For The Last Time, It Was About Slavery

Title: The Demon of Unrest

Rating: 5 Stars

I’m a huge fan of Erik Larson. He’s the best narrative history writer that I’ve encountered. I haven’t read quite all of his books, but I’ve read close to a half dozen. When I saw that he’d written a book about the events leading up to the firing on Fort Sumter, effectively starting The Civil War, I knew that I was going to have to read it. It’s fair to say that I was not disappointed.

Let’s get the blog title out of the way. As I’ve written about before, there was a whole generation of primarily Southern historians that managed to take over the narrative of the Civil War. They worked hard to sell the image of the South as a bunch of oppressed states that were just fighting for their rights and their honor. The Southern states fought their noble fight (the “Lost Cause”) to protect their agrarian life from the oppressive Northerners. When you see someone proudly flying the Confederate battle flag from their pickups, it’s this noble heritage that they’re showing pride in.

Luckily, in more recent decades, historians have called bullshit on that narrative. I’ve read several books about either the Civil War or the antebellum period that puts the lie to the Lost Cause. I wrote a post entitled It’s The Slavery, Stupid and another post called Seriously, It Was About Slavery.

Here is another book fighting the good fight to put the Lost Cause myth to bed once and for all. Larson directly quotes from key documents. Take, for instance, the Mississippi secession declaration, where it says “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest in the world”. In that same document there are fifteen claims. Every single claim is related to slavery.

The South Carolina statement of secession specifically called out that Lincoln being elected President meant that the North planned to wage war against slavery. This was despite the fact that Lincoln honestly thought and repeatedly said that he had no constitutional right to interfere with slavery in those states in which it already existed. In the period of time between when he was elected to when he was inaugurated, he was at his wits end trying to figure out why this very simple truth could not be understood by the South.

Who knows? Probably not in my lifetime, but maybe in another fifty or so years, people will understand that the Confederate battle flag is not only a symbol of slavery but also the symbol of Americans that took up arms and actually shot soldiers defending the American flag. Oh yeah, and they’re also losers. The actual Confederate battle flag should be the white dish towel (currently stored at the Smithsonian American History Museum) that General Lee’s troops used to surrender.

Be that as it may, back to the book. It starts with the election of Lincoln as President. That sets into motion a whole chain of events. Before the twentieth amendment was ratified in 1933, the inauguration date was March 4th. This meant that there was a four month gap between when a President was elected and when he (and yes, it’s always been a he) took office. This kind of made sense in the days of old, especially before railroads, where it might take weeks for the elected President to get to the capital.

However, in 1860, this was a pretty disastrous gap. Lincoln was champing at the bit to get started but felt that any moves that he’d make before his inauguration would be seen as a usurpation. On the other hand, the lame duck President, James Buchanan, was paralyzed with indecision and fear. He could see that the country was splitting apart. His fondest wish seemed to be that it wouldn’t split apart on his watch. Therefore, he did virtually nothing. His dithering let the secessionists get the upper hand in many of the Southern states. Even worse, several of his cabinet appointees were Southern men that were openly supportive of the secessionist movement.

When Lincoln finally was inaugurated, things were at a perilous state. Several states had already voted to secede. Charleston, South Carolina, was in a particularly dire state. Having previously seceded, rebel troops were already beginning to form. Major Robert Anderson, commander of the Union forces in Charleston Harbor, tried in vain to get direction from the federal government regarding whether he should fight or not. Given ambiguous orders, he consolidated his men to Fort Sumter, effectively ceding control of the other nearby forts to the secessionists. They promptly occupied and started fortifying them, clearly planning to attack at some point.

This is the story of that time. It’s almost a day by day accounting of the drama unfolding in Washington DC, in the town of Charleston, and Fort Sumter. As it gets closer to the shelling, it becomes an hour by hour retelling.

Here’s just a few of the things that I noticed as I was reading this book:

Southern plantation owners seemed to consistently have two conflicting perspectives. They believed that their enslaved were happier being enslaved than being free. On the other hand, they lived in perpetual fear of a slave insurrection. If they were so happy, why would they rise up?

Our thirteenth amendment famously outlaws slavery (well, except for that whole prisoner loophole). Did you know that the great abolitionist William Seward, during this time of national danger, actually proposed a different thirteenth amendment? This one explicitly stated that slavery would continue where ever it currently existed. In other words, instead of an amendment freeing the enslaved, it would have been an amendment guaranteeing slavery. If passed, that would have put a twist into our constitution.

Larson draws parallels between the 1860 inauguration and the 2020 inauguration. It is interesting. The 1861 VP, John Breckinridge, was from the border state of Kentucky. When the Civil War started, he fled to the South and was a general in the Confederate army. Not only that, but he was also one of the losing candidates in the 1860 election.

Yes, this was the man that was supposed to certify the result making Lincoln President. Despite the fact that he was a secessionist and a disappointed seeker of the office, he did his duty and certified Lincoln’s electoral count. He was basically an 1861 version of Mike Pence.

There were rumors that secessionists were going to try and disrupt the inauguration. The head of the army, Winfield Scott, was not going to allow that to happen. He stationed troops and cannon around the city, thus very effectively ending any insurrectionist threats. Perhaps we could have used a General Scott on January 9th?

General Scott was much abused by secessionists for these actions. In public, they vilified him with names such as “Old Dotard” and my favorite, “Free-State Pimp”. It’s no “Codfish Aristocracy” or “Moddlecoddling Flapdoodle” but as a nineteenth century burn, Free-State Pimp is pretty awesome.

The battle and surrender of Fort Sumter kicked off the Civil War. Over 600,000 soldiers were killed. It’s by far the most deadly war the US has ever fought. It’s interesting to note that there was only one death in the Fort Sumter battle. After Major Anderson and his soldiers surrendered, as part of the terms the secessionists agreed to let Anderson’s soldiers fire off a hundred gun salute. Well, on the 47th firing, a cannon exploded, tearing one soldier’s arm off, killing him. So, the only mortality was after the battle during the surrender ceremony.

Erik Larson definitely did not let me down. I found it interesting, compelling reading that I could barely put down. It is narrative history at its best.

Making 90 Minutes Feel Like 4 Hours

Title: News From Home

Rating: 2 Stars

The BFI giveth and the BFI taketh away. According to the official list, there are two films tied at fifty-two. Last week or so, I watched Ali: Fear Eats The Soul. Having never heard of it, I didn’t have a lot of expectations. Seeing racism and ageism through the lens of 1970s Germany was interesting and engaging.

This week, I watched the other film listed at fifty-two, News From Home. It was another film that I’d never heard of. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite as enchanted as I was with Ali.

I probably should have guessed. The director of News From Home is Chantal Akerman. There’s a good chance that this name doesn’t mean much to you. She’s the director of the number one ranked film on the BFI list. That film had the unlikely, ungainly title of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (I wrote about it here). Although, against all odds, I ended up loving the film, it was quite a challenge. Akerman apparently loves stationary one camera shots with very long takes. With Dielman, it ended up working because this approach made you feel uncomfortably like a voyeur into Dielman’s lonely, repressed life. I think, in my review, I might have said something along the lines of I loved the film but will probably never watch it again.

From a strictly technical point of view, a similar approach is taken with this film. Essentially, Akerman set up a camera, pushed play, and let whatever happen happen. In this case, it was scenes of New York. There were no actors. There was no dialog, per se. Occasionally, Akerman would, in voice over, recite a letter that she received from her mom. These were apparently real letters that her mom sent her when Akerman first moved to New York City as a struggling artist.

That’s about it. She would set up a camera on a street, perched high on a roof shooting down, in a subway car, in a moving car, or pointing at some random store front. The camera would run several minutes. Whoever walked in front of the camera during the time that it was running became part of the film. Every now and then, you’d hear Akerman reciting a letter from her mom in a monotone.

You can now probably understand the title of this post. Exciting film making this was not. This was a film with no character and no plot. Watching, you just stare at the film and try to see if there’s some reason why Akerman chose to include this particular scene in her film. The film has a modest running time of ninety minutes but it seemed much longer.

This was an experimental film. So, what was the point? Well, I can make a couple of guesses, but to be clear, they are just guesses since I’m no expert.

I’d guess that one theme was alienation. I found her mom’s letters to be somewhat amusing. They are suffused with passive aggression. Clearly her mom did not want Akerman to move to New York City and does not approve. Her letters are full of complaints about how Akerman doesn’t write enough. Her mom regularly complains about various ailments that she suffers from. She begrudgingly sends Akerman twenty dollars but then complains when Akerman doesn’t write back immediately thanking her. After her litany of complaints, she ends every letter with something along the lines of “your loving mother”. Her mom is not happy that Akerman has left her, feels alone, and wants her to come home.

Meanwhile, you see the scenes of life in a big city. Although the city is teeming with people, most people are in their own little worlds, barely cognizant of each other. Living in such a large city can leave people feeling anonymously alienated.

An artist that basically made a career out of exploring that kind of alienation is Edward Hopper. Think of the painting Nighthawks. Set late at night in a diner, there are three customers and the cook. Although they are in a relatively tight space, all four of them are set in different planes, almost aggressively disconnected from each other. Watching scenes from News From Home, there were several times where I got that same feeling.

Another interesting thing that I noticed watching the film is that, even though many millions of people live in New York City, Akerman captured moments where the city seemed empty. There were several scenes that she filmed from, I would guess, a rooftop. Shooting down the street, there would be no sign activity. If you looked closely, you might see one tiny, solitary figure walking down the the street. This reminded me of old Japanese watercolor prints. These prints would be impressive landscapes. If you looked closely, stuck away in one corner you might see one tiny human figure. Doing so makes it obvious how insignificant humans are in the majesty of a landscape. By taking a similar approach to the New York City skyline, it shows how we have managed to create a world in which we have rendered ourselves insignificant. Instead of a luscious landscape, we have created a monstrous concrete jungle.

Akerman also did interesting things with sound. There were times, especially in the subway cars, where the noise was nearly intolerable. It was like living in the middle of a factory. Other times though, there was relative peace and quiet, something that you might not expect from the city that never sleeps.

I did notice something a bit amusing as I watched it. Filmed in 1976, this was in the days before VCR’s or small cameras. These stationary shots had to have been filmed by what was obviously a movie camera. Especially in tightly constrained areas like a subway car, this must have been noticeable. Indeed, you see several of the subway riders staring at the camera with a pretty clear WTF look in their eyes. Being 1976, where the subway cars were pretty beat up and graffitied (as was New York City in general during this time), several people in the car seemed mighty suspicious of whatever this thing was that was pointing at them. One man in particular never took his eyes off of it until finally he had enough and moved to another car.

So, it’s not as if I didn’t get anything out of News From Home. It’s just that, if it’d been even twenty minutes longer, I might have seriously considered bailing. I certainly didn’t get as much out of it as I did Dielman. Just like Dielman, although I don’t regret watching it, it’s very unlikely that I’ll ever watch it again.

Send The Geriatric Out To Fight The Dragon

Title: Beowulf

Rating: 4 Stars

I occasionally set weird goals for myself. This year, one of my goals was to read four epic poems. Having read The Odyssey, Paradise Lost, The Inferno, and now Beowulf, that goal has been met. The Inferno will always have a special place in my heart because reading it pretty much turned me into the semi-serious reader that I am today, so it’s always going to be the top of any epic poems list of mine. Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey was so stirring that I’d place that second. I’d put Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf just a bit below that and then Paradise Lost would be the trailer. Having read her translation of The Odyssey, I’ll probably read Wilson’s recently released Iliad. I should probably tackle Virgil’s Aeneid at some point as well.

I have a weird personal memory of Beowulf as well. I think that I wrote about it when it happened. Several years ago, I was vacationing in London. One of my favorite places to go in London is the National Library. It has a fascinating collection of rotating objects. Depending upon what they’re displaying, you can see everything from a grocery list written by Michelangelo (drawn in pictures because of his illiterate housekeeper) to song lyrics written by McCartney / Lennon to Mozart’s composition book to signed letters by Elizabeth I. For history geek, it’s an amazing place.

When I was last there, there was an Old English copy of Beowulf written around the year 1000 CE. I remember being vaguely impressed that a thousand year old book managed to survive. It wasn’t until sometime later that I learned that that was the oldest known copy of Beowulf. Not only that, it is the first known example of Old English literature. I was unknowingly looking at the first instance of literature written in what would develop into my language. It was an amazing realization.

Translated in 2000 by the Nobel Prizing winning Seamus Heaney, this is considered one of the best translations of Beowulf. What I particularly enjoyed about this version is that the Old English and the translation are paired on facing pages with matching line numbers.

It’s fascinating to me how different Old English is from modern English. If you squint really hard, you might be able to make out maybe one or two words of the Old English. Otherwise, it is incomprehensible. I regularly read, with minimal trouble, Shakespeare’s Elizabethan English, which was written over 400 years ago. However, the thousand year old Old English is no way understandable. It’s interesting to me how language morphs over time.

It is a beautiful translation. As I’ve noted in my other posts about the epic poems, they are much more powerful when read aloud. Beowulf was written in a dialect of Old English that was heavily influenced by Anglo Saxon. Apparently the Anglo Saxon language is alliteration heavy. Heaney worked to integrate alliteration into his translation. When reading aloud, his words flowed wonderfully.

Although considered the first instance of Old English literature, the plot does not take place in England. It takes place in Denmark and Southern Sweden. Beowulf is a great warrior from the gothic tribe of the Geats. A Danish king named Hrothgar (and yes, the names are difficult) is being terrorized by a monster with the unlikely name of Grendel. Every night Grendel comes into Hrothgar’s hall and steals away a couple of warriors. Everyone is terrified and the hall becomes desolate.

Beowulf hears about the Danish king’s problems and sees this as an opportunity to cover himself in warrior glory. He and a bunch of men decide to climb into a boat and row over to Denmark to help. Grendel is a fearsome beast but Beowulf decides that, for maximum glory, he will take it on in single combat with no weapons. Grendel creeps in and kills a new victim. An alarm is raised. Beowulf and Grendel battle mano a mano (mano a beasto?). In the ensuing struggle, Beowulf tears off Grendel’s arm. Grendel sneaks off to die.

Beowulf is celebrated as a hero and Hrothgar rewards him with treasure. However, Hrothgar’s problems are not over. Since even monsters have mothers, Grendel’s mother wreaks vengeance upon Hrothgar by attacking the hall herself. Beowulf once again sees this as an opportunity for valor. They track Grendel’s mother to her underwater lair. Beowulf and Grendel’s mother battle with Beowulf once again coming out on top. Laden with even more glory and rewards, Beowulf heads back home.

Back in the land of the Geats, eventually Beowulf’s king dies without leaving heirs. Beowulf becomes king and he rules successfully for fifty years.

After some fifty years pass, one of the Geats finds a secret path to a treasure filled lair protected by a dragon. He steals something and sneaks away. When the dragon wakes up and discovers the theft, he becomes enraged and vows vengeance. To protect his people, Beowulf decides that he must combat the dragon.

Let’s sit on that a moment. At the very youngest, Beowulf had to have been at least twenty when he took on Grendel and his mother. It is now fifty years later. That means that he has to be somewhere in his seventies at best. No matter how great of a  hero he is, is sending a seventy-something man to fight an actual, fire-breathing dragon really the smart play here?

Regardless, he sets off with his bravest warriors. Upon sight of the dragon, all of the warriors (except for one, Wiglaf) immediately run away in terror. Beowulf and the dragon fight, with Wiglaf assisting. Eventually Beowulf does slay the dragon, but in so doing, he suffers a mortal wound as well.

In death, Beowulf is placed on a funeral pyre with treasures and is set ablaze. As this is happening, it is foretold that the Geats are now pretty much fucked without Beowulf. They will be invaded and taken over. Well, I guess it sucks to be you.

That’s about it. There are some strange side digressions where some random person just says, let me tell about this unrelated action and off they go. Other than that, it really is about battling three monsters. It is definitely in an epic form. You have the hero going off on a journey to prove his worth. You have the hero sacrificing himself to save his home and hearth. It is stirring in action.

If you have any desire to go off and do your own epic poem reading yourself, Beowulf (especially this translation) would be a good start. It is written in an accessible manner. You can, as I did, compare the Old English to its modern English equivalent.

Best of all, it’s only a bit over 3,000 lines. The Odyssey and Paradise Lost both clock in at around 12,000 lines or so. Beowulf is a good one to dip your toes into if you want to see if ancient epic poems are your cup of tea.

Most Stupid College Ever

If you were around four years ago, you’ll remember that I seemed to channel my apprehensions regarding the upcoming presidential election by writing about arcane presidential trivia. I’ve already done so a couple of times this year. Here’s another one.

I’m sure that everyone understands this by now, but US Presidents are not elected by voters. When I cast my vote, even though my ballot says the candidate’s name, I’m not actually voting for that candidate. I am actually voting for a slate of people (the so-called electors). If the candidate that I vote for gets the plurality of votes in my home state, then that means that the slate of people associated to that candidate will get to cast their votes in the electoral college.

This slate of people are chosen specifically for their loyalty to a candidate, so the assumption is that they will indeed cast their votes for the candidate that they are bound to. In fact, several states have laws (that I believe have been upheld by the Supreme Court) mandating that electors must vote for their preferred candidate or suffer penalties.

However, they don’t have to. In fact, it is so common for electors not to vote for their preferred candidate that a name, faithless voter, has come into being. It happens more than you think. In the wacky year of 2016, there were numerous faithless voters. On the Democratic side, you had votes for the following tickets: Bernie Sanders / Elizabeth Warren, Faith Spotted Eagle (?) / Winona LaDuke, and three votes for Colin Powell with three different running mates (Susan Collins, Maria Cantwell, and Elizabeth Warren). Even a Republican elector got in on the act and cast a vote for John Kasich / Carly Fiona. So, for you trivia buffs out there, if anyone ever asks you the name of the first female Native American to receive a presidential vote, you can confidently say Faith Spotted Eagle.

The bottom line is that, when voting for President (you know, possibly the most important position in the world), no matter who you think you’re voting for, some random person who you’ve never heard of can vote instead for whoever the fuck they want to.

How did this come into being? At the constitutional convention of 1787, when it came to electing the president, there were two camps. One camp wanted the people to choose (you know, like in a democracy). The other camp wanted the president to be chosen by Congress. In case you think that the second camp was totally insane, that was kind of how the Articles of Confederation was set up, except that its president wasn’t the president of the country but the president of the congress.

The Congress camp was generally leery of the idea of the unwashed masses directly electing the president. The Democracy camp was equally leery of a chummy Congress gathering in a room to decide who should be the leader of the entire county.

Out of that discussion came the compromise of an electoral college. Not beholden to Congress, the electors would be selected by each individual state government. Whoever won the election in a specific state would then use their slate of electors to cast their votes on behalf of the state.

If it seems like a dumb idea now, it seemed like a dumb idea even back then. The primary architect of the Constitution, James Madison, hated it. It seemed like no one really liked it, but they were tired and wanted to be done with it. In fact, they were so tired that they didn’t even think to have the college vote for President and Vice President separately, causing the first real constitutional crisis in 1800 when Thomas Jefferson and his Vice President running mate Aaron Burr received the same number of votes. This caused a quick Constitutional Amendment to be passed.

What makes it ridiculously dumb now is that, after over 230 years of practice with it, presidential candidates have figured out the game. There are red states, blue states, and purple states. Candidates know that they don’t have to spend too much time in red states or blue states. They’re pretty much guaranteed to go Democratic or Republican. If you’re a presidential candidate, there’s no point in spending too much time campaigning in a state that you know you’re going to lose. In fact, other than to suck up those sweet campaign contributions, there really is no point in campaigning in a state that you know you’re going to win.

You end up in the absurd situation where the two most populous states, California (population 39,000,000) and Texas (population 31,000,000) aren’t, from a voting perspective, strategically important to either campaign. Those two states contain twenty percent of our country’s population and neither campaign cares about them.

In fact, it is much, much worse than that. The number of purple states (the states that could go either Democratic or Republican) have decreased dramatically. Gone are the days when a Ronald Reagan or a Franklin Roosevelt could essentially sweep the country. Either party could nominate a zombie (campaign slogan: “Braaaaaaaains”) and it’d get at least 200 electoral votes.

For 2024, I’ve seen articles that claim that it’s going to come down to possibly three states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Whichever candidate wins at least two of those states will probably win the election.

In case you think that’s bad, it turns out that, since this is a rematch of 2020, that there might only be 100,000 or so people spread across those three states that could spell the difference. Some of that difference could easily be that some of those 100,000 people might not even choose to vote, thus dooming the candidate that they voted for in 2020.

So, in an election that will probably have over 150 million people casting ballots, it’s going to come down to maybe 100,000 semi-random people that are spread across three states.

Even scarier, what if the electoral college is really close and a couple of faithless voters decide, fuck it, I’m going to vote the Kim Kardashian / Dwayne Johnson ticket?

We have all of this madness just because a small number of 18th century white men gathering in a hot stuffy room didn’t trust voters to be able to choose their President. Since the Republican party has what it thinks is a cheat code to get an electoral majority without winning the popular vote, there is zero chance that this situation will be fixed in any near future.

The good news for me personally is that, since I live in Pennsylvania, I could probably get either Biden or Trump to come over personally and wash my car in a desperate bid to earn my vote.

Racism / Ageism, German Style

Title: Ali: Fear Eats The Soul

Rating: 5 Stars

Another entry in the BFI Sight and Sounds list of best films, once again not only did I not know anything about it but I’d never even heard of it. In my ignorance, I figured that it’d be a film about the struggles of Middle Eastern living.

I wasn’t even close. It’s a German film made in 1974. It’s the story of two lonely people. Emmi is a sixty year old office cleaner. She has been widowed for many years and her children have long since moved out and are living their lives. She lives alone in her apartment. At her age with nothing but a lifetime of work in her past and no sign of ever stopping, she is living an invisible, isolated life.

Ali is a different story. First of all, his name isn’t even Ali. Not willing to go to the trouble of learning  their names, it’s just what all Germans call all Arabs. His real name is El Hedi ben Salem. This is also the name of the actor portraying him. Ali is a young man from Morocco. With no employment opportunities in Morocco, the only job available to him in Germany is an auto mechanic. He lives in a tiny apartment with many other Arabs. Alienated by German culture and the German people who are openly contemptuous of him, he is miserable.

One night, in a pounding rain, Emmi stops at a local bar that she’s never been in before. Unbeknownst to her, it’s a bar that caters to Arabs. Goaded by his friends, Ali joins Emmi at her table and they begin an awkward conversation. Despite that strange beginning, their cultural differences, and their age difference, their shared feelings of loneliness creates a spark between the two.

Ali insists upon walking Emmi home. To show her appreciation, she invites him upstairs. When she learns that, at his apartment, he has to share his bed with other men, she insists that he sleeps in her spare bedroom. One thing leads to another and they end up sharing a bed.

The next morning and the succeeding mornings, the other German ladies are scandalized to see a brown skinned man emerging from Emmi’s apartment. Their tongues immediately start wagging and they insinuate that she must not be a real German (she has a Polish surname because she married a Polish laborer during the War).

Their complaint reaches the ear of the building owner. Assuming that she must be subletting to Ali, he tells Emmi that Ali must leave. To prevent that, Emmi lies and tells him that she and Ali are going to get married. After the landlord leaves, Ali suggests that they should get married.

After the marriage, they are immediately ostracized. The ladies at her apartment building refuse to talk to her. Her fellow cleaners, once they find out that she married a brown person, refuse to include her in their breaks. Her family disowns her and storms away. Her local grocer refuses to serve Ali. Even simply sitting and drinking coffee at a cafe earns them dirty, suspicious looks.

Eventually, when people start realizing how important the quiet Emmi is, they begin to relent. A family member needs Emmi to babysit. The grocer wants to recover Emmi’s business. Even the people at the apartment look more kindly on Emmi when she relinquishes some of her storage space to them.

The pressure begins to get to them. Emmi begins to make insulting remarks about Ali’s ethnicity. When in the company of some of his fellow mechanics, Ali refuses to acknowledge Emmi.

By the end of the film, they’ve realized that, even though their relationship is unconventional and imperfect, they are happier together than apart. Emmi resolves to do everything in her power to make Germany more welcoming to Ali.

Emmi and Ali are both characters that you develop strong feelings for. They are both gentle, lonely souls that understand how lucky they are that they’ve found each other. Their loneliness trumps the differences in their ethnicity and age. It really is a touching love story.

As an American, it’s interesting to see issues like racism play out in other countries. Being immersed in our country’s culture, it’s easy to think that somehow our problems are uniquely ours. Racism exists everywhere where different groups of people congregate. Especially considering Germany’s twentieth century history, it should not exactly be surprising that Germans of a certain age will have racist tendencies. It’s just jarring to me to hear people speaking in German complaining about how dirty and lazy brown skinned people are. Such unthinking hatred does seem to be a universal human condition.

In researching the film, I learned that the actor playing Ali led a somewhat checkered life. Married in Morocco with five children, he left them to go to Europe. In 1971, he met Rainier Werner Fassbinder, the man that later directed this film. Meeting him in a bathhouse, they commenced a gay relationship. By 1974, after the film was completed, Salem’s violence and drinking became too much for Fassbinder and he ended the relationship. Salem later stabbed three people (none of whom died) and was smuggled out of Germany to France. By 1977, he was arrested and imprisoned. While in prison, he hung himself.

Fassbinder life’s was not much calmer. His friends kept Salem’s death from him for years. He died at the age of 37 due to a combination of cocaine and barbiturates. On the one hand, that seems tragically young for such a talented film maker. However, in the fifteen years before his death, he somehow managed to complete 40 feature films, 24 plays, two television serials, three short films, and four video productions. I’m not sure how that’s even possible.

This film kind of restored my faith in the BFI list. This was a film that I’d never heard of, and even if I had, I would have felt zero motivation to watch it. However, it was a beautifully told tale of two lonely, ostracized people finding love in the most unlikely of situations.

Hard To Hustle With Feet Of Clay

Title: Charlie Hustle

Rating: 5 Stars

This book struck home to me. When the Cincinnati Reds won their back to back World Series starting in 1975, the Big Red Machine was my team. Even though baseball was no longer quite at the peak as America’s pastime, it was still huge to me. I knew all of the names of the Reds’ starting players and pitchers. At the center of it was Pete Rose. I admired his toughness and his aggressiveness. Unlike some other players, it seemed that he was always working for it and taking nothing for granted. Nothing made this more obvious than his sprints to first base after drawing walks and his fearless headfirst slides.

Probably because both of my parents were from the deeply conservative Midwest, the Reds were the family team. At the time, Cincinnati was a solidly Republican town. The Reds reflected that. They had a strict dress code. Long hair and facial hair was not allowed. We were heartbroken when the long haired hippies of the Oakland A’s defeated the Reds in 1972. My mom loved how excited Pete Rose always seemed to be when playing baseball. My dad thought that Rose was one of the players that played baseball ‘the right way’. Of course, it probably didn’t hurt matters that Rose was one of a relatively few white superstar baseball players in the 1970s. Rose seemed to be one of those superstar athletes that were also great role models.

The first half of the book is about his rise. Born and raised in the Cincinnati area, he was the ultimate local boy makes good story. Pete was a small, scrawny boy that was driven by his very athletic, if frustrated in his dreams, father. Pete became obsessed with baseball, constantly practicing his swings and his fielding. Through a family connection, he was able to connect with the Reds’ organization at its very lowest level for a grand total of $7,000. He didn’t care; he was playing professional baseball. Full of energy and confidence, he quickly made his way up the ranks, making it to the major leagues in 1963, at the age of 22. He was always the first to arrive and the last to leave. Baseball was his everything. One time, even when he was a legitimate star and celebrity, he freely spent hours after regular practice pitching batting practice to George Foster, just to give the young player the opportunity to get better.

With his seemingly boundless energy, it might have turned out well for him if he could simply have played baseball 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Unfortunately, he did have free time and it’s a pretty severe understatement that he did not make good use of it.

He became an out of control gambler. It wasn’t so much the amount of each bet, although that was a problem, but the sheer volume of bets. He’d make multiple simultaneous bets. He’d make so many bets that it’d be nearly impossible for him to come out a winner. It almost seems as if he couldn’t watch a sporting contest without having a wager to keep him interested. He ended up deeply in debt to multiple bookies.

Given his high profile, he knew that he couldn’t make the bets himself. He brought in various sketchy characters to make bets on his behalf. He’d get so close to them that they’d move in with him so that they’d be constantly available to him. He’d go down to spring training, where he and other sketchy friends would do what they called a triple header. After training practice they’d go out and bet on horse racing, dog racing, and jai alai.

It’d finally reached the point where he figured that, to make money, he better start betting on baseball. Not only that, but he didn’t exactly cover his tracks. As the feds started closing in on Midwestern bookie operations, Rose’s name kept coming up. At the time, the most respected sports magazine was Sports Illustrated. Once major league baseball heard that Sports Illustrated was conducting an investigation, the league knew that it had to try to get ahead of it. It conducted an investigation that quickly and easily determined that Rose was betting on baseball.

Even when faced with with all of the evidence against him, Rose refused to admit that he gambled on baseball. Due to this recalcitrance, the league commissioner felt that he had no choice but to enforce baseball’s very strict rules against betting on baseball and banned him for life. It took fifteen years for Rose to finally admit that he gambled on baseball. By then, it was (at least up to now) too late. Over 80 years old now, time is running out for him to be inducted into the Hall of Fame while still living.

On the one hand, it’s kind of a tragic tale. Rose is a man that clearly has Hall of Fame credentials. He has more hits than any other person that ever played the game. Rose gave over twenty years of his life to the game. Many men in the Hall of Fame are drunks, liars, and cheaters. Ty Cobb, an inaugural member of the Hall and Tris Speaker, a member of the second class, apparently conspired together to throw games.

On the other hand, Rose had his chances. There’s a good chance that if he’d just promptly admitted his sins to the commissioners that they would have fined him or suspended him. Even worse, the main person that actually turned on him did so because Rose didn’t pay money owed him. If Rose had simply given him $30,000, the investigation might not have gone anywhere. At the time, Rose kept tens of thousands of dollars in cash in bundles at his condo. Some of his choices are maddeningly.

Although gambling is what did Rose in, there are other things in his past that demonstrate his character. In 1974, at the age of 33, he began grooming a fourteen year old girl and ended up having sex with her before she was sixteen. While married, he had numerous affairs. One ended in the birth of a child. He had no part in the child’s life but did pay child support until he decided that he didn’t want to anymore. One of his roommates was a heavy steroid user. That same roommate acted as a drug mule, driving kilos of cocaine from Florida up to Cincinnati. Several of the bookies that he worked with had links to organized crime. Although he never admitted to it, there’s a reasonable chance that his boundless energy was supplemented through the use of amphetamines.

From a baseball point of view, possibly the worst unproved accusation had to do with his batting. By the time that he was in his forties, he was relentlessly on the pursuit to overtake Ty Cobb’s hits record. The problem was that, by the time he reached 42 or so, his batting average began to decline precipitously. That is, until he had an unexpected resurgence and started hitting better. Well, it turns out that a person has publicly admitted that he was corking Rose’s bats. That is, he illegally altered Rose’s bats to make them lighter so that it’d be easier for Rose to make contact. If true, that is blatant cheating.

I found this book fascinating to read. Spread in this read were moments of great amusement to me. For instance, when Pete Rose broke Cobb’s record, a network broadcast announcer stood up, turned to the camera, help up a Budweiser and said, “Pete Rose, this Bud’s for you”. That is a hilarious product placement. An equally amusing product placement was when, after being named MVP of the World Series, Rose was given, as his award, a GMC Pacer. Amusing because the Pacer was possibly the ugliest, slowest, and most poorly built car of its generation. At the time Rose was driving Rolls Royces and Porsches.

Finally, I learned one piece of trivia that will always stick with me. I never thought about it, but I never knew how Pete Rose got the nickname Charlie Hustle. In 1963, Rose was at his first major league spring training camp, as always desperate to make his mark. One game, the Reds were playing the mighty, legendary New York Yankees. In the fifth inning, Rose laid down a bunt and then sprinted safe to first base.

Mickey Mantle was so shocked by the ridiculousness of a ballplayer bunting during a meaningless spring league game that he decided to come up with a derisive name for Rose. Talking to his buddy Whitey Ford, they first thought about Henry Hustle before finally settling upon Charlie Hustle.

Yes, the nickname that Pete Rose, even now in his 80s is known by, was originally a Mickey Mantle insult.

Was Dickie Trey Just The Fall Guy?

Title: The Daughter of Time

Rating: 5 Stars

I have to admit that I did not have a whole lot of hope for this book. It has appeared on several best mystery lists. The elevator speech for the novel just wasn’t all that enticing. Written in 1951, a detective, laid up in bed, tries to determine if Richard III was really the monster that killed his nephews.

That is really its plot. Scotland Yard detective, Alan Grant, accidentally stepped through a trap door, seriously injuring himself. He’s so injured, in fact, that he can only lay on his back. Staring at the ceiling tiles begins to drive him mad. One of his friends, just to divert him, gives him some pictures to look at. Being a detective, he’s most interested in the faces. He finds one face, in particular, to be fascinating. Later, he discovers it to be a portrait of Richard III.

Richard III, in case you’re not up on your English monarchies, is the true villain of all of the kings. He was the youngest son of the Duke of York. In the War of the Roses (between the Yorks and the Lancasters), his brother overthrew Henry VI and became Edward IV. Edward IV had two sons. Edward also had a younger brother named George that, at various times, served both sides during the War. Ultimately, Edward ordered George executed.

Edward himself unexpectedly died. Since his two sons were young, Edward named Richard as their Lord Protector. This possibly wasn’t all that great of an idea. The two young sons were locked into the London Tower and were never seen again. Meanwhile, Richard had Parliament pass a law declaring that the two boys were illegitimate (as a result of an earlier secret marriage that Edward had contracted). With Edward dead, George dead, and the two missing boys no longer in the succession, voila, Richard assumed the crown as Richard III.

It’s considered pretty much general knowledge that Richard ordered the two boys killed. Given Edward’s unexpected death, it was also suspected that Richard poisoned Edward. When Edward gave the order to execute George, it was believed that it was Richard that actually killed him. If you’re keeping score, that’s four very close relatives that Richard is accused of killing in his relentless pursuit of the crown.

On top of all of that, it was alleged that he was a bent over hunchback. Is it any wonder that all of England cheered when Henry Tudor came marching to rescue the people from such a monster? At the battle of Bosworth, Richard III became the last king in English history to die in battle. The victorious Henry became Henry VII.

Well, Grant is looking closely at the portrait of Richard III and he does not see a murderer. In fact, he sees a careworn man intent on serving his nation. Granted this is just a portrait, but Grant has a lot of faith in his ability to read faces. He just doesn’t see evil when he gazes at Richard.

Since he has abundant time and is about to go nuts with inaction, he decides to research Richard III. The same friend that loaned him the portrait knows that he can’t do it himself. She sends over an American named Brent Carradine, a talented historical researcher that happens to be at loose ends. The two of them dive into original historical sources to try to discover the truth.

I don’t know if I’ve sold this book very well. It is a strange book. Since Grant is immobile, all action necessarily takes place in one room. A good chunk of the book is Carradine reading notes to Grant of things that he’s discovered in his researches at the British Museum. Sometimes Carradine brings the documents in question. In that case, we’re treated to Grant reading them and taking notes himself. The drama, such as it is, is the conversation between Grant and Carradine as they share discoveries and make new connections.

The shocking thing is, it’s actually quite interesting and fun to read. It probably helps that it’s a slight novel coming in at around two hundred pages. Even so, I found myself completely engaged in their back and forth. I am a history geek. Not only that, but I’m a Shakespeare geek, and the evil, twisted Richard III is one of Shakespeare’s iconic roles. Therefore, reading about Richard III and how, hundreds of years later, we might be finding out that he possibly might have been a patsy for the Tudors is quite fascinating.

For more information, please read the book. However, here are some facts (and I did some very basic research on my own (thank you wiki) and they do appear to be real:

• Since the Parliament passed the act denying the children’s legitimacy, they were no longer in the line of succession, so they did not need to be killed.
• The boys’ mother stayed on friendly terms with Richard.
• There were other claimants to the throne that he left alone.
• The person that allegedly actually killed the boys was James Tyrell. His alleged confession has never been found. He was executed only in 1502, some twenty years after the boys were murdered.

So, who does benefit from the murder of the boys? Let’s take a look at some facts about Henry VII:

• Henry VII repealed Richard’s act that made the boys illegitimate. Therefore, if the boys were still alive, then they would have been ahead of Henry in the succession. He needed them to be dead.
• He did have Parliament pass an act condemning Richard. In that act there were all kinds of crimes assigned to Richard. However, the murders of the two boys, which would undoubtedly be the most shocking and severe, were not mentioned.
• The boys’ mother that was still hanging around Richard’s court? Well, she was sent to a nunnery shortly after Henry’s succession.
• Not only that, but Henry’s claim to the throne was shaky. Anyone else that possibly had a stronger claim were arrested, and ultimately executed. This was a man that did not take any chances when it came to possible threats to his crown.
• Most of the really bad stuff about Richard III comes from a book called The History of Richard III, written by Thomas More. The first thing is that it was written around 1513, some thirty years after Richard’s death. Not only that, but More was a Tudor man. He ended up a high ranking official for Henry VIII, Henry VII’s son. Now, to be fair, More ends up crossing Henry VIII (the whole not letting Henry get divorced thing) and losing his head as a result, but that’s decades later. It sure looks like More wrote a hit piece on Richard III on behalf of his patron.

Why would Shakespeare pile on with his dastardly characterization of Richard III? Well, Shakespeare wrote it around 1592. Who was on the throne then? Elizabeth I, Henry VII’s granddaughter. Given how sensitive she was about threats to her throne, it would behoove Shakespeare to stay on her good side by writing a stirring story of how her grandfather took on and overthrew the worst, most evil king ever.

Am I sold that Richard III was the victim of a massive smear campaign that was so effective that people believe it some 650 years later? Maybe not, but it sure was fun to think about.

It’s Not Easy Being A Sociopath

Title: Ripley

Rating: 5 Stars

Considering the fact that I’ve read the book (I wrote about it here) and have seen the film (written about here), it’s probably no surprise that I watched the Netflix series Ripley. Considering that I gave five stars to both the novel and the film, I was suspicious that I’d equally enjoy the series. However, I loved it.

It’s interesting how the main plot points are hit in all three versions but, despite that, they ended up hitting me differently.

The story is the same. Tom Ripley, in New York, is bribed to go to Italy by Dickie Greenleaf’s father to bring Dickie home so that he can take his place at the head of the family manufacturing firm. Ripley goes to Italy, and, after some awkwardness, manages to befriend Dickie. Dickie’s girlfriend Marge is much more suspicious of Tom. Tom grows to love the life of being a wealthy American in Italy. Eventually, Dickie tires of Tom and tells Tom that he’s going to go away. Unwilling to give up the lifestyle, Tom murders Dickie. He impersonates Dickie so that he can draw from Dickie’s trust fund. Dickie’s friend Freddie is also suspicious of Tom and tells him that he’s going to bring in authorities to investigate. That’s the end of Freddie. As all of this is going on, Tom is having to switch between the Tom and Dickie identities while the police, Tom’s father, and Marge are all beginning to zero in on him. Will Tom get away with it?

The cinematic style of the series is breathtaking. The series is entirely filmed in black and white. It’s kind of weird to describe it in this way, but it’s a rich, luscious black and white. The cinematography feels crisper and cleaner than if filmed in color. It’s truly a beautiful series.

Not only the film but Italy is shown in all of its splendor. The characters stay in ancient villas with amazing views. The streets that they walk on have an ineffable charm. Stunning works of art are on view everywhere. Everything is steeped in ruined grandeur. Especially when you think of the one room desolate hotel room that Tom was staying while in New York, you can understand why Tom, once exposed to the beauty of Italy, would never want to go back.

Tom Ripley is played by Andrew Scott. He’s probably previously best known as the hot priest in Fleabag. Here is something totally different. In the film, Matt Damon played Ripley. As I wrote in my review, in the film Ripley is a sociopath but Damon played him with vulnerability. He’s in over his head but desperately wants to maintain the lifestyle. He almost reluctantly has to murder.

Scott’s version is a straight out sociopath. He plays Ripley with oddly cold, dead eyes. You can understand why Marge is immediately repelled by him. He’s a tough grifter who’s stumbled upon a huge opportunity and will do anything to capitalize on it. As an experienced grifter, he is constantly on the alert. He eyes everyone with suspicion, coldly calculating what they know, what they want, and what that means to him. There is no milk of human kindness in his veins.

I’ve mentioned this in my previous posts, but to an even larger extent in this series, the rich are clueless and talentless. In the film, Dickie and Marge are played by Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. They are both at their movie star glamorous peaks. This is especially true of Law, who is positively gorgeous in his role.

In the series, the two are played by Johnny Flynn and Dakota Fanning. Don’t get me wrong, these are both attractive people (after all Johnny Flynn was the romantic lead in both Emma. and Vanity Fair). Still, they don’t have the glow of Law and Paltrow. In the series, Dickie and Marge are basically above average people that are living this lavish lifestyle just because they are the children of wealth. Dickie is in Italy to study to be a painter but his pictures are laughably bad. Marge is writing a book that is simply pictures and text about the town that they are staying in.

Their friend Freddie is played by Eliot Sumner. In the film, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Freddie is a large, brash, typically loud American. In the series, Freddie is much more subtle but still is contemptuous of Tom. Even though he’s suspicious, Freddie, like Dickie and Marge, can’t fathom that Tom would actually be dangerous. Tom is not someone that you want to turn your back on.

Interesting, in the series, grifters can recognize other grifters. In the small town, a local mafioso seemingly randomly follows Tom and within a short while, the two become allies and establish a business relationship. Similarly, at a stuffy, sterile cocktail party in Venice for the vapid rich, a man named Reeves Minot (wonderfully played by John Malkovich) instantly makes a connection with Tom and Tom later gets a fake passport from him. It’s almost as if there’s an essence or maybe an invisible musk that attracts such people to each other.

Since this is a series, it allowed time for characters to incrementally develop. For instance, Tom clearly at the outset knows nothing about culture and seems disinclined to learn. When Dickie takes him to see a painting by Caravaggio, Tom is transformed. He develops a strong interest in art, especially in Caravaggio. At one point, we see that Tom has taken up painting and it’s clear that even at this early point that his painting is far superior to Dickie’s work.

It’s not random that Tom is obsessed with Caravaggio. For those that do not know, Caravaggio led a wild life. He killed a man and had to flee Rome with a death sentence on his head. His mental health was always in question and he died under mysterious circumstances. His paintings, alive with light, often are brutal depictions of violence. If there’s such a thing as a painter for sociopaths, Caravaggio might fit the bill.

I have a couple of additional random notes. One is that stairs feature prominently throughout the series. Tom is consistently seen going up stairs. One of the rare times that we see Tom go down is when he has to hide in squalid quarters to escape. The stairs are a metaphor for Tom’s goal to always be ascending.

Another interesting item that I noticed is how hard it is to be a sociopath. It’s a lot of hard work, whether it’s dragging Freddie’s dead body down a flight of stairs or having to clean up the mess of murders. There are times when you see Tom just sigh and grunt with the frustration of the never ending work of it all. It struck me as amusing.

So, I’ve loved the novel, the film, and now the series. I can hardly wait until the opera comes out!