Gerard Hoffnung. The Hoffnung Music Festival (1956)

     Gerard Hoffnung. The Hoffnung Music Festival (1956) One of a series of enchanting little books of Hoffnung cartoons. Hoffnung had an eye for the foibles and quirks of humanity, and the skill to translate them into line. He also has great affection for his fellow fools, and a great appreciation of the womanly form, especially the more robust type; no admirer of androgyny, he. The drawing in which a conductor sketches a naked lady in midair shows this beautifully. But Hoffnung’s earthiness is coupled with an engaging innocence; his allusions to sex are playful and joyous, never prurient. Fay gave me this little book; it will stand with the much-read and -worn volumes in which other Hoffnung cartoons are collected. **** (2004)

Movie Reviews

I've added several posts to Movie Reviews 1.

The Lion King (Theatre review)

     The Lion King (2000) An awesome show. The story is simple, archetypal, and of course somewhat more sentimental than it needs to be. But as a play it works much better than as an animated movie. Why this should be so is hard to decide. The music is much the same, the characters are much the same. But live actors pretending to be animals, masked and costumed in semi-abstract style, choreographed to mimic the animals’ movements, and so on: these things impress far more than animated special effects.
     Perhaps it’s the body-language, which on stage must be abstracted, simplified, exaggerated, and therefore very clear. Perhaps it’s the costumes and masks and puppet-like structures worn by the actors. We were always aware that someone was acting the role, and perhaps that’s the real reason for the effect – the connection with a real, live person, one who talks directly to the audience. We participate in a live show in a way we can’t possibly participate in a screened one. No matter how interactive the games become, it’s still just shadows on a glass, while the live actor, the live, right-now voice, the actor’s working with the audience, not for the audience (the camera), these things make for an immediacy that’s new every time.
     I didn’t want to go to this show at first, since the Disney label is for me not a recommendation. But I was wrong. This show is very, very good theatre. **** (2002)
     Update 2013: The show is being revived, and will be coming to Toronto. Go see it.

Folio (Magazine of the Folio Society)

     Folio (Magazine of the Folio Society) Various dates. Pleasant and generally innocuous essays on the authors and books reprinted by the F. S. Here and there some interesting news; I’ve cut a few of them to put in books, but on the whole these are puff pieces for the books. Their tone is that of sophisticated nostalgia, and that tends to get rather stuffy and cloying at times. One can take only so much of the Good Old Days before one wants to toss the whole pompous mess into the crapper. * to ** (2003) This is the last of the reviews from 2003)

Edward E. Paramore. The Ballad of Yukon Jake (1928)

     Edward E. Paramore. The Ballad of Yukon Jake (1928). A pamphlet, so to speak, in which is reprinted the poem of the above name, originally published in Vanity Fair in 1921; there must have been some call for the reprint. Paramore (his name sounds suspiciously pseudonymous) satirises Service’s verse; the villain of the piece in fact succumbs to evil desires upon reading a ballad by Service, deflowers a local virgin, and goes off to the Yukon, where he becomes a Very Bad Hat. The girl follows him, intent on saving him from a life of debauchery and crime and restoring her own reputation, but old habits die hard, and Jake deflowers her again. Upon which the girl becomes a dance hall floozie, Jake continues on his merry bad way, and all is wrong with the world. A pleasant squib, and cheap at the price I bought it: $2. **½ (2003)

Carl Zimmer. Parasite Rex (2000)

     Carl Zimmer. Parasite Rex (2000) Zimmer’s description of the lives and times of parasites will raise the grue in most readers. There are passages that could make some people sick. But eventually, we begin to agree with the parasitologists: these creatures are fascinating, with their exquisite adaptations to their habitats, and the beautifully sequenced metamorphoses of their life cycles; and the title does not exaggerate their importance. Zimmer’s final conclusion, that humans are parasites on Gaia, is sobering, especially when we consider that unlike the other, successful parasites, we have apparently not learned how to tame our voraciousness to just the right level to guarantee that our host, and therefore we, will survive in its present form. If we don’t learn how to do this, we may change our host so drastically that it can no longer support us.
     A book that should be read, but I suspect many, perhaps most, readers will come away with a conviction that parasites should be eradicated. This would be a dangerously wrong inference, as Zimmer shows very clearly that without parasites ecosystems would be very different, that there is a fine line between symbiosis and parasitism, and that very likely we would not have evolved: we appear to be a collaboration of symbionts. Evolution of ever more complex creatures may in fact be a response to parasites: every trick that a parasite develops is countered by a trick developed by its host. This attack and counter-attack system will almost inevitably result in increasing complexity.
     But not only is our complexity merely the effect of our ancestors’ attempts to evade parasites, there is some evidence that much of the “junk DNA” may be parasitic, too. It’s pretty well established that cells are symbiotic systems: the mitochondria look too much like bacteria to be anything else. Now it looks like much of our DNA may be viruses that have permanently joined us, their hosts.
     From the beginning of life, in other words, some life forms survived by attaching themselves to others and using their food, their bodily substance, and their reproductive machinery for their own interests. What’s more, this has now become the dominant mode: all animals and fungi live by eating other life forms. Even plants depend on other living things: the remains of dead animals supply essential nutrients to almost every plant. Very few plants can subsist on nothing but water and minerals. Most bacteria and all viruses need living hosts for at least part of their life cycle. Life lives by devouring life. Gaia exists by cycling matter through complex webs of interdependence, the whole system driven by energy derived from the sun and released by the breakdown of molecules deep in the oceans and the crust. Tennyson, with his nature red in tooth and claw didn’t know the half of it. *** (2003)

Oliver Sacks. The Island of the Colorblind (1997)

     Oliver Sacks. The Island of the Colorblind (1997) Sacks can write about anything and interest you. Perhaps that’s because he writes about things that interest him, and that’s a lot more than his metier of neurologist. Neurology in this book forms the focus, but it’s the digressions that bring the most delight. There’s Sack’s love of cycads, and ancient order that has proliferated and populated every habitat except the far north. His ability to give us at least an impression of what colour blindness feels like, his interest in and affection for everyone he meets and befriends, his notes on ecological and economic effects of colonialism, all these make for a book that gives great pleasure.
     The episodic structure of the narrative, and the smorgasbord of mini-essays make it easy to read and leave and return to again. Somehow, one never loses the thread: what causes total colourblindness (a genetic mutation that has become concentrated in a few Pacific islands, and appears sporadically elsewhere in the world); and what causes bodig, a kind of Parkinsonism which may be caused by long term ingestion of minute amounts of the toxins in cycad seeds, which are carefully washed, pounded, cooked, and strained to remove those toxins.
     Bodig may be an example of a genetic flaw that causes disease only with environmental trigger; the family histories of the disease indicate some genetic susceptibility is involved. The younger generation doesn’t come down with bodig, which clearly shows that some lifestyle change has occurred. But there isn’t enough data to solve the puzzle, and as the older generation dies of the disease, the data dies with them. The kind of research effort required to solve the puzzle costs a lot of money; and since there is unlikely to be any commercial need or use for the answers, the money won’t be allocated. Pity. It’s worth having answers even if they are useless. Besides, no one knows what use some information may have in future. It could well be that the biochemistry or physiology of bodig would provide clues to understanding or treating similar neurological conditions.
     A good book. **** (2003)