William Styron, The Long March (1952). Recommended for adults.
Styron (1925-2006) is an acclaimed writer whose work I have largely missed. I read his Lie Down in Darkness (1951) as student and probably missed most of it though I can have been only a few years younger than he was when he published it at the age of 24. His two most famous novels are Sophie’s Choice (1979) and The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967).
I recently read The Long March. In one word: Powerful. To say, accurately, that it is an account of an U. S. Army Reserve training exercise says everything and nothing. It is about an exercise that tests the men involved against each other in a contest of wills, while simultaneously testing them each individually in a battle within himself to keep going on the long march.
It is training and those who drop out get a ride back to base. There is no enemy trying to kill them. Yet it is arduous and soul-destroying to keep moving.
The prose is windowpane clear. The author does not intrude into the action with poetic flourishes or clever comparisons. The story is left to speak for itself. That is indeed bold.
It compares to the hypnotic passages describing physical effort in Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (1948), though the accolade must go to Mailer’s book.
The tools for hyper linking, underlining, and bolding remain off line. Oh, hum.
Author: Michael W Jackson
The Secret in Their Eyes
Films are often based on books, but as a rule films simplify books. A novel of 400 pages is reduced to a screenplay of 60-80 pages or less. Minor characters are deleted, background events glossed over, and the context is muted, if not altogether blanked out, to focus on two or three protagonists. As a reader I have generally found the novel much better than the film that claims to be based on it. There are exceptions and I saw one recently. ‘The Secret in their eyes’ (2009) is from Argentina. To read all about it go to the Internet Movie Data Base. (The tools to insert hyperlinks, bolding, and so on remain off-line.)

It is long at 129 minutes and has a surprisingly high score on IMDB of 8.2. It is well deserved. I read the novel some time ago and my notes (yes, I keep notes about the novels I read) speak of a lack of tension, the icy detachment of the central character, underdevelopment of the judge … concluding that I will not bother to read any more by this writer. Oops! I must have missed quite a lot, because this film follows the book’s plot closely and it is a revelation.
On the surface it is a police procedural with a exotic setting: Argentina during the Dirty War of the 1970s. That is why I read it. Though my notes also say that the Dirty War is never mentioned and there is only one character who seems to have anything to do with it. While that is literally true, the film unmistakably communicates the repression of the society, when even tying a shoe is suspicious, when it is far better not to know than to know … that secret.
Since most of the film is about files, judicial processes, and the writing of a novel an archaic Olivetti typewriter is where much of the action occurs. The lead is Benjamin Esposito. See the film poster above. While there are two murders, each brutal, the tone is, apart from those punctuations, contemplative and inward. The greatest tension in the film is the elevator ride in the devil’s lair. Nothing is said. But when the doors open the judge is gasping for breath and Benjamin is as pale as a ghost. See it!
For action fans there is one incredible scene at a soccer match that leaves one wondering how it was filmed, but filmed it was, not computer magic. The production and direction are supremely confident and fluid in this scene as throughout.
Espositio’s associate Pablo Sandoval also deserves a word. He is played by Guillermo Francella to a T. Sandoval is slovenly, disorganized, reckless, persistent, noble, and — at times — creative. It is his constant study of the files that produces the insight which both resolves the plot and states the meaning of the exercise. No one can change who he is. (Yes, no doubt the Word Police will pounce on that rendering as sexist though it is an accurate description of the point in the story, and it does not mix singular and plural.) Gomez is a fan of Racing soccer club and remains that even when he is on the run. Esposito is hopelessly and wordlessly in love with the judge and has been since the first moment he saw her. Sandoval is a nerd.
What I did not get from the book by Eduardo Sacheri, ‘La Pregunta de sus ojos’ (2005), which by the way I take to mean ‘The question of her eyes,’ is the parallels between the two, intersecting cases of love at a distance.
But thanks to the players and the pacing that gives priority to looks, pauses, and hesitations, it becomes clear first to the viewer and then to the protagonist Benjamin. His unspoken love for the judge is very like the love Isidore Gomez had for his victim, and like Isidore he is incapable of expressing it in a positive way. Or is he? On several occasions the damn he has built around his emotions seems about to burst, but it holds, until a delightful, if incredible, last scene when the judge says, with characteristic understatement, ‘It will be complicated.’
Pedants note. The novel, in editions after the film, has been retitled to match the film.
Conclusion? I will re-read the book, and I suggest that others might do both, read the book and see the film. What is that secret? I think I know. We each have to find it for ourselves.
SBS late night movies has once again given us a gem.
The dean of film reviewers, Roger Ebert, gave it a glowing review. By the way, he is absolutely right about the judge. (As noted above, the hyperlink tool remains unavailable.)
Bony and Arthur Upfield
I started reading Arthur Upfield novels in the 1970s. I liked them for their strong sense of place, ear for the spoken Strine, and the fast pace of the mystery within them. I watched the television series when it came along to see how it translated these qualities to the screen. Upfield published the first book in 1929 and the last in …. 1963: thirty-four in all. He worked at it.
I recently re-read the only one from that period that I kept, The Death of a Lake, and found it possessed all those characteristics. I have also been listening to several of them as audio books, and the same holds true.
Of course, they are of their time and place. The racism, the sexism, the crude manners and mores, these are all there to offend those looking for offense. For others, they document those times and places.
We found the NITV documentary on Upfield and Bony very interesting. The debates among the talking heads about cultural appropriation were a tedious and shallow recitation of cliches without a comprehension of the implications. That said, the rest was informative and engaging.
http://www.nitv.org.au/fx-program.cfm?pid=62639834-A5F1-B003-7954E52912FEAE0B
The tools for underlining, hyperlinking, etc remain unavailable. I have reported this several times. Oh hum.
Samara
We enjoyed watching Samsara at the Dendy Newtown. Breath-taking visuals from around the world combined with uplifting music. No Brad Pitt, no screen play written by a case of arrested development, no shouting, no message shoved down one’s eyes. A meditation, most of which works, some of which does not. All trip and no arrival, much like life. So many arresting images, so many of them completely foreign and yet familiar for all that.
http://barakasamsara.com/
Once again, well still, really, the tools for underlining and linking are unavailable. Cut and paste the link above to see more.
Fly Away Peter by David Malouf
I have read all of David Malouf’s novels, I thought. Each year I give the undergraduate intern with whom I work a David Malouf novel as a thank you. These interns are international students, and I reason that a Malouf novel gives them a little more of Australia to take home. I also think that they should read novels, and that having one in hand before a long flight home to Sweden, Germany, Poland, or the United States might be read. One lives in hope for there is no other way to live.
In july 2012 when I purchased the annual Malouf novel for the intern, I noticed that among the list of his novels there was an early one which I had not read, Fly Away Peter (1982).
I put it on my Amazon Wish List and sure enough, Santa gave it to me for Christmas, in the person of daughter Julie.
Teaching and Learning
I recently published a piece titled ‘Approaches to Learning and Teaching: Some Observations,’ in Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis, Volume 33 (2012), pp: 65-71.
To have a look: select, copy, and past the link below into a browser, and click enter.
http://www.viterbo.edu/uploadedFiles/academics/letters/philosophy/atp/Jackson-WIP.pdf
The tools for underlining and hyperlinking remain off-line.
Krimie Travelogue
James McClure, The Steam Pig (1971). This series is now being reprinted. They are of their time and place, the Republic of South Africa in the 1960s, replete with institutionalized racism, colour coding of one and all, English-Boer hostility, and casual brutality. Sergeant Tromp Kramer, a Boer, and his Bantu assistant Mickey Zondi get on with the police procedural, leaving the moralizing to the reader.
I do know about underlining title but once again the tools for underlining and hyperlinking are not available.
The World According to Murdoch
News Flash! This just in from Pox TV News:
Rupert Murdoch jets to New York City later today to swear in Mitt Romney as president of the United States. Romney has named his cabinet as Sarah Palin as Secretary of State, Mike Huckabee as Secretary for Regulating Private Life as God Wants, Newt Gringrich as Secretary for Fox, Karl Rove will be Secretary for Truth, and Athena Starwomen Secretary of the Treasury. After the ceremony on Wall Street with a small and select audience of yes-sayers, a random selection of workers’ pension funds will be divided among the guests. Trickle-up is the new administration’s chief policy.
President Romney’s first act will be to visit England and pardon all Murdochs of everything, past, present, and future.
Of course the lackeys of the liberal media have made the usual carping noises, e.g., New York City is not the capital of the United States, pension funds should not stolen, an astrologer might not be the best choice for cabinet, and the US President has no authority in England, which is the United Kingdom. Oh, and the biased allegation that Romney did not win the election. Typical!
The end of the Staggerford Chronicles.
The sad day dawned when I read the last volume of the Staggerford Chronicles. In the sequence of the novels, the final one is The New Woman (2005). But I got them out of order and the last one I read was the Staggerford Flood (2002). 
Recommended for adults.
Miss Agatha McGhee does it again. The waters rise and so does she, rising to the occasion in ways that surprise even her. I am sorry to say that this ends my Hassler reading, having completed all of his eleven novels. I heard Garrison Keillor mention him on the Writer’s Almanac podcast years ago and sought out his work. Found it and loved it.
I have learned a lot about forbearance, patience, pain, charity, purpose, self-edification, and more from Fredrick, Simon, Miles, Larry, Beverly, Janet, Lillian, Leland, Lolly, Imogene, Frank, and of course, most of all, from that new woman, Agatha: never give up, never surrender. By Grapthor’s hammer!
When I read the list of his novels, they come alive with the characters: The sullen grocery store clerk, the lost delinquent, the two hunters, the anti-IRA Irish priest, the zombie dean, the ebullient radio talk show host, the empty alcoholic artist, the would-be novelist, the destructive teenager, the numbed Vietnam veteran, the broken woman … The list goes, on and on. Quite a crew in this world Hassler’s created.
In Hassler’s hands Staggerford is as large as life.
Here are the Staggerford Chronicles.
Staggerford (1977)
Simon’s Night (1979)
The Love Hunter (1981)
A Green Journey (1985)
Grand Opening (1987)
North of Hope (1990)
Dear James (1993)
Rookery Blues (1995)
The Dean’s List (1998)
The Staggerford Flood (2002)
The Staggerford Murders (2004)
The New Woman (2005)
The only one I do not recommend is The Staggerford Murders. They do not have to be read in order. Some characters recur but not all of them, and some titles, like Grand Opening, stand alone.
Tasmania reading
Christopher Koch, The Boys in the Island (1958).
This is a novel set largely in Hobart Tasmania with later chapters in Melbourne. It is a coming of age story about Francis Cullen. His boyish desire to fit in with other boys, his first girlfriend, his efforts to conform to the crowd, his mistakes. It is low key, no great dramas, but many small ones – such is life. The prose is attractive, perhaps forced now and again. But the descriptions of place are effective, and there is truth in the characters.
Francis falls under the spell of Lewie, he of massive self-confidence and little intelligence. Lewie’s ambition is a life of crime, but he is not capable of it. Instead he bullies his friends, steals pound notes from cripples, and dreams of the big time. The game of mutual malicious teasing seemed familiar to me from my boyhood though I left it behind, but not these lads.
Koch calls it ‘The Game:’ Francis ‘found himself, as the weeks passed, drawn into a game, the Melbourne game of double-cross which the girl Keeva had apparently invented, and which Lewie was fast learning, her ardent pupil.…… It was the game, to set traps, to hurt. You did not say what you were thinking. You did not let one another know what you were doing. You found ways of making fools of one another at every opportunity’ (p. 115).
Likewise, Lewie’s philosophy that everyone else is dumb, the proof being that they work, had a familiar ring from fellows I knew, and I am glad I know them no more.
The intrusion of the boy Shane, a much more intelligent and mature peer, seems forced and his final destruction is a distraction from the downward spiral Francis has committed himself to as the only means to escape… Escape what? He always says the Island, hence the title. But is seems that ‘the island’ stands for the small town life that awaits him. Though he never aspires to the life of crime he dutifully, though not always happily, follows Lewie. In Francis we see perhaps the perfect follower.
The aside when Francis worked in a factory and though but a boy himself took under his wing the deficient Athol was nicely done but contributed nothing to either plot or character that I could see.
It is out of print and I read a library copy.
I read it in anticipation of going to Hobart for the APSA conference 2012. I also read Peter Timms, In Search of Hobart (2009) which is not recommended.