The Tattooed Man

In 2016, I wrote of my rediscovery of Howard Pease, the author of many boys' adventure books I read when I was about 12 and 13.  I had forgotten both the names of the books and the name of the author, until a friend happened to mention Pease's name in a way that caused the pieces to fall into place.

And so I wrote my review of Thunderbolt House in September 2016.  But Thunderbolt House, a story of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, was not a typical Pease adventure.  Pease is famous as a writer of sea adventures, especially the "Tod Moran series."   Pease was born in 1894 in Stockton, California, and graduated from college at Stanford.  He interrupted his education to serve in World War I, and spent two of his summers while at the university working in the engine room of cargo ships.

He published 22 novels during his career, most of them about life at sea.  He often criticized the "soft" stories that children's literature offered boys.  His books emphasized the value of hard physical labor, courage, and a sense of adventure -- in addition to intelligence and sensitivity.  As well as writing books, Pease was also a high school English teacher, and became principal of Los Altos high school, just south of Palo Alto.

All of his works have been out of print for some time.  His first published work -- and introduction to the Tod Moran stories -- was The Tattooed Man (pub. 1926), a copy of which I purchased this week.  The book went through a number of printings, but I purchased a paperback edition printed in 1948.  The 1961 paperback reprinting of Thunderbolt House, which I purchased second hand, showed a cover price of 35 cents.  My copy of The Tattooed Man, printed 14 years earlier in a similar format, probably sold for 20 or 25 cents.  I bought it used, with yellowing, somewhat fragile pages, but otherwise in reasonably good shape, for only $35 through Amazon. 

Needless to say, Pease's books aren't available on Kindle.

The Tattooed Man introduces us to 17-year-old Tod Moran as he walks out of San Francisco's Ferry Building, onto the Embarcadero, looking for Pier 43.  His older brother, Neil, had served for a couple of years as a purser on a cargo ship, sending post cards and letters home from romantic locations to a starry-eyed younger brother.  Then, the cards and letters suddenly stopped coming.  Tod plans to visit the shipping company at Pier 43, and find out what happened.

Something mysterious is afoot, and he ends up signing on as mess boy on the company's almost-derelict cargo ship, the Araby, bound for Marseilles via the Panama Canal.   By the end of the first day at sea, all of Tod's romantic images of life at sea, derived from excessive reading of boys' literature, have been dashed.  The life of a crewman, as opposed to an officer, is a life hard and brutish.

But also instructive, both to Tod and to us as readers.  Although the plot is a bit melodramatic, with skullduggery and insurance fraud afoot, the descriptions of how a ship worked -- at least in the 1920s -- and how it was manned are informative and fascinating.  And not just for "young adults."  Without trying to outline the plot, we follow Tod and the Araby through a California coastal storm and Tod's first seasickness, through the Canal, across the Atlantic, and into port in Marseilles.  Tod's adventures then continue ashore, mostly afoot, from Marseilles to Antibes, near Cannes. 

Tod is a resourceful young man, who -- despite being considered a rich "toff" -- learns to survive, living and working shoulder to shoulder with overworked, bitter, and definitely non-genteel crewmen.  He is lured into a boxing  match with a vicious, tough, and muscular engine room worker, and wins because of his high school boxing lessons and sharper wit.  Although everyone, including Tod, throws around language that we consider offensive today -- "Chink," "wop," "nigger" are examples -- and although we are assured that all the men and officers swear obscenely and grotesquely, the oaths we hear are such as "Sufferin' catfish," and "drat," and "golly." 

Needless to say, Tod does find his brother, and the forces of evil are averted.  He arrives back in San Francisco, glad to be on dry land once more.  Would he ever sail again?  He isn't certain. The book concludes:

The Araby's upper decks lay deserted.  Her funnel and foremast towered black against the blazing sky.  Gulls swooped and wheeled about them, settled upon the bridge rails, upon the lifeboats, peering with curious eyes down at the galley.  A departing cargo liner went by toward the headlands, and the gulls, with raucous cries, rose in circles and winged their way to sea.

What do you think?  Even forgetting that this was only the first book of the Tod Moran series! 

Pease based The Tattooed Man on two of his own voyages as a crew member, and on a walking trip he took as a student from Marseilles into Italy.

These were books that strongly attracted young teenage boys in the 1950s.  The fact that they have gone out of print suggests that kids now find them too dated to be interesting.  Most young adult literature is now written by women for, primarily, girls.  Those books that are intended more for boys tend to show boys how to understand their feelings and how to handle their social relationships with others.  Without disparaging that kind of story, I'd like to believe that books that encourage adventure and physical courage can still find a teenage audience -- and, in today's world, with girls as well as with boys.

Rebecca

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

British writer Daphne du Maurier is well known, but I've never read any of her stories.  Last night, however, I watched Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 adaptation of Rebecca, the sixth in the current Seattle Art Museum's Hitchcock film series.

According to a Variety review at the time, the film was "too tragic and deeply psychological to hit the fancy of wide audience appeal." But the film received eleven Academy Award nominations, and was awarded Oscars for Best Picture and Best Black and White Cinematography.  In the current SAM series, Rebecca is the earliest Hitchcock film to be produced by an American studio, although it retains a British setting in Cornwall.

I have no idea whether the shift from a British to an American studio accounts for the difference, but the production values are vastly more sophisticated than in the earlier films in the series.  For those unfamiliar with the film, or the 1997 TV adaptation of the novel, aristocrat Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) meets a naïve young woman (Joan Fontaine) in Monte Carlo, sweeps her off her feet, marries her on the spot, and takes her to his home ("Manderley") in Cornwall.   The house -- both exterior and interior -- is breathtaking -- a neo-Gothic take on Brideshead.   Typical American film-making -- no expense appears to have been spared.

The young woman -- referred to only as the "second Mrs. de Winter" -- is intimidated, both by the house and by its enormous staff, as well might she be.  She quickly learns that Rebecca -- the first Mrs. de Winter -- was a famous beauty highly respected by all.  She encounters the frigid hostility of the housekeeper -- Mrs. Danvers -- who apparently not only was devoted to Rebecca, but had somewhat deeper feelings for her, as well.  (Hitchcock made several adjustments to the script to get the movie past the censors, but managed to supply the lesbian overtones through Mrs. Danvers's acting, facial expressions, and voice.)

How did Rebecca die?  She may or may not have been murdered, may or may not have committed suicide.  Or something else.  The last third of the movie becomes a whodunit, made unnecessarily complicated, again, because of the censors' objections to elements of the plot as written by du Maurier.  The inquest scenes are interesting, even if the plot's resolution seems to come somewhat out of the blue.

All quibbles are forgiven, however, upon viewing the magnificent final scene, as Mrs. Danvers wanders about the house, setting it on fire -- it made me think of Lucia di Lammermoor without the singing -- and the entire Gothic pile, fully engulfed in flames, comes crashing down upon her.

It's ok.  No one really liked her. Pity about the house, however.

Traveling musically

I always tell myself that I don't much care for "impressionism" in music (usually described as a style of music written between about 1890 and 1925).  And I guess I don't.  I don't hate it.  I just don't go out of my way to listen to it.

But I love travel to foreign countries.  And travel evoked by impressionism was what the Seattle Symphony's concert last night was all about.

The concert began with Jacques Ibert's haunting Escales (or Ports of Call), offering flavors ("impressions," if you will) of Palermo, north Africa, and Valencia.  The sounds of northern Africa were especially romantic, with the wailing of the oboe suggesting a stereotype of "Oriental" music, and the Valencia movement was filled with Spanish themes.

Respighi's well-known Fountains of Rome suggested the sounds of four famous Roman fountains at various times of day.  And to travel among these Mediterranean ports, one best travels by sea -- hence, the major work of the evening, the changing moods of Debussy's La Mer.

But the number that appealed most to me -- and, judging from the applause, to most of the audience -- was a piece not even on the scheduled program, a piece untouched by impressionism. Because of the illness of the scheduled pianist, the performance of Alexander Scriabin's early-career piano concerto was scratched, and was replaced by Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23.  The pianist, Inon Barnatan, hypnotized me and the entire audience with his smooth, buttery, almost liquid playing of the Adagio movement, and, even more notably, of the two fast movements. 

Looking back, I realize that I enjoyed the opening Ibert number the best of the three impressionist compositions.  By the time we reached La Mer, the concluding work, the rambling style of impressionism, apparently lacking in structure -- the program notes did emphasize that La Mer does have structure, and could almost be considered a symphony, but I was having none of it -- had begun to bore me, and I was checking my watch.

It was the Mozart concerto, and the brilliant playing of Barnatan, that really made the evening worthwhile for me.  If I ever again attend a performance of La Mer, I hope it's performed nearer the beginning of the program before my mind has begun to drift.

Ozymandias

My name is OzymandiasOzymandias Pharaoh Rameses II (reigned 1279-1213 BCE). According to the OED, the statue was once 57 feet tall., King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Abington is a small suburb of Philadelphia.  Its sole high school is named -- logically -- Abington high school.  Or, rather, was.

According to the New York Times, a Wall Street billionaire has generously donated $25 million to the school for renovation purposes.  But he has imposed a few small conditions -- (1) the school would be renamed after him; (2) his portrait would be displayed prominently in the building; (3) various areas of the school would be named after his twin brothers; and (4) he would have final approval of the school's new logo.

The school board accepted the conditions.  And the money.  A community's explosion of outrage has ensued.

I'm tempted to laugh, but "people who live in glass houses," etc."   My own high school was named after its lumber baron founder.  But then, so was the town itself.  Both town and high school, along with most of the public buildings in town, were the inspiration -- and beneficiaries -- of the founder.  The nexus between founder and high school was at least organic.

The Times article made me wonder.  What goes through the mind of a person who demands that the institution benefitting from his generosity be named after him?  (For that matter, what goes through the mind of a man who names every hotel and resort he owns after himself?) 

I suppose in part it's just a way of bragging about one's success, like driving around in an overpriced car.  But for many, I suspect -- especially those who seek to put their names on schools or opera houses or other institutions that will survive long into the future -- it's a hankering after immortality.  "Years from now," the philanthropist tells himself, "the public will remember me and my well-lived life as the cause of their great good fortune."

Hey, even I like to read published appellate decisions that have my name affixed to them as counsel!  I dream of law students two centuries from now pondering in their minds -- who was this brilliant lawyer who triumphed in this important case regarding a car's failure to stop at a red light?

It's all illusory, of course.  Even if the philanthropist's name isn't replaced after his death by the name of someone with even more money -- remember poor Avery Fisher and his hall at Lincoln Center? -- his pre-death hopes and dreams will still eventually join his body as dust.

Percy Shelley wrote his famous sonnet Ozymandias about a great Egyptian pharaoh who built a huge statue of himself in order to remind the future of his power and greatness.  A leader to be reckoned with.  A household word.  And today -- nothing left but an inscription half covered by the desert's shifting sands.

I hope the Wall Street billionaire's true motivation is to improve Abington high school.  He can buy that for $25 million.  Immortality is much more expensive.  In fact, priceless.

In memoriam

Loki

“Feline Extraordinaire”
2004-2018

 

"Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

Gooood eeeevening ....

After the Seattle Art Museum's presentation of nine Ingmar Bergman films last quarter -- all cerebral, all leaving lingering questions that tormented my mind and agitated my blog -- it's something of a change to move into SAM's spring series.  Nine films from the early, British-oriented period of director Alfred Hitchcock's career.

Those of us of a certain age recall the TV program, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," a weekly Sunday night tale of the often humorously macabre.  The unforgettable introduction featured a sketched profile of the director, into which Hitchcock himself walked.  He then offered a short introduction to the night's story, often humorous even when the story itself was somewhat ghastly. 

The introductory theme was Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette," which anyone who was a kid at the time could always hum at appropriate times the following day.

Unfortunately, I missed the first two films -- The Man Who Knew Too Much and Sabotage.  Last night, however, I jumped into the series for the first time, with the 1935 production of The 39 Steps. 

The film is considered something of a masterpiece of British escapist fare, but hardly requires the focused concentration  -- in the theater or in this blog -- of a Bergman film.  Man bumps into a woman in London who tells him of a secret spy conspiracy that plans to turn over British military secrets to an unnamed foe, woman murdered in his hotel room (with giant knife protruding from her back), enemies attempt to do him in as well, while Scotland Yard seeks to arrest him for the murder.

Man heads for a small Scots village circled on a map found on the murdered woman's person, zooming off to Edinburgh on a beautiful 1930s Flying Scotsman train.  Man wanders through black and white Scottish scenery in search of the village, only to discover that he's walked into the headquarters of the enemy.  He escapes, is captured by police and handcuffed to a lovely but hostile woman, escapes again still handcuffed, and improbably evades both enemies and police for most of the film. 

Spoiler alert -- police finally nab the spy, man is vindicated, and handcuffed girl looks up at him adoringly.

The plot isn't much on paper, but Hitchcock's direction is great, the photography of Scotland is stunning, and humor is injected into virtually every scene.  You leave the theater grinning, which is more than I could say for Bergman's Persona!

Six more films in the series, concluding with Dial M for Murder.

Depressive states

Loki on the prowl
April 3, 2018

My birthday dinner at Café Lago,
right here in the Montlake
neighborhood

Yeah, I know.  It's been nine days since my last posting.  You know I haven't been on vacation, because I always brag about my vacations long in advance.

Ok, two things.  First, my sister, her middle son Denny, and Denny's girlfriend Jessie were visiting the better part of four days.  That's a decent excuse.  The other problem you don't want to hear about -- the protracted death of my cat Loki.  Which, incidentally, is still a work in progress.


Bloedel Preserve on Bainbridge

Situational depression.  That's like clinical depression, but with an obvious cause and of limited duration.  That's my basic trouble right now, I suspect.  Embarrassing, because I have confronted many problems in my life with a certain insouciance, or at least appearance of insouciance, and it seems odd that now -- in my dotage, if you must -- I would be laid low by the impending death of a cat. 

Hiking in Interlaken Park,
a couple of blocks from
my house. 

But such is the case, and I've talked about it too much already.  Loki himself is being far more mature and circumspect about the matter -- he isn't making Traviata out of it, lying in bed with one forearm over his eyes, singing interminable arias.  So I will attempt adulthood, and trouble you no more about the matter.


Ferry ride to Bainbridge Island

The visit by relatives was very enjoyable.  Rather than bore you with what was really just a family affair, I'll throw in a few photos (plus one of Loki as he was today) and call it a blog post.

Enjoy.