What Are You Reading

[Harp]

^^^Atonement made its way to film; and, like Moneyball, I haven't seen it.

 

[MisterCairo]

Just finished Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. An interesting look back at the early days and life of Will Shakespeare, Agnes* (Anne) Hathaway, and family, loosely centred around the circumstances of the death of the son, Hamnet.

*Known to history as Anne, she was named Agnes in her father's will, so the author goes with that.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Genius musician Richard Thompson's new autobiography Beeswing. Very good, but it only goes up to 1975 - it's mainly about his days with Fairport Convention and part of his time as a duo with then-wife Linda. I hope he gets around to writing another volume that covers his next 40 years as a solo artist!

 

[Harp]

Just finished Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. An interesting look back at the early days and life of Will Shakespeare, Agnes* (Anne) Hathaway, and family, loosely centred around the circumstances of the death of the son, Hamnet.

*Known to history as Anne, she was named Agnes in her father's will, so the author goes with that.

View attachment 333966

Shakespeare's life escapes strict accounting. Some six, seven or perhaps a baker's dozen years of his life
are relatively unknown though subject to conjecture. I believe he spent some time as a soldier, his prose reveals
sufficient inside baseball to establish reason premise as to historical fact.

 

[Harp]

Is Brett Kavanaugh Out for Revenge? The Atlantic, McKay Coppins June 2021

Looks a hit on Kavanaugh. The Atlantic often lands deliberate left field, which is fine and dandy but tends
to skewer objective fact and any reasoned analysis, but singing to the choir off the same hymnal seems its style.

 

[LizzieMaine]

As an Atlantic subscriber for over thirty years I've always been more inclined to describe them as a rather squishily centrist publication. Anybody who gives page space to to the egregious Christina Hoff Summers is a long way from lefty for my money. (But then again I'm also a proud "Jacobin" subscriber.)

 

[MisterCairo]

Just started...

 

[Harp]

As an Atlantic subscriber for over thirty years I've always been more inclined to describe them as a rather squishily centrist publication. Anybody who gives page space to to the egregious Christina Hoff Summers is a long way from lefty for my money. (But then again I'm also a proud "Jacobin" subscriber.)

My disappointment with Atlantic largely stems from callous disregard for facts, lack of attribution, and cumulative error within its sound and fury off-key chorus cacophony rant. Not that I mind separating wheat from chaff when
subject/topic interest merit such but a lack of clear objective standard marks the cards and spoils the game.
(Summers has a grip on her bat and feet firmly planted on solid ground, a take-it-or-leave it philosopher with guts
to buck the academic/cultural pedestrian trend.)

Most of the current philosophic crowd on and off campus haven't had an original thought since puberty.

Jacobin? You really pay jack for Jacobin?; its socialist craze lacks red blood corpuscles with noticeable cerebrum oxygen depravation.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Jacobin" tends to be a bit right-revisionist sometimes, but I guess it'll have to do till "New Masses" comes back. (Several copies of the latter from 1936-37 on my coffee table even as we speak, with a hard-hitting analysis of the Spanish situation.)

 

[Swing Girl]

I just got Brat Farrar (Josephine Tey, 1949) from the library and am excited to start reading it. I actually learned about it in a discussion about fountain pens, where someone said that this book was where they first learned about them. When I heard it was 1940s and murder mystery, it sounded perfect, so I requested it.

 

[Harp]

"Jacobin" tends to be a bit right-revisionist sometimes, but I guess it'll have to do till "New Masses" comes back. (Several copies of the latter from 1936-37 on my coffee table even as we speak, with a hard-hitting analysis of the Spanish situation.)

Newbie is done gone with the wind, and, like Rhett, ain't comin back nowayzs.

Rhetorical quiz question: ever read Whittaker Chambers' Witness? Interesting to note he was a past Newbie editor.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I have. Professional anti-Communist, much like Louis Budenz, but somewhat less obnoxious about it. It's an interesting book to read in conjunction with John Gates' "The Life of An American Communist." But I'll grant that Mr. Chambers was, aside from politics, a very fine literary critic, whose reviews I often find that I agree with.

 

[Tiki Tom]

"(Several copies of the latter from 1936-37 on my coffee table even as we speak, with a hard-hitting analysis of the Spanish situation.)

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. I think it started when I realized that Rick, in Casablanca, had a backstory of having fought in Spain. Some time back, “Spain in our hearts (Americans in the Spanish Civil War)” by Adam Hochschild absorbed me for a few weeks. A great book that personalized the conflict by following the fates of a handful of individuals. Nicely balances historic big picture with very personal stories. Then, I was glad to trip over a story saying that Bob Merriman finally got a well deserved monument in Spain. And it sounds like a plaque will also be going up at his old apartment in Berkeley.

https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/08/21/student-honors-spanish-civil-war-vet-with-plaque/

 

[Harp]

I have. Professional anti-Communist, much like Louis Budenz, but somewhat less obnoxious about it. It's an interesting book to read in conjunction with John Gates' "The Life of An American Communist."

Gates seemed a tad naïve as to any possible relaxation within Marxism's collective stricture; Chambers quite
a figure, believe he dropped out of Columbia. He heard the screams as it has been said.

Mark Levin's newest American Marxism is due out soon. Should prove interesting.
------
Dovetailing all the above is of course economics. Federal Reserve Bank New York Weekly Economic Index 11.46;
reflective unemployment, low growth, higher commodity prices. Lumber cost increased 1.24%; Oil up deuce%.
Inflation will be a major problem with profligate spending, and many declining return for various cause/concern.
The Washington spin aside, the federal government is incompetently led by foolish ideology; namely, Marxism,
or whatever the left tags it with, semantic dodge wise.

 

[Harp]

But I'll grant that Mr. Chambers was, aside from politics, a very fine literary critic, whose reviews I often find that I agree with.

Not to belabor the issue but communism/Marxism is an ideology; and, personal conviction to reject what once
was accepted, offers fertile ground to explore said intellectual field with its considerable depth.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Pat Hobby Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald originally published as serialized short stories from 1939-1942

After reading the excellent roman a clef of F. Scott Fitzgerald's time in Hollywood, The Disenchanted (comments here: #8636), I needed to read something by Fitzgerald himself. The Pat Hobby Stories were written in a hybrid format during Fitzgerald's time in Hollywood. I learned this reading the introduction after I finished the book, as I usually do, because I like to form my own impressions.

Fitzgerald started writing these short stories simply for money. The man made a ton in the twenties, yet, by the thirties, he had spent even more and was struggling to pay off debt and meet his wife's hospital bills, so he was always "short." Despite this motive and pressure, by the second or third Pat Hobby story, Fitzgerald began to see these tales and the character of Pat Hobby as a continuous "portrait" of a man he wanted to explore artistically, beyond simply grinding them out for a buck.

Unfortunately, while Fitzgerald was creating a holistic view of Pat Hobby, time pressure (he was working his studio job during the week) and his premature death prevented him from finishing the effort. Still, read in one collection, as in The Pat Hobby Stories, they are an engaging and different way to "meet" a character and see a narrow sleeve of thirties Hollywood.

Consistent with the style of the time, each story has a "twist" or "surprise" ending, which can feel modestly hokey today. These were, in a way, TV episodes in a pre-TV age. A tired worker could sit down at night with a magazine, read a short story, get a laugh, turn the TV off, um, put the magazine down, and go to bed.

In The Pat Hobby Stories, not only do you meet Pat Hobby, an all but failed script writer for the studios, but you also get a glance inside Hollywood in the thirties. Fitzgerald's talent at seeing the nuances, contradictions and emotions behind the facade of business and personal relationships is on full display.

Pat Hobby, once a reasonably successful writer during the silent era of filmmaking, owing more to being in the right place at the right time than having any great talent, is now, by the late thirties, struggling to stay employed, find a place to flop at night and keep the repo man at bay from his dilapidated car.

Pat is not a likable or honest guy. Part of the fun in these stories is seeing a low-rent grifter try to steal an idea from a fellow writer, take credit for someone else's work after the fact, cage liquor from anyone (he's good at it), borrow money, also, from anyone, even people he just met, hit on younger women who have no interest in him and, the best of all, be sincerely offended when he's called out, as he often is, doing any of these things. Pat only gets away with all this as he appears more harmless than meanspirited.

Along the way, you watch Pat try to keep a toe-hold in the studio system where, even in his diminished state, he can still get paid decent money if they'll only "put him on salary for a few weeks." Of course, once they do, he finds a way to offend his bosses and coworkers by not doing his job, showing up late and/or drunk and, in general, pushing people's buttons. So why do they kinda keep helping him?

If you came into the workplace after the 1980s, it will be hard to appreciate that there was a time when some companies took an uneven paternalistic view of their long-time employees, even the lazy and disgruntled ones. So, from story to story, you watch Pat play a sort of emotional blackmail on the few old-time bosses around from his better days. While they know he's doing it, they still cave in now and then, only to regret it not much later.

As all of this is going on, a picture of a Hollywood studio in the 1930s emerges. Even in the Depression, it's a successful business, but less so than in the twenties, which has everyone nervous about his or her job, all the time. Writers feel unappreciated by directors, who feel unappreciated by producers, who feel unappreciated by the "New York Money" that is the real power behind Hollywood.

Actors are seen more as aliens to the system. They are respected and feared when on top, while laughed at behind their backs, or worse, when in decline. The "studio's bookie" acts as an éminence grise who serves as a payday lender, the nexus of the studio's grapevine and, yes, a way to get some money down on Wild Night in the fifth at Santa Anita for everyone from the cafeteria worker to the top executive in gambling-crazed Hollywood.

It's a shame Fitzgerald didn't live long enough to give reasonably benign scammer Pat Hobby a fuller treatment as he's a heck of a thirties kinda-sorta antihero or stock character (think Runyonesque). For fan's of the era's comic strip Gasoline Alley, Pat Hobby is an aging Wilmer who's still scamming, but with less asperity and conviction. Possibly, time and life grinds down the sharp edges of even the office miscreant.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Never read them, but I recall seeing a TV adaptation on PBS a VERY long time ago. Per Wiki:

A television adaptation of the Pat Hobby Stories was made in 1987, titled Tales from the Hollywood Hills: Pat Hobby Teamed with Genius, starring Christopher Lloyd as Pat Hobby and directed by Robert C. Thompson. The cast also included a very young Colin Firth as Rene Wilcox, Joseph Campanella as Jack Berners and Dennis Franz.

 

[Harp]

John Plender, The Demise of The Dollar; Financial Times, May 25th

Excellent review of inflationary consequences of reckless economic stimulus spending.
________
Plender adequately accounts the gradual global shift away from the American dollar toward a more hegemonic reserve currency basket; noting the need for liquidity as well as security, and, of course, mature responsible economic and fiscal management. Unfortunately, however, current administrative policy is sorely lacking requisite acumen. Interestingly, Plender focuses the March 2020 dash for cash when hedge funds were called by lenders when speculative spreads between paper Treasuries and corresponding Treasury futures caused concern, leading to a certain illiquidity requiring Fed correction. Recent trends have seen Treasury stock growth without balance sheet reflection and smaller dealers cannot offset a lack of liquidity.
Flight to quality buying and speculative bank calls simultaneous with a lack of liquidity, coupled to inflationary danger to fixed interest rate investments imperils foreign and domestic confidence in Yankee greenback competence.

The astigmatic current fiscal play may occasion a dollar rout; ancillary issues such as Washington's now insistence on a .28% international corporate censure with a floor beneath which tax rates cannot drop, and the Fed's abandonment of a tight monetary policy all wrapped around profligate federal spending does not bode well.

 

[Turnip]

Some history, finishing this one during short hours...

 

[Harp]

The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora's box at Wuhan?, Nicholas Wade/May 5, 2021,
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

To make the truth appear where it seems hid,
and hide the false seems true.

Shakespeare
Measure for Measure V; I
-------------------
There is a thunder in silence.... Anonymous

Interesting to note the lack of the left choir; and, a particular songstress
whose inane warble is strangely silent.