Perduta

The Diary of a Lost Girl (Germany, 1929) by G.W. Pabst, 104 minutes

The divine Louise Brooks never fails to mesmerize even eighty years after this b&w film was made. One of my absolute favourite actresses. Pabst, very famously, fell in love with Brooks during the shooting of Pandora's Box (1928), the first film they did together, and it shows in every shot of Brooks in both films. Like the husband says, "Those Germans sure knew how to light a girl ..."

Brooks plays Thymiane Henning, the teenage daughter of a pharmacist (Josef Rovensky), seduced (some descriptions of the film say raped) by her father's pharmacy assistant, Meinert played by the unnervingly sinister looking Fritz Rasp.

Henning, her father, hypocritically has also taken to seducing and impregnating his housekeepers without repercussion much to the shame and horror of Thymiane.

She gives birth to an illegitimate child. As neither Thymiane nor Meinhert want to marry, the girl is forced to give her baby away by her father and is then sent to a militaristic girl's reform school run by a sadistic Director (Andrews Engelmann) and his equally frightening and cruel wife (Valeska Gert) who appear to derive sexual pleasure from tormenting the girls. Her father comes under thrall to Meta, a conniving housekeeper whom he eventually marries and who does not want Thymiane around.

Pabst had a genius for selecting the right faces for the silent screen: the greedy, selfish Meta; the evil, frightening faces of the Director and his wife; the lecherous father Henning; the weak-willed but good-natured Count; the dour, prudish family that eventually drives Thymiane away; the vicious, predatory Meinhert ...

In one of the few inadvertently and oft shown comic scenes, Valeska Gert bangs on a drum ecstatically while the overtaxed girls exercise violently before her and it is clear that she is deriving a sadistic erotic pleasure from the activity. In another disturbing scene, the Director forcibly removes lipstick from fellow reform schoolmate Erika (Edith Meinhard), then keeps the lipstick which he stealthily applies to himself when alone.

Resourceful Thymiane escapes from the school with her friend Erika and the aid of the sympathetic Count Osdorff (also someone spurned by his family) and with the aid of the other girls who physically restrain the hated Director's wife and steal her keys. It's an amazing scene where we see the two malefactors almost drown in a sea of hands and legs as the girls overwhelm them. It's like an image of locusts devouring their prey!

Thymiane searches for her child only to learn that she has recently died. She wanders the streets completely desolate and then finally searches for Erika, her only friend, who now works in a brothel. Thymiane soon joins Erika in her trade slowly seduced by the company, the beautiful clothes and good cheer of the house. Sadly, it appears the only place which has extended any kindness to her.

There is a bit of a silly subplot about Thymiane marrying Count Osdorff and getting her inheritance from her father's estate in atonement for his abandonment of her. Thymiane promptly gives away her inheritance to her stepsister as her step-family is now destitute. The count ain't too happy either as he was expecting a sizable inheritance to share and soon ends his life. But the Count's father takes responsibility for his son's fate and decides to assist Thymiane financially.

Returning to the reform school as a wealthy trustee, Thymiane now enjoys a life of privilege, and decides to use her new role to help girls such as Erika.

According to the mores of the times, bad girls must suffer for their misdeeds but, surprisingly here, Thymiane triumphs over her enemies despite giving birth to the illegitimate child and a life of prostitution. Of course, in order to redeem herself in our eyes, she must vow to assist other girls in similar situations ... and she does.

As saccharine and cliche as the film can be, Brooks shines in every scene, her beauty is extraordinary, like the picture of a sun in the middle of each frame - conveying sorrow, joy, pleasure, anger across her exquisite features and for the most part her acting is remarkably restrained in style compared to those flailing around her trying to convey intense passions.

What pleasure she gives us on the screen! If only her life had been a happier affair (read her autobiography Lulu in Hollywood for more detail). I urge you to see both this film and the more morally complex Pandora's Box.

More on Louise Brooks:

• The Girl in the Black Helmet by Kenneth Tynan, reprint of a 1979 New Yorker article
• Louise Brooks by Barry Paris (Knopf, 1989)
• A Conversation with Louise Brooks by Richard Leacock, an interview during the filming of Lulu in Berlin (1984) which may be viewed on the Pandora's Box (Lulu) DVD released by the Criterion Collection.

Kindling

Ordinarily this woman makes my skin crawl but she raises some interesting points about the Kindle DX electronic reader ... and the future of reading.

Exit Killer of Kings, Loudly

We rise at 8.30am hoping to have a leisurely breakfast before we leave for Stratford - cereal, fresh pastries, yogurt with fruit and granola, great coffee, fresh berries - an amazing repast at the best table in the house, the north eastern corner of the Dining Room by the window where we can see the pond and the terrace.

We spend the next hour and a half reading in the Wilks Conservatory -this is blissful. Being inherently lazy and loving to read, I am in heaven here.

We leave for Stratford at noon. We arrive early and search for a gift for the sprout (who returns from camp the next day). R finds a Manga version of Macbeth for her as well as a great blank book with an interesting cover for my notes and a pair of blue stone earrings.

I was excited about seeing Colm Feore as Macbeth - what a confusing mishmash of images and themes - it boggled the mind! Set in "contemporary mythic Africa" the male characters are dressed in combat gear with Scotland insignia or African dashikis. The women, notably Yanna McIntosh as Lady Macbeth, sometimes appears in African garb, Jackie Kennedy like attire complete with pillbox hat and at other times appears to superficially resemble First Lady Michelle Obama with her beautiful, tailored clothes and straightened hair. Are they consciously trying to emulate Michelle Obama - but to what end - to suggest that the Obamas resemble the famed Macbeths?

Setting it in "mythic Africa" what does that mean - which Africa? The Africa of AIDS and poverty and civil war? The Africa of the north - Egypt or Morocco? The Africa of war-ravaged Darfur?

Feore seemed, and I hesitate to say it, too effete and fragile to portray the murderous, ambitious Scot who kills his own king. And Yanna McIntosh was underwhelming, tending to shout her lines to convey passion or anger. A slight lisp also mars her performance although R disagreed.

The effects (a jeep on stage, full military garb for the Scottish noblemen, grenades lobbed, bombs going off, rifles shot, men in SWAT team attire literally dropping from the ceiling on ropes, strobe lights, giant videos, MacDuff's son's throat graphically slit with blood gushing) were aggressive and gratuitous I thought. Who is the audience demographic here? Fourteen year old boys who play video games? R was particularly incensed by the production.

And the self-satisfied smirk on Feore's face at the end of the play during the applause! I couldn't understand the enthusiasm of the crowd. And the room was absolutely packed, it was.

Afterwards we met our friends Stan and Penny at Bentley's in Stratford for dinner (always a pleasure to see them). They said that the production has been getting awful reviews and many blame Des McAnuff, the artistic director for not trusting the text enough. Some interesting thoughts about what is happening in Stratford here.

As always, I was anxious to get home at the end of the trip. We made it home in record time (by 9.30pm). We were welcomed by two greedy little cats and a nice cozy house, happy in the expectation that J would be home on the morrow.

Rosse rose per te ho comprato stasera

Rosse rose per te ho comprato stasersa ...
Red roses I have bought for you tonight ...

A significant birthday looms ... my solution was to run away to a beautiful hotel for a few days and pretend it won't happen. J was at camp for four days with her school so it seemed a perfect time to get away. Mad dash to Cambridge to stay at Langdon Hall on June 16th and 17th and to see a play the next day at nearby Stratford Festival. This is our fourth visit to Langdon which is not inexpensive but I like to reserve our stays for special occasions. We arrived just after five after a snarl of traffic.

I requested a room in the main house which I don't believe we have stayed in before rather than the Cloister Rooms - an adjoining building to the south of the manor. We were in Lady Slipper 7 (gotta love these names!) which faces west and is just above the entrance. I was greeted by a dozen large beautiful red roses which R had ordered and a small package which contained three CDs with music from every year since my birth. He had put a photo of my mom and I when I was about a year old on the cover of the CDs. I was so touched! And grateful for such a sweet gesture.

Great room (pictured above) - with a small anteroom containing a large armoire and tea things set on a chest of drawers, working fireplace, walk-in shower, chaise longue and miniscule TV, unbelievably small, a gorgeous bed in beautiful crisp white linens and russet coloured pillows with drapes to match. We flaked out, tired and cozy on the bed, to wait for dinner in the Dining Room at 7.30.

I love to dress up for dinner, how civilized and fun! The Dining Room has east facing windows all along one side and faces the lily pond and a pretty patio terrace. Fresh flowers, candles, beautifully simple white china - magical and elegant.

The food is wonderful - fresh ingredients from the garden on the grounds, beautifully presented, original recipes, gorgeous venue - a foodie paradise. We ordered lobster ragout and pickerel ceviche for appetizers; beef tenderloin and guinea hen for the mains; and, chocolate torte and citrus pave (a layered cookie tart) for dessert.

We walked the length of the grounds after dinner just after sunset - along the edge of the pond, through the entranceway to the Cloister Rooms, across the croquet lawn, and sat for a while on the back porch.

We saw the stone again that was laid for Catherine Wilks' husband Garth Thomson. Catherine's father, Eugene Langdon Wilks (1855-1934), was the great grandson of John Jacob Astor (on the maternal side). Catherine owned the property until 1982. The history of the property and the family alone is intriguing. The present owners purchased it in 1989 and refurbished it as Langdon Hall.

And were we glad they did!

Storie della Sicilia

Behind Closed Doors: Her Father's House and Other Stories of Sicily by Maria Messina (Feminist Press, CUNY, 2007) 196 pages

Maria Messina (1887-1944) is a revelation for me ... a Sicilian writer from the turn of the last century rediscovered by internationally renowned Racalmutese author Leonardo Sciascia (1921-1989). A new friend and fellow Racalmutese from Hamilton, Calogero Milazzo, gave me this book of short stories a few months ago as a gift.

Despite her literary success in Italy and writing under the tutelage of the legendary Giovanni Verga, a master of the verisimo style, Messina seemed to live a stunted life for most of it under the thumb of strict parents, deprived of an education except what she could glean from her older brother whom she revered, and living in a small provincial town in rural Sicily for most of her life. But interestingly, this cloistered, claustrophobic life lead to a careful, sensitive cataloguing of the deprivations of women of her time.

More touchingly for me, the introduction written by the translator touches upon those cultural elements in Sicilian society from the late 19th c. and early 20th c. which are immediately recognizable, which explain to me the actions and thoughts of my parents raised in a small western Sicilian village in the 30s and 40s .... and trying to inculcate these values (sometimes futilely) into their children in the 60s and 70s.

The preoccupations of a "proper" Sicilian woman at the turn of the century were not so different than my mother's expectations for me seventy years later. When my father died I was compelled, not asked, to wear black for six months, as if we were in the old country. A badge of respect for the dead. There was a fierce and, I feel, unhealthy obsession in protecting the chastity of all young females in the family which meant rigidly observed rules of conduct and close watch when we ventured out. My mother seemed very concerned with preparing a trousseau for me before I married (which I did not want nor ever asked for) with linens and bedsheets and towels - all the accouterments of domesticity for when I married!

My parents, indeed all of my relations, were very fastidious in dress regardless of our station in life - it didn't matter if my parents' generation laboured in factories or steel mills or fixing roads - when we went out my mother's rule was strictly enforced: "always look your best" no matter where you were going or what you were doing. Now, it makes more sense, how was one to marry off one's daughter if she did not care for herself, make herself presentable, fashionably dressed and illustrating how well the family was doing?

I remember my hair elaborately curled with a little bun that sat on my head protected by a matching hair net (oh the abuse I took for that hairnet) and coming to school in bright yellow or pink dresses with frills and which sparkled with sequins along the fringes while other girls cavorted in levi jeans and beat up sneakers. How mortified my mother was when I wore my faded jeans with a single patch sewn on to them as a teenager ("You look like a hippie!" she shrieked). And how I loathe those colours now ...

Another explicit rule was that one was never to reveal one's troubles within the family for this was how those who wished you ill gained the upper hand. All of these social conventions feature in the stories here ...

The stories, written in the verismo style, touch on many issues rarely mentioned in Italian literature heretofore. The style is not elegant or particularly artful but should be seen for what it is: a punch in the solar plexus of Sicilian patriarchy merely by daring to utter the simplest of truths. In an effort to preserve la famiglia, Sicilian culture and the sanctity of the home, much was sacrificed by the women (and parents left behind) when the men emigrated.

There is a kind of despair in the plots which I recognize in the writing of the female writers of Southern Italy, not just in Sicily but it seems more pronounced in Sicilian writers. This is disheartening at times (there's a bleak similarity between the short stories) but completely understandable - in these small towns, within these narrowly prescribed worlds, the women had no choice but to comply or risk complete isolation from family and neighbors. And yet, I fear, we, as women, make a virtue of this sacrifice to convention and allegiance to conservative values which I have referred to in other blogs as the "Violetta Complex".

Yet Messina astounds, revealing a level of resentment and anger in her characters which percolates through some of the stories with the characters threatening to destroy themselves, or the family, rivals in love, virtually all familial ties. This, I feel, is revolutionary for a woman and writer of her era.

In "Grace", a widow with a child, who feels herself to be plain and unattractive, faces the unfaithfulness of an abusive lover, a shepherd who beats her, takes her meager earnings and deceives her. Grace lives in terror lest her man leave her for her beautiful neighbor Elena only to find that she has been deceived by the pious, plain housewife Basila.

"America, 1911" tells of the effects of mass emigration prompted by poverty from Sicily. I had not thought of this clearly before ... what of those left behind, the elderly parents? the wives? sometimes the children? The economic, social and emotional toll of emigration is recounted here. The hopes of those left behind dashed by La Merica, which is described alternately as a seductress and wormwood. A wife is left behind because her eyesight is poor, left on the dock, frightened and embittered as her husband sails away. His parents remain as well as they are elderly. The wife slowly loses her eyesight and her mind due to her despair.

Things fare as poorly for Nonna Lidda in "Grandmother Lidda" who loses both her son and then her grandson to La Merica and therefore loses the will to live.

Vanni almost loses hope of a bride when he returns to Sicily from America after two years to learn that his once intended is engaged to another but the dainty shoes (in "Le Scarpette") that he has bought and set aside for his future bride remain pristine ... awaiting some other woman that will eventually take her place.

The shabbily genteel lawyer Scialabba in "Ti-nesciu" must keep up appearances at all costs so that his daughter might marry and marry well so he takes her out each night for display in the piazza.

"Her Father's House" is the most poignant. A young woman watches her youth fade waiting for permission to marry that her sisters-in-law and family will not allow - mocking her for her desires for a home and husband of her own.

"Ciancianedda", a deaf mute beauty, leaves the sheltered life she leads with her father and brother to marry a handsome suitor only to have him stolen by a siren with a beautiful voice who sings to him each night. And in "Caterina's Loom", Caterina rejects a suitor whom her family has coaxed her to accept because of the way she feels she has been put on display - choosing to be alone rather than auctioned off like a prize hen.

Messina remains defiant - her life may have been circumscribed, her options limited as a woman but she was well aware of the injustices and her clear sighted vision could not be curbed or ignored.

Purge

Our neighborhood holds an annual garage sale that extends over several streets. Our participation has been sporadic over the almost ten years that we have lived in our much loved Victorian in Riverdale. We don’t make much at the sales but it’s a good way to clear the house of unwanted stuff hat has accumulated over the years. The longer we are together the more we accumulate ...

This year we decided to sell a lot of J’s larger baby stuff: a portable playpen, a swinging chair, her car seat, some little bits and pieces from her babyhood … I have mixed feelings about this. I have been holding on to the stuff for the second baby that never came and then the adoption that never happened.

The day of the sale, the morning starts badly. J had been ill during the night and I got up and lay down with her at 4.30. Four thirty is a bad time for me ... It usually means I can't settle down after that: the wheels start turning, and then I'm done, I'm too wound up to fall asleep. She did manage to fall asleep luckily but I did not. And unfortunately, R didn’t wake up feeling that great either on Sat. morning. So I have two sickies on my hands and a whole bunch of stuff I have to put out outside and set up on a table and the lawn in front of the house. Books, toys, knick knacks, two pairs of skates, two bikes, many child sized hockey sticks, a stereo ... R drags his heineken outside and helps me with the big stuff then collapses on the couch, creeping out periodically into the sun like a resurrected vampire, shielding his eyes with sunglasses and looking a tad green.

As I sit there in the June morning sun which is pleasant and warm, I realize that I am immensely annoyed and saddened. I am alone for most of the sale (it can't be helped) and I am furious - but why? It's the baby stuff ... I don't want to give it away but what's the point of holding on to the big articles? Some precious toys and clothes and books I have kept - but for whom? J's babies if they come? When - fifteen years from now? If I'm lucky?

Every six months we have an enormous argument about a wooden cradle, similar to the one pictured above, that my sister got for me when J was born (that didn't make it into the garage sale - I refused). I thought it was pretty even though you could not safely use it to place an infant in it with today's safety standards but I kept it in J's room and I piled it high with the dozens of stuffies that J had received as gifts when she was a baby. It gave me such pleasure just to look at it. It gave her room such a homey feel.

R wants to get rid of it - we have no need for it, it's falling apart because it is not particularly well constructed, it's difficult to move around because it's fragile now and invariably just disintegrates in our hands when I move it to get to something else. True, true, true. But if I give it up aren't I saying that's it - I know we will never have another child - biological or otherwise? Aye, there's the rub so I cling to the damn thing and refuse to give it away. And fight with R each time he says we should get rid of it. He is done with this issue, done. And I don't blame him - it's years of frustration and sorrow and not a small amount of bitterness.

The cradle is full of "it should have been", "why didn't we", "why couldn't we", "why didn't you" ...

This cradle has become the symbol of our infertility (excuse me - my infertility). So I am angry at myself and him and the whole damn world for the way things have turned out. Then I feel guilty because I feel (I know) that I am selfish. I have a child, many women do not have that and desperately want one. And she's a beautiful, wonderful child ...

Still.

I am a greedy thing ... I do not feel that I am done with motherhood and small babies. Baby lust they call it. So I pine ... and I wait. And wait ...

P.S. The morning had a semi-happy ending. My sister called early and said that she might be in need of some baby stuff. She is a foster parent for the Children's Aid Society and may get a baby to care for over the summer - could she have the portable playpen, car seat, swinging chair? Could she??? I was so relieved that I didn't have to give it away that I would have carried that stuff on my back to bring it to her in Hamilton.

And the cradle? She will take that too, when and if I want to give it away. Until I want it back. What can I say - my sister rocks.

My First Review

Oooooh, so much rests upon the opinion of others when you write. How sad we are ... how little makes us happy! Today I saw my first review of Made Up of Arias in a journal called Partners which is directed towards the Italo-Canadian business community in Toronto but always includes a section on arts and culture.

A very nice review ... written by fiction writer Julie Booker which took up a whole page with a picture of the book cover. It's an intelligent review - not just because she liked the book but because she knows a bit about opera herself and understands that it is a metaphor for the Pentangelis' life.

She talks about the plot in great detail and then concludes:
"Alfano is a keen observer, with an eye for detail and a gift for humour. ... This charming story is well worth reading."

Thank you Ms. Booker ... from your mouth to God's ears!

Gone but not really ...

Gone with the Wind (U.S., 1939) directed by Victor Fleming, 238 min.

Frankly, My Dear by Molly Haskell (Yale University Press, 2009) 244 pages

I just finished reading the wonderful non-fiction book Frankly My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited by Molly Haskell which made me want to watch Gone with the Wind again. The film has always been a guilty pleasure along the lines of enjoying The Sopranos (far superior artistically but evokes similar feelings of discomfort and guilty pleasure) or the milder guilt inducing West Side Story.

The whole premise of Margaret Mitchell's book and the 1939 film violates the liberal sensibility (or anyone with a conscience): the noble and beautiful Southern way of life destroyed by an uncomprehending and heartless Northern conqueror in the American Civil War. It's a nauseating fantasy when one contemplates what it must have cost in human blood to sustain the plantation system in the South. I am sure that life was an idyllic dream for the privileged white few but at whose expense was this lifestyle sustained?

And let me say upfront (which has been said many times before rightly) that the characterization of most of the black characters is evil and reprehensible - running the spectrum from squirm inducing to horrifying. It boggles the mind. What, therefore, redeems this film?

I must say, for me as it is for some other feminists, it is the characterization of Scarlett O'Hara by Vivien Leigh. And you are thinking ... but she is vain, selfish, manipulative, careless, hypocritical, at times heartless ... she is all of these things and she survives all that is thrown at her: the Civil War, the death of her beloved mother and the consequent mental deterioration of her father; burying two husbands; losing a child; famine, carpetbaggers; marauding Union solders; poverty; social ostracization and the heavy burden of sustaining a household of family and servants, black and white, who seem utterly lost at the end of the war.

In many respects she represents a steely feminist icon which flies in the face of the stereotypical, simpering Southern belle. If, on the surface, she preens and flirts and flatters, it belies a nature truer to the ruthless Yankees that she claims to despise. In her book Haskell compares the characters of the men in the book to Scarlett's ferocity:

Baby-faced Charles Hamilton woos (or is wooed by) Scarlett, and after one night with her, goes off to war to die of measles and pneumonia. Frank Kennedy, a little old maid, can’t collect from his customers and is outwitted by his wife. Ashley Wilkes gives loserdom a high poetic sheen. Gerald O’Hara, a reckless drunk, falls apart with the death of his wife. By contrast, Scarlett is a generalissima on the battlefield of courtship and marriage. Sherman has nothing on the deadly belle-then-widow as she cuts a swathe thought the rolls of Georgia’s most eligible bachelors.

From a mid 19th c. societal point of view as a Southern lady, Scarlett's transgressions range from the offensive (marrying Charles Hamilton, a man she did not love, to make Ashley Wilkes jealous; dancing in public while in mourning for one's husband and callously giving his wedding ring away under the guise of supporting the Confederate cause; sporadically necking with her lifelong love Ashley, a married man and an in-law to boot) to the fairly disreputable (marrying
sister Suellen's beau to save the family estate; traveling alone in a disreputable part of town to do business; trying to con Rhett Butler out of $300 to pay the taxes to save Tara, the family home) to the unconscionable (doing business with the hated carpetbaggers and those whom Southerners claim have destroyed the South; shooting a Union soldier in the face as he tries to rob you; using convicts as labour in her new business).

In the end, Scarlett gets what she wants - wealth and stability - even if she has to marry the once hated Rhett Butler to get it. And she eventually succumbs to his desire that she love him, truly love him, and drives the desire for that milquetoast Ashley Wilkes out of her head forever.

But it takes extraordinary things to happen before she comes to that point. Melanie must die and then Scarlett must see how much Ashley truly loved his wife. Scarlett has to lose virtually every person that she has loved: mother Ellen, father Gerald, Bonnie her first born, her unborn child which she miscarries, her love for Ashley, Rhett.

She stands alone at the end and yet is unbroken. She will triumph. And in the end, feminist or not, you forgive her her transgressions and believe that she will carry on by any means necessary.

The White Tiger

Never before in human history have so few owed so much to so many ... A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9% ... to exist in perpetual servitude; a servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man's hand and he will throw it back at you with a curse."
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (Simon & Schuster, 2008) 276 pages

The really wonderful thing about my book club is that it compels me to read things I ordinarily wouldn't read - this book being one of these instances.

How to describe our hero Balram Halwai? Member of a "low" caste of sweetmakers in India. Servant. Chauffeur. Small business entrepreneur. Oh yes, and, murderer.

He starts life as a poor Indian boy born in "the Darkness" with a searing, subversive sense of humour and an acute sense of the injustices of caste society in India. Early on, as a young boy, Balram is described as a unique and intelligent boy, a once in a generation phenomenon - a white tiger.

He begins the novel as a fugitive, a man wanted for murder, sitting in office alone, transfixed below a chandelier in his small office, writing a letter to a Mr. Jiabao, a Chinese official whom he has read in the newspapers will be visiting Bangalore to "meet some Indian entrepreneurs and hear the story of their success". Balram is very anxious to speak of his success as an entrepreneur and we are anxious to hear his story because the first thing he tells Mr. Jiabao is that he has murdered someone and is on the run ...

This is an India, the publisher describes, composed of "the cockroaches and the call centers; the prostitutes and the worshippers; the ancient and Internet cultures; the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is (almost) impossible, the white tiger."

Balram's initial ambition is to become a driver primarily because he covets the pristine uniform. He succeeds in convincing a wealthy family of landlords to take him on even though his caste dictates that he should be a sweetmaker. But his position as a driver doesn't begin to encompass his domestic responsibilities: cook, masseur, cleaner, household servant, dog-washer and general dogsbody at the service of all in the household. He sleeps in the basement of the apartment in a hovel with the other servants who are summoned by a bell.

Alternately horrifying and grotesquely funny we experience Balram's vicissitudes. The patriarch, known as The Stork, is a vicious oaf whose feet Balram regularly massages. The eldest son, The Mongoose, is a chip off the old nasty block: bigoted, spoiled and cruel. The second son Ashok, whom Balram primarily serves, is somewhat less vicious and often has a guilty conscience about the inequitable relationship. Pinky Madam, Ashok's wife, is another story: perhaps an even uglier emblem of the new entrepreneurial India, greedy, selfish, spoiled, immodest and callous. Of all of them, Balram is most devoted to Ashok who seems to pay for all their transgressions.

Balram is forced by his masters to sign a confession to the accidental killing of a child when Pinky Madam runs over the child in a drunken spree. Balram assures the reader that this is a common fate for drivers in Delhi - to assume responsibility for their masters' crimes. And the boy's family colludes in this, proud of Balram, who has acted like "the perfect servant". At all costs, they wish the money that Balram sends home to continue no matter what degradations he suffers.

But Pinky Madame runs away after the accident, terrified by what she has done leaving thousands of rupees for Balram (out of shame? guilt? fear?) and Balram experiences a narrow escape because the crime is never reported.

How, Balram wonders, can a man break out of this trap - this roosters' coop where the poor are trapped and subservient and oblivious of this trap? Only "a man who is prepared to see his family destroyed - hunted, beaten, and burned alive by the masters. That would take no normal human being, but a freak, a pervert of nature. It would take a White Tiger." Because even if Balram rebels, the masters would then turn on the family in a horrific and violent way to gain their revenge. And this, Balram reasons, is why few refuse to rebel.

Ashok falls apart with Pinky gone. Inexplicably, Balram suffers too. He starts to rebel, tries to frequent a prostitute with humorous results, steals from his master, siphons gas out of the car, goes to a sleek upscale mall which he sees as a luscious, forbidden piece of fruit and plots his escape. And it will not be pretty. Definitely not pretty.

Many words come to mind to describe this book: amoral, hilarious, biting, frighteningly true to life. India.

Doors Somewhat Open

Doors Open Toronto, May 23rd and 24th, 2009

I persuaded R to accompany me on my sojourn to see a few buildings that I have always been curious about: Don Jail, Allan Gardens Conservatory, the Flat Iron Building, the Carlu.

We live a few blocks away from the Don Jail. Apparently the greater portion of the GTA population also shares my morbid curiosity because when we got there at 11.30 on Saturday morning we were met with the news that our wait would be about four hours. We fled ... it was really warm and the line horrendously long. A real cross section of city in the line up. But apparently you can still book an event(??) or a historical tour here.

I wanted to include a section on a visit to the Don Jail in my new work but, alas, I will have to rely on archival info and photos ... the book is partially set in the 1980s so I have to sort out what the conditions were like, who was imprisoned there and why ... There is a plaque on the corner which tells you that executions were performed right up until the 1960s. The old jail was built between 1862-65 (our desire to imprison people predates our desire to be a country in 1867 apparently) and was inhabited until 1977 and then the prisoners were moved to the new jail which adjoins the old.

" ... the Don was the site of a number of hangings. Starting with the execution of John Boyd in January 1908, hangings at the Don took place in an indoor chamber, which was a converted washroom, at the northeast corner of the old building. Previously, condemned men had been hanged on an outdoor scaffold in the jail yard. The indoor facility was seen as an improvement because outdoor executions were quasi-public (at the hanging of Fred Lee Rice in 1905, crowds had lined surrounding rooftops to see something of the spectacle) ... Twenty-six men were hanged on the Don’s indoor gallows. The jail saw three double hangings ...", wikipedia, last updated 15 May 2009

The old building has now been purchased by Bridgepoint Health which will turn it into a series of offices beginning with renovations in October 2009. I feel somewhat guilty for wanting to see the building as it was the site of a great deal of suffering - so what draws us to such things I wonder? The same impulse perhaps which drove the Romans to watch Christians being devoured, crowds of people watching hangings and executions like a circus event or even closer to our time, crowds in the 19th c. frequenting morgues and orphanages as a form of entertainment of sorts.

Off to the Allan Gardens Conservatory at Gerrard and Jarvis Streets. It really is quite beautiful. I had no idea the scope and breadth of the plants, flowers and vegetation. The Gardens make an appearance in the book too. It is an odd combination of the beautiful and the grotesque there ... the conservatory is large, spacious, very well preserved with exotic flowers and vegetation from around the world, fountains, memorial benches, etc ... Yet outside the grounds surrounding the conservatory are filled with homeless people, some apparently mentally ill by the looks and sound of them. It really is a disturbing combination.

I wanted to capture that in the book ... the juxtaposition of wealth and affluence in the city with the lives of those who have fallen through the cracks in the social fabric and somehow survive in this metropolis.

We drove over to the Gooderham Building (or more commonly known as the Flat Iron Building) at 49 Wellington St. E. It's not an original thought but it is one of my favourite buildings in the city and not far from the first condo that R and I owned on George St. when we got married. I miss that neighborhood at Wellington and Front. It's even prettier now with its new shops and the St Lawrence Market, little boutiques, coffee shops.

We waited in line for an hour and as R and I both noted the exterior of the building was much more interesting than anything inside. Before they allow you to climb the five stories to the top there is a charming mini-lecture given by one of the Doors Open staff.

She talks about George Gooderham, the original owner of the building whose father William Gooderham (1790-1881) made a fateful and ultimately wise decision to use an excess of wheat in the early 19th c. to manufacture liquor. With prohibition in the 1920s they became even more fabulously wealthy. She claims that Gooderham was so wealthy that he built a bank across the street to house his money as well as a tunnel which lead from the Flat Iron Building to the bank (now torn down and replaced by an ugly 1970s structure which houses a Pizza Pizza joint). It holds the city's oldest elevator which can only take 3 - 4 people at a time and which we were not permitted to use.

Allegedly, Al Capone and his men were frequent customers of Gooderham's during Prohibition and often visited the building. The building was the first flat iron building in North America predating the one in New York by ten years. She said that flat iron refers to the triangular shape of the building which resembles a traditional iron one uses on clothes?? That info alone was worth the trip ...

When we were let loose in the building we climbed the five stories to the top but all you see on the way up is a fairly innocuous hallway leading to a series of law offices which are inaccessible. If you peer through the glass of the doors you see, surprisingly, cheaply furnished offices which lack any semblance of grace or style considering this is supposedly the most expensively rented office space in Toronto. Immensely disappointing! I had hoped to be able to go into the cupola where George Gooderham himself had had his office but this was not to be.

The next day I was in the area and went to see the Carlu at College and Yonge (R had already been there for an event). An enormous, gorgeous series of rooms in the Art Deco style opened in 1931. The venue once hosted Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Glen Gould. It has a 1,200 seat concert hall, a grand foyer, the Round Room ... stunning in every aspect.

In 1930, the Eaton's department store chain, opened Eaton's on College Street. Lady Flora McCrea Eaton, a member of Eaton's Board of Directors, retained the French architect Jacques Carlu to design the seventh floor of the building. When the Eaton Centre was built in the 1970s at Yonge & Dundas, the Eaton family sold it.

The Carlu had been abandoned for decades but was once the haunt of the very affluent and famous. The guide said that in the 70s some misguided soul wanted to renovate it, removed the Lalique fountain (pictured above) and art deco statues and replaced it with orange coloured columns and an orange shag rug. Ack! Can you imagine? Now it is a elegant venue that you can rent for special events.

Viva Doors Open for sharing this history with us.

Star Trek

Star Trek (U.S., 2009) directed by J.J. Abrams, 127 minutes

Reader, I fought it, I fought it in vain, possibly the only person on earth who did not want to see this film … I said I would accompany R and J to see it. Even J was surprised that I went as I was pretty vehement about not seeing it. I was curious as the reviews were ecstatic (the reviewers couldn’t all be Trekkies could they? I thought to myself).

But they nailed it … they truly nailed it from the casting to the convoluted pseudo scientific plot to the costumes, alien creatures and incredible cinematography and special effects.

Twenty eight year old Chris Pine (James T. Kirk) has the appropriate swagger, sex appeal and bravado to play the aspiring commander of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Pine looks like a slightly beefier version of James Dean that the filmmaker reinforces with the use of Kirk’s motorcycle and his rebellious, often dangerous antics as a boy (clue: it involves a boy, a vintage car, a highway cop and a cliff – I’ll say no more but the scene is among the best in the film). I realized with a jolt afterwards that this was the same kid who played Nicholas the male lead in Princess Diaries 2 and Just my Luck … quite the transformation.

Zach Quinto, a nice Italian boy, plays the young Spock with a frosty but commanding presence that it is surprisingly dead on and his performance is warmed up considerably by a budding love interest with the sexy and brainy Uhuru (Zoe Saldana). The film is equally weighted between Kirk and Spock with a role for Leonard Nimoy as an older Spock and a key element in the alternative universe plot.

Everyone is near perfectly cast: Bones (Karl Urban), Chekov (Anton Yelchin), Sulu (John Cho), and a feisty, humorous Scotty (Simon Pegg).

The prerequisite villains, represented by the ever treacherous Romulans lead by Eric Bana (Nero), elicit a well-deserved shudder as they resemble, to my mind, Nazis or skin heads with their bald heads, facial tattoos, quasi military garb and warrior-like posturing. Bana is near unrecognizable, his handsome looks hidden beneath fierce tattoos and a sneer.

It strikes the right note with a tiny bit of campiness in homage to the original TV series, action, braininess and sexiness.

The “realism” of the fight scenes is a welcome note – when the characters are fighting hand to hand combat, or being jet-propelled through the air in an amazing scene with Pine and John Cho, they look dirty and sweating and bloodily cut up as they should.

Minor quibbles … I guess there is a shortage of actresses older than 50 in Hollywood seeing that they needed to cast Winona Ryder as Spock’s mother?? Trekkies likely had no trouble following the plot but I found myself like the proverbial old lady sitting mystified in the cinema and had to restrain myself from whispering to R: How did “older” Spock end up on that wintery planet? How did Kirk cheat on his test to become an officer? What did Nero mean his planet had been destroyed?? Mercifully I saved my questions for after the film.

Tyson

Tyson (U.S., 2009) directed by James Toback, 88 minutes

Neither boxing nor Mike Tyson interest me. When I heard that this film had been made, I likely had the same response that many might have had: So, Toback is going to try and clean up Mike Tyson’s image and present an alternative, more palatable view of what this guy is? Buona fortuna buddy ...

Tyson has come to epitomize an unsavory and disturbing stereotype: the feral, dangerous, uncontrollable black male. A street punk, a man who abused his wife, a convicted rapist, a vicious fighter who bit the ear of an opponent in a boxing ring, an inarticulate and volatile loser long on the wane …

But … this film accomplishes what I would have thought difficult, if not impossible, to do: not rehabilitate Tyson but make the viewer understand why he is what he is. And that’s invaluable in understanding any human being. I would not say that as a viewer I might approve of or forgive his transgressions but, as a human being, I think I am more aware of what lead him down this tortuous path.

Many times, the camera will focus on different physical parts of Tyson during his description of his life and its many travails: his eyes, his mouth, his hands, the large tattoo on his face, in multiple frames, with the soundtrack running through in two or three layers of sound. It may not be an original effect but it serves an effective purpose here: is his monologue only part of the true story as Tyson is the sole interviewee? Only part of the truth of his life’s narrative? Does it reflect an aspect of madness that he experienced when in jail during solitary confinement? Whatever its purpose it works.

Tyson addresses all the controversial issues head on often in a mangled and slightly comic English unique to him, openly, artlessly: his unhappy beginnings, his violent temper, his troubled marriage to actress Robin Givens, the rape charge made by beauty contestant Desiree Washington for which he served a three year sentence, the fight with Evander Holyfield where he bit the man’s ear, the prison term, the conversion to Islam, a tangled financial and emotional relationship with Don King, the fight promoter whom he alleges stole his money.

Toback is very clever in this simple technique as Tyson’s candor immediately disarms the skeptical filmgoer. Apologies are not made but guilt and personal flaws freely admitted. The man seems a shadow of what he once was, or, at least, what he once attempted to portray to the public. Shy and awkward, often afraid of situations and personal failure, nervous and fearful around women, forever the fat boy taunted by bullies who grew so strong that none could challenge or beat him.

Fatherless and haphazardly raised by what he describes as a “promiscuous” mother, the boy drifted into petty crime and thievery. Luckily, in juvenile detention he was guided towards an older trainer named Cus D’Amato who took an interest in the wayward teenager. He instilled confidence in the boy and trained him to be the ruthless fighting machine that he came to be winning the world heavy weight title at 21. With D’Amato’s death in 1985, things did seem to spin out of control for Tyson who still mourns the man as a father figure and a mentor.

Woefully, great success does not necessarily prepare an individual for what lies ahead; in fact, it seems to exacerbate existing emotional problems: an inability to control his temper, an insecurity which invites leeches and parasites of both sexes, an inability to form healthy relationships with women and friends. It has been a complicated and eventful life and not unworthy of examination.

I don’t know the truth about this man. Toback has claimed in interviews that no less than the legal eminence Alan Dershowitz examined the evidence against Tyson regarding the rape charge and said that the case should have been thrown out, that the man was railroaded. To this day, it is the single thing that he will not take responsibility for, claiming that Washington is a liar who ruined his life.

I see a defeated, frightened man whose career is behind him with no discernibly clear path ahead. The footage of the interview of Tyson at the end of his last fight in 2005 is very painful to watch. He admits he has no heart for the sport and just wants out of boxing.

But he seems to have rethought his priorities and is more concerned with seeing his family succeed than achieving any personal goals for himself – and that in itself represents a profound change for the man. His highest aspiration today appears that he wants a grandchild. Who would have thought it?