What Are You Reading

[Harp]

Zippy was a big favorite of mine and a friend with whom I rode to work early in my career.
It appeared in the free weekly, the Chicago Reader....

A delightful post, what a splendid memory.

Never read Zippy, but the Chicago Reader I fondly recall when it was a chunky little kid cousin to
the monolith immodest tabloid World's Greatest Newspaper itself, da mare's fav all the more, none the less,
Chicago Tribune. A Friday pick up along with shrimp or salmon filets and always well written hard scrabble
scorched shoe sole hard bit investigative reporting the likes of which ain't round much here nomores.

 

[camjr]

I'm going back and reading some of John LeCarre's work following his passing. I just finished The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and am about a third of the way through Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

 

[Tiki Tom]

John LeCarre is an understated genius. His autobiography is worth a read too.

 

[Harp]

I'm going back and reading some of John LeCarre's work following his passing. I just finished The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and am about a third of the way through Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Le Carre's The Pigeon Tunnel is excellent literary memoir.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Supermarket, holy cow!! And a cool lookin' edition, too!

Uncut edition, 46th edition, 2019. Ullstein.

 

[Fading Fast]

Supermarket, holy cow!! And a cool lookin' edition, too!

Uncut edition, 46th edition, 2019. Ullstein.

And here I thought you'd be reading the script from "Das Boot."

 

[ChiTownScion]

"Invisible Ink: My Mother's Sixteen Year Affair with a World Famous Cartoonist," a graphic memoir by Bill Griffith.

Bill Griffith is the last great cartoonist working today -- a craftsman of the old school whose "Zippy The Pinhead" strip is one of the few reasons left to read the comic page. (Every time the Boston Globe tries to cancel it, I write an angry letter demanding they reverse the decision, and so far they've backed off four times in the past decade.) I've been reading "Zippy" for over thirty-five years now, and Griffith never ceases to amaze me with the quality of his writing and his draftsmanship, as well as the bits of his own personal history he manages to work into what's basically a strip based on pop-culture non-sequitirs. So I was very enthusiastic when I picked a copy of this provocatively-titled work.

And for good reason. This is an absolutely fascinating look at the secret corners of one family's life -- capped by Griffith's discovery that his mother had carried on a sixteen-year affair with a second-rate hustler of a cartoonist named Lawrence Lariar, as her way of escaping the tedium of 1950s Levittown, and a joyless marriage to a closed-off, depressive career Army man. Lariar is Griffith's polar opposite in many ways -- an enterprising hack who tried every possible kind of cartooning in an attempt to latch onto the next big trend -- and yet he finds himself wondering if perhaps Lariar's influence on his mother might have subtly influenced his own choice of career as well. All of this comes to light thru bits and pieces of information unearthed from old letters, journals, scrapbooks and other papers unearthed after Mrs. Griffith's death -- and it's fascinating to see a grownup son coming to terms with the fact that he really didn't know his family at all.

It would be easy for Griffith to paint his dad as the villian of the story -- he freely admits that one of the characters in his strip, the sociopathic Mr. Toad, is a manifestation of how he viewed his father growing up. But there's a real sadness in the way he tells his father's story here -- a WWII officer who stayed in the Army for want of anything better to do, only to be purged from the officer rolls by military budget cuts in the late 1950s, and, humiliated and angry, reduced to the rank of sergeant. Did he know what was going on? The whole situation reads like one of those suburban-hell novels popular in that era, except that this one was real.

Griffith tells this story in the same careful hand-drawn pen and ink art style he uses in the "Zippy" strip, full of detailed 1930s-style crosshatching and expressive use of black and white, and he draws himself much as he appears in the strip as "Griffy." But there's none of "Griffy's" cynicism here -- you sense that the story being told is as much a personal catharsis for him as it is a chance to know things that were kept from him as a child. None of us ever really *know* our parents, and some of us never will -- and that realization is what makes this book a fascinating, thoughtful piece of work.

My copy arrived yesterday. Read it: your synopsis is spot on.

I hate to think of Zippy, Claude Funston, Mr. Toad, or any of the rest drawn in Larier's "start with a peanut" style, had Grittith been so mentored. Some things work out best as they have worked out.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My copy arrived yesterday. Read it: your synopsis is spot on.

I hate to think of Zippy, Claude Funston, Mr. Toad, or any of the rest drawn in Larier's "start with a peanut" style, had Grittith been so mentored. Some things work out best as they have worked out.

It made me strangely happy to learn that late in life, elderly Barbara Griffith sported a "Zippy" tattoo. She's a woman I would have enjoyed knowing.

 

[Harp]

Supermarket, holy cow!! And a cool lookin' edition, too!

Uncut edition, 46th edition, 2019. Ullstein.

Uncut? Circumcise Orwell.

 

[Fading Fast]

Vanity Row by W.R. Burnett originally published in 1952


"Roy Shook his head, sighed, sat down, and forced himself to think about the possibilities and ramifications of the case. The ethical side of the business he pushed completely into the background. It was not a question of innocence or guilt. To the Administration this was a complete irrelevancy. Staying in office was the main, in fact, the only point."

- Thoughts of Captain Roy Hargis, police chief and loyal Administration man.


Lynch (Hargis' lawyer): "Isn't this a little unusual Captain - not to say unethical?"

Hargis: "What does that last word mean, Mr. Lynch?"

- The same Captain Hargis discussing ethics with his lawyer


After reading the outstanding noir crime drama Asphalt Jungle by W.R. Burnett (comments here: #8548), I went looking for other Burnett books and found my way to Vanity Row. While it is a notch down from Asphalt Jungle, it is another smart noir crime drama. But where Asphalt Jungle takes the point of view of the criminals, Vanity Row follows a police captain "investigating" a crime that the powers that be want "solved" in a way that protects the Administration.

And the Administration, in this large Midwest town, is a major political party that, effectively, operates as a legal and illegal racket of patronage, graft and payoffs whose goal is to get and stay in office. It is in bed with the local mob and, when in power, runs the city for its benefit. This is not the case of a few bad apples, but an institutionalized corruption that is shocking for its efficiency, reach and self-confidence.

But when one of the Administration's high-profile lawyers - one of the respectable faces of the Administration - Frank Hobart, is murdered gangland style in the middle of the city, the Administration faces an existential crisis.

Hobart had recently strong-armed a national mob syndicate over the split of the "wire services" (the take from the gambling books in the city) and the Administration believes he was killed as payback. Now, the Administration needs a quick arrest and conviction for public consumption that points the finger at anyone but the mob that it believes did the killing as it doesn't want the newspapers or public questioning why an "honest" Administration lawyer would be the target of a mob hit.

To this end, the Administration turns to one of its most trusted men, police captain Roy Hargis, the quintessential Administration Man. He's whip smart, completely immoral, fine with corruption and lines his pockets, not with arrant greed, but with a dispassionate entitlement as, to him, that is how he gets paid for his loyalty to the Administration. He is also coldly indifferent to women - sleeps with them in a detached way and then moves on. If he has a flaw, it's that he is so perfectly integrated in the corrupt system that he's losing any sense of himself and his humanity.

As Hargis begins the investigation, we see a thorough man, respected by some and feared by others in his department, smartly following clues through the seedy and respectable sides of the city. He threatens or cajoles, depending on the need, prostitutes, gamblers, high-end restaurateurs, luxury-hotel managers and even prominent and influential citizens. We quickly learn how all of these seemingly disparate parts of the city are connected, in particular, by the men who run or frequent them.

Trailed by a talented and alcoholic newspaper reporter, Hargis begins to put the pieces of the murder together while feeding the press only the snippets and perspective that he wants it and the public to have. At this moment, Hargis is a man at the top of his game who, when he discovers that married Frank Hobart had a beautiful demimonde girlfriend, sees the perfect fall guy (girl) to hang the crime on.

Ilona Vance is beautiful in a way that shows the failings of ordinary beautiful women. She's tall, cool, oddly friendly and prepossessing to both men and women. Since she has no connections and with real evidence adducing that she might actually have killed Hobart, Hargis has all he needs to hang the crime on her and please the Administration. And while other men (and women) wilt in Vance's wake, Hargis coolly builds his case against her - problem solved.

That is, until it isn't. After placing Ms. Vance under arrest and having her brought to his office for an interview, in a wonderfully written scene, we see aloof Hargis begin, hesitatingly at first, to fall for Vance's charms. By the end of this meeting, Hargis is gone: the hardened, detached veteran is all in for Ms. Ilona Vance. The rest of the book is watching incredibly wily Hargis spin everyone and everything - cops, lawyers, the press, his story, facts, evidence and the leaders of the Administration themselves - to help Vance and to keep his job.

While fun to see and engagingly written, Hargis' metamorphosis to a man in love - a man with some ember of humanity still glowing inside him - and the book's overall conclusion stretch credibility a bit further than one would like. Even if that keeps Vanity Row a touch below the level of Asphalt Jungle, it's still a solid entry in the crime-noir genre.


N.B., While much of this book's views on, well, almost everything would fail today's uncompromising political views, it's interesting to see Vanity Row's complex 1950s take on homosexuality. In it, several heterosexual characters - hardened policemen and politicians - view homosexuality as no big deal, even if they understand that it has to be kept quiet. Of course, it's wrong that it had to be kept hidden, but it still felt surprisingly accepting for the time. Modern writers of period noir stories would almost never have the guts to present this type of nuance - hence, the value of reading these contemporaneous books.

P.S. Alas, my copy didn't have the awesomely tawdry cover illustration shown in the above picture.


@Harp and @Touchofevil, I'm thinking this one - and Asphalt Jungle - would be in your reading wheelhouse.

 

[Harp]

^^^Most definitely...but a large Midwest city with homicides, cops on the take, political administration....
Go along get along ....inside baseball to inside baseball? Naw, can't be Chicaga, my home town...
Chicago is egalitarian, even the cemetery is an active politically viable voting precinct.
Nothing moribund or corrupt here...well, the Cubs are rebuilding but except for these bums,
Chicago is clean as a wolf whistle.

 

[Trenchfriend]

1984 is of course an excellent read, but the storytelling is too dissipated. 200 sides story, pumped up to 357 sides on this pocketbook edition.

 

[Harp]

1984 is of course an excellent read, but the storytelling is too dissipated. 200 sides story, pumped up to 357 sides on this pocketbook edition.

Ever tackle Tolstoy's War and Peace?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Read that in the seventh grade. On a dare.

 

[MisterCairo]

Austen binge continues. Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey both finished, now on Persuasion.

 

[Harp]

Austen binge continues. Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey both finished, now on Persuasion.

Paula Byrne's The Genius of Jane Austen; Her Love of Theatre and Why She Works in Hollywood
is on my stove list though admittedly atop a back burner. Austen's six novel canon I also intend to
revisit, several films adapted: Olivier in Pride and Prejudice, Emma Thompson in Sense and Sensibility,
Northanger Abbey with Carey Mulligan. Anne Hathaway's Becoming Jane I've nearly declared a lost cause
due to my procrastination. Byrne wrote her Genius in part to refute common belief that Jane Austen
was not a reclusive introvert but more the fun loving personality so elusive to popular perception,
a rather difficult thesis which demands further proof, and I remain skeptical but admiring.
What of course is the always lingering question, whether Jane ever found the love she so elegantly
inscribed across hearts hither and yon I believe settled biography; while singularly poignant of the great
ironies of life and literature.

 

[MisterCairo]

Paula Byrne's The Genius of Jane Austen; Her Love of Theatre and Why She Works in Hollywood
is on my stove list though admittedly atop a back burner. Austen's six novel canon I also intend to
revisit, several films adapted: Olivier in Pride and Prejudice, Emma Thompson in Sense and Sensibility,
Northanger Abbey with Carey Mulligan. Anne Hathaway's Becoming Jane I've nearly declared a lost cause
due to my procrastination. Byrne wrote her Genius in part to refute common belief that Jane Austen
was not a reclusive introvert but more the fun loving personality so elusive to popular perception,
a rather difficult thesis which demands further proof, and I remain skeptical but admiring.
What of course is the always lingering question, whether Jane ever found the love she so elegantly
inscribed across hearts hither and yon I believe settled biography; while singularly poignant of the great
ironies of life and literature.

Love the Emma Thompson S&S, but may I suggest the mini-series first:

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0847150/

 

[Trenchfriend]

Ever tackle Tolstoy's War and Peace?

Nah, Stendhal's Red and Black with 600+ sides was maximum to me.

 

[Harp]

Nah, Stendhal's Red and Black with 600+ sides was maximum to me.

College weekend, Stendhal, The Red and The Black. A moment of literary masochism.
I think Giovanni's Room by Baldwin read approximate time. Prefer Dostoevsky to Tolstoy,
the former's Crime and Punishment I must revisit soon.

 

[AmateisGal]

Lauren Bacall's memoir, By Myself.