THE BEAUTIES AND FURIES BY CHRISTINA STEAD

(I will be getting back to posting more book reviews now that I’ve received some new books to review)

I would disagree with the writer who wrote the introduction to Christina Stead’s second novel THE BEAUTIES AND FURIES as far as how important the character Marpurgo is to the end of Elivira and Oliver’s relationship and how important he is overall.  He is a great character but Elvira and Oliver’s relationship is doomed from the start.

After all, Elvira is the bored wife of an older English physician who runs away to Paris with her younger student lover.  Paris is where they met Marpurgo and where the story is set.  One sees from the outset the fling-type nature of their involvement. The spoiled yet stifled wife, the woman looking for a fantasy is paired with the grad student with little and no money who still is on the make for other women.

Elvira’s marriage to the very patient Paul seems modeled on Christina Stead’s own marriage which was rumored to be “open” and the relationship between Elvira, Paul, and Oliver is much like the three pointed relationship that makes up the closing 100 pages or so of Stead’s later book FOR LOVE ALONE which I reviewed here   http://rgdinmalaysia.blogspot.com/2009/05/for-love-alone-by-christina-stead.html

At this point in her career, BEAUTIES ,much like her first book THE SEVEN POOR MEN OF SYDNEY, is stronger on prose than plot.  Later books like her masterpiece THE MAN WHO LOVED CHILDREN (which I wrote about here  http://rgdinmalaysia.xanga.com/649792373/the-man-who-loved-children-by-christina-stead/ ) and HOUSE OF ALL NATIONS ( which I wrote about here http://rgdinmalaysia.blogspot.com/2011/03/house-of-all-nations-by-christina-stead.html ) had stories to match her use of language.

For Stead starts off with a semi-poetic prose that is like the thundering hoofs of a poetic buffalo stampede so powerful so unreal so big and pushy and breathless in its word combinations and streams of similes is her language and descriptions.  Even though this is not her best book, I noticed language more in BEAUTIES perhaps because the plot is so simple.  That made reading it worthwhile and very entertaining as did the machinations and changes in fortune of Elvira, Oliver, and the Iago from OTHELLO counterpart Marpurgo.

She is still my favorite female writer of all time….That has not changed! 

  

PSYCHOANALYZING PROGRESSIVES' OVER THE TOP OBSESSION WITH CRITICIZING RON PAUL

The amount of ink spilled by so-called liberal and progressive sites such as Alternet, Think Progress, The Nation, Salon, etc. in the running of articles critical of Ron Paul has reached an exaggerated, overblown, and ridiculous level when compared with his standing in the race.

I like Ron Paul as I’ve discussed on my blog many times specifically for his foreign policy positions and stand against the drug war but I’m the first to admit he will never be president especially if he sticks with the Republican Party.

However, when one considers the number of articles critical of him on these so-called lib progressive sites, it would seem like he is the front runner.  When you compare the number of articles criticizing Paul with the number of articles criticizing Romney, Gingrich, Santorum etc. who have an equal and in Romney’s case much better chance of being the Republican presidential nominee it boggles the mind.

The obvious reason for this is to attempt to scare away those of a leftward persuasion from drifting towards Paul due to his stands on US militarism, civil liberties, the drug war etc. Of course, the big reason this drifting is happening isn’t due so much to the attractiveness of Paul’s ideas as it is to the complete failure of President Obama to stand up for these ideals even to give them the barest defense instead we have a president sending troops into Yemen, Uganda, Nigeria, signing the bill on indefinite detention, not closing Guantanamo Bay despite promises, continuing the drug war crackdown.

So this can be seen as an attempt to scare these voters back to Obama despite his being worse on these issues than Paul.

However, if I can play armchair psychiatrist for a moment, I would like to offer another reason.

Like the battered wife who projects her anger with her abusive husband on the men she has future relationships with, I feel many of these liberal/progressive sites are projecting their angry disappointment with Obama onto Paul.  They know Obama has failed and they know that if he is re-elected (highly likely I would say at this point) he will continue to disappoint.  But instead  of getting behind another candidate to mount a primary challenge to the president to force his hand on these issues he should be supporting anyway, they have decided to take out their frustrations on Paul a distant shot at the presidency from another party but who is better on several core issues than the Democrat president.

It is petty.  It is sad.  It is part of human nature.  It does not bode well for the future of America.  

  

   

THE BEST MOVIE OF 2011?

On a music forum I sometimes post on, another poster around my age (mid to late 40’s) made a comment that they were happy with all the music they had heard so far in their life and no longer felt the need to seek out or listen to any new bands.

This statement for me applies to how I feel about movies with the exception of horror movies which is where I feel the innovation is these days.  Other than that, the big Hollywood productions have become even more trite and predictable, more narrowed down to what is deemed acceptable by marketing focus groups without anything even remotely challenging thrown in, CGI special effects have also played a negative role here as they often have become the movie themselves, carrying the film, rather than an effect.

Independently made American movies have also gone downhill (This is not necessarily true about films outside the US as this has become the medium for artists in emerging nations).  In the US, indie films about human relationships have become precious and overly quirky, Wes Anderson’s oeuvre as template.

So I don’t have a list of the best films of 2011 but I did see one non-horror film this year which I thought was fantastic and that was TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY. 

This is one of those films that work separately from the source material.  I’m not a fan of spy novels and not a fan of John Le Carre(the author of the TINKER source novel) who with his byzantine plot labyrinths and bureaucratic language is unreadable to me.  However, the filmmaker accomplishes the seemingly impossible task of making this long, complicated story fit in a two hour film without any compromises in the narrative.

In addition, he uses the story to pump in a lot of other subtext on topics that only a film could handle – loyalty, inter-office politics, the nature of truth, the loneliness of the life of the superagent George Smiley , the hero of TINKER very much in control, but with a sad personal life.

A big part of the success of this film is the large cast  of excellent actors– Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, John Hurt among others turn in first rate performances and I especially liked how everyone got a chance to shine – Everyone is given their moment.

This is the type of cerebral action film Hollywood used to make – The plot of the film revolves around catching a mole or double agent in the highest rungs of the British secret service an organization called The Circus.

So in a year where film ceases to matter, where everything is readily available producing a reaction against spontaneity in film, here is a movie that you can submerge yourself in which is the hallmark of any great film.  I can’t wait to see it again!

OBAMACARE SUCKS, MY PLAN FOR HEALTHCARE PLUS WHO IS OBAMA REALLY?

In my evolution of political thought, one of the issues, perhaps the biggest issue, that pushed me away from Libertarianism was my belief in a national healthcare system.  I believe in a truly humane system and that the issue of healthcare for the majority of a country’s citizens should not be left to the whims of the free market and one should also not have to bankrupt themselves due to an unforeseen medical emergency.  I also consider this approach constitutional as I believe it is exactly this type of human welfare issue that the general clause was written for.

That being said, I do not support Obamacare which was the result of a corrupt, flawed, and sloppy process involving the buying of senatorial votes and is filled with loopholes and special favors and was largely written by the insurance industry.

There is the hope that the many problems with it can be corrected by future legislation as was the case with Social Security and Medicare but they both started as much stronger pieces of legislation so I’m not holding my breath.

If I had to come up with my own healthcare plan for the United States, it would involve government run medical centers.  Their distribution would be based on the median salary of the people who live in that area.  Once districts were created, those who reside in them would get a medical card.  If you move, you simply change your address perhaps at the post office.  In order to answer questions about the quality of service, the board that runs each hospital would have to stand for election every 2 or 4 years.  The voters would be the people who live in the district.  The board would be directly answerable to those whom they serve.

Those wealthy enough to afford private healthcare will be free to do so as will anyone else who wishes to do so.  However, they will still have to pay into the system through payroll deduction like everyone else and they will not be allowed to vote in the hospital board elections.

So this issue of healthcare coupled with what I’ve written before about his foreign policy disappointments, makes me want to ask who is Obama?  At this point, what do we know about him?  Is he shallow, weak, unprepared for the job of president after all?

Or is he just ambitious?  We associate political ambition with the vulgar showiness of a sweaty, grasping Richard Nixon or an overeager Al Gore, we have not associated it in the past with Obama’s well-spoken coolness but I think in the end that’s what it all comes down to.

Unfortunately, Obama’s ambition didn’t have any core goals, any core moral structure.  It was the ambition of a high school presidential candidate not someone who really wanted to change things.  That’s the lesson here.  Ambition subtracting real goals, real beliefs, real vision is meaningless and can even be dangerous in some cases.  That type of ambition, even if someone rides it all the way to a higher office, isn’t going to accomplish that much.          

REVIEW OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE FLESH EATING MOSAIC AND OTHER POEMS

ANOTHER NICE REVIEW OF MY SECOND BOOK OF POETRY FROM SYNCHRONIZED CHAOS MAGAZINE
http://synchchaos.com/?p=5678

BUT MY HOUSE WAS HERE AND OTHER STORIES BY GOPALAN SELLAN

BUT MY HOUSE WAS HERE AND OTHER STORIES is a collection of short stories by Gopalan Sellan who is a retired planter of Malaysian Indian origin.  This is his first book of short stories in English although I gather from the author bio that he has written two other collections which were published in Tamil.

What binds these stories together is the estate, the life of the rubber tapper, the estate worker, if not directly then the second generation, the ones who have made it out of the estates, the sons and daughters.  All of the protagonists are Malaysian Indians the descendants of those brought from India by the British during colonial times to work the agricultural estates as rubber tappers or in palm oil.

Probably the most powerful story here is the one that gives the collection its name BUT MY HOUSE WAS HERE in which a man sees the same elderly woman every day who asks for a ride to her house.  The story she tells allows Sellan to fill in the reader on the plight of the modern day estate workers many of whom have been kicked off the estates where generations of their families worked due to the demand for land for development and the selling of estate land for this purpose.  Unable to find work and used to a self-contained life wherein the estate provided schools, living facilities, a community etc., these displaced people become the poorest level of society and sometimes turn to crime.

Sellan also seems to have an ear for the dynamics of Indian family life-the conflicts, the squabbles, the power trips.  Whether it’s the powerless retiree with no control of money given to him in THE OLD MAN AND THE THIEF or the son who can’t seem to appease his strict father in VISHNU or what I think is the second best story EVEN JILLRUBA IS NO CONSOLATION in which a young girl tries to bring peace to her fighting parents by shining her father’s shoes but only makes the situation worse.

A few of the shorter stories fall flat as undeveloped fragments only or existing only to deliver a punchline. The language here is very simple which can be both good and band.  Ernest Hemingway is quoted at the beginning and I can see his influence in the short sentences and terse "just the facts mam" type prose.  I’m a poet by nature and like flowery language to a degree.

I would also like to mention that all the proceeds for BUT MY HOUSE WAS HERE AND OTHER STORIES are going completely to charity. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR PLUS MY YOUTUBE PAGE

Happy New Year to everyone from Raj Dronamraju! 

Here's a new year's greeting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esuPEBXHoko

Just a reminder....I have a youtube page wherein I recite my poetry as well  http://www.youtube.com/user/RajDronamraju