On Fridays in June TCM is showing a series of films noirs. I have seen most of these films and would particularly recommend the following:
June 5. Raoul Walsh's High Sierra (1941), very early in the film noir cycle but an excellent example of the fatalism found in these films.
June 12. Edgar Ulmer's Detour (1945), a dark and elegant film made on a shoestring, and Joseph H. Lewis's Gun Crazy, a story of American obsessions.
June 19. Robert Siodmak's The Killers (1946), from a Hemingway story
June 26. Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past (1947), a movie that practically defines film noir.
Other films this month I like a great deal:
June 8. Raoul Walsh's Gentleman Jim (1942), a fascinating and funny boxing movie, about Jim Corbett.
June 10. John Ford's Judge Priest (1934), one of three films Ford made with Will Rogers; it includes a lovely performance by Stepin Fetchit.
June 12 Erich Von Stroheim's Greed (1914), the two hours that remain of Von Stroheim's 6-hour film, a faithful adaptation of Frank Norris's McTeague.
June 20 Phil Karlson's 99 River Street (1953), a powerful film at the end of the noir cycle, when redemption was becoming possible..
June 24. Blake Edwards's 10 (1979), a film of its time that also transcends it, in its evocation of desire.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Friday, May 29, 2015
Nicholas Blake's The Smiler With the Knife
Ubi es nunc, amice?
In Urbis castra hominis.
Conversation between Alison Grove and Georgia Strangeways in Nicholas Blake's The Smiler With the Knife, Harper and Row, 1939.
I read The Smiler With the Knife as part of my celebration of Orson Welles's 100th birthday. The Nicholas Blake novel was one of the books, along with Heart of Darkness, that Welles had planned to make as a movie before Citizen Kane but could not get approved by RKO. One can see what attracted Welles to this story, about a possible Fascist takeover of England, Welles sharing the socialist sympathies of poet Cecil Day-Lewis, who wrote the book under his nom de plume. Most of Blake's "mysteries" deal with amateur sleuth Nigel Strangeways, but all the sleuthing in this book is done by Georgia, his wife, who infiltrates a secret Fascist organization at considerable risk to her own life. "I'm asking you to do it for England," says Sir John Strangeways, her husband's uncle.
The book is full of detail about English life, both in the country and in London, and there are bombs and shooting and dangerous chases. At one point Georgia disguises herself as a Santa Claus and is discovered because she kept her high heels on, just as a fake nun was discovered for the same reason in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes,1939 (Blake's book would have made a good Hitchcock film if he hadn't already made the rather similar The Thirty-Nine Steps, 1935,from a John Buchan novel). There was significant sympathy for Germany and Italy in 1939 in England; the idea of a Fascist coup was not as far-fetched at that point as it may seem now and Blake does an effective job of demonstrating the reasons for that sympathy. And Blake is not afraid to use words such as "phlegmatically" and "pusillanimity" when they are necessary and appropriate, though I am not so sure that some of the Fascists may not have been familiar with Latin. Welles would have been an excellent Chilton Caneloe, the secret Fascist leader, and perhaps Joan Fontaine as Georgia.
note: in the Latin conversation above (not translated in the novel; I think Blake assumed his audience would understand it) Alison asks Georgia, who is on the run, where she is and Georgia replies she is in the town of the fort of man, hoping that will convey the idea of Manchester, originally a Roman fort.
In Urbis castra hominis.
Conversation between Alison Grove and Georgia Strangeways in Nicholas Blake's The Smiler With the Knife, Harper and Row, 1939.
I read The Smiler With the Knife as part of my celebration of Orson Welles's 100th birthday. The Nicholas Blake novel was one of the books, along with Heart of Darkness, that Welles had planned to make as a movie before Citizen Kane but could not get approved by RKO. One can see what attracted Welles to this story, about a possible Fascist takeover of England, Welles sharing the socialist sympathies of poet Cecil Day-Lewis, who wrote the book under his nom de plume. Most of Blake's "mysteries" deal with amateur sleuth Nigel Strangeways, but all the sleuthing in this book is done by Georgia, his wife, who infiltrates a secret Fascist organization at considerable risk to her own life. "I'm asking you to do it for England," says Sir John Strangeways, her husband's uncle.
The book is full of detail about English life, both in the country and in London, and there are bombs and shooting and dangerous chases. At one point Georgia disguises herself as a Santa Claus and is discovered because she kept her high heels on, just as a fake nun was discovered for the same reason in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes,1939 (Blake's book would have made a good Hitchcock film if he hadn't already made the rather similar The Thirty-Nine Steps, 1935,from a John Buchan novel). There was significant sympathy for Germany and Italy in 1939 in England; the idea of a Fascist coup was not as far-fetched at that point as it may seem now and Blake does an effective job of demonstrating the reasons for that sympathy. And Blake is not afraid to use words such as "phlegmatically" and "pusillanimity" when they are necessary and appropriate, though I am not so sure that some of the Fascists may not have been familiar with Latin. Welles would have been an excellent Chilton Caneloe, the secret Fascist leader, and perhaps Joan Fontaine as Georgia.
note: in the Latin conversation above (not translated in the novel; I think Blake assumed his audience would understand it) Alison asks Georgia, who is on the run, where she is and Georgia replies she is in the town of the fort of man, hoping that will convey the idea of Manchester, originally a Roman fort.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Murder Man and Crime of Passion
Tim Whelan's Murder Man(1935) and Gerd Oswald's Crime of Passion (1957) are two low-budget films that each captures anxieties of its era.
Tim Whelan was an under-the-radar director of low-budget B pictures and Murder Man was Spencer Tracy's first film for MGM. Tracy plays a newspaper man and dipsomaniac (his boss actually uses this term when he is looking for him in saloons, a term not often heard in films) who helps to find the murderer of a dubious businessman, the murderer being the financier's partner. With Tracy's help the partner is tried and sentenced to the electric chair and when Tracy interviews him in Sing Sing he realizes he cannot go through with his plan, which was to murder the crooked businessman and frame his partner. Tracy had killed the man and in the end confesses. The woman who had killed herself at the beginning of the movie was Tracy's wife, who had left Tracy for the businessman and given the crook all their money. The film functions as both a breezy newspaper story of the era and as a story about alcoholism, suicide, murder and despair, as well as something of a reminder that Tracy himself often went on alcoholic binges between pictures. Virginia Bruce plays the sympathetic advice columnist on Tracy's newspaper who loves Tracy, though Tracy is too deep in alcoholism and misery to love her in return.
In Gerd Oswald's Crime of Passion Barbara Stanwyck plays a woman advice columnist on a San Francisco newspaper who falls in love with a Los Angeles cop, played by Sterling Hayden. She gives up her job to marry Hayden and moves to a box of a house in LA, where all the cops' wives get together to talk about clothes and recipes while the men play cards and drink beer. Her own ambition thwarted, Stanwyck turns to promoting her husband's ambition, which he has little of himself. She has an affair with Hayden's boss, played by Raymond Burr, in the hopes of getting a promotion for her husband. When the promotion doesn't happen Stanwyck kills Burr with a gun stolen from evidence and is eventually caught by her husband, the man assigned to investigate the crime. Gerd Oswald had a distinguished career in America and Germany making intense and dark dramas on low budgets. Oswald and cinematographer Joesph LaShelle shoot through the bric-a-brac of homes in LA to capture the feeling of being trapped, felt by Stanwyck and, by extension, many women in the fifties in American who substituted their husband's ambition for their own
Tim Whelan was an under-the-radar director of low-budget B pictures and Murder Man was Spencer Tracy's first film for MGM. Tracy plays a newspaper man and dipsomaniac (his boss actually uses this term when he is looking for him in saloons, a term not often heard in films) who helps to find the murderer of a dubious businessman, the murderer being the financier's partner. With Tracy's help the partner is tried and sentenced to the electric chair and when Tracy interviews him in Sing Sing he realizes he cannot go through with his plan, which was to murder the crooked businessman and frame his partner. Tracy had killed the man and in the end confesses. The woman who had killed herself at the beginning of the movie was Tracy's wife, who had left Tracy for the businessman and given the crook all their money. The film functions as both a breezy newspaper story of the era and as a story about alcoholism, suicide, murder and despair, as well as something of a reminder that Tracy himself often went on alcoholic binges between pictures. Virginia Bruce plays the sympathetic advice columnist on Tracy's newspaper who loves Tracy, though Tracy is too deep in alcoholism and misery to love her in return.
In Gerd Oswald's Crime of Passion Barbara Stanwyck plays a woman advice columnist on a San Francisco newspaper who falls in love with a Los Angeles cop, played by Sterling Hayden. She gives up her job to marry Hayden and moves to a box of a house in LA, where all the cops' wives get together to talk about clothes and recipes while the men play cards and drink beer. Her own ambition thwarted, Stanwyck turns to promoting her husband's ambition, which he has little of himself. She has an affair with Hayden's boss, played by Raymond Burr, in the hopes of getting a promotion for her husband. When the promotion doesn't happen Stanwyck kills Burr with a gun stolen from evidence and is eventually caught by her husband, the man assigned to investigate the crime. Gerd Oswald had a distinguished career in America and Germany making intense and dark dramas on low budgets. Oswald and cinematographer Joesph LaShelle shoot through the bric-a-brac of homes in LA to capture the feeling of being trapped, felt by Stanwyck and, by extension, many women in the fifties in American who substituted their husband's ambition for their own
Friday, May 15, 2015
Billy Wilder's Fedora and David Cronenberg's Map to the Stars
Billy Wilder is too cynical to believe even his own cynicism.
Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema, Dutton 1968
Sarris wrote before Wilder's older and more mellow period, when he made three beautiful and sometimes funny films about growing older: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), Avanti (1972), and Fedora (1978). Significantly all three of these films take place outside of contemporary America and in the case of Fedora, Wilder returned to Germany (originally from Austria, he had fled Hitler) to make the film, though with mostly American actors. It is a film about the difficulties of growing older in Hollywood, where "the kids with beards have taken over. They don't need a script, just a hand-held camera with a zoom lens." So says the older William Holden, star of Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950), in an effort to lure Fedora, star of the forties with whom he had had a brief fling, out of retirement to make a new version of Anna Karenina. Holden eventually finds out that Fedora has destroyed her looks in an effort to keep her youthful appearance and had replaced herself with her daughter, whom she had trained to act like her. Fedora is, of course, based on the elusive Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, both of them having made films for Wilder (he wrote Ninotchka, 1939, for Garbo and directed Marlene Dietrich in Witness for the Prosecution, 1958) and both of whom regularly resisted attempts to lure them out of retirement. Fedora has a lovely Miklos Rozsa score (he also wrote the music for Wilder's Sherlock Holmes film) which captures the melancholy mood of the film as effectively as Bernard Herrman does for the similarly-themed Vertigo (1958).
If you want contemporary cynicism about Hollywood you can't do better than independent Canadian director David Cronenberg's Map to the Stars. Cronenberg became known as a director of science fiction and horror but has lately veered away from The Fly (1986) and Dead Ringers (1988) into films about the horrors of everyday life. A Map to the Stars is about Hollywood, where Julianne Moore plays an aging actress having difficulty finding parts and is killed by her pyromaniac assistant, who bonds with her own obnoxious child star brother. Everyone is looking for their next part or their next scam and everybody takes advantage of everybody else in often desperate and futile pursuit of their own career.
Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema, Dutton 1968
Sarris wrote before Wilder's older and more mellow period, when he made three beautiful and sometimes funny films about growing older: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), Avanti (1972), and Fedora (1978). Significantly all three of these films take place outside of contemporary America and in the case of Fedora, Wilder returned to Germany (originally from Austria, he had fled Hitler) to make the film, though with mostly American actors. It is a film about the difficulties of growing older in Hollywood, where "the kids with beards have taken over. They don't need a script, just a hand-held camera with a zoom lens." So says the older William Holden, star of Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950), in an effort to lure Fedora, star of the forties with whom he had had a brief fling, out of retirement to make a new version of Anna Karenina. Holden eventually finds out that Fedora has destroyed her looks in an effort to keep her youthful appearance and had replaced herself with her daughter, whom she had trained to act like her. Fedora is, of course, based on the elusive Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, both of them having made films for Wilder (he wrote Ninotchka, 1939, for Garbo and directed Marlene Dietrich in Witness for the Prosecution, 1958) and both of whom regularly resisted attempts to lure them out of retirement. Fedora has a lovely Miklos Rozsa score (he also wrote the music for Wilder's Sherlock Holmes film) which captures the melancholy mood of the film as effectively as Bernard Herrman does for the similarly-themed Vertigo (1958).
If you want contemporary cynicism about Hollywood you can't do better than independent Canadian director David Cronenberg's Map to the Stars. Cronenberg became known as a director of science fiction and horror but has lately veered away from The Fly (1986) and Dead Ringers (1988) into films about the horrors of everyday life. A Map to the Stars is about Hollywood, where Julianne Moore plays an aging actress having difficulty finding parts and is killed by her pyromaniac assistant, who bonds with her own obnoxious child star brother. Everyone is looking for their next part or their next scam and everybody takes advantage of everybody else in often desperate and futile pursuit of their own career.
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Springfield Rifle and Crime Wave: two films by Andre De Toth
Andre De Toth's most interesting films reveal an understanding of the instability and outright treachery of human relationships.
Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema, Dutton 1968
Springfield Rifle is a movie with a brutal edge and a certain amount of realpolitik.
J. Hoberman, An Army of Phantoms, The New Press, 2011
De Toth's treatment of betrayals and reversals of character of the ambiguously motivated Sims in Crime Wave is direct and free of moral posturing.
Blake Lucas, Film Noir, The Overlook Press 1979
Springfield Rifle was released in 1952 and Crime Wave in 1954, during the time the Rosenbergs were arrested, tried and executed for espionage. Both films deal with questions of loyalty and secrets. Springfield Rifle was shot on Colorado locations in intense blue and browns by Edwin DuPar and takes place during the Civil War. Gary Cooper is arrested and sentenced to death for espionage but it turns out he was actually acting for the Union, posing as a Confederate sympathizer to expose the real spy, a Union officer. De Toth's use of snow as a visual motif (as in his Day of the Outlaw, 1959) and a violent scene where Cooper slashes an opponent's buttocks to keep him from riding his horse are among the memorable elements of a film that emphasizes the importance of superior firepower (the new Springfield rifle) and counterespionage.
Crime Wave was beautifully photographed in stark black-and-white, mostly at night on Los Angeles locations, by Bert Glennon. It emphasizes the limits of loyalty and authority and the need to inform when necessary. Gene Nelson, a dancer who moves beautifully, plays the ex-con Steve Lacey who is harassed by detective Sims (Sterling Hayden), who says "once a crook, always a crook." Lacey is forced to help some old prison buddies rob a bank but manages to inform Sims in time for Sims to stock the bank with cops. Lacey's loyalty to his old friends is overcome by the need to lead a more normal married life.
Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema, Dutton 1968
Springfield Rifle is a movie with a brutal edge and a certain amount of realpolitik.
J. Hoberman, An Army of Phantoms, The New Press, 2011
De Toth's treatment of betrayals and reversals of character of the ambiguously motivated Sims in Crime Wave is direct and free of moral posturing.
Blake Lucas, Film Noir, The Overlook Press 1979
Springfield Rifle was released in 1952 and Crime Wave in 1954, during the time the Rosenbergs were arrested, tried and executed for espionage. Both films deal with questions of loyalty and secrets. Springfield Rifle was shot on Colorado locations in intense blue and browns by Edwin DuPar and takes place during the Civil War. Gary Cooper is arrested and sentenced to death for espionage but it turns out he was actually acting for the Union, posing as a Confederate sympathizer to expose the real spy, a Union officer. De Toth's use of snow as a visual motif (as in his Day of the Outlaw, 1959) and a violent scene where Cooper slashes an opponent's buttocks to keep him from riding his horse are among the memorable elements of a film that emphasizes the importance of superior firepower (the new Springfield rifle) and counterespionage.
Crime Wave was beautifully photographed in stark black-and-white, mostly at night on Los Angeles locations, by Bert Glennon. It emphasizes the limits of loyalty and authority and the need to inform when necessary. Gene Nelson, a dancer who moves beautifully, plays the ex-con Steve Lacey who is harassed by detective Sims (Sterling Hayden), who says "once a crook, always a crook." Lacey is forced to help some old prison buddies rob a bank but manages to inform Sims in time for Sims to stock the bank with cops. Lacey's loyalty to his old friends is overcome by the need to lead a more normal married life.
Monday, May 11, 2015
New York City Ballet, May 10, 2015
At one point I was worried about the NYC Ballet. I have been attending the company's performances for many years and when Balanchine died in 1983 Peter Martins began running the company and Balanchine's ballets were neglected. In recent years, however, Martins's attempts to change the repertory to more ballets by him and others have not met with artistic success. Martins has continued to do new ballets by a range of choreographers, though most of the results have been dreary indeed. Fortunately he has also realized the importance of keeping the Balanchine ballets in better shape and the results were on impressive display Sunday.
First on the program was Walpurgisnacht Ballet, with music by Gounod, from 1980. As Arlene Croce has written, "The choreography here is diabolical and at the same time angelic." (The New Yorker, Feb. 11, 1980). Sara Mearns, principal dancer since 2008, tore across the stage doing chaine turns with an incredible intensity. The music builds up as the speed of the choreography increases and in the last part the dancers have literally let their hair down in a blaze of purple and pink. The role for a man (in this case Ask la Cour) is small but significant, a quiet moment of contemplation until the intensity returns.
Following this was the "exquisite miniature" (Arlene Croce, The New Yorker, June 2, 1980) Sonatine, with music by Ravel, one of the few successful ballets from the 1975 Ravel festival. Tiler Peck and Joaquin De Luz expressed the love for each other and the simultaneous independence so common in Balanchine couples. There was a feeling of spontaneity of expression and playfulness that I would not have felt from the music but for Balanchine's use of it.
It was perhaps unfortunate to include La Valse, with its darkness and death, on this Mother's Day program, but it was beautifully performed by Sterling Hyltin and Jared Angle. In this performance Amar Ramasar did an impressive job as the dark angel, a role I used to see regularly performed by Francisco Moncion in the 70's, long after he was no longer cast in other roles. About this ballet Arlene Croce wrote: "As for Ravel and Balanchine and their elegant ballet noir : waltz fever and dances of death haunted the European lyrical imagination throughout the nineteenth century. When the heroine dies in La Valse the shock has been rolling toward us for a hundred and fifty years." (The New Yorker, June 1, 1981). The image of the doomed dancer putting on the black gloves of death is powerful and Hyltin effectivel conveys its beauty and fatalism, leading to the whirling finale.
Symphony in C was one of the first Balanchine ballets I saw; its beauty captivated me immediately when I first discovered ballet in the seventies and I started to go to the ballet often, especially when Balanchine was alive and every new ballet was different and exciting. In Sunday's performance Maria Kowroski was lovely in the adagio, a part I first knew as Suzanne Farrell's. In some way Symphony is C is about the history of ballet: its adagio is similar to Ivanov's in Swan Lake and is the basis for Balanchine's Diamonds, in Jewels (1967). Like many of Balanchine's ballets it is endlessly complex and beautiful, with many things happening simultaneously, and the ending has more than fifty dancers, the choreography building to an exhilarating climax.
Not only has Martins started keeping the Balanchine ballets in better shape, he has also improved the music (Sunday's conductor was Andrew Sills) and improved the training of a new group of dancers who can do Balanchine's complex and elegant choreography with the speed and attack it requires, both from the men and the women.
First on the program was Walpurgisnacht Ballet, with music by Gounod, from 1980. As Arlene Croce has written, "The choreography here is diabolical and at the same time angelic." (The New Yorker, Feb. 11, 1980). Sara Mearns, principal dancer since 2008, tore across the stage doing chaine turns with an incredible intensity. The music builds up as the speed of the choreography increases and in the last part the dancers have literally let their hair down in a blaze of purple and pink. The role for a man (in this case Ask la Cour) is small but significant, a quiet moment of contemplation until the intensity returns.
Following this was the "exquisite miniature" (Arlene Croce, The New Yorker, June 2, 1980) Sonatine, with music by Ravel, one of the few successful ballets from the 1975 Ravel festival. Tiler Peck and Joaquin De Luz expressed the love for each other and the simultaneous independence so common in Balanchine couples. There was a feeling of spontaneity of expression and playfulness that I would not have felt from the music but for Balanchine's use of it.
It was perhaps unfortunate to include La Valse, with its darkness and death, on this Mother's Day program, but it was beautifully performed by Sterling Hyltin and Jared Angle. In this performance Amar Ramasar did an impressive job as the dark angel, a role I used to see regularly performed by Francisco Moncion in the 70's, long after he was no longer cast in other roles. About this ballet Arlene Croce wrote: "As for Ravel and Balanchine and their elegant ballet noir : waltz fever and dances of death haunted the European lyrical imagination throughout the nineteenth century. When the heroine dies in La Valse the shock has been rolling toward us for a hundred and fifty years." (The New Yorker, June 1, 1981). The image of the doomed dancer putting on the black gloves of death is powerful and Hyltin effectivel conveys its beauty and fatalism, leading to the whirling finale.
Symphony in C was one of the first Balanchine ballets I saw; its beauty captivated me immediately when I first discovered ballet in the seventies and I started to go to the ballet often, especially when Balanchine was alive and every new ballet was different and exciting. In Sunday's performance Maria Kowroski was lovely in the adagio, a part I first knew as Suzanne Farrell's. In some way Symphony is C is about the history of ballet: its adagio is similar to Ivanov's in Swan Lake and is the basis for Balanchine's Diamonds, in Jewels (1967). Like many of Balanchine's ballets it is endlessly complex and beautiful, with many things happening simultaneously, and the ending has more than fifty dancers, the choreography building to an exhilarating climax.
Not only has Martins started keeping the Balanchine ballets in better shape, he has also improved the music (Sunday's conductor was Andrew Sills) and improved the training of a new group of dancers who can do Balanchine's complex and elegant choreography with the speed and attack it requires, both from the men and the women.
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle Book Two: A Man in Love
"You can spend twenty pages describing a trip to the bathroom and hold your readers spellbound"
Geir to his friend Karl Ove, My Struggle Book Two: A Man in Love, (Archipelago Books, 2013), translated by Don Bartlett.
Why does one find Knausgaard's books so strangely compelling? For me it is, to some extent, because of his ability to find poetry in the quotidian and mundane by describing it in detail and giving his own complex feelings about it, articulating things that for many of us lie just beneath the surface and often never come out. Book Two is mostly about Knausgaard's second wife and their three very young children. It is full of fascinating detail about a child's birthday party, making dinner, changing diapers, taking care of children. Knausgaard delights in his children but sometimes broods about how he is perceived as he walks through Stockholm with the children in tow and how taking care of the children interferes with his work.
Perhaps my clearest childhood legacy was that loud voices and aggression frightened me. I hated fighting and scenes.
There are a number of detailed encounters in Book Two and I think what one finds interesting or amusing depends to some extent on one's own life. I was fascinated by the details of the running feud Knausgaard and his wife Linda carry on with their downstairs neighbor, at least partly because Susan and I had regular run-ins with our downstairs neighbor in the last place we lived, who would come up and give us a hard time if we dropped a book on the floor or if our children made too much noise, just as Knausgaard's neighbor did. The difficulties and rewards of having young children is also something with which I identify and, like Knausgaard, I am not fond of making small talk with other parents.
Referring to Sweden: The conformity is laid bare by an absence; opinions diverging from the norm do not exist in public.
The details of life in Sweden as seen by a Norwegian are precisely observed, down to the food, the newspapers and restaurants. As I said in my comments on Book One, Knausgaard simultaneously evokes feelings we all have while relating them to his particular situation and environment.
There is a type of person who consistently says what he means, without adapting it to the situation in which he finds himself, but such individuals are few and far between.
In person Knausgaard says very little, except to a couple of close friends, while in his books he is able to consistently say what he means
The sky above us was also gray, laden with cold rain that lashed the town at regular intervals. Gray but with a different light in it from the gray winter sky, for it was March, and March light was so clear and strong that it penetrated the cloud cover, even on a muggy day like this, and somehow opened all the gates of darkness. There was a gleam in the walls in front of me and in the pavement on the road beneath. The parked cars glinted, each in their own color. Red, blue, dark green, white.
Geir to his friend Karl Ove, My Struggle Book Two: A Man in Love, (Archipelago Books, 2013), translated by Don Bartlett.
Why does one find Knausgaard's books so strangely compelling? For me it is, to some extent, because of his ability to find poetry in the quotidian and mundane by describing it in detail and giving his own complex feelings about it, articulating things that for many of us lie just beneath the surface and often never come out. Book Two is mostly about Knausgaard's second wife and their three very young children. It is full of fascinating detail about a child's birthday party, making dinner, changing diapers, taking care of children. Knausgaard delights in his children but sometimes broods about how he is perceived as he walks through Stockholm with the children in tow and how taking care of the children interferes with his work.
Perhaps my clearest childhood legacy was that loud voices and aggression frightened me. I hated fighting and scenes.
There are a number of detailed encounters in Book Two and I think what one finds interesting or amusing depends to some extent on one's own life. I was fascinated by the details of the running feud Knausgaard and his wife Linda carry on with their downstairs neighbor, at least partly because Susan and I had regular run-ins with our downstairs neighbor in the last place we lived, who would come up and give us a hard time if we dropped a book on the floor or if our children made too much noise, just as Knausgaard's neighbor did. The difficulties and rewards of having young children is also something with which I identify and, like Knausgaard, I am not fond of making small talk with other parents.
Referring to Sweden: The conformity is laid bare by an absence; opinions diverging from the norm do not exist in public.
The details of life in Sweden as seen by a Norwegian are precisely observed, down to the food, the newspapers and restaurants. As I said in my comments on Book One, Knausgaard simultaneously evokes feelings we all have while relating them to his particular situation and environment.
There is a type of person who consistently says what he means, without adapting it to the situation in which he finds himself, but such individuals are few and far between.
In person Knausgaard says very little, except to a couple of close friends, while in his books he is able to consistently say what he means
The sky above us was also gray, laden with cold rain that lashed the town at regular intervals. Gray but with a different light in it from the gray winter sky, for it was March, and March light was so clear and strong that it penetrated the cloud cover, even on a muggy day like this, and somehow opened all the gates of darkness. There was a gleam in the walls in front of me and in the pavement on the road beneath. The parked cars glinted, each in their own color. Red, blue, dark green, white.
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