IMDb meta-data is runtime 1h and 39m, of rated 5.3 by 3,000 cineastes.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: Iberian.
Verdict: Lugubrious
Tagline: Iberians in space!
In distant 2020 the first crewed multinational mission lands on Mars. Wallop! Caught in a sandstorm it makes a very bad landing. It takes the first 30 minutes or more to establish that point and something of the personalities, several of whom should never have been selected for the mission either because of temperament or what seems to be a lack of technical ability, as well as personal hygiene.
What follows is Lifeboat (1944) without Alfred Hitchcock’s direction or John Steinbeck’s screenplay. These five must wait two years for the low-bid manufacturer’s guaranteed road service vehicle to bring a new battery, which will arrive long after the life support in the lander has failed. And no, they cannot plant potatoes. See, I thought of that, too.
After that slow (read: boring) start it does gradually develop into a character study without the arrested development ‘shoot ‘em up’ of Hollywood, though also without the depth, complexity, and variety of Lifeboat.
There is a surprise in the last reel that undermines everything that has gone before. See it to believe it. The Mars on one of the Canary Islands has a surprise in store. But it is left unresolved.
Several of the players are Portuguese, though the production was Spanish, altogether a rarity, this is an Iberian science fiction movie. Oh, and the dialogue is dubbed, poorly, by high school students, or so much of it sounds.
GoodReads meta-data is 202 pages, rated 3.60 by 5 litizens.
Genre: Non-fiction; Species: History.
DNA: ANU.
Verdict: Read that.
Tagline: Feudalism remains.
The archipelago that comprises Fiji is a thousand nautical miles long with two hundred islands, some twenty of which are inhabited with a total population today of just under one million in Melanesia, as distinct from Polynesia (further east) and Micronesia (further north). Within these groups of ‘nesias’ (islands) there are cultural and racial similarities. Melanesians are more likely to have darker skins. ‘Poly-nesia’ means a lot of islands, while ‘Micro-nesia’ refers to small islands. Rather mixed lines of demarcation: pigment, area, and number. (‘Indonesia’ means ‘Indian islands.’)
These Pacific islanders are reputed to be descendants of daredevils who went rafting from Taiwan millennia ago.
Prior to the British arrival, Fijians divided into clans or tribes with chiefs and that has remained the primary level of social organisation. These tribes had conflicts among themselves, and occasionally pirated around nearby islands like Tonga, Noumea, Samoa, or Cook, which broadened the gene pool. Then Europeans arrived to trade first in copra (dried coconut) which releases oil if pressed. It was a fad as a luxury good in Europe.
Then came sugar cane to rival the West Indies, where blight threatened supply. That had two consequences. First, commercial interest grew, led by the CSR from Sydney, later including investor Frank Packer. Second, there came in train a demand for much cheap labour in the cane fields. This latter demand arose at a time of dislocation on the Indian subcontinent, where there was large scale internal migration to escape drought.
The result was an indentured servitude program recruiting Indians (men and women) to work in Fiji at a pittance (which was far more than they would have had in India). Estimates suggest as many as 30,000 in short order, and more later. Subsequently, the Fiji population at times has been about 50:50 between island Fijians and Indians with a smattering of others (Chinese, Kiwi, Māori, Strine, Tongan, Samoan, Brit). Per Wikipedia today the ratio is closer to 60:40.
During this colonial period, the British tried to devolve responsibility by negotiating with the Fijian chiefs about land and government. Hmm, but there were conflicts among the chiefs that hampered that. The chiefs preferred to deal with the Brits whom they regarded as equals, rather than the Indians whom they regarded as slaves in all but name. (I am going beyond the author in some of this interpretation.)
Here is what is interesting. When the Brits began withdrawing, they wanted to hand over to an elected government. The more recent example of this approach is Hong Kong. The Indians (though there were religious and caste differences among them, these were rinsed out by the Fijian waters) were keen on elections. Not the Fijians, who insisted that the chiefs nominate each other for seats in government. This mixed arrangement of half elected and half appointed was not going work very well but it lasted.
The Indians were very well organised (inspired by Gandhi) and got themselves elected with a mandate, whereas the chiefs’ purpose seemed to this cynic to be to hold onto their feudal entitlements. The differences and tensions between the two communities are deep seated.
With the proliferation of beet sugar, island cane sugar lost value, and tourism began to develop in the 1970s. Hence, our trip. We are the number one business for Fiji.
Derek Scarr
The author’s circumspection and concentration on description did put me in mind of ANU — privileged and complacent. It also made me conclude he was keeping the door open for a return visit to Fiji by not calling things as he saw them. Tricky doing that.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime for two episodes of 1h 45m each, rated 7.7 by 7,100 cineastes.
Genre: SyFy.
DNA: West Germany.
Verdict: Prophetic.
Tagline: Unique.
At a reception sponsored by a state research institute Hero, while casually talking to an old acquaintance, turns his head to follow the progress of an elegant woman across the room, and when he turns back an instant later Acquaintance is gone in mid-sentence. Poof! Nowhere to be seen in the crowded room. Moreover, when Hero asks others about Acquaintance no one else admits to seeing him and others deny he exists. There is no one by that name in the institute or on the guest list. Worse, later he cannot find any record of any kind of his existence. He has become a man who never was.
The institute has created and runs an elaborate social simulation in lifelike virtual reality transmitted onto screens throughout the room. Its purpose is to model and assess the impact and consequences of social practices, programs, procedures, and policies. A few diehard SyFyians will have realised that the source is Neo’s favourite novel by Daniel Galouye Simulacron 3 (1964). In it one of the practices modelled is the banning of cigarette smoking. As an echo of that, smoking is much in evidence in this film.
The simulated world is complete in every detail and its Sim inhabitants think that they are living beings, with the exception of a few spies from the Institute who monitor, evaluate, and report upward. Ours is the upper world. So we think. Beware hubris!
Hero pursues the acquaintance who was and then wasn’t there down into the simulated world and learns…. Quite a lot. As always, Plato got there first as admitted by Hero. It is not often that Plato is mentioned in mass market entertainment.
It is a marvellous example of cinema, creating two worlds on a paltry budget. That is accomplished on, let us say, our surface world through the use of mirrors and glass in and through which images are fractured, reflected, reversed, all of which confuses the original with its images. The simulated world is shown mostly via flickering greyscale video on TV monitors, except when upper characters pass through the membrane of virtual reality to visit the Sims via headsets.
Did Neo ever see this? Bet he did.
It is far too long, and does seem to go round in circles at times, but well so be it. Consider that to be the scenic route. It certainly showcases its prescience about technology and its integration into society, though not the miniaturisation of electronics. The computers involved in this story are monumental.
Speaking of smoking, who can forget Hero lighting his cigarette using a Bic from a woman? See it to believe it. Those troubled by A.I. today had better not watch this film. Indeed, since 1972 it has seldom been seen. I saw it at a foreign film night screening in Montréal in my grad student days with some pals, and found it, well, strange. Then it disappeared. Only in the last decade has it been retrieved, remastered, and released. That is all to the good, but the subtitles were in such a small font I could not always read them in my home. My efforts to adjust the size failed.
It is of its time and place with heavy-handed sexism, and much masculine smoking and drinking. It also shows the director’s preoccupations. While the teutonic atmosphere is emphasised, it was in fact filmed in Paris, where the production costs at the time were much lower. There he meets Lemmy Caution!
It was one of the innumerable projects of that live-fast, die-young and leave an enormous body of work enfant terrible Rainer Fassbinder (1945-1982). I also watched the Making of video on the DVD to learn more about Fassbinder. What a prodigy.
Thinking about all this brought to mind an Outer Limits episode, Demon with a Glass Hand (1964), which I will try to locate.
Marco Santagata, Dante: The Story of His Life (2012).
Good Reads meta-data is 485 pages rated 3.74 by 168 litizens.
Genre: Biography.
DNA: Italia.
Verdict: Finely shifted
Tagline: Synergy of fact and fiction.
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) aspired to greatness, beginning that quest by changing his name from ‘Durante’ to ‘Dante’ to imply a connection to a once great family name in Florence. This change is characteristic of the aspirations and method of the man.
The Guelph and Ghibelline dispute dominated social and political life in Dante’s time and place. While Florence was identified with the Guelph cause, occasionally there was a swing to the Ghibellines. A victorious sect would banish its enemies, seize their property, ransom its members, and depending on God’s will murder them en masse! Dante had no interest in this bloodbath but he could not ignore it. This conflict started in the 11th Century and continued for centuries, with neither a definitive beginning nor end.
It arose from the clash of secular and sectarian authority, that is, over who appointed bishops: the Pope (Guelphs) or the Holy Roman Emperor (Ghibellines). That doctrinal cleavage aggregated a great many other political, social, and personal motivations. Each of those unities had divisions with its ranks, for example, there were black and white stripes among the Guelphs. Regional and dynastic loyalties led to conflict among Ghibellines. And so on and on. It all seemed cataclysmic to the participants and it is meaningless to us, like so many murderous religious disputes.
Autobiographical references are to be found in all of Dante’s works, as per the custom of the time, and a systematic examination of these references indicates that they pad his resumé with fictions. Or as the author delicately puts its, Dante did not draw an exact line between fiction and fact. This penchant is most visible, of course, in the longest work where there is the largest number of such autobiographical selfies, the Commedia, where he meets many deceased relatives, friends, and mentors who were in fact no such thing. He claims many associations with people to bathe in their reflected glory borne from social status, poetic achievement, or civic heroism, who had nothing to do with him: including, it seems likely, Beatrice herself. To illustrate his free use of fiction, he peopled the Commedia with more than one person who was still alive, giving Dante the opportunity to pass his judgements on those people, which he certainly did, though not always consistently. On this inconsistency see below.
About this point I paused once again to ponder the parallels between Dante and Machiavelli. I put the question to Google AI on 7 July and got this response: ‘Both Dante and Machiavelli were Florentines living during a period of political and social upheaval. However, their responses to these challenges differed significantly, with Dante focusing on moral and religious ideals and Machiavelli prioritizing practical political strategies.’
Hmm, what underlies this anodyne generalisation is this. It refers only to their written work. In Dante’s case it was De Monarchia (1313) in which he concluded that a only universal monarch above and apart from all sectional, regional, sectarian division could bring and insure peace: Big Brother with a crown. Whereas in the Prince, Machiavelli described what he saw and tried to find patterns in the instances of politics he observed.
So far, well, so good, but there is more. In his life Machiavelli worked for a Republican government: his texts, including the Prince for those with eyes to see, shows that preference. He remained true to that conviction throughout his tenuous exile. (The story of writing the Prince for a prince and presenting it to him, is one of his elaborate jokes that has passed into reality by repetition, in my opinion, a minority one to be sure, but right all the same.)
In his own exile Dante behaved according to the stereotype of Machiavellian and Machiavellianism, currying favour by trimming, temporising, and tacking with the prevailing, local political winds. One day he was ardent Guelf, and a week later a born Ghibelline, then a born-again White Guelf, and so on. He did not trust to prayer alone but to his wit and wile to survive. This variation is shown in the Commedia where inconsistent judgements are rendered on the long journey. Inconsistent, yes, and at times deceitful as this biographer shows ever so delicately. Dante did all of this balancing on the ball of fortune in a world of confusion, conflict, and – some of the time – chaos while living by the grace and favour of hosts.
And Exhibit B is that Dante’s name and the Commedia went onto the Papal Index, just like Machiavelli. That was in retaliation for all those popes whom he had sent to Hell!
Yet Dante’s name has not entered the lexicon as an adjective or noun for deceit, dissimulation, or duplicity. Why is that? When you can answer that question, let me know.
The point is not to condemn Dante’s survival instinct, but to highlight the opprobrium visited on the blameless Machiavelli. By the way, as far I can tell, Machiavelli does not mention Dante’s De Monarchia in his History of Florence, though he does mention the man himself, his trials and tribulations. Nor does he mention Dante at all in The Prince. This vacuum has generated a speculative literature in which Machiavelli’s silence is made to speak! On that, perhaps, more another time.
For some reason in the mysteries of little grey cells pondering this conundrum brought to mind Gerald Durrell’s description of a jellyfish as a process. The fish is itself 95% water and it is immersed in water. It is but 5% out of that water. To think of it as separate from water is to misconceive it entirely. It is rather like abstracting a dancer from the dance, leaving only footsteps on the stage. Something like this applies to Machiavelli for whom politics was a process and abstracting from it is a distortion. Think about that. I know I will.
Returning to the poet, none of his personal peccadilloes. proclivities, and penchants, detracts a single iota from the Commedia; its grandeur is sui generis and self evident. We heard a translated reading from Paradise a few years ago, in of all places, Redfern, and were transported to another place. Mind you the reader had a voice of smoked honey that made it easy to listen. The translation was by John Ciardi whom I met years ago at another poetry reading.
This biography is an exemplar in the careful, systematic, and critical way it pieces together the story of Dante’s life. That makes the going slow, true, but also, and more importantly, sure. However, it lacks a final summation chapter. It is weighted to his activities more than his creativity, and perhaps that is why the abrupt ending. Still I would have liked to learn more about, e.g., how the Commedia got on the Librorum Prohibitorum of forbidden books. And more about that adjective Divina, which he did not use.
Marco Santagata
This reading reminded me I read a krimi some time ago that features Dante himself in his role as Florentine Prior, a kind of magistrate. There are several in this series and I will read another in due course.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime 1h 24m, rated 5.4 by 9,100 cineastes.
Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Incomprehensible.
DNA: USA.
Verdict: Huh?
Tagline: Look, Ma, no … point.
IMDb summary: ‘The year 2039. Captain Lee Miller is a lone astronaut stationed aboard the International Space Station. During downtime, he reads the journal of Captain Lee Briggs, a soldier during the American Civil War. Abruptly, contact with Earth goes dead and Miller is left alone aboard the space station.’
It seems men keep journals and women keep diaries. Let’s think about that some other time.
Ingenious and pointless, like the title.
It opens with a long and puzzling Civil War battle (re-enactment) and then, gets even muddier. The date 4 June 1864 is specified, to no purpose it seemed within my attention span.
Astronaut Robinson Crusoe marooned in space is a well worn trope, and every time I have seen it, starting with Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) it is, well … boring. Without a doubt the prize for most boring instance to date within my ken goes to Magellan (2017), as discussed elsewhere on this blog. This one gets a dishonourable mention.
Die Schlüssel zur Freiheit (2025) The Keys to Freedom
Not on IMDb: runtime 5m.
Wim Wenders narrates a brief meditation of war and peace occasioned by the anniversary of the German surrender in a school room at Rheims France on 6 May 1945. It is thoughtful, moody, quiet, measured, and altogether a relief from contemporary insanity.
The film is on You Tube and elsewhere. An insightful review can be found in the NYT.
By the way that surrender was re-enacted a week later in Berlin with the Soviets presiding. That explains a scene I saw in a film awhile ago and questioned. Answered.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 40m, rated 6.4 by 38,000 cineastes.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: USA.
Verdict: Oh hum.
Tagline: Claim jumpers abound.
Gold rush among the stars. A teenage girl and her father prospect for rare minerals in the far reaches of the galaxy on a rainforest planet and encounter some unpleasant types wearing masks. Shoot-outs follow, and Randolph Scott does not ride to the rescue. More’s the pity. Also absent is a leathery old timer chewing tobacco in this space oater.
The twist is that, oops spoiler, the girl grows up quickly in this environment. Remember Kim Darby? I do.
The girl or her nemesis are in nearly every scene and carrying the film as far as it is carried. The second half becomes clichéd, some might say. Well, I did.
The setting is effective and the two principals are committed to their parts, unlike some of others who seem to find the whole thing boring. Oh, maybe that was me.
A few years earlier, It was preceded by a very short short of the same name on DUST as proof of concept to raise the money for this effort. Full marks for wit, energy, and initiative.
Late in the Republic Plato outlines the decay of democracy into autocracy. The details are supplied in a number of lesser works. Of course the sage of Baltimore did the same much more succinctly and colourfully.
Jack London, The Iron Heel (1908).
Good Reads meta-data is 155 pages rated 3.77 by 11,866 litizens.
Genre: Fiction; Prophecy, Documentary.
DNA: USA
Verdict: Hamer blows!
Tagline: It happened.
After centuries of rule by Iron Heeled oligarchs the socialist revolution triumphs in 2600 AD and unearths it own past in previous, failed revolutions of earlier times. The protagonist in those early effort was Avis, a woman born to privilege, who becomes aware of the terrible conditions of the working class through a committed revolutionary husband.
She sees through the free market rhetoric of the kleptocracy, and joins the doomed cause. Proselytise though he does, Jack London also had a sharpe sense of humour as when he portray William Randolph Hearst as a socialist!
The prose has the sledgehammer subtlety of Fox news and the characters are all cardboard for the preaching of the author, like Fox news. But there is also energy and conviction on the page, too. The story goes from 1913 to 1932. For an update read more below.
It has much contemporary resonance with the censorship of universities, stripping of opponents of citizenship, rounding up anyone and everyone for confinement behind wire in Florida, the complete corruption of the judiciary into hirelings…. Well, just watch the news tonight for further examples.
It generated two Russian films 1919 and 1999 and stage adaptation was done in 2016.
Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here (1935)
Good Reads meta-data is 400 pages rated 3.80 by 22,537.
Genre: Fiction; Prophecy, Documentary.
DNA: USA
Verdict: Grim but boring.
Tagline: Ripped from today’s headlines!
Mirroring Hitler, Buzz rises to power in the USA; his Boswell logs his course. Once installed President Buzz disregards Congress and the Supreme Court and charges ahead, imprisoning critics, disappearing opponents, and loosening a masked Praetorian Guard on real and imagined enemies, as well as harmless bystanders to meet corporate KPIs of body count. Those who do not support Prez Buzz are threatened into compliance by these heavily armed, masked men who patrol voting sites in the states to make sure only Buzzards get in.
The army is set on the civilian population, while Mexico is invaded, perhaps to change the name of Gulf of Mexico. The press is censored, and brought to heel with threats, intimidation, and violence. The free market kleptocrats rule. Only Fox newspapers and radio stations are permitted and they sing the praises of the Buzz on the hour. Two minute hate session are deemed inadequate to encompass all the enemies.
Lewis’s exposition lacks the energy of London’s but it shares the bellicose urgency. Huey Long provided the model of Buzz, as Lewis declared at the time. See my previous posts on this creature of the bayou.
Lewis himself collaborated on a stage version of the novel. A film based on the stage play was bruited in 1935 but did not proceed, because the script was judged ‘too anti-fascist’ to sell in fascist markets. Ah, the free market! Available at a price but only for a price.
Might add to this pair Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (2004) with RFK re-parenting work camps for those who lack enthusiasm for the fascist supremo Charles Lindberg, the regime’s badgering of the media into silence, the murder of critics of the maximum leader, the administration’s support for the resurgence of the masked Ku Klux Klan, and…. Like the author’s other books, this one is mostly about himself, a subject of endless fascination … to him.
For further details check the latest news from Yankeeland.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h 46m, rated 6.3 by 14,000 cineastes.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: Sweden.
Verdict: No exit!
Tagline: IKEA to the stars.
It is well thumbed script since When Worlds Collide (1951): Humanity is leaving the dying Earth for Mars, and here it is again. However, while previous manifestations of this theme have a handful of pioneers in pressure suits buckled into Qantas economy seats without saltine crumbs or even an inflight magazine, this version has a multitude of immigrants in a spaceship IKEA for the three week voyage to Mars. There are twenty restaurants, a dozen cinemas, gyms, libraries, the mandatory wellness centre, a shopping mall, spas and saunas, hair salons, and, yes, a holodeck. It is a gigantic cruise ship with thousands of passengers.
Of course, it is all too good to be true, and within a few minutes one of the front tyres blows — hit by a meteor — and the ship, Aniara, loses power. It will now drift, drift, and drift. The mean scriptwriter denies them any rescue, and they drift on and on. (Why Swedes would give this ship a Greek name is never explained within my attention span. Cul de Sac or Huis Clos would have been a better title.)
Tensions follow: the captain combines being dogmatically optimistic with terminal boredom, while the protagonist, a 360-degree Bill Clinton empath mind-melding with the computer and who feels everyone’s pain, except mine at the attenuated proceedings. At least there is no Greta preaching about our Earthly sins.
What follows for the bulk of the runtime is a study of individual reactions to shopping without end in the maze of this interplanetary IKEA store from which there is no exit. A few straws are grasped but no salvation occurs and years pass though none of the actors appear to age. Is that a result of the relativity of time? As the years roll by, the population of the spaceship re-enact the idiocy of Earth. There is sexual dalliance, irresponsibility, cults, gangs, litter, false prophets, destructive fashions, flared trouser legs, pointless conflicts, dumped share bikes, demagogues, and other instances of the decline of civilisation. The end. Solaris indeed.
Downbeat. Very Ingmar Bergman. Dreary.
* * *
It is based on a 1957 epic poem! That in turn was the basis for an opera in 1959 which was then filmed in 1960. Yes, it was a space opera; it was also dead boring. The poem runs to 160-pages and the Swedish Academy, of Nobel Prize fame, ruled it the second most important book published in Swedish in the Twentieth Century, later awarding the author a Nobel Prize. What was number one? Pippi Longstocking?
There are at least two other films on the IMDb with the same name, making four versions in all, two of which I have not been able thus far to locate. Tips welcomed about the 1986 and 2023 variants. The four are listed below for those who have to see to believe.
Good Reads meta-data is 597 pages, rated 3.50 by 2 litizens.
Genre: Biography.
DNA: USA.
Verdict: The strength not to fight.
Tagline: Chads, what chads?
Who was Samuel J. Tilden (1814-1886)? And who cares?
He was a New York Democrat who supported Republican Abraham Lincoln, opposed slavery, and warred on Tammany Hall. In 1876 he was the Democratic nominee for U.S. President, described as dour, colourless, drab, and taciturn. Still he won the popular vote by a margin of more than 250,000. However, neither he nor his opponent, Rutherford Hayes, had a majority of electoral votes. To be exact, Tilden fell one single vote short of majority of electoral votes. One vote.
The result was a stalemate, that went on from 7 November to 7 March the following year, and the outgoing Republican-majority Congress resolved it by establishing a bipartisan, well, deeply partisan, Commission to adjudicate the electoral votes. Given that the Republican majority in Congress ensued this commission had a majority of dog-loyal Republicans the conclusion of its short deliberation was forgone, and Hayes took office.
Samuel Tilden
Tilden observed all these shenanigans with a dignified silence and accepted the inevitable outcome with equanimity. Having lived through the Civil War, he had no wish to stir up a new conflict (pp 400-403). His agents did however secure a commitment from Hayes to reduce the postwar burden of Reconstruction on the Southern states in return for Tilden’s quiescence. But others in his party kept the controversy alive for years thereafter, and, inevitably, dragged Tilden into it over the next decade.
When the 1880 election approached, the Democratic nomination was Tilden’s for the taking, and given that the corruption of the 1876 election result was by then widely known, his election seemed assured. All that, it seems, was true. It was also true that he was not a well man, and had grown to like rustic retirement. Thus he forbade placing his name in nomination.
During the Civil War, Tilden did not profit himself by buying a rank or taking a quartermaster’s role, as did so many others in politics, e.g., the egregious Chester Arthur. He continued his legal practice and did fundraising for the war effort. However, he demonstrated colossally bad judgement in supporting George McClellan’s 1864 presidential campaign.
Here are a few things I learned about the man. He was easily bored and that together with his fragile health explains why he went from school to school without graduating, the Williams Academy, Yale University, Union College, and Columbia University. The curriculum in all these places was mostly Latin and Greek. He later entered law via apprenticeship.
He remained a bred in the bone hypochondriac all of his life, often speaking in a whisper to emphasise his fragility. Yet in law and business he set a cracking pace for those who worked for him.
He was a single-tasker; he did one thing at a time. When I think of a multi-tasker I always think of Napoleon. When Tilden’s political energies led to six years in public office he was honest and conscientious, one of those people who never put off anything until tomorrow. He would finish the job before going home. In this work he was oriented to the last detail.
By the way he does not seem to have had a home-life to which to go. There was no wife by age 40. By then his health seemed stable for the next twenty years and with his legal and political prominence, he was an eligible bachelor who was regularly invited to meet likely young ladies. While he enjoyed flirting with the bright young things, there was no advance on that. Make of that what you will. I did.
The text quotes several extracts from his legal briefs which often contained numerical data and statistical extrapolations, which he would then explain to the court with visual presentations. He seemed to be good at boiling down the mass of data he collected to something he could explain in very simple lay terms, because he won most of the contests. Contemporaries described his method as scientific and mathematical.
Even as a teenager he had found political work engaging, writing pamphlets, organising speakers, getting handbills printed, renting halls for rallies, and so on. He was inspired to do this by family friend and neighbour Martin van Buren, 8th US President (Ret.). He was involved in an endless round of campaigns for Democrats, usually in the backroom organising, only speaking when no one else was available for he was not imposing on the stump, being small and wheezy.
His success against Tammany Hall led to his election as Governor of New York State in 1874. Once ensconced he re-newed his attack on political corruption which flourished under the neglect of President Grant’s administration. Thus credentialed, he won the Democratic nomination in 1876.
After his 1876 concession he became a recluse in distant (!) Yonkers. (Sounds like a Neil Simon title that – ‘In Distant Yonkers.’) Unmarried and childless, he left a considerable fortune, earned as a corporate lawyer and his own sagacious investments, much of it to the New York City public library, in today’s dollars more than $110,000,000! Yes, he had always been an avid reader of history, biographies, novels, travelogues, and more.
The book concludes with a finely judged retrospective chapter on his life and career. It seems obvious that a biography should have such a chapter, but a surprising number do not, still less a chapter as comprehensive and clear as this one.
***
Alexander Flick professed history at Syracuse University and published many studies of American history, especially regarding New York State. Good Reads credits him with 43 titles!
On that election start with: Michael Holt, By One Vote (2008); William Rehnquist (yes, that Rehnquist), The Disputed Election of 1876 (2004); Roy Morris, Fraud of the Century (2003); Lloyd Robinson, Samuel J Tilden and the Stolen Election (2001); and Bill Severn, Samuel J Tilden and the Stolen Election (1968).
