Germany. American sitcoms came in much later, in early 1990, thanks to Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV (Satellite Television Asian Region). In many ways, it heralded the third invasion of India, after the Mughals and the British, not counting the trespass by the French and the Portuguese. 

German actor Siegfried Lowitz as Chief Inspector Erwin Köster

DD cast itself in no small glory by also broadcasting two German crime serials—The Old Fox and Derrick—produced by Transtel-Cologne and Telenova Film, respectively, and originally telecast on ZDF, the German television broadcaster. Both serials were created by Helmut Ringelmann, a German film and television producer. I have no idea who he is.

I have no recollection of Derrick but a little reading on the internet tells me that it was about a detective chief inspector and his loyal assistant inspector who solved murder cases in Munich and its surrounding areas.

The Old Fox, on the other hand, is as fresh in my mind as ever.

Known as Der Alte (‘The Old Man’) in German, The Old Fox is a crime drama that originally featured Siegfried Lowitz as Chief Inspector Erwin Köster and a handful of police detectives. Lowitz played the Old Fox from 1977 until 1985 after which the role was assumed by at least three German actors. I believe the serial continues on ZDF.

Herr Köster is a lot like Monsieur Poirot minus the handlebar moustache. They may not look alike, in spite of being short, portly and affable, but they think alike. They solve murder cases from within. As the Belgian detective is wont to say, “The true work, it is done from within. The little grey cells — remember always the little grey cells, mon ami.” It’s a sentiment the Old Fox shares for he, too, dives into the mind of his suspects and unearths the murky truth behind heinous crimes. 

Old Fox is as “humble and unassuming in appearance” as he is crafty and diligent while investigating a case. He often surprises his loyal policemen by solving a mystery in the most unexpected manner; the look on their faces akin to the perplexed look on Captain Hastings’ face after his friend, Poirot, has poured fresh concrete into a case and sealed it. 

Unlike Poirot, though, Koster often jumps into his car with his assistant inspectors and gives chase to possible criminals which, if my memory serve me right, often results in a brief gunfight. In that, the Old Fox braves more danger than the Belgian sleuth. But then, he is a homicide cop who often has to deal with the mafia and cannot afford Poirot’s luxurious pace of cracking cases.

The Old Fox is a gripping crime serial and one of the most realistic police dramas I have seen. Siegfried Lowitz as the soft-spoken Old Fox is superb. I don’t know if DVDs of the series are available but it would be worth your while to check it out. I’m sure you’ll enjoy watching Herr Koster go after the kriminelle.