Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

     Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) [D: Anatole Litvak. Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster] Stanwyck was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in this film noir terror show. She’s bed-ridden Leona Stevenson, who overhears a phone conversation that suggests a woman is to be murdered, ends up she’s the victim. The story is told though flashbacks and phone conversations. Develops that she is a man stealer, her husband Henry (Burt Lancaster) is her kept man who wants to get out of the stifling marriage and job as VP in a chemical company owned by his father-in-law. He concocts a plan to steal some of the valuable chemicals, and involves gangsters to get rid of the stuff. These are annoyed when he and his co-conspirator decide to go it alone without paying the thugs their fair share. Leona’s life-insurance payout will supposedly pay the debt and free her husband of her and the job.
     The movie is dated as can be. It’s based on a radio play, and transfers well to the screen. All the things we have come to see as cliches of the genre are here: the selfish femme fatale, the suave mob boss, the crude business man, the self-centred handsome young man, the ineffectual good girl, the lonely derelict buildings by the sea shore, and the 2D characters, too obtuse to figure out the stupidity of their plans or the full implications of the revelations.
     I suppose that if I had seen this when first released I would been caught up in Leona’s developing terror, but at this remove the gears and pulleys of the plot are too obvious. The charm of this movie now is that it is such a near-perfect example of its type, a well-crafted entertainment offering a frisson of fear and a dollop of moral righteousness. The pacing is slow enough to suit the audiences of 65 years ago, who didn’t expect the jump cuts and minimal dialogue that we are used to today. The photography is slick and beautifully lit. the acting is very good. The whole movie is informed by a clear vision of its purpose, which is to deliver a thrill. It did that very well back in its day; now it’s an example of a genre that has developed in several different directions. As such, it has great historical interest, but only average entertainment value.**½

J. Burnley, ed. Penguin Modern Stories 1 (1969)

  J. Burnley, ed. Penguin Modern Stories 1 (1969) The date says it all: very mid-20th century “serious literature.” I read the first two stories by William Sansom, both rather depressing tales of people finding scraps of self-esteem in the midst of small defeats and smaller victories. The next tales, by Jean Rhys, begin in the same mode and mood, and I haven’t read them yet, and probably never will. David Plante’s stories (which I skimmed) are “experimental” in that self-conscious way that asks you to admire technique above content or insight. Malamud’s story concerns a father-son conflict of some sort (I skimmed it, too), typical again of the mid-20th century, when honest description of the dysfunctions of real families was considered brave.
     I suppose the 1950s and 60s were the last decade in which “educated” people took literature seriously as signs and signposts. This book, the first of a series that as far as I know never had a second, testifies to the belief that words on a page matter. They do, but discussion of their importance almost always misses the mark. In Julian Symons Bloody Murder, which I’m re-reading, I found a reference to F R Leavis; Symons accepts Leavis’s assumption that a story’s moral thesis is the criterion of its value. The stories in this collection all have value in the Leavisite sense, and that’s what makes them almost unreadable now. Leavis was wrong (Symons’ book is one of a number that disassemble Leavis’s heritage for our edification), and these stories demonstrate why. They are well written, the characters are well-observed, the pacing is just right, the insight into life’s little ironies is just so, and so on. But reading them feels like taking medicine. *½ (2003)

Gordon Dickson. The Alien Way (1965)

     Gordon Dickson. The Alien Way (1965) A first contact novel that seems to be one of Dickson’s early attempts. I suspect it was written well before 1965. Contact is made through “virus-sized mechanisms” that “infect” the aliens, and through a “collapsed space” channel that links the alien and the human directly. I didn’t finish this book. Its premise is intriguing enough, but the writing and characterisation are too clumsy to give much pleasure. The technology is inconsistent; surely a science that can build collapsed space drives and virus-sized devices can build high-powered miniature computers and store petabytes of data in a few sugar-lump sized cubes of collapsed space. The aliens, the Ruml, are a bear-like warrior race with a strong sense of honour (they have computers, by the way). They are in some ways prototypes for the Dorsai, in whom Dickson developed the warrior ethos so convincingly. I may pick up this book again some time this summer, but at present it will remain unfinished. ** (2003)
     Update 2013: I didn't finish the book, have tried it a couple of times since, but never got past the first 30 pages or so.

Agatha Christie. Towards Zero in The Mousetrap and Other Plays (1978)

     Agatha Christie. Towards Zero in The Mousetrap and Other Plays (1978) Adapted from the novel of the same name, the play moves briskly through the plot. The characters are well enough defined for good actors to give them credibility, even though their speech is not well-differentiated (Christie’s dialogue is true to class, but only vaguely evokes the individual). The stage directions are for a director, not a reader, and so they interfere; I have a hard time with “moves above table,” etc.
     Apparently amateur drama groups love Christie plays, and one can see why. They are “stagey”, though usually not in the bad sense of that word. Christie liked dramatic endings to scenes; she loves to drop the curtain on a plot point. Even the endings depend on a few lines of dialogue and action in the last two minutes or so. Her plays don’t wind down, they end with a bang. I don’t especially like a play that has a punch line, but many people do. Her plays for the most part are box office successes. Christie also likes realistic sets, “natural” props, and so on, and takes great care in describing them. In other words, they are the kinds of plays that people who like a good story will enjoy; but I doubt I would like them much; they are weak theatre. I can’t imagine these plays working on a bare stage, but it might be fun to try. As for the stories themselves: the scripts make it even clearer that Christie had a strong sentimental streak in her. These plays are romantic love stories with crime as the spoiler of true love’s deserved happiness.
     It’s also clear that she had an essentially dramatic imagination. Her novels rely a great deal on dialogue. This makes transposition into video easy, and often the video does a better job of presenting the story than Christie’s prose does. Or so it seems to me.
     I skimmed a couple of the other plays, but didn’t find them attractive reading. ** (2003)

Dorothy Sayers and Jill P. Walsh. Thrones, Dominions (1998)

     Dorothy Sayers and Jill P. Walsh. Thrones, Dominions (1998) Based on notes and drafts by Sayers of a novel she had planned and begun to write, this is a well done imitation of the Sayers style and form. Walsh has caught the Sayers adoration of Wimsey and her idealisation of his marriage with Harriet very well, perhaps to the point of gentle satire. The puzzle is satisfying, although the reader knows the perpetrator quite early on; but that’s common with Sayers, who was not much concerned with teasing the reader with red herrings until the denouement (except in Five Red Herrings, but even there, the murderer’s identity is fairly clear well before the end).
     The pleasure in this book comes from the characters, especially Wimsey and Harriet, and Walsh also shows a nice talent for social comedy. There are times when it seems she’s more interested in that than in the mystery, but Sayers’ notes justify her emphasis. Sayers planned the novel as having two main subjects, and Harriet and Peter’s adjustment to each other as husband and wife was to be one of them. Peter’s family should perhaps have been given more prominence; I think Sayers would have done that. But I suppose the publishers had some say I the length of the book. Considering the way Sayers expanded Gaudy Night and Nine Tailors into novels with a mystery element, Walsh would have been justified in insisting on a longer book.
     As it is, the marriage is charming. It clearly represents Sayers’ ideals, and certainly Walsh’s too, for she does these scenes so nicely. The Sayers reticence is there, but also the hint at passion unbounded and thoroughly enjoyed. Although the dialogue sometimes becomes a little precious, that’s Sayers' style, and Walsh is a sympathetic imitator of her prototype (whom, she says, she has admired since reading Gaudy Night in her early teens, a time when romantic novels and poetry can have a lasting effect). She must have read the couple of short stories of Wimsey as a married man and father very carefully.
     I found the puzzle well enough handled, though I would have liked to have seen the Wimsey-Parker relationship developed more; they are brothers-in-law, after all, not merely colleagues in detection. And Harriet and Mary will be excellent friends; I think more scenes between them would have added to the book, especially since Harriet isn’t sure she wants children at first. I guess I’m saying I could have read a book twice the length quite happily; I didn’t want it to end. Sayers usually wrote a lovely mix of social comedy, romantic love story, and adventure romance, and Walsh is an excellent pupil; I must look up her own published work.
     Sayers is very like Austen in her eye for the absurdities of social convention, but like Austen she also acknowledges the power of these conventions to cause real unhappiness. And like Austen, she believes that common sense, a disciplined heart, courtesy, kindness, and a strong moral sense will carry one through the worst of times. Also like Austen, Sayers rewards her heroes and heroines with great connubial happiness. It may be a fairy tale; but in real life, too, people can live happily ever after, or at least aspire to that state, and from time to time achieve it. **** (2003)

Charles Osborne. Agatha Christie: Her Life and Crimes (1999)

     Charles Osborne. Agatha Christie: Her Life and Crimes (1999) Cutesy title for a catalogue raisonnee of Christie's works with notes on her life. Osborne is probably most reliable on the bibliography, since he corrects some errors by other authors, and his notes on Christie’s life give one a painless overview. The glimpses of her relationship with Mallowan are worth having; they seem to have had an exceptionally happy life together. Osborne gives complete lists of the plays and movies based on Christie’s books, but although he mentions the TV adaptations regularly in the text, he supplies no list of those. He himself has “adapted” two of Christie’s plays into novels; I’ve read one, Black Coffee, and it’s rather badly done. Christie, with all her faults, was able to create a mood or atmosphere in addition to the dialogue, and that’s what Osborne can’t do. Worth a read to remind one of the books, and worth keeping as a reference.** (2003)

Improbable Research and the Ig Nobel Prizes

The Ig Nobel prizes are given yearly for oddball and strange research, the kind that answers questions that have caused brief puzzlement or annoyance. Such as Why is it so hard to walk with a full cup of coffee (or bowl of soup) without spilling it?

You will find the answers to these and other questions here, the website of Improbable Research. Not only fun, but Educational!