Monday, Monday

                                                August, 1978: Ocean City, NJ
 I saw THE ODYSSEY again. This time on an IMAX screen and enjoyed it even more. The night before I attended a lecture on the film, which made certain things stand out. Also saw THE END OF OAK STREET, which didn't do much for me. Hard to understand why Anne Hathaway chose this one. 

Finished WHISTLER by Ann Patchett, which was likable it not as good as TOM LAKE or DUTCH HOUSE. Reading JOHN OF JOHN (Stuart) which seems very good.

The Dream Cruise took place this Saturday. The 30th year and a bigger crowd than ever lining Woodward Avenue. Over a million people attended to see the classic cars race up and down a sixteen mile stretch that spans nine communities. 

TV-not too much. Hoping LANTERN on HBO will be good. Starting MY BRILLIANT CAREER on Netflix. 

How about you?  

 

 

FFB: KARNAK CAFE, Naguib Mahfouz

( From Ron Scheer on Buddies in the Saddle in 2015) 

Naguib Mahfouz, Karnak Café (1974)

Bit of a change today at BITS, from West to Middle East. This short novel by Nobel-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz is a sadly melancholy story of the crushing of youthful hope. Set in the 1960s around the time of the 1967 war with Israel, it describes how a generation of young Egyptians, the children of the revolution of 1954, were betrayed and lied to by their government, while being subjected to interrogation and imprisonment by secret police.

Their story is told by an older man (and stand-in for the author), who befriends a gathering of them who are regulars at a Cairo café, Al-Karnak. There they talk of politics and express their idealistic aspirations, both for themselves and their country. Abruptly disappearing for periods of time, they return shaken and demoralized. While in police custody, kept in windowless cells, they have endured harsh treatment and false accusations.

Eventually it’s revealed that they have been coerced into becoming informants, which corrodes their trust in each other and eventually leads to the death of one of them. Two, a loving couple at the story’s start, are driven apart by their guilt and shame.

Karnak Café is a troubling vision of life in a modern police state, and it sheds light for Westerners on the recent struggles in Egypt for freedom and justice. Novella-length, it takes a stand somewhat distant from political events, while clearly throwing its sympathies to the young people who speak on its pages. 

Short Story Wednesday; "THE BLIGHT" by Emma Cline from the NEW YORKER

 This is an excerpt from Cline's forthcoming novel, SWITZY. It is completely satisfying in its self. A man is journeying to Switzerland to end his life. He has dementia and has gone as far as he cares to go. Once there, he has dinner with his daughter who doesn't seem to realize how far his disease has progressed. He covers up as much as he can and it feels like he never really has a close relationship with her so it is easier than you expect. Very moving and I will read the book when it debuts this fall. Who does not know someone with dementia now? So much familiar in its path. 

TracyK 

George Kelley 

Jerry House 

Monday, Monday

 

Lots of hot, dry weather. And so much humidity. Watching THE TRUTH WILL OUT on Prime, a Scandy show about a depressed cop. Aren't they all about that? I like it though. Watched one TED LASSO, I am not sure it's going to work. Finishing up ANNE WITH an E,

Reading WHISTLER-one of my favorite writers. Also JOHN OF JOHN. 

I found the list of the 50 best thrillers of the century pretty good. I certainly agree with GONE GIRL as number one. It was original, beautifully written and exciting and it did new things with two unreliable narrators.  Most of the choices were exceptional in some way. I was surprised Louise Penney wasn't on it but I think it's because none of her books stand out from the rest. Overall she would certainly be chosen for her entire oeuvre but not so much any one book. Same with a lot of writers. 

My book group has a good time talking about YESTERYEAR although no one really loved it. Sometimes it's the ones that are flawed that make the best discussion.

So what's new with you?  

 

Friday's Forgotten Books, THE DEAD LINE, Philip McCutchan

(from the archives) Bill Crider

 

The Dead Line -- Philip McCutchan

 Back in the '60s I read spy novels by the metric ton.  I wasn't the only one, as there were more spy series being published than I care to count.  The reason, as you all know, was James Bond.  Every publisher wanted to find "the next Bond," and as you can see by the blurbs on this book, Commander Esmonde Shaw was one of the guys that reviewers thought might fit the bill.  I'm not sure how many books in the series Berkley published, but I read a lot of them.  I ran across this one the other day and picked it up to see what it would be like to read one again.  Or re-read.  I have an idea I read all the Berkley editions with this particular cover style.


As you'd expect, Commander Shaw is pretty much a Bond clone, except even more suave and attractive to women.  He's a magnificent physical specimen, and he has a great car.  He smokes, too.  Everybody did, back in the old days.  The book opens (as a lot of spy novels did) with Shaw recovering from wounds received on his previous assignment.  He's doing some surfing to tone up, and of course all the young women on the beach swoon over him.  Also of course in only a short time he's become one the best surfers around.  Now, however, it's time to get back to work, so he gets put through some tough exercises by his handlers and proves that he's aces.


Then he learns about his assignment.  This is a very '60s novel, with the commies stirring up "the Coloured elements" and doing a bang-up job of it. Shaw's sent to Harlem, where a woman falls for him at once and gets involved in some really serious action that even includes a tiger.  In an apartment.  Things get even more bizarre later on.  (Spy novel plots got more and more outrageous as the years went on for writers not following the Le Carre model.)  It's kind of hard to get past the racial elements of the plot here.  It might have been good fun in 1966, but it's not so much now.  Still, McCutchan had a flair for this kind of thing, and the book zips right along.  Maybe I'll read another one someday.

Short Story Wednesday, The Continental Op, Dashiell Hammett

     "The Tenth Clew"

Hammett is such a straight forward story teller He dives right into this story as he goes to the house of a man who has summoned him. He arrives to find his potential client has been killed. Just what the man feared. Nine items have been recovered from the dead man's person and he asks the man's son, if they all belonged to his father. The son identified nine items that were his father's. Of course, there's a woman in the story and her brother. A well-written story I enjoyed.  

George Kelley 

Jerry House