February 2022
-
This curiously named novel, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. (no relation, thank goodness), concerns a 30-year-old Baltimorean become Brooklynite who drifts from bed to bed but is incapable of lasting love. Adelle Waldman takes a scalpel to Nathaniel P[iven] and also to his various lady friends. Her analyses are sharp, incisive and sometimes painfully…
-
Through the continuing miracle of TCM, we watched Divorcee, a 1930 "pre-Code" drama of marriage and adultery. It's a film that was shocking in its own time and still carries a bit of an edge. Jerry Martin (Norma Shearer) and Ted Martin (Chester Morris) attempt to create a marriage of perfect equals, but Ted strays. There's…
-
Just when I was beginning to think that the Hollywood memory-loss well had run dry, along comes Whirlpool and another variant of the world's most flexible mental affliction. This time: loss of memory by hypnosis. It could have been a good film: Ben Hecht, Otto Preminger, Gene Tierney, Jose Ferrer. But it's gimmicky and the…
-
At lunch yesterday, a friend of long standing mentioned that the conglomerate that now publishes his American politics textbook has hired a new employee, a vice-president for diversity and inclusion. It's a well-intended decision, I am sure, but it carries a potential downside. The new v-p has instructed my friend to make some changes to…
-
Another long troubled night, another astonishing dream. This time, I found myself lurking in a primitive cabin inhabited, it seemed, by a big happy family. There were a bunch of kids and a cheerful be-aproned matriarch cooking on an old wood stove what looked to me like a cauldron of soup. Immediately, the scene shifted…
-
Amnesia is perfunctory in this "pre-Code" melodrama. Comes and goes without much stress. Rich snotbucket monocle-wearing attorney Charlie "Beauty" Steele is beaten, thrown into a river and presumed dead. He is rescued and wakes up without a glimmer of memory but is otherwise entirely functional. In his new, raccoon-skin-hat personality he falls in love with…
-
Friendship is definitely an urban novel, but there's little in it that is particular to Brooklyn. Certainly not to my Brooklyn. It's a modern, contemporary coming-of-age novel, but, unlike prior-century works, adolescence is delayed or postponed, because the two thirtyish women about whom it revolves would have solved their problems when they were a decade…
-
Some years ago, I wrote about meetings of the E & L Chafetz Family Circle, a biennial gathering of my immigrant grandmother's family and also of her many cousins, spouses and descendants. I recalled that Youthful Me objected to being dragooned into attending these sessions. I also confessed that I hadn't a glimmer of understanding…
-
It's been six years since Dr. Metablog (aka Vivian de St. Vrain, aka The Modern Nostradamus) issued a set of predictions. His last collection, from 2016, earned a score of 100% correct, when every single one of his dazzling glimpses into futurity proved to be exactly accurate. An astonishing performance!! Which is why The Modern…
-
Re: Jenny Offill, Department of Speculation (2014). "Shimmering." "Breathtaking." "Radiant, sparkling with sunlight and sorrow." "Powerful." "Glitters with different emotional colors." "Each line a dazzling perfectly chiseled arrowhead aimed at your heart." That's what they say. How about "undisciplined," "faux-poetic," "self-indulgent", "unreadable." Which is what I say. Whatever happened to my gritty Brooklyn? When did…