The Claim, 2000

A brief overview of an as-yet unseen film adaptation of a Thomas Hardy classic for Tuesday's Overlooked Films, Audio & Video at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

I read and studied abstracts of novels by Charles Dickens (Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, and A Tale of Two Cities) and Thomas Hardy (The Mayor of Casterbridge) in school. The Victorian authors introduced me to their celebrated genre, the classics. In later years, I was more inclined to read Dickens because he was easier to read than Hardy, whose dystopian tales weren’t exactly my cup of tea. Then, a few years ago, I reread The Mayor of Casterbridge and rediscovered Hardy and understood the novel much better than when I read it in my youth. I both like and dislike the powerful and pathetic character of Michael Henchard, who, in a drunken fit, sells his wife and little girl to a passing sailor. It remains my favourite novel by Thomas Hardy.

I mention this particular novel because the story, which is set in the fictional town of Casterbridge, Wessex, is imprinted in my memory. Not many novels stay with me. I was, therefore, surprised when I read that The Claim (2000), a loose adaptation of The Mayor of Casterbridge, is set in distant California and not in Wessex, the setting for many of Hardy’s novels. I have not seen the movie yet.

Not only does director Michael Winterbottom take Thomas Hardy’s story out of Wessex, he also substitutes the original storyline and characters.

In the film Michael Henchard doesn’t get drunk and auction his wife and daughter. Instead, Daniel Dillon (Peter Mullan) is an Irish immigrant who sells his wife Elena Burn (Nastassja Kinski) and month-old baby Hope Burn (Sarah Polley) to a prospector for the rights to a goldmine in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.

For the next twenty years or so, Dillon amasses a great deal of wealth and owns nearly every business in the old west town of Kingdom Come. Then, one day, Elena and Hope accompany Donald Dalglish (Wes Bentley) to the town and give Dillon the shock of his life. His dark secret is about to be exposed. Dalglish is a surveyor with the Central Pacific Railroad which wants to build a railroad through Kingdom Come.

On the face of it, The Claim sounds very interesting because it is set just after the California Gold Rush of 1849 and it has all the elements of one of my favourite genres, western, such as romance, gold mining, railroad, and the symbolic frontier town of Kingdom Come that will decide the fate of Michael Henchard’s alter ego in the film.

I plan to see the film and compare it with Hardy’s classic, though, I think, both deserve their own place. Have you seen The Claim?

The Wreck of the Golden Mary by Charles Dickens, 1856

A review of a poignant story by the famous storyteller for Friday’s Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

In 1898, American writer Morgan Robertson wrote Futility or The Wreck of the Titan which bore a close and uncanny resemblance to the sinking of the ‘RMS Titanic’ fourteen years later, in 1912. 

Both the fictional steamship ‘Titan’ and the real-life passenger liner ‘Titanic’ set sail from England and were cruising toward New York when they collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean and sank.

When Robertson wrote his novella, scarcely would he have imagined that the fate of his ‘Titan’ would prove to be a premonition for the ‘RMS Titanic.’

What Robertson, the son of a ship captain, may or may not have known is that a very famous novelist of the Victorian era had written a somewhat similar story nearly fifty years before he did.

The basic plot of The Wreck of the Golden Mary by Charles Dickens is the same as The Wreck of the Titan.

The ‘Golden Mary,’ a majestic ship with a barque of three hundred tons and carrying more than forty passengers and crew, hits an iceberg and sinks off the coast of Latin America in the South Atlantic Ocean. The ship, commanded by the middle-aged Captain William George Ravender—the best and the bravest of seafarers—had left the shores of England and was on its way to California to trade cargo for gold nuggets. 

The California Gold Rush is incidental to the story. However, it was interesting to see Dickens weave a story around a momentous period in America’s history that saw diggers and emigrants from across the world, especially Europe, rush to the US west coast for a share of the yellow metal.

Dickens focuses on the sad fate of the shipwrecked passengers and crew of the ‘Golden Mary,’ particularly Captain Ravender, a great believer in duty before self; John Steadiman, his chief mate and trusted friend; Mrs. Atherton, a bright-eyed young woman sailing to join her husband in California, along with their little daughter, Lucy; Miss Coleshaw, a sedate young woman in black; and Mr. Rarx, an old and unpleasant gentleman obsessed with the gold discovery.

The captain and his passengers and crew spend nearly a month in their lifeboats—a long boat and a surf boat—wet, cold, and hungry, and drifting aimlessly somewhere in the South Atlantic, often at the mercy of stormy seas and hostile weather conditions. Through it all, Dickens brings out the innate strengths of his characters, particularly Captain Ravender and John Steadiman, who forget their own mental and physical distress to keep alive the hopes and spirits of those under their charge.

More than anything else, The Wreck of the Golden Mary is a metaphor for the tragic fate of Golden Lucy, the three-year old girl with golden curls who endears herself to everyone first aboard the ill-fated ship and then on the lifeboats. Both Mary and Lucy are buried at sea.

There are many affecting scenes in this beautiful story which Charles Dickens narrates through the gentle voice of the captain and his chief mate.

I liked several passages in this novella including the one I reproduce below.

As the child had a quantity of shining fair hair, clustering in curls all about her face, and as her name was Lucy, Steadiman gave her the name of the Golden Lucy. So, we had the Golden Lucy and the Golden Mary; and John kept up the idea to that extent as he and the child went playing about the decks, that I believe she used to think the ship was alive somehow—a sister or companion, going to the same place as herself. She liked to be by the wheel, and in fine weather, I have often stood by the man whose trick it was at the wheel, only to hear her, sitting near my feet, talking to the ship. Never had a child such a doll before, I suppose; but she made a doll of the Golden Mary, and used to dress her up by tying ribbons and little bits of finery to the belaying-pins; and nobody ever moved them, unless it was to save them from being blown away.

Inspirational books I read in my youth

On October 2, I wrote about the popular fiction I read and enjoyed in my teens and twenties. Today, I'm going to briefly discuss some of the nonfiction books that influenced me and my outlook on life early in my youth. This is going to be relatively easy because, back then, I didn’t read many of those.

To start with, I read a lot of spiritual literature by some of the great mystics of India, which included some thirty-odd books written by my own spiritual preceptor. I still read them. They infuse me with a sense of calm and peace, even if for a brief while, and enable me to recharge my batteries, exhausted in dealing with life’s mundane affairs. Spiritual reading also serves as a necessary counterbalance to my daily dose of stimulating literature.

Among the other mind healing and soul cleansing books I read early on, five books in particular are etched in lasting memory.

1. As a Man Thinketh by James Allen (1902), the British philosopher-writer

2. Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970) by Richard Bach, American writer

3. Gandhi: An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (first serialised during 1925-28) by Mahatma Gandhi

4. The Power of Positive Thinking, 1952, by Norman Vincent Peale, minister and author

5. The Discovery of India, 1946, by Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister

As I grew up I discovered many more spiritual, inspirational, and motivational thinkers and writers such as Bertrand Russell, Eknath Easwaran, Thich Nhat Hanh, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Peace Pilgrim (Mildred Lisette Norman), Paul Brunton, Eckhart Tolle, Paulo Coelho, and Joseph Murphy, among others. I'm not mentioning specific titles as an internet search will provide you with some of their best-known books. Every one of them is a veritable treasure.

There are days when I read and reread only these books and each time I do, I discover something new and enlightening, something that I find beneficial in more ways than even I realise.

Musings on an election Wednesday

I haven’t done a Musings post since July this year, so here goes…

© Prashant C. Trikannad

See the purplish ink mark on my left forefinger? It is proof I voted in today’s election in the West Indian state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai (Bombay) is the capital. It is one of four states where elections are being held to elect a new party-government that will rule, or mis-rule, my state for the next five years.

Elections to India’s twenty-eight states and half-a-dozen union territories are held every five years depending on when their terms end. Thus, we see electoral jamboree in one or two or more states every year.

We already have a new central (federal) government run by a new prime minister in New Delhi, where the rejuvenated Hindu Nationalist Party, the BJP, toppled the Congress after ten years.

The BJP and the Congress are India’s two major political parties and are the ideological equivalent of America’s Republican and Democratic parties. They are in power in a majority of the twenty-eight states, which are governed by chief ministers who are equivalent of US governors.

Today’s state assembly election in Maharashtra (Great State) saw a keen contest between disparate, and desperate, candidates belonging to the BJP and the Congress, a slew of regional parties, and some well-meaning independents. The BJP is confident of wresting power from the Congress in the state, too. That, however, remains to be seen. A hung verdict is expected which means no absolute majority for any party.

Illustrative picture of an EVM

Over the years, I have become a political cynic. I have faith in the Indian political system, not in Indian politicians. The ‘protest vote’ or ‘none of the above,’ or NOTA as it is popularly known, was conceived for disgruntled voters like me. It ranks at the bottom of the list of aspiring candidates on the electronic voting machine. If I'd my way I would have placed it right at the top and called it 'None of the Below.' Either way I have had no hesitation in using this potent electoral weapon and leaving the polling booth with a triumphant look on my face.

People tell me I’m wasting my vote and that I ought to cast it in favour of a party, at least for the sake of a majority government and political stability. I don’t see it that way. My vote is too precious to be wasted on politicians I no longer trust to govern justly and fairly. Come to my city and you’ll know what I mean.

Let’s talk about something pleasant—books! 

I got carried away by my own recent post about popular fiction by bestselling authors and decided to read one of them—The Way to Dusty Death (1973) by Scottish writer Alistair MacLean. I’m almost halfway through the novel and I can say with conviction that it’s not his best work. I have read better MacLean.

The story is about Johnny Harlow, a legendary Formula 1 racer who crashes his car in the French Grand Prix leading to the death of one of his fellow drivers and seriously injuring his girlfriend. This is the latest in a series of mishaps on the GP circuit. Harlow is no longer a hero. He loses his nerve and sense of balance and takes to alcohol, or it would seem he has. Actually, Harlow is secretly investigating the cause of the accidents including the one that killed his younger brother. I’m racing to the finish line to see how it ends.

While I’m on the popular fiction wagon, I recently purchased a secondhand copy of The Tangent Objective (1976) by Lawrence Sanders. It is the first of two books in the Peter Tangent series that I haven’t read.

The back of the book aroused my interest: “As the corrupt and strife-torn African nation of Asante teeters on the brink of savage revolt, the lives of two men—one white, one black—are caught up in an explosive maelstrom of money, politics, intrigue and violent action.”

The white man is Peter Tangent, a sophisticated and unscrupulous executive of an American oil company who wages war in Asante—and wins.

One of the things I like about bestselling fiction is the opening line. It is usually banal but effective, like this one from the Sanders novel—“Brindleys was a private club. Small enough so that one knew everyone. Large enough so that one didn’t have to speak to them.”

As I conclude this post, a piffling 45 per cent of the electorate in Maharashtra has cast its vote. Looks like I’m not the only political cynic around.

Q3 review: books I read in the monsoon months

I’m beginning to hate these quarterly reviews of books and short stories I read and occasionally review because they tell me, and you, just how little I’m reading these days. 

© Candied Crime

As I noted at the end of the first quarter and second quarter, I hope to catch up in the next quarter, which is October-December, and reach a respectable figure of fifty books and short stories each for the whole of 2014. More than fifty would be a bonus for now and an incentive for the future.

But I have doubts as I plan to renew my interest in drawing and painting, my second favourite hobby after reading and writing. Both run on either side of the family and every creative gene must be explored. I also intend to devote some time to philately which I have neglected since graduation. Sitting with one’s stamps collection is time well spent—you learn about places and events. 

© The Book Place

I’ll let you know how all of that goes in the first week of January 2015, perhaps, with a scan or two of my intended paintings.

Although I’m not happy with the number of books and short fiction I read in the third quarter, July through September, I’m satisfied with the quality of fiction.

I read some very good stories by three of my blog friends, all very seasoned writers—The Man in the Moon, a crime mystery by James Reasoner; Green Acres and Ding Dong Bell The Kitten in the Well, two cosy mysteries by Dorte Hummelshøj Jakobsen; and The Education of a Pulp Writer & Other Stories, noir at its best by David Cranmer. The three covers tell their own story. While there is nothing common in any of them, every one of the stories is a standout. Check them out. 

© Beat to a Pulp

Among the other modern books I read in Q3, I strongly recommend Defending Jacob by William Landay, reviewed, and The Button Man by Mark Pryor, to be reviewed soon.

This is the full list of books and short stories I read, July-September, in no particular order.

Novels and Novellas

The Dark Side of the Island by Jack Higgins, 1963

Defending Jacob by William Landay, 2012

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, 1960 — reread

The Man in the Moon by James Reasoner, 1980

The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft, 1928

Buck Hawk, Detective by Edward L. Wheeler, 1888

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe, 1959

The Button Man by Mark Pryor, 2014

Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, 1900

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy, 1963 — nonfiction

Short Stories

Comrades by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, 1911

A Woman on a Roof by Doris Lessing, 1963

The Education of a Pulp Writer & Other Stories by David Cranmer, 2008-2014

The White Fruit of Banaldar by John D. MacDonald, 1951

Green Acres, 2012, and Ding Dong Bell The Kitten in the Well, 2014, by Dorte Hummelshøj Jakobsen

The Adventure of the Dying Detective by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1913

Who Murdered the Vets? by Ernest Hemingway, 1935, and The Suppressed Poems of Ernest Hemingway, 1922-1929

You’ll see that I have reviewed more shorts than novels—they are quicker and less time consuming. And besides, I genuinely enjoy reading short stories and short fiction.

Songs I grew up listening to in the seventies

I don’t understand music. I merely derive pleasure from listening to it. I listen to any form of music as long as it sounds like music to me. When I listen to songs, for instance, I don’t know if they are title tracks or sound tracks, who wrote or composed them, which albums they come from and when they were released, or how many people have sung the same song. I don’t bother with all that. It’s like this: if I can simply read a book written by an author, I can quietly listen to a song sung by a singer.

Yet, music touches me like it does most people. It lifts my mood and makes me feel good about myself and about others, and sometimes it allows me to take to the stage and lose myself. In that sense music is a non-intrusive and non-invasive remedy for a cheerful disposition. If meditation is a splendid tonic for the soul, music is a mighty stimulant for the senses. Both have curative powers.

My first brush with music came in the mid-seventies, when we used to listen to English pop songs on Binaca Hit Parade on Radio Ceylon and Saturday Date on All India Radio. Both shows were immensely popular in India.

I believe, in the fifties and sixties, Binaca Hit Parade was presented by the “happy-go-lucky” Greg Roskowski, one of the few “overseas announcers” on the station that was blaring in every household in South Asia. I don’t remember Roskowski.

Later, my father bought us a white-coloured Polish tape recorder for the princely sum of Rs.600 ($10 by today’s rate). The recorder looked a lot like its more famous Japanese cousin National Panasonic. It came with a small microphone. There was much excitement at home. We huddled around the recorder and taped nearly every song on Binaca Hit Parade and Saturday Date, and played them over and over again through the week. 

Recording was a tricky business owing to the absence of a cable link between the radio and the tape recorder. All external sounds got recorded as well. At times a song sounded like so much noise, because my father sneezed loudly, a car honked outside or my mother dropped a steel utensil in the kitchen, that we had to overwrite the song. Shushing had little effect.

Fortunately, like today’s cable television, the songs were repeated on radio back then. If we missed George Baker’s Una Paloma Blanca one Saturday night, we were sure to hear it the following weekend.

Those were simple and hassle-free days. We were contented with the little things we had, like Murphy Radio and the pop songs it belted out.

So then, which were some of the popular songs I grew up listening to in the seventies, right through most of school? Let me see…

Almost everything by Abba and Boney M. In my opinion, Abba has some of the best music and lyrics in the pop business. Boney M was preachy although I like their NASA-inspired Night Flight to Venus.

Carpenters: Top of the World, 1972, and Please Mr. Postman, 1975 (remake of The Marvelettes classic)

Tina Charles: Dance Little Lady Dance, 1976

Cliff Richard: Bachelor Boy, 1962

Perry Como: Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba, 1948

Bee Gees: Stayin' Alive and How Deep is Your Love, 1977

Elvis Presley: You Were Always on My Mind, 1972

George Baker: Una Paloma Blanca, 1976

Connie Francis: Stupid Cupid, 1958, and (He's My) Dreamboat, 1961

Mary Hopkin: Those Were the Days, 1972

Neil Diamond: I Am...I Said, 1971

Peter Frampton: Show Me the Way, 1975

Carl Douglas: Kung Fu Fighting, 1974

Neil Sedaka: Oh! Carol, 1958

Jim Reeves: But You Love Me, Daddy, 1959

John Denver: Annie's Song, 1974

Lee Hazlewood-Nancy Sinatra: Summer Wine, 1967

Louis Armstrong: What a Wonderful World, 1967

Lulu: To Sir with Love, 1967

The Mamas & the Papas: California Dreamin', 1965

Pat Boone: April Love, 1957

Simon and Garfunkel: Sound of Silence, 1966

Quantum Jump: The Lone Ranger, 1976

Brothers Four: 500 Miles

Tom Jones: Delilah, 1968

Trini Lopez: If I Had a Hammer, 1963

Village People: Y.M.C.A., 1978

Yvonne Elliman: If I Can't Have You, 1977

The Four Aces: Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, 1955

Gershon Kingsley: Popcorn, 1969

While these are by no means the only picnic songs I listened to as a kid, they are the ones that have stayed with me for more than three decades. I still listen to most of them, particularly Abba, whose popularity soared after the Swedish quartet came together for the film production of Mamma Mia! a few years ago. Every one of these songs hold up.

I'll round up by recommending two whacky numbers, the very funny Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas and the tongue-twisting The Lone Ranger by Quantum Jump, as well as Popcorn, an unusual instrumental by Gershon Kingsley.

The Vienna Assignment by Olen Steinhauer, 2005

Last evening, I waited in an autorickshaw queue for about half an hour and while I was still twenty heads away from the starting point, I stepped out of the line and caught a bus home. In-between, I ventured out to my regular bookstore and bought myself a secondhand book and an unhealthy snack. In Bombay, you do crazy things like that. 

© HarperCollins

In the bus, all the seats were occupied, including those reserved for women and senior citizens, so I stood behind the driver and skimmed through my new book—my sixth purchase in the past six months.

The Vienna Assignment, the UK title of 36 Yalta Boulevard by American espionage writer Olen Steinhauer, pulls you right in with the tagline, “To be wrongly accused of murder once is a misfortune. Twice — and it’s a conspiracy.”

The blurb on Book Three of the Yalta Boulevard Sequence convinced me that I’d made a good choice, for it says — “It is the height of the Cold War. When a defector mysteriously returns to the Eastern European village of his birth, it's a chance for disgraced detective Brano Sev to redeem himself. Being framed for a murder should just be part of his cover story. Or is it? Exiled suddenly to Vienna, treacherous city of spies, Sev finds himself caught up in a cat-and-mouse game where survival is the only prize. But in a world where no good deed goes unpunished, loyalty can be the biggest crime of all…”

© HarperCollins

Just my kind of book.

Steinhauer, 44, has also written the bestseller The Tourist, the Milo Weaver Trilogy, and the standalone novel The Cairo Affair. His next release, due 2015, is All the Old Knives which is about terrorism and revenge and is set in California and Vienna.

Rob Kitchin, professor and author, has reviewed the novel on his blog The View from the Blue House.

Col, my good blog friend, reviewed Steinhauer's On the Lisbon Disaster and The Cairo Affair over at his blog Col's Criminal Library. Our mutual blog friend, Tracy, who reviews mystery and espionage books among other fiction at Bitter Tea and Mystery, also reviewed The Cairo Affair and The Tourist. 

Have you read anything by Olen Steinhauer?