Allen Kopp – Page 50 – Literary Fictions

Penny Dreadful, Season Two ~ A Capsule Review

Penny Dreadful, Season Two ~ A Capsule Review by Allen Kopp

My favorite character on Showtime’s Penny Dreadful is Dr. Victor Frankenstein. He’s nothing like Colin Clive or Basil Rathbone. He’s slender, young and handsome with a dimple in his chin. He doesn’t look like a mad scientist or somebody who enjoys reanimating dead tissue. He’s brilliant in his work but uncomfortable, since he is a Victorian gentleman, when it comes to things like picking out a lady’s undergarments. In season one he created a sweet doe-eyed monster out of parts from cadavers, only to have an earlier creation—one who didn’t turn out so well—return, kill the sweet monster and start making demands. This earlier monster, who calls himself John Clare, is lonely—if Dr. Frankenstein will create a mate for him, he promises he will go away and not cause any more trouble. Dr. Frankenstein tells him to be patient and he will go to work on the problem. While John Clare is waiting, he goes out into the cruel real world and finds a job. First he works at a Grand Guignol theatre, where bloodletting is the order of the day. That ends in tragedy, so, in season two, he secures employment at a wax works. The kindly owner of the wax works has a blind daughter to whom John Clare is drawn. She feels perfectly comfortable with him because she cannot see how strange he looks.

In season one of the show, the only American character in the cast, Ethan Chandler (in London with a Wild West show), had a girlfriend from the lower English classes named Broma Croft. He was in love with her but, alas, she had consumption and soon died. Dr. Frankenstein secures her body with the intention of turning her into the mate for his monster. He puts her in a pickling solution and waits for the terrific thunderstorm that will reanimate her. When the storm occurs and he is able to bring her back to life, she is disoriented and remembers nothing of her former life. He names her Lily (the flower of rebirth and resurrection) and tells her she is his cousin and that they grew up together. He has to teach her everything about the world, as she is like a newborn baby. He dyes her hair blond to give her a different identify from the one she had when she was Broma Croft and enlists the aid of Vanessa Ives to buy her some clothes to wear.

Of course, other things are going on simultaneously. Vanessa Ives, who was revealed at the end of season one to be Sir Malcolm Mallory’s out-of-wedlock daughter, is now living in his house with him and his African man-servant Sembene. She is, and always has been, much tormented, subject to visitations by the darkest of forces. (Is she a witch or what?) We have recently learned that Satan desires her above all others. (What he will do with her when he gets her we can only imagine.) Satan has sent his consort (one of them?) to earth in the guise of one Mrs. Poole. She has a collection of naughty “daughters” who are also minions of Satan who will do her (and his) bidding. Their one goal is to get Vanessa Ives for Satan. (Why he can’t get her himself has not been revealed.) Sir Malcolm has begun a flirtation with Mrs. Poole (not as innocent as he thinks), not knowing who, or what, she really is.

Then there’s youthful Dorian Gray. He has a new love interest, named Angelique, who, on first acquaintance, appears to be a woman but—wait a minute—“she” is really a “he.” (Dorian knew right away it was a man; men are what he is most interested in.) When Angelique inquires about Dorian’s age, he tells her he is older than he looks. (We already know how he keeps his youthful appearance.) There’s a scene where Dorian and Angelique are playing a game called gossamer tennis (ping-pong to us), a game newly brought over from India by returning soldiers. Angelique bests Dorian in every game, even though the place where they are playing is lit by electric light, not very flattering to a “girl’s” complexion, as Angelique says.

Penny Dreadful is set in Victorian London, but it’s not the London of Charles Dickens. It’s a mélange of horror movie themes, dark and forbidding, with dark forces everywhere afoot. It’s classy, well-made, intellectually stimulating and a feast for the eyes. How do they do those fabulous sets that are only seen for a second or two? If it’s all computer-generated graphics, it’s still impressive because it looks so real. Seeing it is to step out of the mundane world we live in into another time and place that is fun to visit, even though you probably wouldn’t want to live there if it meant you had to do without the Internet.

May 27, 2015May 28, 2015 by allen0997

Benediction ~ A Capsule Book Review

Benediction ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

I met writer Kent Haruf at one of his book-signing events in St. Louis. We spoke for a minute about Cormac McCarthy and Oscar Hijuelos and I came away with a signed copy of his novel Plainsong to add to my collection of signed books. His 2013 novel Benediction continues his string of quietly impressive books set on the high plains in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado. The main character here is Dad Lewis (we never know his first name), lifelong owner of the town’s hardware store. He has a faithful wife named Mary and two children, Lorraine and Frank. When we meet him, he is old and sick and doesn’t have long to live. His daughter Lorraine, now middle-aged, returns home to be with him in his final stretch. He longs to reconnect with his estranged son Frank before he dies, but Frank is gay and he and Dad have never hit it off very well.

Then there’s Reverend Lyle, new to Holt from Denver. His wife and son are unhappy with small-town life and they never pass up a chance to remind him. (His wife was having an extramarital affair in Denver and that was one of the reasons they left.) When Reverend Lyle preaches a sermon in the Congregational Church about loving one’s neighbors and turning the other cheek, it doesn’t go over well with small-town folk, especially during wartime. (He’s only stating what the Bible says, but most people seem to think he’s siding with the enemy.) He is so disliked after this sermon, it seems there is no way he can survive attempts to have him fired or reassigned. After his unsympathetic wife leaves him and his son attempts suicide, what’s left for Reverent Lyle in the town of Holt?

Other characters include Berta May, the old lady who lives next door to Dad and Mary Lewis, raising her young granddaughter, Alice, after the girl’s mother dies; Tanya, the wife of a fired employee who Dad Lewis helps (without expecting anything in return, although sex is offered) after her husband commits suicide; Willa Johnson and her fifty-six-year-old daughter Alene, a teacher who once had an unhappy love affair with a married man that she was never quite able to get over. On a hot day the ladies (Mary Lewis and her daughter Lorraine, Willa and Alene Johnson, Berta May and her granddaughter Alice) take off all their clothes and get into the stock tank. I might have expected them to be more modest than that, especially in the company of a young girl, but it seems that woman aren’t as modest as men.

Benediction is a slice of small-town life, understated in the way of the man who wrote it. There’s nothing bombastic or larger than life here, just solid storytelling told in uncluttered language with plenty of drama (but no drama queens) just underneath the surface. It’s people living out their good-and-bad lives, forcing us to wonder—and not for the first time, either—what it’s all about.

May 24, 2015May 24, 2015 by allen0997

Far From the Madding Crowd ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Far From the Madding Crowd ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

This is the second film adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel. The first was in 1967 and starred that mod girl Julie Christie. This one is better, though. It has Carey Mulligan (who played Michael Fassbender’s disturbed sister in Shame and Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby) as Bathsheba Everdene. The story is set in rural England in 1870. Bathsheba is that rare animal in Victorian England, a free-thinking woman who doesn’t believe that a woman has to be dependent on a man to get along in the world. She has, as she says, an education and nothing else. When handsome sheep farmer Gabriel Oaks (Matthias Schoenaerts) proposes marriage to her on very short acquaintance, she tells him she doesn’t want a husband. That isn’t the end of him, though. Just about the time he loses his own small farm through a cruel twist of fate, she inherits a farm of her own from an uncle. Since she knows nothing about running a farm, she employs Gabriel Oaks to help her.

Meanwhile, Bathsheba has caught the eye of wealthy landowner William Boldwood (Michael Sheen). He has a large, impressive house and anything a girl could want in the way of earthly possessions, but he’s dour, middle-aged and unexciting. When he proposes marriage to Bathsheba (as, with Farmer Oaks, on very short acquaintance), she turns him down, explaining that she doesn’t want to be any man’s property. Farmer Boldwood doesn’t give up easily, though; he believes he might be able to get her to change her mind.

A third man comes onto the scene and almost literally sweeps Bathsheba off her feet. He is handsome Sergeant Francis “Frank” Troy. With his red uniform, pale skin, perfect physique and black mustache, he is too much for Bathsheba to resist. She enters into a hasty, ill-informed union with him, only to regret it almost the same day as the marriage. It turns out that he was supposed to marry another girl named Fanny Robbin (played by Juno Temple, who plays Texas-accented Dottie in Killer Joe), but when Fanny goes to the wrong church on the day of the wedding, she literally leaves him standing at the altar. When Frank meets Fanny again after he is married to Bathsheba, she is destitute and carrying his child. She and the child both die and Frank is grief-stricken. He tells Bathsheba that Fanny meant more to him that she (Bathsheba) ever could. He commits suicide (or seems to) by removing his uniform and swimming far out into the ocean. There’s a heavy dose of irony in how the story is resolved.

With this cast of characters and the setting, how could you go wrong? If you are of a literary bent and especially if you have read the books of Thomas Hardy, you will love this satisfying, beautifully photographed, perfectly cast version of Far From the Madding Crowd. Unless, of course, you prefer Fast and Furious 7, which is, I imagine, a lot like Fast and Furious 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Where will it all end?

May 23, 2015June 13, 2015 by allen0997

The Stranger ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Stranger ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

French writer Albert Camus was born in Algiers in 1913 and died in an automobile accident in 1960 at the age of 47. His novel The Stranger was published in 1942 and first appeared in English in 1946. It’s the simple story of an ordinary French Algerian, named Meursault, and the act of senseless violence that changed his life.

When the story begins, Meursault’s mother has died in the rest home where he put her because he couldn’t take care of her properly at home. When he travels to her funeral it is a very hot day. He loved his mother in his own way but is not able to cry over her death. In the ordeal of sitting up with her body overnight and the funeral the next day, he shows no emotion. He stands before her coffin, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, observing the other mourners. His lack of emotion is noted by those in attendance and plays a significant part in what is to come.

Meursault has a friend named Raymond Sintès. When Raymond has a dispute with an Arab girlfriend, Meursault helps Raymond by writing her a letter. This leads to an altercation between Raymond and the girl, which leads to Raymond hitting her. A few days later when Meursault and Raymond go to the beach with some friends, the girl’s brother is waiting for them. There is a fight, during which Raymond is slightly injured. Meursault takes Raymond’s gun from him to keep him from doing anything rash. Later in the day, after they have all calmed down, Meursault returns to the beach with the gun and shoots the Arab five times and kills him. Meursault can’t explain why he killed the man, except to say that it was very hot.

Meursault is put in prison to await trail. He is detached about prison as he is about everything else. He is appointed a lawyer, who assures him that he will be acquitted. When the trail begins, it doesn’t go well for Meursault. The prosecution brings in all the people from Meursault’s mother’s funeral who testify that Meursault didn’t cry. The prosecutor in his eloquence portrays Meursault is a cold, calculating murderer and an unfeeling monster. The jury finds him guilty and he is sentenced to die by the guillotine. While awaiting death he allows himself to imagine some miracle occurring by which he is acquitted, but he knows it isn’t going to happen.

Meursault confides to a prison chaplain that he believes in nothing, that life is meaningless and random. There is no plan, no design that gives life a larger meaning. Meursault believes he understands the indifference of the universe toward man, and this allows him to come to terms with his own death. “…I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world,” he says. “Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.”

The Stranger is divided into two parts, before the murder and after. It’s a first-person narrative, told in Meursault’s own voice. We’re being told Meursault’s version of what happened. This makes the story seem immediate and relevant. While Meursault is detached in all things, his story is not detached and the reader doesn’t feel detached either. It’s a very readable classic, never dull or ponderous. In tenth grade when we were given a list of books to read to write a report on, I chose Pride and Prejudice. If I had known then how good The Stranger is, I would have chosen it instead. The Bennett sisters are chloroform in print.

May 17, 2015 by allen0997

Mad Max: Fury Road ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Mad Max: Fury Road ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

Mad Max: Fury Road is set in a post-apocalyptic world (yes, another one), in an arid desert wasteland, where warring factions made up of grotesques battle each other in enormous vehicles (1000 horsepower) called “war rigs” that seem to be made up of parts of old cars and trucks. These people have reverted to a kind of primitive state in which one person, named Immortan Joe (the most grotesque of them all), “owns” all the people because he “owns” all the water. A woman named Furiosa has “stolen” some of Immortan Joe’s “breed stock” (five scantily clad girls, one of whom is carrying his child) to free them and also to take them with her to the “green place” of her birth. We can see that Furiosa has not had an easy time of it; her left arm is missing below the elbow. She keeps the girls hidden in her war rig as she tries to flee with them.

Enter Max Rockatansky, or Mad Max (Tom Hardy). Max tells us right at the beginning that he is driven by his instinct for survival in this hellish world and is haunted by the people he wasn’t able to save, including, apparently, his own small daughter who appears in his vision at odd times. This is about all we ever learn of Max. He is taciturn in the way of movie heroes, not nearly as menacing as the other men in the movie, and is more than capable of taking care of himself and anybody else he wants to take care of. He joins forces with Furiosa and the breed stock girls, helping them to get to where they think they want to go and flee from their menacing pursuers. We see that Furiosa likes Max but there’s no room here for romance—everybody is in too much danger and too hot and sweaty.

Mad Max: Fury Road has everything you would expect from an action-adventure movie: loudness, fiery explosions, a pulsating music score, unintelligible dialogue, lots of frenetic action, death-defying stunts, and good against not-so-good. This one also has character names such as Slit, Nux, Rictus Erectus, and Toast the Knowing. I see on IMDb that it’s not a remake of the 1979 Australian movie with Mel Gibson but a different story using the concept and setting of the earlier movie. Everything that was at one time a movie hit (that is, made money) will eventually find its way into the forefront again if you give it enough time.

May 15, 2015April 14, 2017 by allen0997

All the Light We Cannot See ~ A Capsule Book Review

All the Light We Cannot See ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

This year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction is All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. It’s a World War II story (yes, another one) set mostly in the small French coastal town of Saint-Malo. Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a French girl, blind from the age of six. She lives with her widowed father, who is employed as a locksmith at an enormous Paris museum. Marie-Laure is very bright and seems to live life to the fullest despite her blindness. She reads books in Braille—Jules Verne is her favorite writer—and she and her father are happy in their lives. All of that changes, however, when Germany occupies France and Marie-Laure and her father flee to the town of Saint-Malo and the home of Marie-Laure’s father’s uncle, whose name is Etienne.

Marie-Laure and her father are happy in Saint-Malo with Uncle Etienne and his housekeeper, Madame Manec, in spite of the deprivations of war. After a time, though, Marie-Laure’s father is called back to Paris by his employer (apparently a trick) and is captured and imprisoned by the Germans. Marie-Laure has no other choice but to continue to stay with her great-uncle in the narrow, six-story house in Saint-Malo. The town is right in the way of the fighting, though, so war comes to their doorstep when the Allied forces invade France to liberate it from the Germans. Etienne is forced to give up any radio transmitter in his home, but he keeps one secretly and continues to broadcast information that will be of help to the resistance movement. Marie-Laure is also part of the resistance, as she carries information, baked into loaves of bread, that he can transmit.

Marie-Laure’s story is juxtaposed with that of a German boy named Werner Pfennig. Werner and his sister Jutta live in an orphan home in a dreary mining town in Germany. Werner is also very bright and teaches himself the principles of mechanics and radio technology. When people see that he can repair radios that nobody else can, he is chosen to go to a “Hitler Youth” school. He has been looking for a chance to escape his dreary, futureless existence (and an enforced job in the coal mine when he turns fifteen) and this is his one chance, although he isn’t at all political and he hates to leave behind his sister, Jutta, as she is his only family.

Werner and his small contingent happen to be in Saint-Malo when it is heavily bombarded. They are buried for many days beneath a hotel that has collapsed. With what little he has to work with, he is able to put together a radio receiver that allows him to hear radio transmissions. He hears the voice of Marie-Laure as she reads from Jules Verne. When he and the others miraculously and unexpectedly escape from their imprisonment, he goes looking for the girl whose voice he heard. We knew all along that his life and Marie-Laure’s life were in some way going to intersect. He plays an important role in her life, but not in the way one might expect.

All the Light We Cannot See is a very readable book, with short chapters, most no more than two or three pages long. It’s not what you would call a long-winded book despite its 530 pages. The characters are engaging and believable and, even though it’s a wartime story, it’s not about war but about innocents whose lives are caught up in war. World War II continues to provide an unending source of storytelling material. What would the twentieth century be without war? Not nearly as tumultuous or as interesting.

May 12, 2015May 28, 2015 by allen0997

Suicide Hotel

Suicide Hotel ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

(This is an expanded version of a short story I posted before.)

Margaret Pendler was to be passed over again for promotion, after seventeen years with the company. A younger, prettier girl named Stephanie with only three years got the nod. Stephanie with her blond hair and tight skirts that showed the contours of her can; shapely, nylon-clad legs that she was all too willing to show off; a touch of cleavage, perfect teeth and lips the color of a valentine.

After Margaret received the news right before morning coffee break, she sat at her desk holding a pencil in her right hand, her left hand on her cheek, barely moving. Not even pretending to do any work. When the girls, all atwitter at Stephanie’s promotion, went for coffee, Margaret stayed behind.

In one minute or less, she had lost all interest in everything around her. When Mr. Dauphin came in, she didn’t even look up and smile as she always did. He was her favorite and she had even believed, at infrequent intervals, that she was in love with him. Never mind that he had been married three times and was working his way through all the pretty young things in the office.

At lunchtime she was still sitting exactly as she had been two hours earlier. Her coworkers had been giving her curious glances but she ignored them. If anybody had said anything to her, she might have pulled a knife out of the drawer and stabbed them.

Finally, when the lunch hour was almost over, she stood up and said, to no one person in particular, “I have no wish to be here.” She took her purse and her raincoat and left, without bothering to straighten the clutter on her desk or even to push the chair in. Without a word to anybody, she went down the stairs and out the building, her intention being never to return.

At home her mother, Georgina, was going through trunks, trying on clothes and wigs for a social function she was going to go to at her lodge. She held up a forties-vintage green dress with huge fabric-covered buttons and a long red wig and said, “What do you think of this?”

“Is it a costume party?” Margaret asked.

“No. I just want to look different from anybody else there.”

“That ought to do the trick.”

“What do you think of these?” She held up a silk Pagliacci lounging set.

“Oh, I think you ought to put those on now,” Margaret said.

“I think I will.”

Georgina went behind the screen to change. “I think I’m getting married again,” she said in a too-loud voice, believing that if she wasn’t seen she wasn’t heard.

“Who’s the lucky fellow?” Margaret asked.

“His name is Herman Mudge. I don’t think you’ve had the pleasure. He hasn’t actually asked me yet, but I think he will.”

“Let me be the first to congratulate you.”

“What do you think about having a stepfather?” Georgina asked, stepping out from behind the screen and turning around one time so Margaret could see the silk Pagliacci lounging set.

“Stunning,” Margaret said. “Is he younger than you?”

“Is who younger than me?”

“Herman Mudge.”

“He’s eighty-three. I’m seventy-nine. I think that’s a nice age difference, don’t you? My father was four years older than my mother.”

“Where are you going to live after you get married?”

“Why, here, of course. He’s got a small room in a hotel. You don’t think a newly married couple can live there, do you?”

“Well, I hope you’ll both be very happy,” Margaret said.

“I want cornflakes for supper and macaroons,” Georgina said.

After the evening meal was finished and the dishes washed and put away, Georgina installed herself on the couch in front of the television set for her endless parade of police dramas and situation comedies. Soon she was asleep with her head thrown back, her mouth open because she had trouble breathing through her nose. Her dentures had slipped down and were partway out of her mouth, giving her a rather strange and unnatural appearance.

Margaret went upstairs to her bedroom, threw some clothes into a suitcase and left the house, her intention being never to return. She took a taxi to the bus station where she stood in line for fifteen minutes to buy a ticket to the nearest large city. After she had her ticket, she sat on a hard plastic chair for nearly two hours until time for her bus.

When her bus was finally announced, she stood up and ran for the door as if it might leave without her. Heart pounding, she boarded and took a seat next to the window near the back. As the bus roared off, she laughed, relieved that the ordeal of waiting was at an end.

She slept at intervals during the trip but it was a troubled sleep, the kind she had when she was sick with one of her bronchitis infections. At about four-thirty in the morning the bus arrived at its destination. Stiff from the long hours of sitting, she had a cup of coffee and a light breakfast in the coffee shop of the sprawling bus depot and set out walking, not certain where she was going.

The St. George Hotel had nothing to recommend it other than its neon sign glowing invitingly in the early-morning light and its height of fifteen stories. She went inside and asked for a room on one of the upper floors. When the desk clerk asked her how long she would be staying, she said she didn’t know.

Her room on the twelfth floor was dark and musty-smelling like a long-undiscovered tomb. She turned on the lights, hung her coat in the closet and slung her suitcase on the bed. Crossing the room to the lone window, she pulled back the heavy curtain and looked down at the street a hundred and twenty feet below. She calculated the approximate spot on the sidewalk where she would land when she jumped. Someone would scream (they always did in the movies). There would be loud excited voices, a screech of brakes. She wouldn’t hear any of it.

But she didn’t have to be in any hurry. She would work up to the thing, to the jumping. When she decided the time was right, she would do it. She had the nerve all right, the nerve to just let go. And it would all be over in a matter of seconds. Lights out. Lower the curtain. What was any of it for, anyway?

She stayed in the room for two days and on the third day she ventured out to have dinner in the restaurant downstairs. The day after that she took a walk, had lunch in a diner, bought a pair of gloves and two books and went to a movie. It was when she was having a drink in the bar before going to her room and going to sleep that he approached her. He was a small man, about thirty-five, dark hair and three or four days of stubble on his face. He stood beside her and offered to buy her a drink.

“I have a drink,” she said, not looking at him.

“Are you having a good time?” he asked.

“I was until you came along.”

“I saw you the day you checked in,” he said. “I was sitting in the lobby watching you but you didn’t see me.”

“What of it?”

“Women don’t usually check into this hotel alone. They’ve usually got kids with them or a man.”

“I’m waiting for my husband to get here.”

“What does he look like? Maybe I’ve seen him.”

She stood up abruptly. “I don’t know what your game is,” she said, “but I’ll thank you to leave me alone.”

She brushed past him and took the elevator up to her room.

The next day she saw him and the day after that. She didn’t look directly at him but she knew he was there. He seemed to just appear wherever she was. Once when she saw him standing by the elevator, she asked the desk clerk who he was.

“I don’t see anybody there, ma’am,” the clerk said. “The person you’re talking about must have gone up.”

The next night at ten o’clock she was in her room, getting ready to get into bed when there was a soft knock at the door. “Who is it?” she asked. When no one answered, she went to the door and opened it a couple of inches. She wasn’t surprised when she saw him standing there.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“No, you may not.”

He pushed the door open farther and when she did nothing to stop him, he came inside and closed the door again as if it were his door to do with as he pleased.

“My husband went to get some cigarettes,” she said. “He’ll be back in just a minute.”

“You don’t have a husband. You know it and I know it.”

She looked at him and took a deep breath. She wondered why she wasn’t more afraid.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Are you a murderer who preys on women alone?”

He laughed and took off his hat, took a step toward her. “Now, do I look to you like a person who would do that?”

“Did my mother send you? Are you a private detective?”

“I could be just about anything, I suppose. Anything or nothing.”

“If it’s money you want, I don’t have any.”

He surprised her by taking hold of her arm and leading her to the window. “Look down,” he said. “It’s a long way to the sidewalk. Your body bursts like a balloon, but instead of water it’s blood. Those who see it never forget. You’ll be dead but they’ll have to carry the horror of what you did around with them for the rest of their lives.”

“Why should you care about that?”

“That’s not the question you should be asking.”

“Get out my room or I’m going to call for help.”

When he made no move to leave, she picked up the phone and put it to her ear. A few clicks and then someone came on the line.

“There’s an intruder in my room,” she said. “Yes. A man. Room twelve sixty-eight. Yes. Thank you.”

She put the phone back in its cradle and said to him, “They’re sending someone up. You’d better be gone when they get here.”

He crossed the room to the door and opened it.

“Wait!” she called. “Don’t go!”

“You change your mind awfully fast.”

“I’m afraid I won’t see you again and I won’t ever know who you are.”

He reclosed the door. “You don’t know?”

“If I knew, would I be asking?”

“I’m the devil come to take your soul back to hell.”

“Where’s your pitchfork?”

“I’m an angel sent to try to keep you from destroying yourself.”

“Which is it? You can’t be both!”

“I’m whatever you want me to be. Maybe I’m nothing at all. Maybe I’m not even here.”

“I’m not in the mood for riddles,” she said. “Just go. I want you to stop bothering me.”

“I’ll go,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”

Instead of leaving, though, he leaned against the wall near the door, hands in pockets, and looked at her. He was like a man waiting for a bus or doing nothing in particular, as if time were nothing at all.

She went to the window and pushed the curtain out of the way and looked down to the street once again. How long would it take her to reach the sidewalk? She would close her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see anything. Just a few seconds and it would all be over.

The window wouldn’t raise as she thought it would, no matter how hard she pushed and pulled. So, there it was, a pane of glass, the only thing between herself and oblivion. It wasn’t going to stop her, though. Nothing was going to stop her now.

She kicked at the glass and hit it with her fists until it shattered, letting in the noise from the street and a sickening stench of gasoline, asphalt and burning rubber.

With the glass gone, the way was open for her. It was so easy now. The only question remaining was if she should go out feet first or head first. Would somebody cover her up right away or would people stand and gape at her until an ambulance arrived? What would her mother say when she received the phone call? Who would call her mother, anyway? Would she come and identify the body? Would sweet Mr. Dauphin with his doe-like eyes and the other people from the office come to her funeral?

“Are you losing your nerve?” he asked from across the bed over by the door.

“What did you say?”

She had forgotten he was in the room with her and, remembering, felt a little embarrassed, as though a stranger were watching her in her most private and intimate moment.

“I asked if you were having second thoughts.”

“I asked you to leave.”

“You’re bleeding.”

She hadn’t realized that blood was pouring from the juncture of her thumb and forefinger. She held out her hand and watched the blood as it dripped onto the floor.

He got a towel from the bathroom. “Here,” he said. “You probably need some stitches.”

“You’re with me in my final moments,” she said. “The only one.”

“You’re not going to jump,” he said.

“I’m not?”

“You’re going to go down to the desk and apologize for breaking the window and you’re going to offer to pay for it.”

“What did you say your name is?”

“You can call me by any name you like.”

She knelt on the floor and leaned against his leg because it was the closest object. “You thought I was going to jump out the window?” she asked.

“It looked that way.”

“Take me away from here, will you?”

“Where to?”

“A place so far away I’ll never get back.”

“Oblivion?”

“No, not there. Farther away than that.”

May 11, 2015 by allen0997

Bettyville ~ A Capsule Book Review

Bettyville ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Bettyville is a memoir by a writer named George Hodgman set in the small town of Paris, Missouri. Paris is an insignificant town in a state full of insignificant towns. George is a middle-aged man and is gay, always feeling that there is something wrong with him or he doesn’t quite measure up. (“The people who feel okay in the world,” he says, “don’t understand those of us who don’t feel okay.”) He knows his conservative parents will never understand or embrace his sexuality, so he chooses to never discuss it with them. He becomes adept at secrecy and at hiding his true feelings. At the age of forty, when he finally admits to his mother that he’s gay (“Surely you must have known.”), she replies, “Well, then, I guess you’ll go your way and I’ll go mine.” She doesn’t make it easy for him.

Knowing he will never fit in or be accepted in his home town, George goes to New York, where he embraces the “gay lifestyle.” He spends summers on Fire Island. He has a series of “relationships,” somehow never managing to make one of them last for the long haul. He works for publishing houses as a book editor or at places like Vogue magazine. He turns to drugs to help him cope with his demanding job and eventually becomes an addict. In spite of all this, though, he manages to go back to Missouri a couple of times a year to visit his family.

When George’s father dies (George senior), his mother, Betty, is left alone. As she gets older and more frail, it is up to George, an only child, to care for her. He would like to put her in a nursing home so he can live his own life, but, as expected, she won’t hear to it. After George loses his job (making him feel like more of a failure than ever), he moves back home with his mother and takes on the difficult job of caring for her full-time. So, a fifty-year-old repressed, secretive man is taking care of his failing, often difficult, emotionally reserved ninety-year-old mother who has dementia. He wants to “do right” by her and see her through to the end, whatever the end is. That’s what Bettyville is about: acceptance of one’s own failings, putting another person’s interests before one’s own, and doing it all with humor and grace.

Bettyville is almost effortless reading and is full of humor. When George takes his mother to see the art film The Master, she says in a loud voice, “Why would anybody want to make a movie like that?” When they go to the Muny Opera in St. Louis to see The Music Man, George’s father sings along, embarrassing George and Betty. In drug rehab, when somebody asks George when he became aware that his emotions had shut down, he replies, “I don’t think they were ever opened up.” George is a clever man who uses self-deprecating humor to keep people from seeing what he really is, as if what he is needs covering up.

April 27, 2015 by allen0997

The Queen Bee of Café Society

The Queen Bee of Café Society ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

It’s early November and the nights are getting colder. Ouida Longworth makes her way through the dark city streets to the only place left to her. She struggles up the stairs, through the door, and stops before a low table with an old woman sitting behind it.

“Need a bed,” Ouida says.

“All full up tonight.”

“Got one left,” a man’s voice says from the shadows. “A lady checked out a little while ago.”

“All right,” the old woman says. “You know the rules. No smoking, cussing, gambling or alcoholic beverages. No fraternizing with the other guests. You got to be out by nine o’clock in the morning.”

“Thank you, madam.”

“Go down them stairs and hold your nose.”

Ouida isn’t sure if she has the strength to find the one empty bed, but find it she does and when she comes to it she sits down heavily and takes off her shoes and rubs her feet. They are so numb she can hardly feel them—one day they will stop working altogether. Holding her shoes against her abdomen to keep them safe, she gets under the covers to lose herself in sleep for a few hours.

A roomful of sleeping women and a few children. It is semi-lit, one bulb high up on the wall in a little metal cage, and quiet except for a few rustles like the sounds mice make. The wild-haired woman in the bed next to Ouida raises herself on her elbow, eyes glowing in the dark. Ouida is certain the woman is going to speak to her, so she covers her head with the musty blanket and is left only with herself and her recollections of the life she had before the one she has now.

She was once the wife of Franklin Longworth, a man of many millions. She wore glittery gowns, smoked custom-made cigarettes in a foot-long holder and articulated in a faux English accent. Besides having a penthouse apartment on Park Avenue, the Longworths spent a part of each year at one of their homes in the South of France, Switzerland or Italy.

Ouida Longworth was one of the leading lights of her social set, which included sixty or so of the best people. During the social season, she gave parties or attended them nearly every night. On off nights, there was always the opera, the theatre, or any one of the fashionable cafés and clubs. The revels often lasted until dawn and nobody was written up in the society columns more than Ouida Longworth. To be seen in her company—and especially to be photographed with her—was much desired by those hoping to get a leg up in society. Any man of letters, painter, or actress was fortunate to be taken up and admired by her.

One such man was a fellow named Ricky Beaumont. Establishing himself as a playwright proved to be more problematic than he anticipated. His one play that he managed to have produced folded after six performances. He was badly in need of a patroness, someone to pay his liquor bills and leave him alone while he cultivated his untapped genius.

Ouida claimed to be the “discoverer” of Ricky Beaumont. He was, she said, the most gifted young playwright of his generation and she would see that he had every advantage. Men of genius should not be bothered with worldly matters such as how to pay the grocery bill and the rent.

She started out advising Ricky in his career, but soon her professional interest turned personal. Helping matters along were his youth and the fact that he had piercing blue eyes, a head full of thick brown hair and stood six feet, two inches tall in his stocking feet. He recalled to Ouida the thrilling days of her youth, before she married stodgy Franklin Longworth, when she could have any man for the taking and there were plenty willing to be taken.

She began being seen everywhere in Ricky Beaumont’s company. Rumors abounded. Some of her friends reviled her, while most were blasé in the matter. A silly older woman with a rich and serious husband falling for a good-looking younger fellow who, everybody could see, was taking her for a ride. It’s been happening since the beginning of time.

She admitted to her husband before a roaring fire in his study after a large dinner that she was in love with Ricky Beaumont and he was in love with her.

“Has it ever occurred to you, my dear,” her husband said, “that Ricky Beaumont might be more in love with what you can do for him than he is with you?”

“Only a person with a vile mind would think of such a thing,” she replied.

“I’ve known for a long time that you weren’t happy in our marriage.”

“It isn’t so much that, Frank. It’s just that I’m young and pretty and I want to be with a man who thrills me.”

“You’re forty-seven.”

“My age doesn’t matter. I don’t look a day over thirty.”

“Age has a way of catching up with you when you least expect it.”

“I’m not surprised that you turn the conversation into something as trivial as age.”

“Does Ricky also believe the age difference to be trivial?”

“Ours is a love for the ages! That I’ve lived a few years longer than he has is absolutely inconsequential.”

“All right. We’ll meet with my attorney and arrange for you to get your divorce.”

Always one to be generous, Franklin Longworth settled ten million dollars on his wife. Almost before the ink was dry on the divorce agreement, Ouida and Ricky Beaumont were married at city hall in a simple ceremony. She wore a modest navy suit and a small hat with a veil. No photographers were present.

They rented a villa in Tuscany, where they spent the first few months of their married life. From there they went to Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Paris, Vienna, Budapest, and Berlin. After a few months in London, Ricky was tired of the rain and cold, he said, so they moved on to sunnier climes.

Before they had celebrated their first wedding anniversary, Ouida began to notice a change in him. Instead of being charming all the time, as she expected him to be, he was moody and withdrawn. He abandoned his writing career, which she had hoped he would pursue. He went for days at a time without speaking to her and insisted on separate bedrooms. When she asked what was wrong, he became violent and accused her of being an old nag. He slapped her in the mouth on more than one occasion and blackened both eyes.

He began drinking heavily, alone, and then with male companions that to Ouida seemed unsavory. He was sometimes gone overnight and when he returned in the morning he was always dirty and disheveled. He lived a separate, secret life apart from hers and remained drunk much of the time.

To have something to do to pass the time, he took up gambling. At first it was races and sporting events and then he began frequenting casinos. He was, she soon discovered, addicted to the roulette table and other games of chance. He squandered huge sums of money every night and never gained a cent.

“Our money does have a limit, you know,” she said to him during one of his infrequent sober periods. “As does my patience.”

“Can’t you leave me alone for just one minute?” he said.

“What will we do when you’ve squandered all our money and we have nothing left?”

“I’m not going to do that, I promise.”

“I can see now that our marriage was a mistake,” she said. “I gave up a good man for you.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“I gave up everything for you.”

“Go stick your head in the oven.”

When she was just on the verge of trying to figure out a way to extricate herself from the marriage, he came to her one night in her bedroom with tears in his eyes.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news, old girl,” he said.

“You’re in trouble with the police?”

“Worse than that. We’re broke.”

“We’re what?”

“All our money is gone.”

“What? How are we going to live?”

“I know what I’m going to do. It’s every man for himself now.”

That was the last time she saw him. In the morning he was gone and he didn’t tell her where he was going. He didn’t even bother to take any of his belongings with him.

She sold what jewelry she had left to pay a few outstanding debts and to buy a plane ticket home. When she arrived back in America, all the people in her crowd had moved on. There was no one to whom she could turn for help. Anybody who had known her wouldn’t recognize her anymore. She had gained weight and let herself go. Her hair was gray, her skin sallow, her appearance haggard. Age had caught up with her, as Franklin had told her it would.

Her small reserve of money was dwindling. She tried to find a job but couldn’t. Nobody wanted a fifty-year-old waitress or sales girl with no experience. In her previous life, she had never learned to do anything and had never envisioned a time when she would be forced to earn her own living.

The hotel where she was staying locked her out of her room when she stopped paying. They kept her bags and clothes, which they would be happy to return after she paid the money that was owed.

She began walking the streets, learning where other people like her congregated. She learned the safe places to hide out, to get a bite to eat or a bed for the night. Few had ever fallen so far and so fast.

She awakes in the long, low room with all the beds. It’s daylight, time to get up and move on. When she reaches for her shoes to put them on, they are gone. The wild-haired woman in the bed beside her is also gone.

She begins crying uncontrollably. “How could this happen to me?” she sobs.

“Are you all right, honey?” a woman with a little girl asks her.

“Somebody took my shoes! What am I going to do now?”

“See the lady at the desk. She’ll fix you up.”

The old woman from the night before has a cardboard box of discarded shoes under her desk. Ouida looks through it until she finds a pair of red tennis shoes that fit her.

“Thank you for your kindness,” she says. “I’m all right now.”

She goes out into the bright, cold air and begins walking. The streets are crowded, the time of morning when people are headed for their places of business. Somebody is certain to notice her and hand her some money, enough to get a decent breakfast, without her having to ask for it. These things happen much more often than she might have imagined.

She rarely looks directly at individual people, but she can’t help noticing an older man walking toward her, a man unlike anybody else. He wears an overcoat and a bowler hat. He has an air of assurance and respectability. When she realizes it’s Franklin Longworth, her heart skips a beat. She makes a sharp turn to the left to try to avoid him, but he has already seen her.

“Ouida!” he calls. “Is that you?”

“Hello, Franklin,” she says.

“Why didn’t you let me know you were in town?”

“I don’t know.”

He looks her up and down. “Things not going so good?” he asks.

“Well, I…”

“Let me buy you breakfast. We can talk.”

“Well, I…”

He takes her by the arm and leads her to a restaurant down the street.

“You’re looking well,” she says, after they are seated.

“I wish I could say the same for you.”

“I know. I’m not the person I was.”

“You and Ricky all washed up?”

“Yes. I’m finished with him. Or rather, he’s finished with me.”

“Did you hear I got married again?”

“No, I hadn’t heard.”

“Her name is Katherine. You’d like her. She was a widow, has two sons. I’ve come to think of them as my own.”

“I’m happy for you, Frank.”

“Where are you staying?”

“Well, I was staying at the Fulbright Hotel, but…”

“You could no longer afford it?”

“You always had a way of seeing right through me, Frank.”

“Can I help in any way.”

“You were always so good, Frank, and I was such a fool. You gave me everything a woman could possibly want and I threw it all away.”

“For love?”

“For love.”

“Well, it’s all in the past now,” he says. “Time to move forward.”

“Yes, move forward.”

“We have an opening for a maid if you’d be interested.”

“A maid?”

“Yes.”

“You’d hire me as a maid?”

“I don’t see why not. Nobody has to know about your past. We’ll keep it between ourselves.”

“What would your wife think?”

He takes a pad out of his pocket and begins writing. “I got rid of the old place,” he says. “Too many painful associations. We now live at this address.” He rips a page from the pad and hands it to her.

“You’ve always treated me better than I deserve, Frank,” she says.

“You won’t have to start to work right away. Take some time to get yourself rested up. A couple of weeks, if you want.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” he says, “I was just on my way for an appointment. I’m late as it is.” He takes his wallet out and hands her a fifty-dollar bill. “Order anything you want to eat.”

“Always so thoughtful, dear.”

“Come to us when you’re ready. I’ll tell my wife you’re coming and she’ll make the necessary arrangements.”

“It’s been wonderful seeing you again, Frank.”

He pats her on the hand and smiles and then he’s gone.

She leaves the restaurant a few minutes after he does with the fifty-dollar bill in her hand and the piece of paper on which he has written his address. When she sees a man on the street who looks worse than she does, minus a leg, she gives him the money. As for the address, she lets the wind take it from her hand and watches as it blows into the gutter. After she has done these things, she fades into the crowd and is seen or heard of no more.

April 24, 2015April 25, 2015 by allen0997

An American Son ~ A Capsule Book Review

An American Son ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Marco Rubio was born in Miami in 1971. His parents came to the United States from Cuba during the 1950s, in search of a better life for themselves and their children. They had no formal education and job skills that would only ever allow them to work in menial jobs, but they were determined that their four children would have better lives than they had had. They survived as Americans without exactly thriving and saw their son Marco become an attorney, a family man with four children of his own, and a successful and powerful politician.

An American Son is Marco Rubio’s story, from his modest upbringing in Miami to his hard-fought election in 2010 as Florida’s junior senator. He began in Florida politics when he was elected to the West Miami City Commission. From there he went to the Florida House or Representatives, where he was eventually elected speaker of the house. When his term of office ended there, he considered leaving politics for good and concentrating on his law practice, but the opportunity came up for him to run for the United States Senate. At a time when nobody believed he could win, he challenged a powerful and popular sitting governor, Charlie Crist, for the nomination of his party to run in the general election. Defying the odds and also conventional wisdom (not to mention a barrage of vicious personal attacks), he won the nomination of his party and went on to the win the general election in a three-way race. It’s a story of perseverance, of not giving up in the face of overwhelming odds.

Too often politicians in Washington, with their $1500 suits and their luxury vacations, come across as elitist and out of touch. Marco Rubio might prove over time to be a different kind of politician. He wasn’t born into a privileged environment. He has lived in the real world and he knows what it’s like to struggle. He comes across as a decent man, maybe overly ambitious but not overly egotistical. He’s not perfect, he makes mistakes, and he’s figuring out the way as he goes along the same as everybody else.

An American Son is breezy reading, never ponderous or bogged down in unnecessary detail. I found the whole book interesting but especially the second half where Marco details his up-and-down campaign for the Senate where he was attacked daily by the opposition. Some politicians have the job dropped into their laps because of what their names are, while others have to work for it, night and day, over months and sometimes years. It’s not an easy road and it takes a certain kind of person to want to do it. Somebody with plenty of drive and ambition but also with the conviction he can make a difference in the world.

April 9, 2015 by allen0997