luni, 31 octombrie 2022
duminică, 30 octombrie 2022
Rabbit Redux by John Updike – a previous note on this book has been published at http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/03/rabbit-redux-by-john-updike-great-book.html - 10 out of 10
Rabbit
Redux by John Updike – a previous note on this book has been published at http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/03/rabbit-redux-by-john-updike-great-book.html
10 out of
10
This is the
second time I have read Rabbit Redux and this is because I have enjoyed the
tetralogy, critics say it is ‘a masterpiece’ and it is included on The 100 Best
novels Written in English compiled by The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/17/the-100-best-novels-written-in-english-the-full-list and most of all, it is a pleasure
to read and it navigates easily, even in audiobook format…
The hero
aka anti-hero or just a common man we have met in Rabbit Run, the first part of
the roman fleuve, his name is Harry Angstrom aka Rabbit, and we can see quite a
few things we share with him, just as we have many differences, this being the
archetypal (maybe) American man of the sixties and we come from across the
globe
He has been
a fabulous basketball player in his teenage days, but later on, the promise has
been not fulfilled and he has lost his wife, job and spoiler alert – since this
note is not about Rabbit Run, I could say that the protagonist has a daughter
die, because she is accidentally drowned by Janice, her alcoholic mother, and
then Harry shares in the blame – and he is now trying to find his way, a new
identity maybe
Surely the
most important aspect that I like about this read is how much I now have in
common with Rabbit, if some decades ago I would be outraged by the equanimity with
which he takes the affair that his wife, Janice, has with her father’s
salesman, Charlie Stavros, now I am quite serene about it and find that I take
my spouse’s almost daily evasions, the long weekend trips with serious doses of
ataraxia.
There are
more than qualms about this, but they are mainly or even exclusively directed
at the money spent on these outings, the perils involved by the terrorizing,
upcoming new crisis and not by some the possible, nay, sure innuendo, and the
disparaging fact concerns the attitude of contempt, which is one of the Four
horsemen of the Apocalypse, as identified by the quintessential expert on
relationships, John Gottman, author of the classic The seven Principles of
Making Marriage Work
http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-seven-principles-of-making-marriage.html the others are Defensiveness, Stonewalling
and Criticism
Harry
Angstrom is not an innocent, injured party, for he has had an affair with Ruth
(maybe a child resulted from the intimacy) and he had driven away from home,
thinking he may end up on the ocean coast, somewhere in the South, maybe in red
Texas (red for the cult of Trump, not the communism which was associated with
that color in our part of the world) and furthermore, he has a relationship
with a teenager.
Jill settles
in the house where Janice has gone missing, and she has intercourse with
Rabbit, trying to recover from our own traumas, she has run away from home, the
place where her mother lives with her step father, taking away the white Porsche
with he (incidentally, VW has just put out shares in this company for sale, and
the estimation may make it the second most valuable car company in the world, second
only to Tesla, the toy of the crazy, richest man on the planet, who had just interfered
in the war in Ukraine…after he had initially backed the right side, giving
access to the crucial Star link system, he now talks of peace [which would be
lovely] but on some Russian terms, with them keeping the Crimea and presumably
some of the land they have invaded in this goddamn war) and she would destroy
the luxury vehicle.
She would
drive it without oil and so the engine would be ruined, but she is not the only
one to do that, for we have Skeeter mistreating the automobile – Skeeter is a
drug dealer wanted by the police, who seems to think to think he is the new Messiah
or Jesus, he keeps saying ‘right’ and has a speech that is both dazzling and
somewhat hard to believe…would a normal person talk like that, never mind one
with little education.
However,
let me refer to the wondrous To The Hermitage http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/09/to-hermitage-by-malcolm-bradbury-author.html by Malcolm Bradbury, wherein he
writes about the fabulous advantage of engaging with the literary world, where
everything is so much more interesting (his humor is unique and he says unless
we are talking Kafka or Beckett) the characters are much cleverer, the events
satisfying, scintillating (he does not use those words, of course, but you
could and should look for the magnum opus and/or the passages in question) the
readers have access to a phenomenal world and they can do that from their home,
or bed and then we could add the quote from Umberto Eco which gives readers
‘Immortality backwards’ assured for us by reading, which means living five
thousand lives, as opposed to the ones who do not read and have only one, alas…
I will
return to what makes this magnum opus (in the words of TIME Magazine) so much
more important for me, the fact that there are many parallels between the life
of Rabbit and my own, at least in the part covered by Redux and some of the
aspects that define what we do now, first of all, the continuous fighting with
the spouse and the separation that is in effect, not taken to a divorce yet
(albeit who knows, maybe she is seeing a lawyer right now, however implausible,
seeing that she woke up early and taken the car yet again on one of her regular
long, fuel consuming trips to who knows where, maybe Predeal)
Harry
Angstrom is resigned to the situation and eventually, he will even accept
Charlie Stravros working for him, and just as he does, I tolerated the fact
that I spend most of my time with the babies (aka the two macaws, Balzac and
Puccini) at home, but the extent of the spending, the travels, the insults have
become too much lately, and even if stoic precepts come to mind (wish for what
you already have) and an inclination to laughter, self-deprecating humor can
take over, still, taking all that much shit can be overwhelming…right now, she
may be in the mountains, with her sister or who knows what (that Raymond fellow
may be there as well) and the whole expense is on my tab, the silly son of a
bitch that is good for nothing, though a hero of the revolution – check this
out http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html -and able to do this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
sâmbătă, 29 octombrie 2022
vineri, 28 octombrie 2022
joi, 27 octombrie 2022
Permaflow 22, Stories from the Commie Days and After http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
Permaflow
22, Stories from the Commie Days and After http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
Coming out
of the attorney’s office, there is this tall, handsome woman talking to my
German shepherd, who was sitting in the car (the dog, not the stranger) as he
was used to for long periods during the day…
Cruel and
sadistic, perhaps But Daryl would rather come along with me, on my many
adventures than sit and wait in Sfanta Vineri.
When I went
to the pool, at what is now called the Downtown Club, of alleged World Class
quality, but in fact of dubious reputation, and I have been considering for two
years, nay it is more since the pandemic has started, if I should return there,
seeing as they have some obnoxious fellows as clients and…employees.
One of them
looked from the first floor and would talk with buddies and laugh at me (one of
the ‘trainers’ they encourage you to hire, they even include one free session
in the membership, for which you obviously pay, and quite a lot, seeing as they
have a sort of monopoly of this market) and then I would see him flirting with
a rather off-putting manager, which I hope has moved in the meantime, to other
pastures…
The trouble
now might be connected with the boys that I have near me right now, Balzac and
Puccini, the blue and gold and red and green macaws respectively, with which I
spend most of my days now, even when writing, like now
They get
two hours of sleep between two and four in the afternoon, they are released in
the house at 10 in the morning and the spouse takes them over at about seven
thirty in the evening, when she is at home.
And she is
very often away, she has just left and would return late in the evening, for
the scheme now is to Do Revenge and pay me back for all the philandering and
going out that I have done through the years…
So what to
do with the boys now, do you have any ideas?
Actually,
you may, for there are few comments on our YouTube channel – incidentally, the
boys and I have three videos every day, and you may wish to check them – and
among them, there would be the ‘lose the birds man ‘kind of suggestion
That is not
a solution and the exit might be around the hours in the morning before they
wake up, as it is, I wake up a few minutes before five, get downstairs for a
drink and then depart for a job at half past five or twenty to six.
Then there
are about fifty minutes of exercise up to and around the Mogosoaia Park and
‘cultural Centre’, which includes the architecture and historical monument The
Mogosoaia Palace, with a dreadful management.
Upon
return, in summer there needs to be watering the lawn, still doing it these
days in October, because there has been insufficient rain for months now, and
then a sleep of about one hour and then releasing the beasts at about ten.
This could
be replaced in the pie chart program of the days to come with a new subscription
at the ‘world class ‘network and then cycle there at five thirty to the opening
at sis, but not over the weekends
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html
miercuri, 26 octombrie 2022
The Reivers – A Reminiscence by William Faulkner, Winner of The 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize_for_Fiction - William Faulkner has won the won the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature - 10 out of 10
The Reivers
– A Reminiscence by William Faulkner, Winner of The 1963 Pulitzer Prize for
Fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize_for_Fiction - William Faulkner has won the won
the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature
10 out of
10
William
Faulkner is one of the greatest writers – though apparently Clark Gable had no idea
about this, and I think I will insert an anecdote on the subject, at the end of
this note, which says a lot about both Gable and William Faulkner and actors, celebrities
in general – and this reader has had the chance to be enthused, elated by
masterpieces of this Magister Ludi, such as As I Lay Dying, Absalom, Absalom,
The Sound and The Fury http://realini.blogspot.com/2012/12/absalom-absalomthe-sound-and-furylight.html
However,
even if The Reivers has been dismissed as a ‘lesser work, while the author
called it "Golden Book of Yoknapatawpha County", this glorious novel
appears to be the most accessible among his magnum opera, notwithstanding the challenges,
the art of writing which is manifest here – with refined details, the brackets where
the wondrous writer explains who the subject is, avoids any confusions and adds
exquisite humor to a story that has so many dramatic turns and reads altogether
as a marvelous thriller
Lucius
Priest is the eleven year old boy who is the protagonist of the narrative and
we hear what has happened mostly from him, albeit when he tells the story he is
an adult and may have gained some perspective on the saga, which involves some
other characters, the most notable of which would be Ned McCaslin from Jefferson
Mississippi (they are all from that small town, it is just that Ned is the one
who tells his whole name, which includes some other relatives and the town he
comes from, and he is dismissed by various racist, disgusting white folks, the
most reviled would be Butch, the man with the badge from the town misnamed
Possum a few times) a man of superb intelligence, of both the ‘established,
traditional’ type and of the more important, Emotional kind, the EQ displayed
here is astounding.
The Priest
Grandfather is called Boss by all concerned, he is a banker, and when another
man in the town, also a banker, issues a ban against driving cars (this is
1905, in Mississippi) in his town, Boss rebels and buys a car just to act
against this injunction, notwithstanding that he has no intention to use the
car and he hates them just as much…nonetheless, when he departs for a few days,
the friend and employee of the family Boon Hogganbeck takes the vehicle away to
travel to Memphis, and Lucius is on board for the ride.
While they
drive through some difficult terrain, mud, holes, a river, they discover that
Ned is hidden in the back of the automobile, where he has broken some wind
(when Boon protests, he mentions the many bumps, which rendered his effort to
be quite inconspicuous and futile) and Ned will not just come along, but play
the most important role, next to that of Lucius, only first they have to
extract the vehicle from the mud holes, with the help of an entrepreneur, who
is using his mules to pull the cars that are trapped in his area, and he
doubles the prices he charges and there is nothing clients can do about it.
In Memphis,
Boon is febrile and desperate to see and get intimate with Miss Corrie, at the brothel
where the imposing, fierce and brave (on the one hand, the women are in a
despondent position, but they come out as formidable, extraordinary, strong,
resilient personages) Miss Reba, and while Boon and Lucius are in the house
(where the latter is impressive with his manners and the respect he shows for people,
the promises he had made) Ned is exchanging the automobile for a…horse, and
this is where we embark in quite a joy ride, which is also a thriller in that
we wait with breathless anticipation to see if they get the car back, will they
win the races, what retribution is in store, will they go to jail?
They have
to get all their resources together, and enroll Sam, a flagman with the
railways, to transport the horse to the small town of Pasham, where they will
race (Insha’Allah) and win back the vehicle and maybe some collateral money on
the bets, the trouble being that the horse had been in a contest before and
refused to run, losing in a disastrous manner…Ned on the other hand is a
special trainer, he has had a donkey race and win and this is where we have a
charming, incredible depiction of mules, who come on top of the hierarchy,
cats, which are next, then dogs and finally horses, the last of this pack in
intelligence and the way they deal with humans, some of them with wisdom,
others with silliness…
Everbe
Corinthia (what a splendid name) has brought a nephew, thinking she is doing
him a favor, moving him from the country (where today he would most likely vote
for Trump, as a member of a cult of idiots) to the city, for refinement, only
this fifteen year old named Otis is as corrupt as possible, thinking only of
money (back hoe, he made a hole in the wall and would charge customers to watch
Connie aka Everbe have sex with men) and blackmailing the woman that had taken
pity on him…Everbe was forced by her own aunt into prostitution, when she was
orphaned, but meeting Lucius would have a tremendous impact.
The latter
fights with Otis because of the attitude he (Otis) had towards Everbe, and we
can see here that the eleven years old hero has fallen in love for the first
time, and it is reciprocated, albeit with maternal instinct, platonically
mostly, and in the fight Otis takes out a knife and Lucius is cut on four
fingers and would have to ride Lightning aka Coppermine with a sock to cover
the wounds and protect him somewhat.
In Pasham, a
huge crowd comes to see the race (we are told that wherever you have a couple
of horses, people will come to see the competition and bet on it…come to think
of it, William Faulkner was right, even as he was clearly using sarcasm and
humor throughout, for today we see a multitude of betting firms, sponsoring and
advertising on every possible channel, if I wait another few seconds, the YouTube
channel in the background will be interrupted but one such ad, inviting me to
bet on anything I want, on any race in the world) and one loathsome character,
Butch, the man with the badge, representing the law (albeit not in Pasham, but
nearby) tries hard to ‘dominate’, as a sort of small, avant la lettre Trump,
and when he is refused, he will use blackmail and try to stop the race and send
Everbe’s friends and admirers in jail…we have a complex ending, to a glorious
novel that is enthusing…
“You’ve
heard that thing about Faulkner and Clark Gable haven’t you? Howard Hawks was
taking Faulkner out on a quail shoot and came by to pick him up a little before
dawn to get to where they were going by first light…Clark Gable was in the car
and Faulkner in the backseat…As they rode along, Gable and Hawks got to
talking…Gable said, ‘You know, you’re a well-read man, Howard…I’ve always been
meaning to do some reading…I never have really done it…What do you think I
ought to read?’ And Hawks said, ‘Why don’t you ask Bill back there…He’s a
writer, and he’ll be able to tell you.’ Gable said, ‘Do you write, Mr.
Faulkner?’ Faulkner said, ‘Yes, Mr. Gable…What do you do?’ ‘’
marți, 25 octombrie 2022
luni, 24 octombrie 2022
duminică, 23 octombrie 2022
sâmbătă, 22 octombrie 2022
joi, 20 octombrie 2022
The Old Men at The Zoo by Angus Wilson, author of the much more appreciated, fabulous Anglo-Saxon Attitudes http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/01/anglo-saxon-attitudes-by-angus-wilson.html - 7 out of 10
The Old Men
at The Zoo by Angus Wilson, author of the much more appreciated, fabulous
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/01/anglo-saxon-attitudes-by-angus-wilson.html
7 out of 10
“The person
who doesn't read lives only one life…The reader lives 5,000…Reading is
immortality backwards’ – this is what Umberto Eco said and that is of such great
help to one who does little except for reading, or having books read by others,
as in audiobooks like Rabbit, Run by John Updike http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/10/rabbit-run-by-john-updike-may-make-you.html finished the other day -
We could
laugh though when we arrive to the situation where we do not find the lives of
some characters so fun to go through, such as these Old Men at The Zoo and then
we can think of another great writer, Malcolm Bradbury and his chef d’oeuvre To
The Hermitage http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/10/notes-on-to-hermitage-by-malcolm.html wherein he speaks of the advantage
of the literary world over the physical one, the former has personages that are
cleverer, more interesting, wiser, attractive, the events in there are more
enticing, life is more exuberant (these are not the words of the author, but
what I remember of the prose) and then we also have the advantage of getting access
to these awesome characters and their beanos, from our room or bed.
The added
advantage would be that in the artistic realm, we can also disengage suddenly,
we are not forced to continue to participate as is the case in the ‘real’ realm
– for instance, right now I have a serious crisis on my hands with the spouse,
who is out there, maybe in the mountains, carrying with (my) car the family to
who knows what spending shindigs and this at a time of crisis, when bills will
reach extreme highs for energy, fuel and what not – and if we find The Men at
The Zoo irritating, boring o just not appealing enough to stay connected with
their saga, well, then we can just stop reading…
This is
what I did, finding the term ‘Hideous kinky’, which I generally applied for
wondrous, fabulous magnum opera, to be more suitable here for the first part –
Hideous Kinky is a mesmerizing saga by Esther Freud, daughter of acclaimed
painter (absent in the childhood of the writer, if we look into the novel)
Lucien Freud and great-granddaughter of the titanic Sigmund Freud http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/06/hideous-kinky-by-esther-freud-10-out-of.html - though I am exaggerating for
mirthful purposes…
There are
quite a few passages that we can relate to in The Old Men at The Zoo, such as
the perils of a world war that are so terrifying right now, when we face the
almost certain arrival of a new crisis (and my wife is out spending god knows
where, she has done over many months, in spite of the debts we have, the news
that show prices rising, economic activity threated, bad results from the
company that provides us with dividends, when the weather if fine) and Putin
and his acolytes keep speaking of Armageddon…
This is so
serious, for they even calibrate to say that they could use tactical nuclear
weapons, in other words, smaller devices, but still devastating ones, for to my
knowledge, they are still more powerful that what they used at Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, for in the meantime, they have ‘pe4fected the capabilities, to the point
where the H bomb and others have incredible powers to destroy and kill humans…
Thinking
about it, maybe that was one of the reasons why The Old Men at The Zoo became
somewhat redundant, and it is also way too long in my view, for the winding,
rather uninteresting on so many pages story of the giraffe that kills a keeper
at the London Zoo, sometime in the future, which is placed around the 1970s, and
the consequent look for culprits, the evasion of the manager, the effort to
avoid such cases in the future, competing with the need for a good image to be
preserved, so that a new National Zoological Park could be established, and the
priority for the latter matter would see that the death of the new,
inexperienced keeper, killed by a sick giraffe does not affect the project
There are
details to follow there, such as the fact that the giraffe has been sick, her
liver was causing pain and she should have been euthanized, but in the name of
that aforementioned vital issue, the new Zoological Park, the giraffe was kept
alive, so that it can serve the ‘higher cause’, and the new man had not known
so well how to approach the animal and thus the giraffe had been scared
presumably and then such an innocent, peaceful being normally, took fright and
defended itself with violence.
The nuclear
aspect, or the prospect of war is so frightening at the present that its
presence in the book could work to make it more interesting for some readers – after
all, The Old Men at The zoo is included on the list of 1,000 Novels Everyone
Must Read https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction - but it could deter others, such
as the under signed
Finally,
there is the aspect of the Zoo which I have had at home and reading about the
Men at the Zoo did not bring back phenomenal memories…the same wife I was
complaining about earlier has decided about fifteen years ago to have six…dogs,
and not just any kind of pet, but borzoi, those that fit into ‘giant breed’
category, in other words, the equivalent of maybe north of one hundred Chihuahuas…
Therefore,
with the financial crisis of 2008, this became such a burden that I became
crazy, and hence you have notes like these – fortunately, I do know that those
who stick around to reach this far into the nonsense clearly have similar, if
not worse issues, so we are free to go ahead – and feeding all these beasts and
well, anybody for that matter became a serious challenge, and it had to be done
accumulating debt.
Indeed, it
is not fair to play the IIWFY game detailed in the psychology classic Games People
Play by Eric Berne http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/09/games-people-play-by-eric-berne.html a game which involves us blaming
the consort for something we could not achieve, and the fact that we have two
macaws is partly my choice (one was brought home by Throw Mama From The Train)
and then we could all do this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
miercuri, 19 octombrie 2022
marți, 18 octombrie 2022
luni, 17 octombrie 2022
Permaflow 20, Audi and yachts http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html
Permaflow
20, Audi and yachts http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html
Taking back
the Audi was not so easy, never mind paying for the repairs to the wreck which
had cost me the incredible twenty five hundred that Stefan has in fact stolen
from me – we could say it was a case for court, to sue and prove he swindled,
just like the police would suggest in the piece to come – because of a few
factors, one was the ‘speed’ with which the mechanics worked, or rather did
not, and then an unexpected incident…
They
dragged their feet in the atelier, until one day, when I passed by to see the
‘progress’ they have made, there was no Audi – by the way, the mechanics were
in a prime location, a few hundred meters away from the Victory Square, the
seat of the government, in the area where they have some office towers now –
and nobody knew where it was, hence I had to go to the police station, near the
Neculce high school.
The
response was baffling, though somehow in accordance with the reputation
militiamen had -in the commie days, police was militia and those who worked
there ‘enjoyed’ a reputation of being totally stupid (and indeed, one had to
be, in order to join such a beano, rotten, or most likely, both) and the jokes
with them include the likes of ‘how many militiamen do you need to replace a
light bulb, answer five, one to keep the bulb and four to rotate the table, or
how many policemen die in a traffic accident, eight, four in the initial crash
and four when they reconstitute it’- for they said they would not look into the
matter.
Since I had
left the car in the mechanic’s atelier, which technically it was not true, for
it was Stefan who had done it, the automobile was there on trust and if it is
not there anymore, this is none of their business, I just have to take the
matter to court, which might pronounce in my favor, and then I can claim the
missing property, but for the militia, it is not a question of theft, just
missing vehicle and an issue between me and the mechanic…
So the
solution was one familiar to the corrupt ancient regime and quite clearly, very
much ingrained in the ‘new aka the same system’ on so many counts, and it involved
paying a bribe, finding the ‘sectorist’, the militiaman (maybe they were still
called militiamen, for we are talking just some months into 1990, very soon
after the revolution) that had the area of the repairs outfit in his portfolio…
I gave him
an incentive, a reward if the car is found, not to call it paying for him to do
his job and we went together to the man who had to fix the automobile and found
that it was the son who took the car and somehow we were told whereabouts we
could find it, which was near the bridge under which I pass quite frequently
now, where Grivita ends and Bucurestii Noi begins, and there was some damage,
but hey, I had the yacht.
An Audi was
much like an yacht in those days, in terms of the prestige associated, not the
navigation into the waters of the Atlantic and the effect was clear on the
company we could get in that car, the speed with which it travelled (it could
get up to 200 kilometers per hour and rather fast) and we took it to Germany
for trade, where we had to replace the parts for the breaks at a high cost for
us back then (it would be even now, what with the recession coming and a goddamn
pressure increasing from this spouse of mine, who takes cash out, then takes
regular trips to Snagov, takes the ancient borzoi to the vet and then buys
medicine for it, and as if it is not clear what is going one in the world, with
inflation, war in Ukraine, sky high energy prices and economies facing a fall,
she buys every month shoes and clothes and has accumulated perhaps eighty pairs
of shoes…she was supposed to start making and selling them, but as we can see,
it has not happened, and yes she plays that fucking game described in the
psychology classic Games People Play, the one frequently seen If It Weren’t For
You
I am the
one responsible, because I have stopped her years ago from getting a job, by
saying look, if it means paying more for the car and the gas to get there, it
is a loss and I see no point in spending to get work done for someone (besides,
she would accumulate at one point a fantastic number of five (5) borzois, and
mind you, this is a giant breed we are talking about, we could say about
fifteen middle sized dogs, and a mutt to have about ten mouths to feed, if we
count the humans, and then the cat and the ocean fish…the latter being a very
fancy and expensive enterprise, the aquarium would eventually get a hole in it
– it was maybe a couple of years back, some fish died and other have been
donated to a fellow
The mad man
in Mamaia crashed the windshield of the Audi, and maybe we could think
ourselves lucky to have escaped without a scratch, but we would have a lot of
trouble with the car, especially me, as the driver, who had to see through what
was an almost opaque surface, the fool had beaten it until there were very few,
if any transparent spaces there, and we had to go back to the police station
and we drove dressed as Arab men, or maybe Berber, with sheets all around, just
in case the frail windshield would fall…
To add
insult to injury, when we parked the car in Costinesti, the militiamen came by
and placed some notes on the windshield, telling us we have parked in the wrong
place and however that could have been, the reason for placing the automobile
in that spot had been to have it near a light, because it was easy for a thief
to just push through and get the car, or whatever was in it, so we thought the
police stupid and vile to have done that.
To show
that I have learned little, if anything from this experience, when we went to Buzau
to get a new windshield, at that time the only place making these was there
(yes, you would have the alternative to order and have one shipped from
Germany, but it would cost an arm and a leg, maybe as much as the vehicle
itself) and as I met one young woman there, I took her to the edge of the town,
where they had (maybe still do) some forest and we had sex there, and if it is
true that the chances of an encounter with another serial killer are reduced
once you have met one (which is in itself a rare occurrence) still, it seems somewhat
reckless to try outdoor sex so soon after a near catastrophe and a big loss…the
car would be again under attack, but the next time it was just for the stereo,
and the window broken in the process was replaced temporarily with a plastic
copy and then we had one, maybe from a car cemetery…we did go to get parts when
we were trying to get small commerce going, on one of our trips to Germany
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
duminică, 16 octombrie 2022
The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov – the greatest author of short stories http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/02/short-stories-by-anton-chekhov-ladies.html - 10 out of 10
The Three
Sisters by Anton Chekhov – the greatest author of short stories http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/02/short-stories-by-anton-chekhov-ladies.html
10 out of
10
One of the
best ways to meet The Three Sisters would be to search for the adaptation of
the play that has been directed by Laurence Olivier, wherein he also plays Ivan
Romanovich Chebutykin, the doctor that would reveal in a coup de theater reveal
the affair that Natasha – what a loathsome character that, talk of good versus
evil, you have that personified here, in a woman that cares only for herself
and to hurt all around, ‘you give your room to my baby, and then about that old
woman, who is a thief, all she does is sits around, she will be sent out and
what if she has been with the family for thirty years’…she maries Andrey and enters
the family as quite a social climber and once inside, she takes over, she
becomes the small Putin of the house, orders all about and imposes her cruelty
on everyone.
Olga is the
eldest of the sisters, she is a spinster that has a good heart, she is
traumatized when Natasha tells her – no, this should be edited to read Natasha
screams at her – that the old servant must go, just after Olga and the old
woman had had a conversation, with the spinster assuring the servant that
nobody would send her out, which is just what mean Natasha has in mind, she
wants everybody to march to her tune, and f one is too feeble to do that, too
bad, for she is the despot now, in control and what she says goes, to the point
where she takes the money from the mortgage, albeit the house is not hers, not
even her husband’s, when there are more heirs, property is divided if justice
is done…
Olga is a
teacher and Fyodor Ilyich Kulygin, who is also a teacher of Latin, says at one
point that he would have married her, if it had not been for Masha…as it is
Masha, the middle sister, is married to Fyodor Ilyich, she had been enthused at
the beginning, admiring the knowledge of her husband, thinking him destined to
achieve great things, but now she is disappointed, insists on the fact that she
is bored and in that, she reminds one of Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/02/an-unfinished-piece-for-mechanical.html and seems to represent so much of
the Russian soul, looking for the Meaning of Life and then dejected putting
Putin in power…
Aleksandr
Ignatyevich Vershinin is the lieutenant colonel that is in charge of the
military unit stationed in this small town, played by wondrous Alan Bates in
this adaptation that I talk about here, he had known the sisters when they were
very little and they called him the Lovesick Major, for he was a major back
then, and later, he would represent the hope that Masha has a for a different
future, one that has promise, it could be animated by love, instead of the
tedious, bleak present that she has, in the house where Natasha takes the reins
at one stage and everything becomes oppressive, especially when Andrey plays at
cards, loses a fortune and the home is endangered because of debts and the fact
that the small tyrant, Natasha, had taken over…
Irina Sergeyevna
Prozorova is the youngest of the sisters, the one who is only twenty years old
when we meet her, as she celebrates her name’s day, the doctor brings a samovar
as a gift – he is a bachelor, but used to love the sisters’ mother decades ago –
and they have guests in the house, the future seems bright, but what happens is
not…she hopes they move back to Moscow, away from this backwater, where all
their skills, knowledge, reading, foreign languages seem to be good for
nothing, for there is nobody to talk Italian, German or French to here and
nobody could appreciate the piano music – well, a few could, but this is a very
small town and if the military is moved, there could be no one left at the same
level as Vershinin – but her exclusive concentration on the move to Moscow
could be deceptive.
First, I
cannot remember who said that the problem with travel is that we take ourselves
along, or something like that, but more importantly, second we have the Hedonic
Adaptation phenomenon, described in the psychology classic Stumbling On
Happiness, by marvelous Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/06/stumbling-on-happiness-by-david-gilbert.html where we learn that we know so
little about what makes us happy, just like Irina, we assume that we would be
mirthful, if only we were to move to California, an island in the Pacific or
the Caribbean, not Moscow, no way…
Only once
we move in one of those paradisiacal places, we adapt to the good things and
start noticing and getting annoyed by the many flaws, such as the terrible wild
fires in California, where there has been such a draught for many years – due
to Climate Change, there are so many places affected by calamities – that water
use is limited and in places, taking a bath is forbidden and usage is
restricted, whereas the islands have their own problems, from hurricanes, to
power cuts and ultra expensive items, electricity and many others…on the other
hand, with the war in Ukraine, prices have rocketed almost everywhere.
We could
change lenses and take a perverse, debauched view of the whole thing and say
that this beano proves that ‘there is something rotten in the state of Russia’
(not Denmark as in the original quote from Hamlet) and take these characters
and say that the feeble Three Sisters show why they have gone from one mad,
cruel czar – Ivan the Terrible for instance, but even the glorified Peter the
Great has tortured and killed his own son, together with many others, and the
then look at the many crazy things he did abroad and his own lands – to another
and ended up with perhaps a couple of decent rulers, one of them Catherine the
Great and even about her we have quite a few controversial stories…as for
tyrants, I took part in the 1989 Revolution that took one down, check this out:
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html
Masha is
rebellious, Irina keeps dreaming hopelessly for the much cherished Moscow,
while Olga is so vulnerable as to break down when Natasha screams at her and
orders the poor old servant to go and die elsewhere (in the country) equivalent
to saying let her expire in the street, for how can she tell if there is a
place for her ‘in the country’, the poor old woman had been with this household
for decades, it is all she has, and looking at the narrative of The Three
Sisters and the other figures involved, we could have an explanation for…Putin,
the desperation, the boredom, the sense of futility, the Learned Helplessness
that seems to plague the Russians – we learn about this and Learned Optimism
from a marvelous book by the co-founder of positive psychology, Martin
Seligman, who talked about how dogs used in experiments learned to stop
resisting or looking for a way out, once they got used with abuse and having no
exit from the situation http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/07/learned-optimism-by-martin-seligman.html
The
alternative is to Learn Optimism, perhaps using the technique exposed here:
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
sâmbătă, 15 octombrie 2022
vineri, 14 octombrie 2022
Permaflow 19, Selling fashion - http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
Permaflow
19, Selling fashion http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
We went
into the fashion business in the late nineties, with the local House of Gucci,
with Paul from Pitesti, the fellow I had met about ten years before, in the
story that I have abandoned, itself a tangent on the Audi saga, but do not
worry, sometime this year, or the next, I will probably return to the topic,
and the chap and his wife would show us the ‘atelier’, the shop where they had had maybe ten or
fifteen workers making dresses, jumpers, skirts from wool and some other
material, and a partnership was proposed.
It involved
us buying half the shares or so, and then take care of the selling part, or at
least a large part of the enterprise, and it meant going to Unirea, Cocor and
other outlets (the former was the biggest and probably the only massive mall of
the time) and talk to individual proprietors and try to have them place our
wares on their shelves and put them on display and sell them, sharing the profits
on some scheme…the huge ‘magazin’ was in fact crowded with more than a hundred
small shops…
For some
time, some of the dresses, skirts, blouses sold, but nowhere near the numbers
needed to make a decent profit, if any money at all, and in due time, we had to
throw in the towel and say this is not working and we are refused when we try
and bring in more stuff, after they return what we had not sold in the previous
batch and we had to say that we need out of the deal, since it is not working…
I do not remember
if we recuperated anything from that investment, but I know I still have one
sort of wool coat and perhaps a couple of pullovers, but let us return to the
trip to Mamaia, and the first encounters with Pitesti Paul, who was famous in
the circle for a joke he was making when we had a vacation together, still on
the Black Sea Coast, but in Costinesti, before the 1989 Revolution, in the first
encounter with Paul, when we were staying five to a room, Sherika, her brother,
Adrian and I, with Paul one of the tow who were supposed to be in the room, the
other was Adrian, but this was a sort of tradition.
Indeed,
from that Costinesti vacation, we would travel to Predeal, where I had a ticket
from the university, and we would use it for four people, the same Sherika, her
brother and Adrian, this time I would be the possessor of the papers, the
official guest at the villa which was higher than the Orizont Hotel, on the way
to Trei Brazi, where the official girlfriend, Sherika, would soon leave for
home, with her brother, allowing the Despicable Me to bed with one woman, then
move on to her friend, and then the third in this circle (however, just two of
the three would go all the way, to Carnal Knowledge, the third would just agree
to platonic intimacy)
Returning
along the thread of the story to the Audi and the horror story connected with
it, we were visiting Paul aka Paulica, in Mamaia, and I think Adi was with the
daughter of the big shot from the National Radio, Mr. Sun, who in herself had a
bit of a story with us, or maybe two, we met her on the beach for nudists and
Adi made the first move, when I had been absent, and ignoring their arrangement,
I would approach her as well, and later, when we returned from a disco night,
she would stay on with the women I had invited with me and intended to fuck, only
the chemistry between Miss Sun and this prospect was much better and we can
only assume the tow had carnal relations together.
I had met
many women in Costinesti, another case jumps to mind, while with Sherika in her
official consort capacity, I would scan the beach and everything else for
targets, and while going to get food, I arranged a date, but Sherika found out
and she went out to the place where I was supposed to meet this bint and said
‘you are waiting for Realini…he is not coming’…on this fatidic trip to Mamaia –
I know this is all confusing, but let us place this part of the story in the context
of wild parties and beanos, where it is hard, nay, impossible to make head or
tail, but then it was such a wild ride, what with the end of communism, a
frenzy of liberation, a hunger, lust for sex, getting wild, recuperate the
years of darkness, albeit within those Dark Ages, one of the few, maybe the
only, venues to let off steam and feel free to do something was the bed, or
quite often just an enclosure or a bush…I would fuck quite a few women in the
open lockers of the Student Park, a sort of small beach, near a quite dirty
lake, which one of the exclusive, classy places today the Pescariu Club, and
they had some cabins where girls would agree to oral sex, if they received it
mostly and sometimes it was felatio
The
calamity with the Audi took place near the beach, we went to see Paul and his
girlfriend, with Adi and miss sun, and the four of them stayed in the
restaurant and I took this spectacular girl from Resita, in the car, north of
Mamaia, where the vegetation was (and is maybe)
thick enough to allow for some coitus in the ‘wild’ and then we stopped,
I started eating her fanny, then we had missionary sex and suddenly, a wild
noise broke out and something started kicking the windows and we saw a Savage
near.
This
pervert would know that people come there for the same thing (would this be
called the ‘lovers’ alley’ in some places, I wonder) and so he had his spot in
waiting and he had something like a baseball bat with which he started trying
to smash the windows and then we left the car, ran away near the main road, and
eventually, I would get the car back and what with the trauma, the fear and
everything, I would lose contact with the girl, I mean, we all went back to
Costinesti and then said goodbye, instead of trying to get her address, which I
now regret having missed, albeit these were days when there ‘were so much fish
in the pond’ that there was no worry about finding someone else, just as enticing,
if not more, and there was the Coolidge Effect in full display, explaining much
of what happened.
Coolidge
was an American president, I think in the twenties, in the last century, and he
went to visit this farm, with his wife, and she saw a very active rooster,
jumping on the hens nearby…the first Lady asks somebody how many times does the
bird do that, and the answer is some very high figure (would that be over one
hundred) and she says ‘tell that to Mr. President’ and when they do, the latter
asks if it is always the same hen, and they retort that ‘no, it is always a
different hen’ to which the president indicates ‘tell that to the First
Lady…hence the Coolidge Effect, and I have suffered badly from it…
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html
joi, 13 octombrie 2022
miercuri, 12 octombrie 2022
Rabbit, Run by John Updike may make you do this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world - 10 out of 10
Rabbit, Run
by John Updike may make you do this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
10 out of
10
Some years
back, the under signed has read this wondrous novel and rated it with just
three stars out of five, only to take it up again, about a week ago, and find
it enchanting – this proves that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, which
is paraphrasing Plato, and there is also the truth related by Marcel Proust, in
his chef d’oeuvre, the greatest book that I know, A La Recherche du Temps
Perdu, that we are a different person with the passing of time, and while there
seems that the forty years old me found little to relate with Rabbit aka Harry
Angstrom, now that I have added a couple of years, I find him quite like me.
This master
work does not have a hero, in that he could also be seen as an antihero (after
all, he is in large part responsible for a tragedy, the decline of his wife is
her responsibility, but he did not stop it, arguably contributed to that, and
however likeable he is, there is a sense that he is superficial, selfish, ready
to…well, Run) and we see him Running from the very first chapters, after he
plays basketball with some youngsters (he is twenty-six), he takes the car and
drives through Pennsylvania, heading south.
There is no
definite aim (this in itself could be a shortcoming, he is a father and
husband, but appears to be undecided, confused over the duties he has and
thinks he is free to just take off and disappear into the sunset) in his
driving, but he contemplates a long, long trip to the beach, in the south,
perhaps to Florida, Texas, one of those red states that are associated with the
cult of personality these days, and what a monster that personality is, orange
and idiot, in ignorance of the Happiness Myths exposed in the psychology
classic Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/06/stumbling-on-happiness-by-david-gilbert.html wherefrom we learn that we think we
would be happy if only we were to live in California or a Pacific, maybe Caribbean
island, and once we move over there, we discover that happiness is elusive
because of Hedonic Adaptation…
Nonetheless,
Harry Angstrom does not travel all the way to Mexico or Florida (devastated by
hurricane Ian these days, and more generally, by a governor who acts as a
mini-Trump), he returns from his initial escape trip and looks for his former
basketball coach, Marthy Tothero, the latter speaking of the days when Rabbit
was a star, scoring record points and promising an outstanding future – this
also shows the complexity of our main character, who combines extraordinary
qualities with equally remarkable shortcomings and flaws, at one stage, he
thinks about what he can do, and he does not have many, or any skills, except
for putting the ball through the net, he sales a magic kitchen instrument when
we meet him, and though his standing will improve, for we know that Rabbit Is
Rich is the name of a title in the trilogy, in the first part, we see him as
pretty much a lost soul, doing a rather less than rewarding job, facing
unhappiness at home, where his wife is almost, or already an alcoholic.
In Harry’s defense,
the guilt is not completely his to carry, because if both spouses have clear
responsibility when one is in decline – the tendency is to blame the partner,
as we learn from another magic psychology classic, Games People Play by
Magister Ludi Eric Berne, where one of the most common interactions is called
If It Weren’t For You http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/09/games-people-play-by-eric-berne.html only it appears that we select the
other, better half to blame him/her/they for the things we do not think we can
do anyway, but a scapegoat comes in handy – then Janice Angstrom is an adult
who should not indulge in drink to this point.
Harry finds
some solace in the arms of Ruth Leonard, who used to be a prostitute (or sex
worker in the parlance of our age) and though Rabbit declares himself ready to
marry her (supposedly in a harem) his superficiality, lack of involvement,
seriousness make him hesitate between staying in this affair and returning to
Janice – incidentally, let us quote yet another psychology classic (they help
us understand human interactions) and say that the affair is not the cause of
the breakup in marriages, but the symptom, the marital troubles have reached
the point where an affair is investigated to resolve the solitude felt within a
‘stable relationship’ but ne suffering because of one of the Four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse, as named by John Gottman in his quintessential The Seven Principles
of Making Marriage Work http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-seven-principles-of-making-marriage.html
When Janice
is giving birth – they have already a son, Nelson, and she is expecting another
child when Rabbit drives south and then settles for some weeks with Ruth – they
call him to go to the hospital, and this is the occasion when the bond between
Harry and Ruth is broken, and the modern day Ulysses returns to his awaiting Penelope,
but it is a rather unstable situation, though some folks try to help, one of
them is the clergy Jack Eccles, who becomes a sort of friend – in spite of
these efforts however, our anti-hero slaps Jack’s wife on her ‘fanny’ and
envisages erotic games with her, imagines that she winks at him (maybe she did,
but with just humor in mind) with the intention to have coitus
Ruth may
give birth to a daughter – I am now already reading Rabbit is Rich, which is the
third part in the trilogy, having finished Rabbit Redux, thus a note will be
coming in the next few days on the latter, an announcement which presumed with
infatuation that somebody might be interested in the notion, and Harry is already
well, rich, as the title puts it clearly and when a young woman enters the
Toyota dealership where he is boss now (a spoiler alert might be missing) he
thinks this might be the daughter he had not met, given that she mentions that
her mother owns a farm, and then Rabbit had met Ruth in Redux and she mentioned
that, just as she made it clear that she does not want Harry to come anywhere
near – but the tragedies in the life of the hero, or perhaps antihero of this
narrative, mix with the happy events
Rabbit Run
and some of the other volumes in the tetralogy have been well received (‘a
masterpiece’ is one comment) and two went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for
Literature…as a personal comment, they make for a very entertaining reading,
and this is the second time that I meet with Harry Angstrom and the characters
that people his saga…
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html
marți, 11 octombrie 2022
luni, 10 octombrie 2022
Permaflow 18, Ataraxia, Spire http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html
Permaflow
18, Ataraxia, Spire http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html
Revenons a
nos moutons, to come back to where we left on a tangent, some episodes ago, I
was talking about the period of June, in particular the days of 13, 14, 15,
when the miners came down to Bucharest, and we were driving around - without a
license, but what is this act can still be prosecuted…well, there it is, as the
emperor of Austria-Hungary was saying in the effervescent Amadeus, directed by
marvelous Milos Forman, with Tom Hulce and Abraham Murray (the latter winning
the Oscar, against the odds) http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/08/100-out-of-100-for-amadeus-on-realinis.html - the city in Stephen’s car, which
was left as guarantee while he roamed the West.
So I left
off, explaining who Stephen aka Stefan was, then talking about Claire, Linda
and miss Romania for about two hundred and fifty six pages, but now I am back
baby, and we continue with Stefan, who called someday, asked for money and I
gave it to him, for I am such a fool and always have been (what was that I was
saying with us being different after decades, or just the passing of enough
time…well, it was not me, it was Proust http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/10/albertine-disparue-by-marcel-proust.html who came with the notion) but
insisting that only one thousand needs to be spent for me.
The details
are not clear after all this time, but then they are not relevant and let us
say he had about twenty five hundred dollars from me, with the instruction that
he is to use the 1,500 that he says he needs, then return it as promised, and
then for me, he could buy a car with the maximum price tag of one thousand.
People were
going to the West back then, to buy things that they had missed for so long, in
the dark ages of communism, but also the first entrepreneurs would think of the
trade and bring the goods for sale, to which we need to add a different
category, that of Stefan, those who thought to attack on multiple fronts, why
not get money from others, buy things to get back and then also trick the fools
in the process.
After he
left and said he comes back in a few days, weeks would pass and no word from
our Stefan, and when he finally answered the phone, he started on another
weeks’ long delaying tactic, saying he has the car, which is a wondrous vehicle
(anticipating, it would be true, for an Audi, even twelve years old or more,
would be the equivalent of an yacht in this age, there are plenty, but nobody
on your block has one…oh, they do, well, so you are the rich guy who leaves
comments with links to porn sites on my feed, goddamn it) and it just needs
some work at the mechanic, for it got involved in a minor accident…
Minor
incident my ass, the car had been totaled in Switzerland and our goodfella had
bought it for 10 dollars, if they did not even pay for him to get it out as
metal garbage and it spent long weeks in the mechanic shop because it need to
be built back from the ashes, come to think of it, I should have called the
baby Phoenix and use it thinking about the legend, but in the meantime, the
Phoenix was absent…
Confronted
with the prospect of a major loss, I had to take some action, for I was looking
at a major confidence trick played by this made guy, who agreed to the terms
presented above (and after all, he had initiated the ‘deal’ calling for a
favor, he needs money and he would make a profit, so will return the investment
and buy the one thousand or half that car and come in/with it) and now he says
that he had spent all the money on the car, which was not in the terms we
detailed, and then that vehicle is not in view…
It looked
like he is lying one hundred percent, not just in the parts with the ‘oh, I thought
you deserve a better car than just one worth one thousand’ or some such
bulshit, and then I called in the special council of our own famiglia, with the
consigliere – as in one of the top five best movies ever made The Godfather http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-godfather-written-by-francis-ford.html - and decided to visit our con man
I mean, if
one tries to con you, you need to try and outfox him, or you get played all the
way, isn’t it, and thus we took a ride to his place, with uncle Sandu, his
friend Bono, cousin Adrian and Socrate, telling the goodfella that these
individuals have claims on the money and he would need to talk to them from now
on, which was not an intimidation, nothing on the lines of ‘you have such a
nice place here, it would be such a shame if anything happens to it’, but still,
it was enough to have us see the car in the mechanic’s shop…
It was a
disastrous situation, at least in the beginning, because the car had been
totaled, probably bought by my friend, the crook, for zero dollars, maybe he
had even been paid to take the junk out and dump garbage out of squeaky clean
Switzerland (we know this is a thing even today, with advanced economies
sending trash to ‘shit hole countries’ to quote the most disgusting fellow on
earth, Trump…well, next to Putin and a few others) and we were looking at my 25
hundred bucks, all piled up and painted green…
It turns
out that the vehicle would do some magic, eventually, for after it would be
fixed, it worked as a…vacuum cleaner, this was the expression used back then,
this car is a vacuum cleaner for…women, they are so enthused, exhilarated by
the look of it, which said money, not so much inventive, Bauhaus design, that
they would love to be invited to jump in, and they were, and then told to take
off any inhibitions and clothes and a lot happened inside it, and then wherever
the automobile would depose the driver and occupants…
There is at
least a grim story about the events taking place and that would us going to
Mamaia, where we were visiting some friends (I keep using the term, but it is
very relative, for I would be a business partner of the fellow there, and after
some initial enthusiasm, the clothes selling outfit would have us divided over
the way it worked, which it actually didn’t so much…they were making some
outfits out of wool or something and we were supposed to place, sell them in
the capital, and they did not fly from the shelves…
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
duminică, 9 octombrie 2022
sâmbătă, 8 octombrie 2022
The Victim by Saul Bellow, winner of The Nobel Prize for Literature, author of Herzog http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/04/herzog-by-saul-bellow-has-redoubtable.html and at least three other novels that are on the lists of best books - 10 out of 10
The Victim
by Saul Bellow, winner of The Nobel Prize for Literature, author of Herzog
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/04/herzog-by-saul-bellow-has-redoubtable.html and at least three other novels
that are on the lists of best books
10 out of
10
It is hard
to say who The Victim is in this astounding novel, for we have Kirby Allbee who
is clearly claiming that spot for himself, but the fact that he approaches Asa
Leventhal – arguably the hero, or maybe better said the main character of the
saga – and then harasses him throughout the story - oops, would that constitute
a transgression on the spoiler alert rule, I mean I have not mentioned what
happens and who has falls victim, I was just wondering about that, isn’t it,
but maybe some would deduct an outcome…well, don’t, it is all relative, as it
has just been emphasized – would make the latter a more likely injured party in
this Game People Play, which incidentally is a classic of Psychology, written
by wondrous Eric Berne http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/09/games-people-play-by-eric-berne.html
Asa
Leventhal is alone in New York, as his spouse, Mary, has gone to Baltimore to
be with her now widowed mother, who has had to sell the house and is in the
middle of a difficult transition, and as the man suffers from the absence of
his wife, he will have to face…The Victim and this, I just realized is part of
the humorous side of this narrative, where the suffering inflicts perhaps more
pain on the one he picks on, because he is sure that he had been targeted and
made to suffer, even if this is subject to debate and readers will find that
Asa had had no intention to harm Kirby, when, during a job interview, he had
lost his patience and responded in anger to the man that had the power to offer
or deny the position, and because Kirby had recommended him, the boss would
boot Allbee and thus the grudge.
In the
first part, Asa receives a call from his sister-in-law, Elena, an Italian woman
that had married his brother, Max, and she is asking for his urgent help, because
one of her two sons is very sick, and her husband is away, working and trying
to have all them move out of New York, when Leventhal is going out for this
emergency, he hears his boss and the son-in-law discussing his departure and alleged
lack of loyalty in anti-Semitic terms, as if ‘this is how they are, they stick
to each other’ or words to that effect…
Indeed,
this is one of the main themes of the saga, if not the most important one, for
the antagonism between Asa and Allbee is the result of yet another anti-Semitic
stand, and the latter is actually using prejudice, racism and the anti-Semitism
that was prevalent – and clearly is in many segments of land in the world alas
– to justify his hostility, the position he takes and attributes to Leventhal all
manner of thoughts, attitudes, and keeps quoting from the holy texts, to abuse
and serve his purpose ‘go forth and multiply’ is just one of the many things he
says and he is sure that Asa had wanted to take revenge…
Some years
back, the two had met at a party, where Allbee had mocked Dan Harkavy, a friend
of Asa and a man of Hebrew descent, and showed his anti-Semitism there, and
when Leventhal has that outcry of rage during an interview for which Allbee had
recommended him, the latter is sure that this was just an orchestrated attempt
to take revenge, with the knowledge that the boss would not accept this furious
response and in his turn, he would take action against Kirby, who would be let
go, if for this or another reason.
We doubt
with Leventhal if it was not his drinking that did it, for when we meet him,
Allbee is drunk and admits to having a problem with alcohol, if it attributes
it to the state he is in, what Asa had done and also, to the death of his wife,
who had been killed in a car accident, as she was driven by her brother, during
her stay with the parents – Allbee had been separated, his spouse had gone to
live with her parents, and he keeps lamenting this aspect, though he uses the
money he received from her insurance policy to keep drinking and at one stage,
Leventhal finds him with a woman – perhaps a whore, sex worker as we call that
today, or just a stranger, it is not clear – in Leventhal’s own apartment.
However, it
is hard, if not totally wrong to paint the two and other figures in this story
with pure white and one hundred percent black, they are in fact complex, and
though we loath Allbee for most of the or some time, he has some sides to him
that allow for a different perspective, he is a man that has read books (and
that is rare today, when seventy million Americans and countless others in different
lands worship Absolute Idiots and thus show how limited and primitive they
are…this is placed strategically here, where few, if any reach, since if placed
in the first lines, there is still a [slim] chance that somebody will read it
form that camp, and then enter a rage and comment on it…it has happened twice
anyway) his pain at having lost his spouse seems genuine, he is near the bottom
and then we now know that alcoholism is an addiction and a disease, which must
be cured and not despised…
Asa
Leventhal has made a mistake during his interview, but that has been a period
in his life when he was very angry and frustrated, he lived on the edge,
looking for a job in desperate circumstances, when it looked like he could face
destitution as a pauper, and the fact that his clash would lead to the sacking
of The Victim was not intentional, but still, even if accidentally, we could
argue that he was responsible at least to some extent to what would happen to
Allbee, and he would pay for it, because the latter shows up to confront the
man he accuses of his whole ordeal, and though this is total nonsense, he would
insist on retribution http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html
Eventually,
Kirby would take money from Asa, and would come to live in his apartment, while
the spouse is away and transform it into a pig sty almost, for he leaves it
very dirty and he may even try the ultimate punishment against his host, who
would slowly give in, trying to offer some compensation for his act, coming to
terms with the fact that without knowing it, he had hurt the man who is
harassing and abusing him, The Victim changes places with the one that had
harmed him and we are challenged by this narrative where we see one and then
the other showing vulnerability, attracting sympathy, only to change and then
show a darker side
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world