Charles (1948) and The Witch (1949) by Shirley Jackson

It’s Shirley Jackson special at Friday’s Forgotten Books over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

“I delight in what I fear.”

Human nature and behaviour is the focal point of many of American writer Shirley Jackson’s stories including Charles and The Witch. Both the stories are about four-year old boys who think, talk, lie, and act like most adults. They are impudent, disrespectful, and even precocious.

"The teacher spanked a boy, though," Laurie said, addressing his bread and butter. "For being fresh," he added, with his mouth full.

In Charles, for instance, Laurie has just started kindergarten and he is already lying to his parents at the dinner table. Every day he returns from school and tells his father and mother about a mysterious classmate who gets into serious trouble with his teacher and the other students. Charles is frequently punished for being bad. If one day he hits his teacher, the next day he whispers an evil word in a little girl’s ear. Laurie’s parents encourage their son to discuss Charles and his antics in class even as you suspect that they know who Charles really is and that they’re merely hiding from the truth.

"I saw a witch," he said to his mother after a minute. "There was a big old ugly old bad old witch outside."

In The Witch, four-year old Johnny is travelling by train with his mother and little sister. He is looking out of the window, bored and making childish talk, like “We're on a river…This is a river and we're on it,” or “We're on a bridge over a river,” or “There's a cow. How far do we have to go?” His mother humours him. And then, just as he is talking about seeing a witch outside the window, an elderly man with white hair and a pleasant face enters the coach and strikes up a conversation with the boy. Among other things, he tells Johnny about how much he loved his own little sister before he cut her head off and put it inside a cage where a bear ate it up. The boy’s mother is shocked and orders the man to get out of the coach. Johnny thinks the man is a witch.

To me, Charles made more sense than The Witch. Both the stories are dystopian in their character. They are about families, not necessarily happy families, even though they may seem like they are. There is a disconnect between Laurie and Johnny on one hand and their parents on the other. I found this line of thought disconcerting. I have never read Shirley Jackson before and therefore I cannot say much except wonder if that is really how she thinks families can be, or really are.

Her writing is best exemplified in an obituary in The New York Times, August 10, 1965: “Shirley Jackson wrote in two styles. She could describe the delights and turmoils of ordinary domestic life with detached hilarity; and she could, with cryptic symbolism, write a tenebrous horror story in the Gothic mold in which abnormal behavior seemed perilously ordinary. In either genre, she wrote with remarkable tautness and economy of style, and her choice of words and phrases was unerring in building a story's mood.”

The two stories number less than 1,600 words each, which appealed to my reading sense. While Charles was first published in Mademoiselle, July 1948, she wrote The Witch in 1949 though I couldn’t trace its original publication. Both the stories are a part of at least two collections that I know of, Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories and The Lottery and Other Stories. The good news is that many of her stories are available online. I'll be reading many of them, especially her non-macabre horror stories.

Sergio Angelini, George Kelley, John Norris, and Todd Mason have more authoritative reviews of Shirley Jackson's work at their excellent blogs. Click on their names to read them. You'll also find more reviews at Patti's blog.

Flight (2012)

Here’s another film about an airline that nearly comes to a catastrophic end for Overlooked Films, Audio & Video at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

Unlike Passengers (2008) which I reviewed in spite of not really understanding the film, Flight was easier to grasp even though the plot was banal.

Captain Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) is a commercial pilot who crash lands his Orlando-Atlanta airliner and saves most of the passengers on board. Six people including a stewardess with whom he had drinks, drugs, and sex hours before take off die in the accident that is apparently caused due to a malfunction.

Whitaker is a hero but not for long. He is injured and admitted to a hospital where blood tests show the presence of alcohol and cocaine, which he probably consumed inside the aircraft. With its reputation at stake, the airline company hires lawyer Hugh Lang (Don Cheadle) and union man Charlie Anderson (Bruce Greenwood) to keep Whitaker and the company out of legal trouble. Lang succeeds in pinning the blame on the maintenance company and diverting attention from the seasoned pilot.

While the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash, accepts malfunction as the reason behind the accident, it is suspicious of Whitaker’s condition before and after the plane took off. Ellen Block (Melissa Leo) heads the inquiry and grills Whitaker eventually forcing him to listen to his conscience and come out with the truth.

Flight is not so much about Whitaker’s flying skills (in one death defying scene he flies the plane upside-down) or landing the aircraft in relative safety as it is about his alcoholism and denial of his addiction. Everyone knows he needs help, his lawyer and union friend, for instance; Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a post-drug rehab hooker who lives with him for a brief while and vainly tries to get him to enroll for AA; his god-fearing co-pilot Ken Evans (Brian Geraghty) who knows the truth but keeps quiet even though he’ll never walk again; close friend Harling Mays (John Goodman in a weird cameo role) who has an instant cure for a hangover; and even his ex-wife and son.

Towards the end of the film there is a scene that I thought was nicely done. The night before the hearing Whitaker is put up alone in union man Charlie Anderson’s apartment. He must be sober the next morning. There is a small refrigerator in the kitchen. Whitaker opens it, rather gingerly, and finds it stacked with non-alcoholic beverages. He has dinner, watches television, and goes to sleep. Somewhere in the middle of the night, he hears the sound of a door opening and closing. For a moment you think someone is going to jump him from behind and kill him. He enters the room and discovers another fridge, this time stacked with all kinds of alcohol. The next morning he is found in the bathroom, sprawled face down with only his black shorts on, a bloody gash on his head, the apartment in a mess, and forty-five minutes left for the hearing.

Director Robert Zemeckis has portrayed Denzel Washington as a smug and a pathetic character who is too weak to resist temptation, one who doesn't have it in him to stand up and admit he has a problem. I believe real alcoholics are loath to admit their addiction and enter into rehab. It’s hard to like his character even though he redeems himself in the end. As an actor, Washington is cheerless. He has done better. As a film, I liked Flight better than Passengers.

I was pleasantly surprised to read that Robert Zemeckis has directed films in many categories like drama, comedy, sf, romance, and animation; films I've seen and liked such as A Christmas Carol (Jim Carrey), The Polar Express, Cast Away, What Lies Beneath, Contact (Jodie Foster), Forrest Gump, Back to the Future (trilogy), and Romancing the Stone.

Blog on a break

Due to personal reasons I will not be posting anything for the rest of the week. However, I'll be visiting other blogs as and when I can. Before I sign off, for this brief period, here's something to chew over.

I'm currently reading American writer William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (1929) which is considered something of a literary masterwork. I have read thirty-odd pages and so far I have understood very little. Those pages are filled with dialogue, actually seemingly disconnected verbal exchanges that fly back and forth between a group of children including siblings of different ages, their father and ailing mother, and a black housekeeper. I have resisted the temptation to read what the book is about on the internet. I did, however, find out from Wikipedia that the novel "employs a number of narrative styles, including the technique known as stream of consciousness, pioneered by 20th-century European novelists such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf." 

Since I never give up on a book, I'll continue reading it until the end. Have you read it? If you have then what did you think of it?

The Rome Express by Arthur Griffiths, 1907

I offer this review for Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase as well as my self-imposed challenge to read 1850-1950 vintage books in five categories this year. This is the first of five books in mystery-detective which supersedes spy-espionage for now.

The Rome Express, the direttissimo, or most direct, was approaching Paris one morning in March, when it became known to the occupants of the sleeping-car that there was something amiss, very much amiss, in the car.

The Rome Express by English author Arthur Griffiths has some of the ingredients of Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. A man is brutally murdered on an express train, half-a-dozen people of different nationalities are suspects, and the detective investigating the crime seems like Hercule Poirot’s twin. Except for one thing: Griffiths wrote his novel 27 years before Christie wrote hers. Did Christie borrow the idea from Griffiths? We'll never know.

Unlike Poirot who investigates Ratchett’s murder on the Orient Express, M. Floçon, the Chef de la Surêté, or Chief of the Detective Service of the French police, investigates the mysterious death of Francis A. Quadling, a disreputable banker on the run from Rome, after the express train reaches Lyons station in Paris.

Floçon wastes no time in questioning the seven suspects—the beautiful Contessa Sabine di Castagneto, an Englishwoman by birth, and her attractive maid Hortense Petitpré, a Frenchwoman; the upright and indignant General Sir Charles Collingham, an officer in the British army, and his brother Reverend Silas Collingham, a rector in Norfolk county; Natale Ripaldi, a police detective from Rome; and two unknown Frenchmen.

The other passengers in the adjoining cars are allowed to go on the ground that they’d no access to the one in which the murder took place.

© www.christies.com

In his interrogations Floçon gets a lot of help from M. Beaumont le Hardi, the instructing judge who does as much of the questioning, and a commissary of police, who is at best a mute spectator. Two first inspectors, Galipaud and Block, bungle their way through the field work.

Floçon somewhat resembles Poirot in attire and appearance but not in attitude. I liked Arthur Griffiths’ description of M. Floçon. It says:

“He lived just round the corner in the Rue des Arcs, and had not far to go to the Prefecture. But even now, soon after daylight, he was correctly dressed, as became a responsible ministerial officer. He wore a tight frock coat and an immaculate white tie; under his arm he carried the regulation portfolio, or lawyer's bag, stuffed full of reports, dispositions, and documents dealing with cases in hand. He was altogether a very precise and natty little personage, quiet and unpretending in demeanour, with a mild, thoughtful face in which two small ferrety eyes blinked and twinkled behind gold-rimmed glasses. But when things went wrong, when he had to deal with fools, or when scent was keen, or the enemy near, he would become as fierce and eager as any terrier.”

A lithograph in colours, 1900,
by R. De Ochoa

The French detective is overzealous in his frantic effort to nail the murderer, to the extent that he accuses nearly all the seven people of committing the crime. A mere word or two from someone is enough for the Chief of the Detective Service to zoom in on a suspect, as he does in the case of the countess, her maid, the general, and the Roman officer, often with hilarious results. His accusations swing from one suspect to another like a pendulum.

In the end General Collingham, who is smitten by Contessa Castagneto, saves the day, and much embarrassment, for Floçon, as he perceives a trail of blackmail involving the Italian detective Ripaldi and correctly reasons that the murdered man is not Quadling, the banker.

Final word
The British like poking fun at the French and Arthur Griffith does in ample measure in his delightful novel which is laced with French and Italian exclamations. He has portrayed the French police as a bunch of nitwits who can’t do their job right. For instance, when the general learns that the countess has been arrested, he blurts out, “I don't believe it! Not from these chaps, a pack of idiots, always on the wrong tack! I don't believe a word, not if they swear.”

The Rome Express lacks the suspense and seriousness of Murder on the Orient Express but makes up with a dose of unintended humour through the antics of Floçon and his investigation. Except for the French detective, the other characters are quite ordinary. In short, a nice and light read.

The book is not to be confused with the 1932 film Rome Express by Walter Forde and starring Esther Ralston and Conrad Veidt. The story, by Clifford Grey, an English songwriter, actor, and Olympic medalist, takes place on the train and revolves around a valuable painting that is stolen.

About the author
Arthur Griffiths (1838-1908) was an inspector of prisons and author who has published over 50 books. He is believed to have descended from a long line of military men and served as a Second Lieutenant during the Crimean War in mid-19th century. His books include both fiction and non-fiction, notably The Passenger from Calais, Mysteries of Police and Crime: A General Survey of Wrongdoing and Its Pursuit, The Mediterranean: It’s Storied Cities and Venerable Ruins, The Thin Red Line, Life of Napoleon, Victorian Murders: Mysteries of Police and Crime, In Old French Prisons, and In Spanish Prisons: The Inquisition at Home and Abroad, Prisons Past and Present, among many others.

THE BLAKES: The Greek Mission by Venkitesh Vijay

It's good to see Indian publishers sending out emails about new releases in Indian fiction. This afternoon I received one from Partridge India, a Penguin Random House company, New Delhi, which drew my attention to THE BLAKES: The Greek Mission, the first part of a trilogy. 

The 164-page ebook is written by Venkitesh Vijay, a 14-year old boy from South India and a student of Kendriya Vidyalaya Ernakulam, Kerala. This is his debut novel which "traverses through a new imagination of Greek mythological characters, their real life, and the modern period."

The story is about Alex and John, two archaeologist brothers from London who are summoned by the gods for an important mission—to save one of the gods from the enemies in God’s world. The brothers were identified, tested and entrusted with the mission by the Greek God Zeus due to a power struggle in gods' world. The brothers, however, have to pass many challenges before they are given the task.

Sounds good. Of course, I have not read the ebook which promises action and excitement for the reader. The spate of fantasy and mythological fiction has generated interest in this genre among young readers in India. 

If interested, you can buy the ebook at Amazon for $1.80 (Rs.118.30).

James Coburn

A brief profile of an ageless and versatile actor for Overlooked Films at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

The last time I profiled Maggie Smith, Keishon, who blogs at Yet Another Crime Fiction Blog (check it out), thought that something had happened to the grand dame of cinema. I guess I conveyed that impression by writing about Maggie Smith out of the blue. 

James Coburn in Eraser

Last evening, I watched action film Eraser (1996) and saw a familiar face—James Coburn—who at 6' 2" and 74 is still going strong. (Addendum: Sergio in comments has brought it to my notice that Coburn died in 2002, a fact I clearly overlooked.) As head of the US Federal Witness Protection Programme, he orders US Marshal John Kruger (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to protect Lee Cullen (Vanessa Williams), a key witness to a scam in a company that manufactures secret weapons for the military. The mastermind, US Marshal Robert DeGuerin (James Caan, who I mistook for Armand Assante), is a friend of Kruger and he wants both Kruger and Lee out of the way. The conspiracy, if exposed, can rattle skeletons on Capitol Hill.

Coburn with his peers from The Great Escape.

This is not about Eraser, it is about Coburn, and I realise just how little I know about this fine actor with the rugged look and a winning smile. He has been hovering around the periphery of my cinematic vision for some years now, cast in secondary roles as both good and bad guy, in films like Eraser, Snow Dogs, The Nutty Professor, and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. The only earliest film I remember Coburn in is The Great Escape made over fifty years ago. He didn’t have a beard then.

That’s how long James Coburn has been around. I’ve probably seen him in some of his other films between then and now but don't remember any. I went through his filmography and found only one familiar exception, A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die, a western he starred alongside Bud Spencer and Telly Savalas. He also had a sound television career.

How well do you know James Coburn? Which of his early films do you remember most?

The Renos by Wolf Lundgren, 1999

This fine western is my first book review of the year, posted for Friday’s Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

They planned to do what no man had done before, the hold-up and robbery of a railroad locomotive, the Ohio and Mississippi Flyer. They were going to make history.

My copy of the book

If you want to read a gripping fictional account of the real-life story of the Reno Brothers, who robbed the first train shortly after the Civil War, then The Renos by Wolf Lundgren (1999) is the book for you. In this historical novel, the little-known author weaves a rich story of a group of daring outlaws whose lives and destinies are shaped and sealed by the war they fought for the Union army; a war that taught them to ride, steal, shoot, and kill even in peacetime.

In reality, the Reno Brothers, also known as The Jackson Thieves, were five brothers—John, Frank, Simeon, William, and Clinton—born to god-fearing parents on a ranch in Rockford, Jackson County, Indiana. They also had a sister called Laura. They were made to read the Bible and attend church on Sunday. They had some schooling. While their mother taught them manners, their father gave them a hard time. When they grew up, circumstances led them astray and four of the brothers took to crime.

“They are basically a wild bunch, ruined by their war experiences.”

Often, too much fact can spoil fiction. In this book, however, you cannot separate fact from fiction or fiction from fact. They are intermingled in a seamless plot.

Big John Reno

In The Renos, the Bible-quoting Big John leads his four brothers and their trusted cousins and cohorts on a crime spree in the Midwest, striking terror wherever they go. They are a dandy lot, dressed in slickers and greatcoats and wide-brimmed hats, and carrying twin revolvers. The brothers share a close bond. They have a pecking order, first John, then Frank, and so on. Their sister Laura does not figure in the story. In real life, the youngest Clinton was said to be an honest lad who stayed behind. In the story, he is the loudest and most lecherous of all.

"Nobody, as far as (John) knew, had tried stopping an express train on its track before."

At the heart of the story is the daring robbery of the first railroad train in the history of America, the Ohio and Mississippi Flyer, in Jackson County, Indiana, on October 6, 1866. It’s a robbery that wasn’t attempted even by Jesse James or any of the other infamous outlaws of that era. The Renos and the “trash” who ride with them gallop fast alongside the steaming locomotive, yell like Comanches, and fire in the air before boarding the train and looting $10,000 ($13,000 in real life) from the armoured Adams car.

The run on the Flyer does not cost a single life. For the Renos have sworn never to kill, partly because of their religious belief and partly because they don’t want to be hanged. As John tells his brothers, “We don’t want to kill nobody if it can be helped. We give ‘em a chance to surrender first.”

The first train robbery is soon followed by the daylight break-in at the Davies County Treasury in Gallatin, Missouri, from where the Renos make off with over $22,000. The spoils of both the raids are shared equally between the brothers.

After the robberies, John and Frank want to go straight and settle down, but greed for more ill-gotten wealth keeps them on the wrong path. The brothers settle down in Seymour, Jackson County, and virtually take over the little railroad town and its establishments, inviting anger and hatred of its peaceful inhabitants.

The Reno boys are unaware that their unlawful reign is soon going to end. Well, almost. For, hot on their trail is the famous private detective Allan Pinkerton and his three agents, notably the tall and white-haired Charlie Durango who as a Union spy had infiltrated Confederate lines during the war. Pinkerton became legendary during his relentless pursuit of Jesse James, the Dalton gangs, and Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch among others.

Frank Reno

The wily Pinkerton convinces the trusting John to meet him alone to discuss amnesty but, instead of keeping his word, he “hijacks” the big outlaw from under the noses of his brothers and their comrades and whisks him off to Chicago, to serve forty years in prison. In reality, John Reno was sentenced to twenty-five years. 

Frank Reno, the second brother, takes charge of the gang and continues to ambush railroad trains before finally fleeing to Canada where the final showdown takes place.

The characters
There are no heroes or villains in The Renos. Big John and his brothers may be marauding outlaws but they mean well and are generous with their booty. The eldest brother is a man of principles and he holds the flock together, at least until his early exit, after which Frank takes over and shows his ugly side. Frank is the only one with a girlfriend called Hetty Hancock, a seamstress in Seymour. She hates Frank for his nefarious ways but, like an old-fashioned woman, she accepts the fact that she belongs to him. And then she meets Pinkerton agent Charlie Durango. His boss Allan Pinkerton is a hard taskmaster. Throughout the story, his obsession with tracking down the Renos runs parallel with the misdoings of the brothers.

The novel is filled with lots of other characters from brave and cowardly sheriffs and an ex-army major to railroad clerks and guards, to saloon owners and prostitutes, to “shabby hangdog men” and hooligans.

Final word
The Renos, a Black Horse Western, has all the elements of a traditional western minus gunfight and murder, though the unintentional shooting of a train guard goes against the Renos’ credo of no killings. Author Wolf Lundgren doesn't just tell you the life story of the Renos; he also frequently refers to the Civil War, such as guns like the Henry rifles and Remington army revolvers that were, and are still, used; the fiery Morgan stallions bred on the Reno ranch and used by the brothers; the ruined village of Shiloh, the second great battle of the war where thousands of men slaughtered each other in two days; and the Grotto Saloon, Independence, Missouri, a bustling city and the gathering point for settlers.

Two events stand out in this novel: the formation of a vigilante committee made up of the “honest citizens of Seymour,” who track down the last four Reno boys and their trusted lieutenants and hang them in cold blood; and Big John’s recurrent diatribe against politicians when he growls, “The whole country’s in a mess. The ordinary man don’t have a chance. We might be robbers but we’re no worse than that gang of thieves in Washington led by President Grant.”

The Reno brothers were the subject of at least two movies one of which had Elvis Presley as the youngest brother Clinton.

The Author
I have no idea who Wolf Lundgren is. There is next to nothing about him on the internet. The name could be a pseudonym for a noted writer of westerns. After enjoying the brisk and unhindered pace of The Renos, I’m looking forward to reading his other three novels, Battle at Gun Barrel Canyon, Scorched Lightning, and Gold Frenzy.