Allen Kopp – Page 48 – Literary Fictions

Crimson Peak ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Crimson Peak ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

Crimson Peak is the kind of new movie we don’t see very often, a costume drama set in a long-ago time (early 1900s), when the automobile was a novelty and a lot of the streets weren’t paved yet, at least in America. It’s a combination gothic love story, Victorian ghost story and horror fantasy, with touches of Henry James, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Bronte thrown in.

Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) lives with her well-to-do father, Carter Cushing, in a beautiful house in Buffalo, New York. When she is ten years old, the ghost of her mother appears to her (a black, horrible, decaying ghost) to give her a warning about “crimson peak.” She doesn’t know what it means but she knows it has some meaning that will be revealed to her at a later time. Fourteen years later she is an aspiring novelist who has the usual problems that novice writers have—she’s not writing about what she knows or feels and she can’t get a publisher interested in her work. She has an old friend named Alan McMichael who is an ophthalmologist. While Alan is romantically interested in Edith, she doesn’t seem to reciprocate his feelings. Then along comes a handsome aristocrat from England. He’s a baronet and his name is Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston). He’s in America with his forbidding sister, Lady Lucille Sharpe (Jessica Chastain), trying to get funding for a machine he has invented that extracts clay from the earth that is used in brick-making.

Edith’s father doesn’t like Sir Thomas Sharpe and, not only does he turn him down for funding for his machine, he has him investigated when it becomes apparent that Sir Thomas and Edith are becoming romantically involved. The investigation turns up some dirt on Sir Thomas and his sister, but it’s no less than Edith’s father suspected. He gives the Sharpes a sizeable check to leave America and go back to England, thereby breaking Edith’s heart and insulting her writing in the bargain.

Soon Edith’s father is brutally and mysteriously murdered, leaving Edith the recipient of all his money. Just when we thought Sir Thomas had gone back to England with his sister, he turns up again. With Edith’s father out of the way, he is free to marry Edith and take her to his family home, a decaying gothic mansion that sits on top of a clay mine in an extremely isolated region in England. The place is in such disrepair, we learn, because the once-wealthy Sharpe family is now poor. Edith’s money is going to come in very handy here.

Edith is visited by another hideous ghost in the Sharpe mansion, delivering yet another warning. (It turns out to be the ghost of Sir Thomas and Lucille’s mother, whom Lucille murdered). In a series of startling and distasteful revelations, Edith discovers that she is just one in a succession of “heiresses” who have fallen prey to the Sharpes. She also discovers that Lucille, who has always been too eager to have her drink a cup of tea, has been poisoning her. That’s why she hasn’t been feeling very well lately. Soon, however, her admirer from America, Dr. Alan McMichael, shows up unexpectedly. Will he be able to rescue Edith, or will he also fall prey to the Sharpes’ machinations?

Crimson Peak has a throwback-to-an-earlier-time feel to it, so, for that reason, a lot of people probably aren’t going to like it. If you are one of those who can suspend disbelief and put away your skepticism for a couple of hours, you might enjoy it. Besides ghosts, there are some fabulous sets and period costumes, and who can do evil better than Jessica Chastain? If you don’t want to kill her when her back is turned, well, you’re just not a very feeling person.

October 27, 2015October 27, 2015 by allen0997

The Dunwich Horror ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Dunwich Horror ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) and Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) are often mentioned in the same sentence. Poe belonged to the nineteenth century and Lovecraft to the twentieth, and while their writing styles are dissimilar and reflect the times in which they lived, the two writers share certain similarities. Lovecraft was an avowed fan, if not an imitator, of Poe. They were both New Englanders and trod upon some of the same ground, principally in Providence, Rhode Island. They both wrote about the dark world that most of us never see. Poe wrote about murder, death, sadness and alienation and Lovecraft wrote about unseen terrors and monsters from another realm. They were neither very successful in their own lives but both are more famous long after they lived than they might have ever imagined being when they were alive.

The Dunwich Horror is one of Lovecraft’s most famous stories. It’s either a very long short story or a very short novel, so let’s say for the sake of argument that it’s a “novella” or a “novelette.” It’s set in the Miskatonic Valley in Massachusetts in a remote village known as Dunwich in the early twentieth century. Dunwich is old and seedy and is not a pleasant place to visit. Something odd is going on in Dunwich that people can’t explain. The Whateley family is strange, even by Dunwich standards. Old man Whateley is a wizard of some kind. When his weird albino daughter gives birth to a “child,” Wilbur Whateley, speculation is rife as to who the father is.

Wilbur Whateley is hideously ugly. Before he is one year old, he walks and speaks. When he is three years old, he seems as old as twelve and he grows a beard. Long before he is old enough to be of adult height, he is seven-and-a-half and then eight feet tall. More odd than his appearance, though, is his behavior. He can barely speak English but deals in ancient forbidden texts. Strange noises come from underneath the ground at the Whateley home and whippoorwills, ordinarily a serene and peaceful bird, trill violently all night long, as though trying to convey a warning.

As the story progresses, we learn that Wilbur Whateley is not human but is only in human form (he’s not fooling anybody). He is one of an alien race of “elder beings from another dimension” that wants to kill all human, animal and plant life on the earth and then “strip the earth and drag it away from the solar system and cosmos of matter into some other plane or phase of entity from which it had once fallen, vigintillions of eons ago.”

Wilbur is killed by a guard dog, however, when he breaks into a library late at night to gain access to one of the “forbidden books” that contains ancient spells he needs. After that, three “experts,” one of them a professor from the university, travel to Dunwich to confront the evil that threatens the world.

The Dunwich Horror was first published in Weird Tales magazine in 1929. It is classic American science fiction, by a master of the genre. It has some wordy descriptions, typical of Lovecraft, and some mildly annoying conversations in the mountain dialect, but they’re not that hard to get through. All in all, an interesting reading experience. I haven’t seen the movie version that came out in 1970, but from the description I read of it, it seems to bear little resemblance to the original story. They’ve concocted a “love interest” for Wilbur Whateley (in the person of Sandra Dee) that doesn’t seem to fit at all. So much for movie versions of books.

October 17, 2015October 18, 2015 by allen0997

Everest ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Everest ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

Why do ordinary people risk death and injury, spend lots of money and tolerate untold pain and discomfort for months at a time in some of the harshest weather conditions on earth to climb Mount Everest, the highest mountain peak on earth? Have they been deprived of something in life, or they just looking to fill some inexplicable empty spot? Whatever the reasons, there are plenty of people who try it and fail. Failure means never making it to the summit or never making it back home alive.

Everest chronicles one such expedition in 1996 to the top of Mount Everest by a group of people who might be our next-door neighbors. There’s the Texan (Josh Brolin) who has a “dark cloud of depression following him around all the time”…except for the time that he’s on a mountain. There’s the New Zealander (Jason Clarke) with the pregnant wife (Keira Knightley) back home; he’s the leader of the expedition and it’s up to him to watch out for the others. There’s the 47-year-old Japanese woman who has been to six of the seven highest peaks on earth; Everest will be her seventh. There’s the divorced loser (John Hawkes) who delivers the mail and is out for the thrill of a lifetime. There’s the nouveau hippy (Jake Guyllenhaal) badly in need of a shave and a haircut who seems to serve no purpose other than to be annoying. Back at the base camp is the “surrogate mother” (Emily Watson) who tries to help the climbers through radio transmissions and who suffers vicariously with them. We know at the outset that some of them will make it and some of them won’t. If all of them had made it back alive, there wouldn’t be a movie being made about them almost twenty years later.

For movie fans there are lots of familiar faces in Everest, but the characters don’t matter. The people are ciphers. It’s like filling the SS Poseidon with the likes of Shelley Winters, Gene Hackman, Roddy McDowell, Stella Stevens, Carol Lynley, Red Buttons and Ernest Borgnine and then turning the ship over in a storm. We know some of the characters will make it and some will not. Figuring out who will and who won’t make it might help you to pass the time during all the dialogue that, no matter how inane it is, you can’t understand it anyway.

Everest is a predictable action-adventure movie with some beautiful scenery and a spectacular storm (I like storms). It’s another one of those man-versus-nature stories where nature wins. No matter how much star power they put on the screen with no matter how many Oscar nominations, the real star is the mountain. Nature wins. Man loses. Now, if the mountain had been Godzilla or an alien from outer space, man would most certainly have come out on top.

October 1, 2015October 4, 2015 by allen0997

Poe-Land ~ A Capsule Book Review

Poe-Land ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

The overarching themes of Edgar Allan Poe’s life is that his all-too-brief span on this earth was tragic and unhappy and his towering literary genius went mostly unrecognized until after his death. His parents were itinerant actors. He was born in Boston on January 19, 1809, because that’s where his parents happened to be working at the time. His father abandoned the family when Edgar was small and his mother died of consumption at the age of twenty-four. Edgar, his brother and his sister were then placed in separate foster homes. Edgar ended up in the home of one John Allan and his wife Frances of Richmond, Virginia. John Allan had inherited wealth but was parsimonious with his young foster son, whom he never bothered to adopt legally. Edgar and John Allan most likely would have killed each other gladly if they could have managed it without being detected.

Edgar Allan Poe seemed destined from the beginning to never find his place in life. He was, to put it mildly, not like anybody else. At a time when most people must have stayed in one place all their lives out of necessity, Edgar moved around a lot. He spent a few years of his childhood in England with his foster family, which probably accounts for the European “feel” of some of his writing. As a young man, he attended college at the University of Virginia in Richmond, but John Allan wouldn’t give him enough money to live decently, so he ran up gambling debts, further infuriating Mr. Allan. He tried the army and did better than one might have expected, but when he ended up at West Point Military Academy after his military stint, he lasted only a few months before being expelled.

So, Edgar was a talented misfit. He made a little money from his published stories and poems but never enough. He moved around from place to place, never gaining wide acceptance in the literary world, although there were a few who recognized his uniqueness. (The most fame he would ever achieve during his own lifetime was with his poem The Raven, which is, arguably the most famous poem in American literature.) He had several ill-fated romances with different women, but they didn’t really work out either the way he had hoped. At the age of twenty-seven, he married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, and lived with her and her mother (or they lived with him) until Virginia herself died of consumption at the age of twenty-four, exactly as Poe’s mother had. Are we able to see now the pattern of his life?

Poe-Land by J. W. Ocker is an exploration of Poe’s life (a sort of travelogue/biography) through all the places he lived or at least spent some time. Besides Boston, these places include Providence, Rhode Island; the Bronx and Manhattan in New York; Great Britain; Baltimore; Richmond, Virginia; Philadelphia; Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island in South Carolina; Fort Independence in Massachusetts and Fort Monroe in Virginia. One of the ironies of Poe is that, however he might have been dismissed during his own life as a no-talent crackpot, almost any place he ever lived or even spent some time is today almost a sacred site or a tourist attraction. Anything Poe ever touched or anybody he ever knew is today of interest because of his association. The New England states abound with Poe sites or museums, including places he lived or worked and places that he somehow signified with his presence, no matter how briefly. Poe fans are legion all over the world, some of them to the point of obsession. Of course, one of the things that makes him so interesting is his death in Baltimore at the too-young age of forty, on October 7, 1849, of unknown or mysterious causes. He was found, apparently desperately ill, and admitted to a Baltimore hospital, where he died in a delirious state after several days. His attending physician became a sort of celebrity but never seemed to be able to cast any light on the cause of Poe’s death, changing his story as it seemed to fit the circumstances.

One of the many interesting details I learned about the life and death of Edgar Allan Poe from reading Poe-Land is that, when he died, he was placed in an undistinguished grave toward the back of Westminster Cemetery in Baltimore. Within twenty-five years of his death, his literary stature had grown to the point where people began to realize that his grave wasn’t as good as it should be, so his body was exhumed and he was moved to a more prominent place in the cemetery with a much more showy headstone, which still stands today. After twenty-five years in a wooden box in the Maryland earth, there wasn’t much left of dear old Edgar except for bones, hair and clothing. Chunks of his decayed original coffin became coveted collectors’ items and are on display in Poe museums today.

The story of Poe’s life is enough to make you wish in an afterlife so that he might know what became of his literary “legacy” after he died. Today he is probably the most famous of American writers and is almost universally recognized and loved throughout the world. Not only did he practically invent a new literary genre, that of the detective story, but he found a new way of writing poetry, quite unlike anything that had ever been done before. All we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

September 29, 2015September 30, 2015 by allen0997

Black Mass ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Black Mass ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

For decades James “Whitey” Bulger was an organized crime boss in Boston, head of the Boston Irish mob known as the Winter Hill Gang. He demanded absolute loyalty from his associates and, if he didn’t get it, he was prepared to kill without compunction. In the 1970s he made a deal with shady FBI agent John Connolly to become an informer with the purpose of bringing down a rival mob run by Italians. He hated informers, he said, but he became one to do to his rivals what they deserved. If you rat on somebody who deserves it (so his reasoning went), it isn’t so bad.

In Black Mass Johnny Depp plays Whitey Bulger with receding hairline and crazed, blue-eyed intensity. (How do they get his eyes to look that way? At times he looks like an evil doll.) And, as psychotic as he is, he has his sweet side. He has a young son whom he loves, he allows his elderly mother to cheat him at gin rummy and he’s kind to the old ladies in the neighborhood. For those who knew him, though (even for their whole lives), he was to be feared. You never knew what he was thinking or what he might do. He was inclined never to forget even the smallest slight or insult.

Joel Edgerton, who last year played Pharaoh Ramses II in Exodus: Gods and Kings (with plenty of eye makeup), looks bloated as FBI guy John Connolly. (At times his Boston accent seems over the top.) Of course, associating himself with Whitey Bulger isn’t a good career move for him. While he is ostensibly on the side of “good,” things don’t work out well for him.

There’s a great cast of supporting players in Black Mass, including Rory Cochrane (who conveys a lot of feeling without words) as Steve Flemmi and Jesse Plemons as dough-faced Kevin Weeks (not very bright but a game player). Benedict Cumberbatch, last seen as gay Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, plays Whitey Bulger’s straight-shooting (or is he?) politician brother, Billy Bulger. Juno Temple, always a standout, plays a hooker/drug addict who meets a not-very-pleasant end at the hands of Whitey Bulger, just when she was beginning to think he was on her side.

Adding to the irony of this story is that Whitey Bulger, regardless of the number of souls he dispatched to the next world, still lives in this one. After sixteen years as a fugitive, he was captured in California, living under an assumed name in 2011. He was put on trial and today serves as an inmate in a federal prison in Florida. He is 86 years old.

What makes Black Mass so interesting (if maybe a little reminiscent of other crime movies, including The Departed) is that it’s a true story rather than a fictional one. After a summer of youth-oriented fluff in movie theatres, isn’t it refreshing to see a movie that is actually about something?

September 23, 2015September 24, 2015 by allen0997

The Canterbury Tales ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Canterbury Tales (A Prose Version in Modern English) ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400) lived during the Middle Ages, almost two hundred years before Shakespeare. The English spoken at the time he lived is called Middle English, to distinguish it from Old English and Early Modern English (the language that Shakespeare spoke and wrote in). Chaucer’s most famous work is The Canterbury Tales, a collection of about twenty stories (some in prose but most in verse) with a simple premise: A group of diverse “pilgrims” (a nun, a knight, a miller, a priest, a doctor, a pardoner, a “wife,” etc.) on their way to Canterbury to pay homage to Thomas Becket (who “helped them when they were sick”) tell stories to pass the time and relieve the tedium of the road. Each pilgrim is required to tell a story, whether they want to or not. The stories range from bawdy, low humor to tragedy and give us a picture of what life was like in England at the end of the fourteenth century.

No matter how you’ve been spending your time lately, you probably haven’t been reading The Canterbury Tales in its original Middle English, unless, of course, you’re a graduate student preparing a thesis on the subject. If you’ve ever heard Middle English spoken, it’s beautiful to hear but not that easy to understand for modern speakers of English. A lot of the words are the same and are easily recognizable, but a lot of the words no longer exist in the language. (If you’d like to hear an example of spoken Middle English, here is an easy link to “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” from The Canterbury Tales on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C6rS0aL0DM

Since Middle English is beyond the ken of most people (including me), there’s this “Prose Version in Modern English” by David Wright. A lot of the “feel” of The Canterbury Tales, I’m sure, is lost is this translation (sort of like the “modern American translation” of the King James’ version of the Bible), but if you need to read The Canterbury Tales and you want to be able to understand it, this is the best, most accessible way. Of course, you have to be a dedicated reader if, like me, you’re reading it only for enjoyment and out of curiosity and not because you have to. After all these years since high school English class, I finally know what the Wife of Bath is all about.

September 12, 2015 by allen0997

Your Friend August Wellington

Your Friend August Wellington ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

He selected several pairs of swimsuits from the men’s-small rack and locked himself in the dressing room. After checking the door three times to make sure nobody could get in, he took everything off except his underpants and, standing before the mirror, began trying them on: first a plaid pair that he immediately rejected because they were too skimpy; then a yellow pair with a black stripe up each side and a slit at the thigh that made him look like something he wasn’t; then a black, baggy pair that hung down almost to his knees and made him look like an old man; then a red pair that wasn’t too baggy or too tight. He turned this way and that, looking at himself from every angle. The red pair would do, even though he hated the way he looked with his chest, arms and legs uncovered. No doubt about it, he was meant to be clothed. He wasn’t sure he would ever let anybody see him in the red swimsuit, but buying it was the first step and then he would see. He couldn’t look any worse than a lot of other people.

Of course, he had already turned down the invitation to the pool party, but he still might change his mind. He could see himself calling at the last minute and graciously accepting, after all, the invitation that he had declined. “I thought I was having abdominal surgery that day but it turns out the doctor says I don’t need the operation after all. Hah-hah-hah!”

When he got home, Aunt Vivian was waiting for him in her Cadillac, smoking a cigarette. She saw him in her rearview mirror and jumped out.

“August, where the hell have you been?” She reeked of perfume and her lipstick was smeared down to her chin.

“I had some shopping to do,” he said.

“I was about to call the police.”

“Why?”

“You didn’t answer the door. I thought something terrible must have happened to you.”

“And how many martinis did you have for lunch today?” he asked.

She stood behind him while he fumbled with the key in the lock and when he opened the door she went inside behind him as if the house belonged to her.

“I want you to come and stay at our house until your daddy gets back from his business trip,” she said.

“I’ve already said I’m not going to do that.”

“When you’re in school, it’s different, but now that school is out you don’t have any business staying in this big house all alone.”

“I like being alone.”

“You get lonely.”

“No, I don’t!”

“You daddy had no business going off and leaving you alone. You’re still a child.”

“No, I’m not!”

“I worry about you.”

“No need.”

“So you’re saying you won’t come and stay at my house?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“I could still put you over my knee and whale the living daylights out of you,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m bigger than you are.”

She swiped her fingers on the dining room table to see how much dust had collected there and then she went into the kitchen, opening the refrigerator and all the cabinets and looking inside.

“Are you eating properly?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“I’m afraid you’re just eating pizza and junk food.”

“I don’t even like pizza that much.”

“I could bring you some things.”

“No need.”

“You know how to cook?”

“I have a cookbook,” he said. “I can cook when I need to. Do you want me to show you?”

“You have eggs and milk?”

“I have flour, sugar, coffee and tea. What I don’t have I can go buy.”

“All right. I know you had to grow up fast with your mother dying so young the way she did.”

“Please don’t mention that to me again.”

“I hope Dana gets married again, for his sake and for yours.”

“He said something before he left about getting married soon.”

She nodded her head and smiled. “Oh, well, that’s encouraging! Have you met her?”

“I don’t think he has anybody in mind yet.”

“Is he seeing someone?”

“He was seeing a Mrs. Bone with three daughters but I think that romance fell through. I didn’t like her, so that might have had something to do with it.”

“You met her?”

“He took me out to dinner with them one night.”

“Oh, that’s lovely! Did you have a nice time?”

“No. Father isn’t supposed to eat lobster but he ate it anyway and got sick. While he was in the men’s room vomiting, I had a little tête-à-tête with Mrs. Bone. I think I scared her off.”

“Was that your intention?”

“I just told her the way things are.”

“I’m sure that was very naughty of you!”

A few minutes after Aunt Vivian left, there was a knock at the door. It was his friend from school, Colin Mayhew. He was carrying his gym bag.

“Is the paterfamilias still gone?” Colin asked.

“Who wants to know?” August asked.

“I’d like to stay here tonight if you don’t mind.”

“Why?”

“My parents are fighting again. I had to get away from all the yelling.”

“You can stay only if you promise you aren’t carrying any bugs or communicable diseases.”

“Very funny.”

“You can sleep on the couch or in the guest bedroom. You’re not sleeping with me.”

“Thank goodness! I was afraid that was going to be a condition for letting me stay.”

After they consumed a jar of peanuts and two glasses of wine apiece, the talk turned to the pool party.

“I’ve decided to go after all,” August said. “I bought a red swimsuit this morning.”

“You can’t do that,” Colin said. “You already turned down the invitation.”

“Yes, I can.”

“It would be very rude to show up after you’ve said you’re not coming.”

“Why are you always so concerned about what’s rude and what’s not?”

“I’m just telling you what I think.”

“That’s what’s wrong with the world. Too many people expressing their opinions.”

“Pardon me for living.”

“So you think I should call Beulah Buffington and tell her I’d like to come after all?”

“I know her. She’ll probably take your head off.”

“Let her try.”

“I wouldn’t have the nerve.”

“Are you still going?”

“Of course!” Colin said. “My dad’s letting me take the car.”

“You can come by and pick me up and we’ll go together.”

“I don’t think you should do that.”

“Why not?”

“If you told Beulah you’re not coming, that’s the same as not being invited at all. You don’t want to be a gate crasher, do you?”

“I’ll call her first and arrange it.”

Colin picked up the phone, handed it to August and dialed the number. Beulah answered on the first ring.

“Hello?” August said. “Is that you, Beulah?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“This is August.”

“August who?”

“Wellington.”

“Do I know you?”

“From school?”

“Um, I don’t seem to remember you. Can you describe yourself?”

“Look, Beulah, I know why you’re doing this.”

“Doing what?”

”Pretending not to know me.”

“I’m terribly busy,” she said. “I’m going to have to hang up now.”

“I just wanted to ask you a question.”

“What is it?”

“It’s about your pool party.”

“What about it?”

“I was wondering if it would be all right if I change my mind and accept your invitation after all.”

An icy silence on the other end, after which she said, “I don’t want to be mean, August, but I’m afraid you weren’t on the invitation list.”

“You called me just the other day and invited me.”

“I did? Are you sure it was me?”

“Well, yes. I had no reason to believe it was anybody else.”

“This is very odd,” she said. “I’ve never had anybody call and invite themselves to one of my parties. Are you sure this isn’t a joke?”

“No, it’s not a joke. I just thought…”

“What did you say your name is again?”

“It’s okay, Beulah. Just forget it.”

“Well, I suppose it’ll be all right for you to come since you place yourself in such an awkward position, but I have to warn you. We’ve already invited more people than we can handle and we probably won’t have room for all of them. We’re hoping some of them change their minds and don’t show up after all.”

“No, I wouldn’t dream of…”

“I have to go now,” Beulah said. “It was awfully lovely speaking to you.”

August hung up and shook his head at Colin.

“What did she say?” Colin asked.

“She was very obtuse. She pretended she didn’t know me. She said she never called and invited me to the party.”

“Are you sure it was her?”

“She said I could come anyway but there probably wouldn’t be enough room.”

“That’s terrible.”

“No, it isn’t. I don’t care.”

“You don’t want to go?”

“No.”

“I’ll fill you in on everything that happens,” Colin said.

“Do you mean you’re still going?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I thought you were my friend.”

“I am.”

“We’ve known each other since the beginning of school.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You can still go knowing that I’m not invited?”

“Yes.”

“Loyalty means nothing to you?”

“Look, August, just because you’re a loser doesn’t mean I have to be one, too.”

“So now I’m a loser, am I?”

“I only meant…”

“I don’t care what you meant. I want you to get out of my house.”

“If it means that much to you, I won’t go.”

“No, it’s too late now. I’ve already discovered what a rat you are.”

“Do you want me to talk to Beulah and wangle you an invitation?”

“No! I want you to leave. Right now!”

“I thought it’d be fun to come over here and spend the night with you. I was wrong.”

“Colin, if you don’t get out of my house right now, I’m going to stick a knife all the way through you!”

“Nobody likes you, August, but you’re not able to see it.”

“Do you want me to throw you out?”

“I know your mother killed herself because she was crazy. I think craziness runs in your family.”

August picked up a letter opener and began brandishing it in Colin’s face. “Have you ever seen a person stabbed with one of these things?” he said.

“I hope your father marries a horrible woman!” Colin said. “I hope you end up with a stepmother who makes your life miserable!”

August threw the letter opener, narrowly missing Colin’s head. As he was looking around for something else to throw, Colin grabbed his gym bag and ran for the door. August watched him as he ran across the street and disappeared down the block.

He went upstairs to his room and locked himself in, slowly took off all his clothes and put on the red swimsuit he had bought just that morning. He turned this way and that, looking at himself in the full-length mirror. To himself he looked like a hairless monkey, all joints and angles, his skin as white as paste. He could hear people in his head laughing and making fun of him for trying to get invited to Beulah’s party.

“This will never do,” he said.

He took the scissors and cut the swimsuit into strips, feeling he was relieving himself of a burden. And he left the strips on the floor around his bed to remind himself of just how foolish he had been.

August 29, 2015August 30, 2015 by allen0997

The Confidential Agent ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Confidential Agent ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

The hero/protagonist of Graham Greene’s novel The Confidential Agent is referred to only as “D.” That’s how confidential he is. He’s a middle-aged man (think Charles Boyer), a foreigner, travelling in Britain, and he’s not there to see the sights, either. He is a lecturer in the Romance Languages, a scholar and peace-loving man, but things haven’t been going so well for him. His country is at war, he’s been in prison for two years apparently because he was on the wrong side, and his wife was shot and killed by the enemy. He’s in Britain to negotiate a coal deal with the owner of a huge coal-mining conglomerate, a certain Lord Benditch. His side must have the coal to have a chance of winning the war. If the enemy gets the coal, D.’s side is certain to lose. Well, guess what? There’s another “confidential agent” from the other side, known to us as “L.” who also wants the coal. Will “L.” kill “D.” to keep him from getting the coal, or will “D.” kill “L.” to keep him from getting it? It’s a cat-and-mouse game from the beginning. D. is badly beaten (although it doesn’t seem to stop him) and his papers that establish his identity are stolen, and this is just the beginning of the obstacles that are placed in his way.

We realize early that the business about the war or D.’s side needing the coal doesn’t really matter. We learn nothing of the politics of the war or who is fighting whom. This is only a device to propel the plot. Don’t waste any time or expend any brain power trying to figure out the war.

Of course, there always has to be a “femme fatale” in a story like this. In this case she is the daughter (what a coincidence!) of Lord Benditch, the coal magnate, and her name is Rose Cullen (think Lauren Bacall). She seems to know D. and to know the importance of his mission, but where do her loyalties lay? Is she to be trusted? After a while she claims to be in love with D., in spite of their age difference and also in spite of his not being very lovable. Can D. make a go of it with Rose Cullen or he is only deceiving himself? Will they have a future together after the war business is settled, or is she only sucking up to him, seeking his vulnerable side to knife him in the back? In a story like this, you can never be sure.

We are told that Graham Greene wrote The Confidential Agent in 1939 in a matter of a few short weeks, fueled by Benzedrine (whatever that is), and that he wrote it for money. After it was finished, he was so unhappy with it that he wanted to disavow it and publish it under a pseudonym, but it was published under his own name and it turned out to be well-received by critics and the reading public alike. It’s rather formulaic, a “thriller” (in other words, “light” reading), but it lives up to its subtitle: An Entertainment.

August 23, 2015August 25, 2015 by allen0997

Busy Will You Wait

Busy Will You Wait ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

Dot Crandall kicked off her shoes after one hour behind the desk and put on her fleece-lined mules. “My dogs are barking already,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll make it to the end of the day.”

“You have to make it,” Zora Costello said. “You ain’t got any choice.”

“One day I’m going to show them who’s got a choice and who hasn’t!”

“Maybe you ought to buy a different kind of shoes if they hurt your feet all the time that way.”

“It’s not my shoes. It’s my feet. They’re not normal”

“Nothing else about you is normal, either.”

Before Dot could take exception to Zora’s remark, there was a chirp-chirp sound, meaning the phone was ringing.

“Goodapple and Rood,” Zora said. “I’ll connect you.” Pause. “Busy-will-you-wait?” Click.

“People are calling here all day long with their problems,” Dot said. “It makes me sick.”

“I know, but that’s the world of business.”

“I don’t think I can stand much more of it.”

Chirp…Chirp.

“Goodapple and Rood,” Zora said. “I’ll connect you.” Pause. “Busy-will-you-wait?” Click. “Okay, I didn’t want to talk to you, anyway!”

“Nobody’s waiting?” Dot asked.

“They just hang up.”

“My, but people are impatient today!”

“I’m glad they hang up,” Zora said. “Then I don’t have to deal with them.”

Chirp…Chirp.

“Goodapple and Rood,” Zora said. “I’ll connect you.” Pause. “Busy-will-you-wait?” Click.

“I’ve got a pain in my side,” Dot said.

“Pregnant, I’ll bet.”

Dot’s laugh was a sudden release of air, as from a gas bag. “Now, that would be a miracle!”

“Call that old man of yours and tell him you’re got a little bundle of joy on the way.”

“Not that one! He’s got alcoholics’ disease and, if that isn’t bad enough, his brain has gone soft from watching too much TV. When he’s asleep he dreams he’s watching Bonanza.”

“Well, that’s what happens to old men, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so, but I’m not ready to take care of an old man yet. I’m still young.”

“You’re not as young as you’d like to think you are.”

“You should talk!”

“I know. We’re both old.”

“And still going to work every day. That’s the sad part.”

“How long do we have to go until we can retire?” Zora asked.

“I don’t think that day will ever come,” Dot said. “We’ll both still be here when we’re ninety-five.”

“You’ll be ninety-five before I will!”

“We’ll die chained to these desks and nobody will even notice.”

“We’re already dead and in hell. That’s the only explanation.”

Chirp…Chirp.

“Goodapple and Rood,” Zora said. “I’ll connect you.” Pause. “Busy-will-you-wait?” Click.

“Fix your face, honey! Here comes that cute postman!”

With the precision of an acrobat, he came through the door, deposited the mail on the desk and went out again, all without looking up.

“I wish I could get him to look at me just once,” Dot said.

“Why?”

“I think he’s cute. Don’t you think he’s cute?”

Zora hooted with laughter. “If he looks at you, he would probably only be noticing the resemblance to his great-grandmother.”

“If I was only twenty years younger, I could go for him in a big way.”

“If you were forty years younger, it would still be a stretch.”

“He looks like a boy I was crazy about when I was fifteen. He was a couple years older than me and he wouldn’t give me a tumble.”

“He probably liked other boys.”

“You never forget your first love.”

“Are you sure he was the first?”

“I wonder what his name is.”

“You were in love with him and you didn’t know his name?”

“No! The postman! I wonder what his name is.”

“You could always ask him,” Zora said.

“I’m too shy. I wouldn’t be able to get the words out.”

“Do you want me to ask him for you? It’s probably Nelson or Kenny or something like that. Or maybe Kenny Nelson.”

“I think he looks like a Freddie.”

“Okay, then, we’ll say his name is Freddie.”

“One day when he comes in here,” Dot said, “I’m going to ask him if it’s raining. You know, engage him in conversation.”

“The janitor is more your type.”

“He’s too much like my husband and, anyway, he’s married.”

“Yeah, all the good ones are taken.”

Chirp…Chirp.

“Goodapple and Rood,” Zora said. “I’ll connect you.” Pause. “Busy-will-you-wait?” Click.

“They hung up?”

“I think it was Freddie the postman calling to see if you would answer. It sounded like his breathing.”

“If he calls again, tell him I’m waiting for him to make the first move.”

“Tell him yourself! He’s your love interest.”

“The pain in my side is getting worse,” Dot said. “Now I’ve got the same kind of pain in my head. I think I’ll go home sick for the rest of the day.”

“And leave me here to cope all by myself? I don’t think so!”

Chirp…Chirp.

“Goodapple and Rood,” Zora said. “I’ll connect you.” Pause. “Busy-will-you-wait?” Click.

“Hung up again?”

“Yeah.”

“I think you’re pushing the wrong button, honey. When you try to put them on hold, you’re disconnecting them.”

“Which button am I supposed to push?”

“This one.”

“I’ve been pushing that one.”

“That’s why they all seem to hang up. You’re cutting them off.”

“Well, isn’t that funny? Hah-hah-hah! The joke’s on me! Hah-hah-hah!”

“You’d better not let Mr. Goodapple know you’ve been hanging up on his clients. He wouldn’t like it.”

“You know what Mr. Goodapple can do! I’ll just say there’s something wrong with the phone.”

“The problem isn’t with the phone but with the person using the phone.”

“Yeah, who cares? I’m hungry.”

“Me too. I didn’t eat any breakfast this morning.”

“Maybe we could slip out and get a real sit-down lunch today.”

“We can’t both be gone at the same time. We’ll have to go one at a time or one of us will have to bring back.”

“I’ll go.”

“And leave me alone to answer the phone? I don’t think so!”

“You go, then. Bring me back a bacon and tomato on whole wheat toast, a large Coke and a pack of Luckies.”

Their thoughts were just then interrupted by the smell of Mr. Goodapple’s cologne and the sound of his footsteps in the hallway coming toward them. Dot opened a ledger and began studiously copying figures from it onto a pad. Zora opened her desk drawer and began rearranging the things inside.

“Well, well, well!” the great man boomed. “How are we all doing today?”

“Just fine, Mr. Goodapple!” Zora said.

“Very good, sir!” Dot said.

“Keeping busy, are we?”

“Oh, yes, sir!

“I like to check up on the girls in the front office and make sure things are running smoothly.”

“We’re getting along swimmingly,” Dot said.

“We’ve been so busy this morning!” Zora said. “Hardly time to catch our breath.”

“Haw-haw-haw!” he laughed, showing his mule-like teeth. “That’s the way we like it, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, sir!”

“The busier we are, the more we feel we’re earning our pay.”

“I was saying that very thing a little while ago,” Zora said. “We do love our jobs so.”

“You’ve both been here a long time, haven’t you?”

“Oh, yes, sir! Many, many years in fact.”

“More years than we can count,” Dot said.

“Some people just can’t stand to ever think of retiring, can they?” he said.

“I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have my job to go to every day,” Zora said.

“I feel the same way,” Dot said.

Mr. Goodapple smiled in his self-satisfied way. “I like to see dedication in my people,” he said. “And loyalty. Nothing is more important.”

Somebody came up behind Mr. Goodapple and tapped him on the shoulder and he left. Zora and Dot let out their breath with relief.

“That bastard!” Zora said. “Spying on us!”

“He’s got his nerve!”

“He thinks he’s so important and he’s just the white on top of old chicken doodle.”

“The smell of his cologne makes me sick.”

“For two cents I’d tell him what I think of him!”

“The pain in my side just got worse!” Dot said. “I have to get out of here!”

She stood up and shuffled in her mules down the hallway to the ladies’ room. When she came back, she was pale and her intricate hairdo had come undone.

“I was just sick in the bathroom,” she said. “The stress is too much for me.”

“You’d better go home and lie down, then, honey,” Zora said. “I can cover for you.”

“You’re right,” Dot said. “I guess maybe that’s the thing I ought to do.”

After Dot was gone, Zora combed her hair and fixed her face. Then she left the office to get herself a good lunch. She would take as long as she wanted, if not the entire afternoon, and if Mr. Goodapple didn’t like it, well, she’d be glad to tell him what he could do about it.

August 11, 2015 by allen0997

The School on Heart’s Content Road ~ A Capsule Book Review

The School on Heart’s Content Road ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

I first became a fan of Carolyn Chute when I read her novel The Beans of Egypt, Maine many years ago. Then Letourneau’s Used Auto Parts, Merry Men and Snow Man. Her most recent book (not that she’s published but that that I’ve read) is The School on Heart’s Content Road. She has another book out, Treat Us Like Dogs and We Become Wolves (just out in 2014) that I haven’t yet read but that I intend to read as soon as I’m ready to tackle another 700-page novel. (The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, last year’s Pulitzer Prize winner, is 769 pages.)

The thing about Carolyn Chute is that she’s not like other writers. Nothing bores me any faster than stories of yuppie angst and heartbreak (multiple marriages, affairs, fears about growing old, screwed-up kids because their parents are screwed up, blah, blah, blah). Carolyn Chute writes about the other end of the spectrum: people on the fringe, the dispossessed, the poor, illiterate (what’s called in the South white trash but is called something else in Maine where her books are set). These people are fascinating, and in The School on Heart’s Content Road we have a whole assemblage of fascinating characters. Characters who are much more concerned about survival than about their stock portfolios or what wines to have for dinner or what college two-year-old Muffy will apply to when the time comes.

The School on Heart’s Content Road is set, for some reason, in the year 2000. It is not about a school but instead centers around four characters: Michael (known as “Mickey”) Gammon, Jane Miranda Meserve, Richard York (likes to be called “Rex;” his mother calls him “Ricky”) and Guillaume (known as “Gordon”) St. Onge.

Fifteen-year-old Mickey Gammon smells bad (he doesn’t bathe) and he can’t read, even though he goes to school (or seems to). He lives with his half-brother Donnie Locke and Donnie’s family. Donnie works in an unidentified “chain” (like Wal-Mart) store and is understandably unhappy. He and his wife Erika have a sick child, Jesse, who is bound to die with cancer, whether he has treatments or not. They hardly have enough money for pain medicine for the sick child. Also living with them are Mickey and Donnie’s mother, Britta (she has three kids by three different men, none of whom she was ever married to), their younger sister, Elizabeth, and several of Donnie’s kids from a previous marriage (referred to throughout the novel as the “girl gang”). Donnie throws Mickey out of the house. (“You can’t live here anymore,” he says.) Mickey lives for a while in a tree house with Maine winter setting in. He begins spending time with Rex York, a fifty-year-old Vietnam veteran who has a military bearing and a soldierly attitude toward life (he doesn’t eat desserts and maintains his trim body with exercise). Rex is head of the True Maine Militia. This is a “separatist” group that doesn’t trust the government (with good reason) and will use force if necessary to “take back” (with plenty of guns and ammo) the country that they believe was stolen from them by greedy politicians and an even greedier corporate structure that “steals from them and tries to sell back what they have stolen.” They are a fringe group and have been much maligned by the mainstream media, whose job it is to stir up fear in the public imagination against them.

Gordon St. Onge is about ten years younger than Rex York, but they have known each other since they were young. (They consider themselves almost brothers.) Gordon is called (among other things) the “Prophet,” because he is a head of the “Settlement,” a sort of commune/co-op where a bunch of people live and work. Gordon is charismatic and is loved by most of the people who know him and feared by many because he has a lot of (not legal) wives and many children by those wives. It seems that nothing disturbs the public as much as the thought of “polygamy” and a “cult” in which young girls are made to have “relations” with much older men (it isn’t like that in the Settlement). Life seems to be pretty harmonious in the Settlement and the people living there are happy. Still, though, there is the idea that they will overthrow the government in an ugly way if (and when) they have the chance, or possibly even try to secede from the Union. For this reason they are disliked and feared.

Jane Meserve is a six-and-a-half-year-old, half-black girl (her father was a black musician with whom Jane’s mother, Lisa Meserve, had one encounter) who is suddenly left without a mother when Lisa is hauled off to jail on a drug charge. When Jane is wearing her heart-shaped, white-framed glasses that allow her to observe things that others can’t see, she is secret agent Jane, adding a lighter touch to the proceedings. She is a wry observer of everything going on around her, smart and clever beyond her years. She and her mother serve to illustrate how unfair and brutal police are (can be) to poor, powerless people. When her mother goes to jail, apparently forever, Jane is taken in by a Settlement family.

The School on Heart’s Content Road is always engaging reading. The “set piece” of the novel, toward the end, is a long, long (too long) sequence about an open house kind of event at the Settlement where everybody is invited. Hundreds of people show up; there are music, food and drinking. When Gordon speaks, he works the crowd up into a frenzy with his rhetoric about taking back the country and not standing for the government’s lies and double-dealing anymore. There are federal agents everywhere, and word has been circulated that somebody is going to try to kill Gordon. We know something is going to happen but we don’t know what until it happens. It’s not what we expected.

If you are a reader of “serious” fiction (as opposed to a reader of Harold Robbins or Jacqueline Susann), you will like The School on Heart’s Content Road. If it was a movie, it would play at art houses instead of at your neighborhood multiplex where they have Ant Man and Jurassic World and all the latest rom-coms. Some of us just want more out of life and we’ll do whatever we have to do to get it.

August 2, 2015August 3, 2015 by allen0997