Showing posts with label acquisitions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label acquisitions. Show all posts

Monday

Acquisitions


Contents:




Note behind counter of local secondhand bookshop
photograph: Michael Steven (2012)




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Friday

Acquisitions (110): Deborah Lipstadt


Lipstadt, Deborah E. Denial: Holocaust History on Trial. ['History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier', 2005]. Ecco. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2016.

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Richard J. Evans: Lying About Hitler (2001)
Richard J. Evans. Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial. 2001. Basic Books. New York: Perseus Books, 2002.

Lying About Hitler


The Richard J. Evans book pictured above was my point of entry into the intricacies of David Irving's infamous libel case against American Professor Deborah Lipstadt for labelling him a Holocaust denier.

So fascinating did I find Evans' book, in fact, that I made it the centrepiece of a whole module in the Creative Nonfiction Masters course I put together with my Massey colleague Ingrid Horrocks.

Peter Bradshaw: Review: Overwhelmingly relevant assertion of truth (26/1/2017)
l-to-r: Andrew Scott, Rachel Weisz and Tom Wilkinson in Denial


When I heard that there was to be a film about the trial, I felt very anxious to see it. However, if it was screened in any of the cinemas around here I must have missed it. Instead I was forced to order the CD online and watch it that way.

Mick Jackson, dir. Denial (2016)
Denial, dir. Mick Jackson, writ. David Hare (based on Deborah Lipstadt's book History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier) – with Rachel Weisz, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Spall, Andrew Scott, Jack Lowden, Caren Pistorius, John Sessions, Alex Jennings – (UK / USA, 2016).

So it was a distinct feeling of pleasure that I finally ran across Deborah Lipstadt's own book about the trial in an Op shop the other day. It was the film tie-in version (not surprisingly), and I was reminded yet again of how difficult Rachel Weisz finds it to look anything but gorgeous in any of her roles. I guess she'll just have to put up with the fact: there are worse fates, after all.


Tom McCarthy, dir. Spotlight (2015)
Spotlight, dir. Tom McCarthy, writ. Tom McCarthy & Josh Singer – with Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian d'Arcy James, Liev Schreiber, Billy Crudup – (USA, 2015).

The same might be said of Rachel McAdams, one of the stars of the movie Spotlight, which appeared in 2015, just a year before Denial.


Daily Mail: Rachel McAdams dresses down (29/9/2014)


The parallels don't end there, of course. Spotlight is a film about the Catholic Church's attempts to cover up the wide-spread child abuse cases concerning their priests in Boston. It's certainly a serious, cerebral film - but it struck a chord with viewers. It was both critically and financially successful, and proved that you really can underestimate the intelligence and taste of filmgoers.

Denial is equally serious and challenging. David Hare's script is both restrained and effective, and he does a wonderful job of conveying the urgency of the questions under debate in the courtroom, while still providing meaty roles for the impressive cast. Alas, it ended up losing money rather than making it, and attracted a somewhat muted critical response also. Spotlight clearly hit a nerve that Denial, a year later, didn't.


D. D. Guttenplan: The Holocaust on Trial (2001)
Guttenplan, D. D. The Holocaust on Trial. 2001. New York & London: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2002.

So why do I see this trial, and the various books and feature film provoked by it, as so very important? It's not really the fact that it concerns the Holocaust - I mean, anyone who needs the verdict in a British libel trial to convince them that the Holocaust actually took place is probably impervious to any conventional standards of evidence.

No, it's the question of whether or not any historical event can be proved to have taken place in the face of someone else's claim that it didn't. Does it matter? Well, yes, it does. If someone can stand up and say that there was no Second World War - or Roman Empire - and have their opinion on the matter treated as seriously as anyone else's, then there can be no history, no settled sense of the past, no context for anything but assertions of opinion.

That may sound like a world of paranoid delusion, but in our present political situation, where the number of attendees at a rally can be disputed on the grounds that "alternate facts" can co-exist in the universe as we know it - or where the results of an election depend on your pre-conceived view of who would win - it suddenly becomes quite a vital question.

The easiest way to summarise my view of the importance of this libel trial might perhaps be to summarise some of the notes I wrote on the subject for our Masters Course:


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Deborah Lipstadt: Denying the Holocaust (1993)

To make a long story short, an American historian, Deborah Lipstadt, wrote a book called Denying the Holocaust (1993) in which she described prominent British military historian David Irving as a Holocaust denier. The book was published in the UK as well as in the US, and Irving accordingly brought a libel action against Lipstadt, claiming that she had done irreparable damage to his professional reputation.

In Britain (unlike the United States) the onus is on the person accused of libel to prove their own innocence of the charge. Lipstadt therefore had to show sufficient evidence of systematic distortion of the facts in Irving's - very extensive - published work to win her case and avoid having to withdraw her book and pay substantial damages.

Irving filed suit on 5 September 1996. The judge's final 333-page written verdict was delivered on 11 April 2000. In between those two dates the historian Richard Evans and his assistants spent thousands of man-hours combing through Irving's books, articles and diaries - not to mention an immense amount of time spent on the case spent by the lawyers and other experts.

Evans says in his book that he'd thought initially that a court of law was a terrible place to judge history. By the end of the process, however, he concluded that it was actually an excellent place. Only there could people actually be forced to answer questions, and could matters of details be examined from all angles without having to apologise for testing the patience of those concerned.

It was the failure of other readers, both professional and casual, to subject Irving's work to this unprecedented scrutiny which explained how its shockingly unbalanced nature had avoided exposure previously.

What is truth? Truth, it turns out, is the Holocaust. Or, rather, events of that cataclysmic nature. It is not a criminal offence to deny that the Holocaust took place in most countries (though it remains one in Austria and Germany). You may be a Holocaust denier yourself. Bully for you.

For a professional historian to twist and subvert the documents he uses to make them imply things they don't actually say is a crime of a quite different nature, however. Irving used every device at his disposal to attempt to prove Hitler's innocence of the crime of genocide. At first he was content to blame it on Hitler's subordinates, but later he decided that no substantive crime had taken place at all (beyond some deaths from disease at such camps as Auschwitz).

But if he actually believed this to be true, why did he need to lie about it and distort the evidence? This is where the balance between unrestrained relativism ("there is no truth: only points of view") and old-fashioned pragmatism ("the documents don't lie: there was a war, there was an Auschwitz, there was a genocide") becomes most tricky.

It's a morass you can't avoid, no matter how much you'd like to, which is why the details of the Hitler libel case should be so fascinating to all of us. Irving was proved to be a liar because he had to cite the sources of his lies: those are the rules professional historians play by. You can write an article or a speech off the top of your head, and assert anything you like. When you sit down to write a history, though, you need to cite chapter and verse.

Everybody makes mistakes. If they didn't, we wouldn't need to cover the same ground again and again, with different emphases and different interpretations. You can simply get it wrong. You can also change your mind (if you're honest you'll admit it: if you're less honest you'll just try to sneak revisions to your original point of view into subsequent work).

None of that has anything to do with the Irving case. Evans showed, in painstaking detail, that Irving could not have misunderstood the nature of some of the documents he relied on to exculpate Hitler from the charge of genocide: he misquoted and mis-paraphrased them deliberately. Tellingly, there were never any mistakes in the opposite direction - all his "mistakes" tended towards one end, the exoneration of Adolf Hitler.

Did Irving do this because he believed it to be true on some deeper level than the documents would allow? Did he simply make things up and distort them because he couldn't find any real evidence for his beliefs? It's hard to tell. But it seems as if he can't really have believed it himself - if he had, why would he have needed to lie? If Hitler really was innocent of genocide, then surely that fact would sooner or later become clear.

Irving was an autodidact. He never attended a university. His fluent German, his archival scholarship, were all self-taught. Like many autodidacts, he felt an inferiority complex about these deficiencies in his professional CV. He therefore took every opportunity to deride products of the Academic system as mindless drones and yes-men. As he saw it, they supported the party line on the Holocaust and everything else simply because that is what they had been taught to do.

Irving's books are unreliable trash not because he didn't understand historiography, but because he was a liar. The motives for his lies are complex: probably more personal than ideological in the final analysis. It would be unfair to suggest that his love for Adolf Hitler as a man and an historical figure was anything but passionate and lasting.

But would anyone in the 1960s and 1970s, when Irving was at the height of his influence, have wanted to read a series of love letters to Hitler? Of course not. He was therefore forced to try to sound objective while secretly stacking the deck in favour of his hero. The most obvious example is in his very influential 1963 book The Destruction of Dresden, which, largely as a result of Evans's investigations, can now be seen to be fundamentally flawed and completely unreliable on points of detail: especially the absurdly padded casualty figures that Irving provided, on the most tenuous evidence.

The moment you accept the possibility of a lie: that a statement can be untrue, then you simultaneously admit the need for a complex and nuanced model of historiography. If, however, you believe that the opinion that there was no Second World War, or there was no Holocaust (in the accepted sense of those terms) has no less validity that the opposite view, then you inhabit a field of extreme relativism which probably qualifies you more for Linguistic Philosophy than Historiography - or, for that matter, for an Austrian jail. Irving was sentenced to three years imprisonment in Austria in 2005 for "Nazi activities." He was released in 2006 after serving only a year of his sentence, but was banned from ever re-entering the country.

The argument, of course, continues. It is a criminal offence in Turkey to use the word "genocide" in connection with the First World War massacres of Armenians in that country. Is this justified? Any and every event in history can - and should - be questioned - and questioned repeatedly.

If you have a preconceived bias on the matter you're discussing, you must say so. If David Irving had prefaced any of his books with the words: "I adore Hitler. I don't believe so wonderful a man can have been a mass murderer," then our opinion of him might have been different. Many people loved the late serial killer Charles Manson on even slighter grounds. It's doubtful that it would have been much of an incentive to major publishers to issue his books, however. And Irving did need the money.

Life's too short to spend your time talking to narcissists and liars. Any of you who've spent any time in their company will recognise what I'm talking about. The ingenious twists and turns of their reasoning always tend, in the end, towards self-exculpation. Whoever's to blame, it's never them.

Does all the attention paid to the Holocaust distract us from other, equally wicked and terrible events which have also taken place over the past century or so? It would be easy to argue that it does. Others claim that terms such as "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" are used too frequently for crimes which pale into insignificance beside the twelve-year ordeal of Europe's Jews at the hands of the Nazi party. These are philosophical and ethical issues which ultimately come down to matters of personal opinion.

It's as well to be aware of at least some of the implications if you really do feel inclined to offer the benefit of the doubt to Holocaust-deniers, though.

The Holocaust is a subject for respect, for tears at the sheer horror of what people can do to each other. It's not something to make cheap jokes or chop logic about. Mind you, if you feel equally horrified by Rwanda or Srebrenica or the genocidal assaults on the Palestinians in Gaza, all I can say is that I couldn't agree with you more.

But, to be honest, I've never noticed any of the people who say we 'talk too much' about the Holocaust, or Slavery, or the other great crimes of history having much to offer in the way of alternative topics of conversation.

Perhaps the final lesson here, then, is simply to have a bit of respect. Listen to those who were there. Otherwise it's hard to imagine that you're likely to have much to contribute to the world's thought.

Richard J. Evans: In Defense of History (1997)
Richard J. Evans. In Defense of History. 1997. American ed. 1999. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000.


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Wednesday

Acquisitions (108): Paul Bowles


Paul Bowles: Up Above the World (1966)

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Paul Bowles (1910-1999)

Paul Bowles. Up Above the World (1966)
[Habitat ReStore North Shore, Wairau Park - 17/4/24]:

Paul Bowles. Up Above the World. 1966. An Abacus Book. London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1991.

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Bernardo Bertolucci, dir.: The Sheltering Sky (1990)


The Sheltering Sky


My only knowledge of Paul Bowles used to be that he was head honcho among the expatriate American writers in Tangier when William Burroughs arrived there in the mid-1950s. This was shortly after the latter had shot his wife Joan through the head in Mexico City - a tragic accident, he claimed, but one which he might not have got away with scot-free if he hadn't skipped town shortly afterwards ...

It wasn't until I saw The Sheltering Sky that I really began to fall under Bowles's spell.



There was something so mesmerising about it: the landscape, the heat, the sultry magnificence of Debra Winger in surely one of her greatest roles ... "For you there is only the desert," as Anthony Quinn says to Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. The Sheltering Sky, too, is definitely a film for those in love with the desert.


Paul Bowles: The Sheltering Sky (1949)


I read the book shortly afterwards. I wasn't disappointed, exactly. It's a powerfully written novel, and I can understand why it caused such a sensation at the time. But it is very much a book of that time: the era of Sartre and Camus and the other Existentialists. The film seems to translate that into something more universal.

But Bertolucci's film too, is now 35 years old. Perhaps it seems just as archaic to viewers today: nostalgia for the 1990s is no doubt just as powerful a thing for the young as nostalgia for the 1940s, however absurd that might seem to members of my generation.

Perhaps Debra Winger sums it up best, in her tribute to the film-maker, recorded shortly after his death in 2018:
It was such an intense experience filming The Sheltering Sky. ...
But the moment of shooting the movie I remember most ... was when we were at the edge of the Sahara Desert. I was in the robes I was wearing in the film. He was wearing a black leather Armani jacket and a scarf. He was girding himself against the infinite qualities of the desert. We are standing on the edge of this untouched sand. You can see in the forefront of the photo all the footprints and the dolly tracks where the crew had walked.
Then there were these vast dunes — just nothingness. I was to walk out into that, and hopefully they were driving out around the dunes and picking me up at the other end, but there were to be no footprints in the sand. The shot was opening up very wide, and it was very scary because everyone understood that you cannot walk easily in the desert. You can go over a couple of dunes and think you have gone in a straight line. There was this moment where life and the art of making a film about it were coming up against each other.
I said: “I love it here. Whatever happens is OK. I love it. I love how small I am in the scheme of things.” He said, “That’s exactly why I hate this place.” He said to me, “I don’t even go to a party if it’s not for me.” Now the party is all about him.
- Benjamin Svetkey: "Debra Winger Remembers Bernardo Bertolucci".
Hollywood Reporter (27/11/18)


And then, of course, there's the Jane Bowles factor. It would not really be much of an exaggeration to refer to her the Frida Kahlo of American letters - a very gifted artist, initially overshadowed by her famous husband, but now definitely coming into her own.



As you can tell from the photo above, Kit in the film of The Sheltering Sky is very closely modelled on Jane Bowles (the same can also be said of the character in her husband's book). In particular, Debra Winger's hair and general look were carefully sculpted to look as much as possible like the intensely photogenic Jane:



There are some who would argue that Jane was the more important writer of the two. Which of them you prefer comes down not so much to matter of taste as a matter of temperament, I suspect. Jane's oblique, unsettling short stories are certainly great in themselves - but their fragmentary nature gives a clue to how much greater than that were her actual literary ambitions.

She completed one novel, Two Serious Ladies, and one play, The Summer House, but many of the notebook fragments sound like the openings of abandoned, large-scale works which she was never able to carry to a conclusion - possibly more for reasons of health than of existential self-doubt.



Perhaps this side of her is better expressed in yet another film embodiment, David Cronenberg's adaptation of William Burroughs' Naked Lunch, where Judy Davis plays a version of Jane Bowles as 'Joan Frost', the estranged wife of a local novelist in the baffling port town of Interzone (= Tangier). The passionate, masochistic affair Joan is conducting with a local woman closely echoes events in Jane's own life, seen through the mordant lense of Burroughs' dislocating prose.

I don't know what it says about me that it's still one of my favourite films. Despite the lukewarm response it got from the critics at the time, I think it's now recognised as a classic piece of alternative cinema.


Ian Holm & Judy Davis as a version of Paul & Jane Bowles
David Cronenberg, dir. Naked Lunch (1991)


Paul, by contrast, started off as a serious modernist composer, but gradually morphed into a novelist and short story writer. His work as a translator is also impressive: particularly the Moroccan authors - often personal friends - whom he was able to introduce to the larger world of letters.

Was he anything like the reckless, rather self-satisfied character played by John Malkovich in The Sheltering Sky? There are certainly some resemblances, but if it was meant as a self-portrait, it's an exaggerated and caricatured one. The point about Bowles seems to have been that he self-consciously cultivated a reputation as an enigma.

The editor of his selected letters, Jeffrey Miller, was shocked to discover after Bowles's death how intensely the writer disliked him and resented his poking around in his personal archive. He'd thought they were friends, but the letters said otherwise. Maybe it was just Bowles's last joke on him, though - after all, he could have hidden the fact much more carefully if he'd wanted to.

Perhaps they really were friends all along, but Bowles resented his complacency. Or perhaps ... but the possible scenarios are endless. That's really the mark of a Paul Bowles story: no matter how carefully you parse and analyse it, there's always something more concealed at its core.




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Jane Bowles in Morocco

Jane Bowles
[née Jane Sydney Auer]
(1917-1973)

Books I own are marked in bold:
    Novels:

  1. Two Serious Ladies (1943)
    • Two Serious Ladies. 1943. Introduction by Lorna Sage. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000.

    2. Plays:

  2. In the Summer House (1943)

    3. Stories:

  3. Everything is Nice: The Collected Stories (1984)
      Plain Pleasures:
    1. Plain Pleasures
    2. Everything is Nice
    3. A Guatemalan Idyll
    4. Camp Cataract
    5. A Day in the Open
    6. A Quarreling Pair
    7. A Stick of Green Candy
      8. Other Stories:
    8. Andrew
    9. Emmy Moore’s Journal
    10. Going to Massachusetts
      11. From the Notebooks:
    11. The Iron Table
    12. Lila and Frank
    13. Friday
      14. From the Threepenny Review:
    14. Looking for Lane
    15. Señorita Córdoba
    16. Laura and Sally
    • Everything is Nice: The Collected Stories. Introduction by Paul Bowles. 1984. Virago Modern Classics, 328. London: Virago Press Limited, 1989.

    4. Collections:

  4. The Portable Paul and Jane Bowles. Ed. Millicent Dillon (1994)
  5. Collected Writings. Ed. Millicent Dillon (Library of America, 2016)
    1. Two Serious Ladies (1943)
    2. In the Summer House (1943)
    3. Stories and Other Writings:
      1. A Guatemalan Idyll
      2. A Day in the Open
      3. Song of an Old Woman
      4. Two Skies
      5. A Quarreling Pair
      6. Plain Pleasures
      7. Camp Cataract
      8. A Stick of Green Candy
      9. East Side: North Africa
    4. Scenes and Fragments:
      1. Señorita Córdoba
      2. Looking for Lane
      3. Laura and Sally
      4. Going to Massachusetts
      5. The Children’s Party
      6. Andrew
      7. Emmy Moore’s Journal
      8. Friday
      9. “Curls and a Quiet Country Face”
      10. Lila and Frank
      11. The Iron Table
      12. At the Jumping Bean
    5. Letters


    6. Jane Bowles: Collected Writings (Library of America, 2016)



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    Paul Bowles in Tangier

    Paul Frederic Bowles
    (1910-1991)


      Paul Bowles: The Sheltering Sky, Let It Come Down, The Spider's House (Library of America, 2002)


      Novels:

    1. The Sheltering Sky (1949)
      • The Sheltering Sky. 1949. Penguin 2947. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
    2. Let It Come Down (1952)
      • Let It Come Down. 1952. Introduction by the Author. 1980. Afterword by Barnaby Rogerson. Penguin Modern Classics. London: Penguin, 2009.
    3. The Spider's House (1955)
      • The Spider's House. 1955. Preface by the Author. 1982. Introduction by Francine Prose. Penguin Modern Classics. London: Penguin, 2009.
    4. Up Above the World (1966)
      • Up Above the World. 1966. An Abacus Book. London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1991.
    5. The Sheltering Sky, Let It Come Down, The Spider's House. Ed. Daniel Halpern, ed. Library of America (2002)

      6. Stories:

      1. The Scorpion (December 1945) [CS] [LoA]
      2. The Echo (September 1946) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
      3. By the Water (October 1946) [CS] [LoA]
      4. A Distant Episode (Jan-Feb 1947) [CS] [LoA]
      5. Under the Sky (June 1947) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
      6. Call at Corazón (October 1947) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
      7. You Are Not I (January 1948) [CS] [LoA]
      8. At Paso Rojo (September 1948) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
      9. Pastor Dowe at Tacaté (February 1949) [CS] [LoA]
      10. The Delicate Prey (Summer 1949) [CS] [LoA]
      11. Pages from Cold Point (Autumn 1949) [CS] [LoA]
      12. Doña Faustina (1950) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
      13. The Circular Valley (1950) [CS] [LoA]
      14. The Fourth Day Out from Santa Cruz (1950) [CS] [LoA]
      15. A Thousand Days for Mokhtar (1950) [CS] [LoA]
      16. Tea on the Mountain (1950) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
      17. How Many Midnights (April 1950) [CS] [LoA]
      18. Señor Ong and Señor Ha (July 1950) [CS] [LoA]
      19. A Gift for Kinza [aka The Successor] (March 1951) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
      20. If I Should Open My Mouth (April 1954) [CS] [LoA]
      21. The Hours After Noon (1956) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
      22. The Frozen Fields (July 1957) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
      23. Tapiama (May 1958) [CS] [LoA]
      24. Sylvie Ann, The Boogie Man (1958) [CC]
      25. He of the Assembly (1960) [CS] [LoA]
      26. Merkala Beach [aka The Story of Lahcen and Idir] (October 1960) [CS] [LoA]
      27. A Friend of the World (March 1961) [CS] [LoA]
      28. The Hyena (Winter 1962) [CS] [LoA]
      29. The Wind at Beni Midar (1962) [CS] [LoA]
      30. The Garden (Autumn/Winter 1964) [CS] [LoA]
      31. The Time of Friendship (1967) [CS] [LoA]
      32. Afternoon with Antaeus (Summer 1970) [CS] [LoA]
      33. Mejdoub (Spring/Summer 1974) [CS] [LoA]
      34. The Fqih (Fall 1974) [CS] [LoA]
      35. The Waters of Izli (1975) [CS] [LoA]
      36. Things Gone and Things Still Here (January 1976) [CS] [LoA]
      37. Istikhara, Anaya, Medagan and the Medaganat (Spring/Summer 1976) [CS] [LoA]
      38. Allal (January 1977) [CS] [LoA]
      39. Reminders of Bouselham (June 1977) [CS] [LoA]
      40. You Have Left Your Lotus Pods on the Bus (1977) [CS] [LoA]
      41. The Eye (Fall 1978) [LoA]
      42. Here to Learn (Summer 1979) [LoA]
      43. Midnight Mass (Winter 1979) [LoA]
      44. The Dismissal (Spring 1980) [LoA]
      45. Madame and Ahmed (Summer 1980) [LoA]
      46. Kitty (Summer 1980) [LoA]
      47. Bouayad and the Money (July 1980) [LoA]
      48. The Husband (Winter 1980) [LoA]
      49. At the Krungthep Plaza (Winter 1980-81) [LoA]
      50. In the Red Room (1981) [LoA]
      51. The Little House (Spring 1981) [LoA]
      52. Rumor and a Ladder (Spring 1981) [LoA]
      53. Monologue, Tangier 1975 (Spring 1981) [CC] [LoA]
      54. Monologue, Massachusetts 1932 (Autumn 1983) [CC] [LoA]
      55. The Empty Amulet (1985) [LoA]
      56. Hugh Harper (Spring 1985) [CC]
      57. Julian Vreden (Fall 1985)
      58. An Inopportune Visit (1986) [CC]
      59. Unwelcome Words (January–February 1987) [LoA]
      60. In Absentia (Spring 1987) [CC] [LoA]
      61. Monologue, New York 1965 (1988) [CC] [LoA]
      62. Dinner at Sir Nigel's (1988) [CC]
      63. Too Far from Home (1991) [LoA]

      Story collections:

    6. A Little Stone (1950)
    7. The Delicate Prey and Other Stories (1950)
    8. The Hours After Noon (1959)
    9. A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard (1962)
    10. The Time of Friendship (1967)
    11. Pages from Cold Point and Other Stories (1968)
    12. Three Tales (1975)
    13. Things Gone and Things Still Here (1977)
    14. Collected Stories, 1939–1976 (1979) [CS]
      • Collected Stories 1939-1976. Introduction by Gore Vidal. 1979. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1990.
    15. In the Red Room (1981)
    16. Midnight Mass (1981)
    17. Points in Time (1982)
    18. Unwelcome Words: Seven Stories (1988)
    19. A Distant Episode: Selected Stories (1988)
    20. Call at Corazon (1988) [CC]
      • Call at Corazón and Other Stories. An Abacus Book. London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1989.
    21. A Thousand Days for Mokhtar (1989)
    22. Too Far From Home (1991)
    23. [with Vittorio Santoro] Time of Friendship (1995)
    24. The Stories of Paul Bowles (2001)
    25. Collected Stories and Later Writings. Ed. Daniel Halpern, ed. Library of America (2002) [LoA]

      26. Travel:

    26. [with Peter W. Haeberlin] Yallah (1957)
    27. Their Heads are Green and Their Hands Are Blue (1963)
    28. 17, Quai Voltaire: Paris, 1931-1932 (1993)
      • Included in: Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993. Ed. Mark Ellingham. Ecco. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.
    29. [with Simon Bischoff] How Could I Send a Picture into the Desert? (1994)
    30. Travels: Collected Writings, 1950–1993. Ed. Mark Ellingham (2010)
      • Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993. Chronology by Daniel Halpern. 2002. Ed. Mark Ellingham. Introduction by Paul Theroux. Ecco. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.

      31. Autobiography:

    31. Without Stopping (1972)
    32. Two Years Beside The Strait (1990)
    33. Days: Tangier Journal (1991)

      34. Plays:

    34. The Garden (1967)

      35. Poetry:

    35. Two Poems (1933)
    36. Scenes (1968)
    37. The Thicket of Spring (1972)
    38. Next to Nothing: Collected Poems, 1926–1977 (1981)
    39. No Eye Looked Out from Any Crevice (1997)

      40. Collections:

    40. Paul Bowles: Selected Songs. Ed. Peter Garland (1984)
    41. Too Far from Home. Ed. Daniel Halpern (1993)
    42. Paul Bowles: Music. Ed. Claudia Swan (1995)
    43. The Paul Bowles Reader (2000)

      44. Letters:

    44. In Touch – The Letters of Paul Bowles. Ed. Jeffrey Miller (1993)
      • In Touch: The Letters of Paul Bowles. Ed. Jeffrey Miller. 1993. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.
    45. Dear Paul - Dear Ned: The Correspondence of Paul Bowles and Ned Rorem (1997)

      46. Translations:

    46. Jean-Paul Sartre: No Exit (1946)
    47. Roger Frison-Roche: The Lost Trail of the Sahara (1952)
    48. Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi [Larbi Layachi]: A Life Full Of Holes (1964)
    49. Mohammed Mrabet: Love with a Few Hairs (1967)
    50. Mohammed Mrabet: The Lemon (1969)
    51. Mohammed Mrabet: M'Hashish (1969)
    52. Mohamed Choukri: For Bread Alone (1973)
    53. Mohamed Choukri: Jean Genet in Tangier (1973)
    54. Mohammed Mrabet: The Boy Who Set the Fire (1974)
    55. Mohammed Mrabet: Hadidan Aharam (1975)
    56. Isabelle Eberhardt: The Oblivion Seekers (1975)
    57. Mohammed Mrabet: Look & Move On (1976)
    58. Mohammed Mrabet: Harmless Poisons, Blameless Sins (1976)
    59. Mohammed Mrabet: The Big Mirror (1977)
    60. Mohamed Choukri: Tennessee Williams in Tangier (1979)
    61. "Five Eyes" by Abdeslam Boulaich, "Sheheriar and Sheherazade" by Mohamed Choukri, "The Half Brothers" by Larbi Layachi, "The Lute" by Mohammed Mrabet, and "The Night Before Thinking" by Ahmed Yacoubi (1979)
    62. Mohammed Mrabet: The Beach Café & The Voice (1980)
    63. Rodrigo Rey Rosa: The Path Doubles Back (1982)
    64. Mohammed Mrabet: The Chest (1983)
    65. Pociao: Allal (1983)
    66. Rodrigo Rey Rosa: The River Bed (1984)
    67. She Woke Me Up So I Killed Her: 16 authors' short stories from various languages (1985)
    68. Mohammed Mrabet: Marriage With Papers (1986)
    69. Translations from the Moghrebi: by various authors (1986)
    70. Rodrigo Rey Rosa: The Beggar's Knife (1988)
    71. Rodrigo Rey Rosa: Dust on Her Tongue (1989)
    72. Mohammed Mrabet: The Storyteller and the Fisherman [CD] (1990)
    73. Rodrigo Rey Rosa: The Pelcari Project (1991)
    74. Jellel Gasteli: Tanger: Vues Choisies (1991)
    75. Chocolate Creams and Dollars: by various authors (1992)
    76. Mohammed Mrabet: Collected Stories (2004)


    Paul Bowles: Collected Stories & Later Writings (Library of America, 2002)



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Tuesday

Acquisitions (107): Damon Runyon


Jimmy Breslin: Damon Runyon: A Life (1991)

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Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017)

Jimmy Breslin: Damon Runyon: A Life (1991)
[Habitat ReStore North Shore, Wairau Park - 8/4/24]:

Jimmy Breslin. Damon Runyon: A Life. 1991. A Laurel Trade Paperback. New York: Dell Publishing, 1992.

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Damon Runyon: Runyon on Broadway: A Runyon Omnibus (1950)


Runyon on Broadway


I remember buying a very battered old copy of the book above, Runyon on Broadway, at a school library sale when I was still in my teens. I made various attempts to read it, and must have worked my way through Don Iddon's introduction plenty of times. Somehow I always bogged down when I got to the stories, though.


Damon Runyon: Guys and Dolls (1931)


My father had an old paperback copy of Guys and Dolls, the book that started the whole Runyon phenomenon. I didn't read that, either.

What was my surprise, then, when I picked up the book the other day and found it not only easy to read but also extremely entertaining! After fifty-odd years of staring out at me reproachfully from the shelves, the value of of this volume I shelled out a few cents for has been vindicated at last ...


Damon Runyon: From First to Last (1931)


Being an incorrigible completist, I'd picked up a copy of the second Runyon omnibus, Runyon from First to Last, at some point along the way. That, too, is now coming into its own.

So who is this Damon Runyon, and what exactly is his claim to fame? It all rests on three fairly simple innovations, really:
  1. Telling his stories entirely in the present tense, with no shifts into past, past continuous, past historic, or any of the other problematic areas of English grammar.
  2. Giving his characters simple, easy-to-remember sobriquets such as "Harry the Horse" or "Madame la Gyp", while keeping his central narrator-persona completely anonymous.
  3. Applying the tried-and-true O. Henry formula - the surprise last line capping each carefully crafted narrative - to the distinctly unappetising world of the murderous hoodlums and petty grifters who (allegedly) infested New York during the Prohibition era.
Much debate has gone on over whether these really are innovations. It's been claimed that De Quincey employed present tense for narrative effect long before Runyon. It's difficult, however, to see many other obvious resemblances between the two writers - apart from a morbid preoccupation with the gorier details of violent crime, that is. But then the same could be said of most detective novelists.

The use of the name-epithet, too, can be traced back to Homeric epic ("swift-footed Achilles", "fair-cheeked Briseis", "Hector tamer of horses"), but the blind bard seems too distant in both time and gravitas to pose any serious threat to Runyon's originality there.

As a hugely successful and widely syndicated newspaper reporter, Runyon certainly knew what he was talking about when it came to raceside and ringside scams. His deeper knowledge of gangsters may be questioned, but then the sentimental nature of many of his stories doesn't really accord very well with the realities of the world of Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, either.

It's certainly a fantasy world his stories take place in: a setting every bit as unbelievable as the Drones Club or Blandings Castle of P. G. Wodehouse. As with Wodehouse, though - a writer to whom he bears a distinct resemblance both in creative ingenuity and narrative skill - it's a fantasy world we want to believe in.


Jimmy Breslin: Essential Writings (Library of America, 2024)


What, then, of Jimmy Breslin? If it weren't for the recent publication of the library of America anthology pictured above, I'm afraid I might never have heard of him. And yet he seems to have been, in his day, one of the most celebrated (or notorious) newspaper columnists and media personalities in the United States.

I picked up his biography of Runyon for fifty cents in a throwout bin, so it seems that both of them have been similarly devalued by the march of time. It's certainly rather an odd book. He seems more interested in outdoing Runyon as a storyteller than chronicling his life and times.

The result is definitely very readable - if a trifle mannered at times. I don't know how reliable a source it is for matters of detail, but I certainly felt that I had a far better grasp of the realities of American life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries after reading it.

For the rest, all I can really advise is that you give Runyon a try. Runyon on Broadway has most of his really good stories in it (Runyon First to Last is more of a grab-bag): any one of the many selections listed below will give you the flavour of his writing, though.

It's probably an acquired taste, but - once you've acquired it - more than somewhat satisfying.


Joseph L. Mankiewicz, dir.: Guys and Dolls (1955)



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Damon Runyon

Alfred Damon Runyan
['Damon Runyon']
(1880-1946)

Books I own are marked in bold:
    Stories:

  1. Guys and Dolls (1931)
  2. Blue Plate Special (1934)
  3. Money From Home (1935)
  4. More Than Somewhat (1937)
      Introduction by E.C. Bentley
    1. Breach of Promise
    2. Romance in the Roaring Forties
    3. Dream Street Rose
    4. The Old Doll's House
    5. Blood Pressure
    6. The Bloodhounds of Broadway
    7. Tobias the Terrible
    8. The Snatching of Bookie Bob
    9. The Lily of St. Pierre
    10. Hold 'em, Yale
    11. Earthquake
    12. 'Gentlemen, the King!'
    13. A Nice Price
    14. Broadway Financier
    15. The Brain Goes Home
    • Included in: Runyon on Broadway. 1937, 1938, 1938 & 1950. London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1957.
  5. Furthermore (1938)
      introduction by E.C. Bentley
    1. Madame La Gimp
    2. Dancing Dan's Christmas
    3. Sense of Humour
    4. Lillian
    5. Little Miss Marker
    6. Pick the Winner
    7. Undertaker Song
    8. Butch Minds the Baby
    9. The Hottest Guy in the World
    10. The Lemon Drop Kid
    11. What, No Butler?
    12. The Three Wise Guys
    13. A Very Honourable Guy
    14. Princess O'Hara
    15. Social Error
    • Included in: Runyon on Broadway. 1937, 1938, 1938 & 1950. London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1957.
  6. Take It Easy (1938)
    1. Tight Shoes
    2. Lonely Heart
    3. The Brakeman's Daughter
    4. Cemetery Bait
    5. It Comes Up Mud
    6. The Big Umbrella
    7. For a Pal
    8. Big Shoulders
    9. That Ever-Loving Wife of Hymie's
    10. Neat Strip
    11. Bred for Battle
    12. Too Much Pep
    13. Baseball Hattie
    14. Situation Wanted
    15. A Piece of Pie
    16. A Job for the Macarone
    17. All Horse Players Die Broke
    • Included in: Runyon on Broadway. 1937, 1938, 1938 & 1950. Introduction by E. C. Bentley. Memoir by Don Iddon. London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1957.
  7. My Wife Ethel (1939)
    • Included in: "The Turps". London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1951.
  8. My Old Man (1939)
  9. The Best of Runyon (1940)
  10. Damon Runyon Favorites (1942)
  11. Runyon à la Carte (1944)
    • Included in: Runyon from First to Last: A Second Runyon Omnibus 1947, 1948 & 1950. London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1954.
  12. The Damon Runyon Omnibus (1944)
  13. In Our Town (1946)
    1. Our Old Man [aka On Good Turns]
    2. Samuel Graze
    3. Pete Hankins
    4. Jeremiah Zore
    5. Mrs. Judson
    6. The Happiness Joneses
    7. Mrs. McGregor
    8. Doc Brackett
    9. Officer Lipscomber
    10. Marigold and Maidie So
    11. Sterling Curlew
    12. Doc Mindler
    13. Mrs. Pilplay
    14. Sheriff Harding
    15. Boswell Van Dusen
    16. Dr. Davenport
    17. Mrs. Bogane
    18. Sam Crable
    19. Ancil Toombs
    20. Amy Vederman
    21. Peter Chowles
    22. Judge Juggins
    23. Banker Beaverbrook
    24. Judge Joes
    25. Angel Kake
    26. Bet Ragle
    27. Hank Smith
  14. The Three Wise Guys and Other Stories (1946)
  15. Damon Runyon Favorites (1946)
  16. Trials and Other Tribulations (1947)
  17. Runyon First and Last (1949)
    • Included in: Runyon from First to Last: A Second Runyon Omnibus 1947, 1948 & 1950. London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1954.
  18. Runyon on Broadway (1950)
    • Runyon on Broadway: Omnibus Volume Containing All the Stories from More Than Somewhat; Furthermore; Take It Easy. With a Memoir by Don Iddon. 1937, 1938, 1938 & 1950. London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1957.
  19. More Guys and Dolls (1950)
    1. Maybe a Queen
    2. Leopard's Spots
    3. Joe Terrace
  20. The Turps (1951)
    • "The Turps". Drawings by Josef and Lieutenant-Colonel Frank Wilson. London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1951.
  21. Runyon from First to Last (1954)
      The First Stories:
    1. The Defence of Strikerville
    2. Fat Fallon
    3. Two Men Named Collins
    4. As Between Friends
    5. The Informal Execution of Soupbone Pew
    6. My Father
      7. Stories à la Carte:
    7. Money from Home
    8. A Story Goes With It
    9. Broadway Complex
    10. So You Won't Talk!
    11. Dark Dolores
    12. Delegates at Large
    13. A Light in France
    14. Old Em's Kentucky Home
    15. Johnny One-Eye
    16. Broadway Incident
    17. The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown
    18. The Melancholy Dane
    19. Barbecue
    20. Little Pinks
    21. Palm Beach Santa Claus
    22. Cleo
    23. The Lacework Kid
      24. The Last Stories:
    24. Blonde Mink
    25. Big Boy Blues
      26. Written in Sickness:
    26. Why Me?
    27. The Doctor Knows Best
    28. No Life
    29. Good Night
    30. Bed-Warmers
    31. Sweet Dreams
    32. Passing the Word Along
    33. Death Pays a Social Call
    • Runyon from First to Last: A Second Runyon Omnibus: Containing All the Stories Written by Damon Runyon and Not Included in “Runyon on Broadway.” 1947, 1948 & 1950. London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1954.
  22. A Treasury of Damon Runyon (1958)
  23. The Bloodhounds of Broadway and Other Stories (1985)
  24. Romance in the Roaring Forties and other Stories (1986)
  25. On Broadway (1990)
  26. Guys, Dolls, and Curveballs: Damon Runyon on Baseball. Ed. Jim Reisler (2005)
  27. Guys and Dolls and Other Writings. Introduction by Pete Hamill (2008)

    28. Uncollected stories:

  28. The Art of High Grading. Illustrated Sunday Magazine (January 2, 1910)
  29. The Sucker. San Francisco Examiner (July 10, 1910)
  30. Burge McCall. Collier's (July 11, 1936)
  31. Lou Louder. Collier's (August 8, 1936)
  32. Nothing Happens in Brooklyn. Collier's (April 30, 1938)

    33. Collected columns:

  33. Short Takes (1946)

    34. Poetry:

  34. The Tents of Trouble (1911)
  35. Rhymes of the Firing Line (1912)
  36. Poems for Men (1947)
    • Poems for Men. 1947. Permabooks Edition. New York: Duell, Sloane & Pearce, Inc., Inc., 1951.

    37. Plays:

  37. [with Howard Lindsay] A Slight Case of Murder (1940)

    38. Biography:

  38. [with W. Kiernan] Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker (1942)

    39. Secondary:

  39. Breslin, Jimmy. Damon Runyon: A Life. 1991. A Laurel Trade Paperback. New York: Dell Publishing, 1992.


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