IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 2 minutes, rated 6.1 by 102 cinematizens.
Verdict: S l o w.
Philo needs vitamins to perk up. He is slow as molasses in this outing. stopping in front of every mirror to check his pencil mo, or so it seemed. I have never warmed to Mr Vance. Maybe it is that first name: Philo. If ‘Phil’ was good enough for Marlow why isn’t for Vance? Mail your answers to someone else as soon as possible.
Jewel thieves double cross each other, and Philo sorts them out with a very little help from Plod.
Dan Seymour is always a good heavy but he is murdered in the first act, well…after that not much is left.
The body count is high. There are so amusing touches with the butler’s tweenager niece that single this screenplay out. But not much else.
Released on 12 April 1947, the month that Jack Robinson broke the colour barrier in baseball in a one-man Iliad.
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 13 minutes, rated 6.6 by 682
Genre: krimi
Verdict: Snappy
Successful gold digger (Goldie) is about to elope with Money Bags in his private railway car on a siding at the vast Grand Central Station yards when….! She is murdered in the shower! Yet the corpse seems untouched, as well as unseen, per the censorship of the day.
Earlier we saw a felon in transit elude his police escort using the oldest trick in the book, throwing a dime on the ground and while they fought over it, he legged it, but only to the nearest phone booth where he used his last dime to call Goldie with threats many. In the bowels of the Station the two police escorts run around and bump into a Smart Mouth PI and his wife Off-Sider.
There is more to’ing and fro’ing until the usual suspects have been rounded up: Felon, PI, Mrs PI, jilted crim financier played by the Falcon’s Brother, Money Bags, Money Bags’s previous fiancee before Goldie moved in, and assorted others who become a chorus moving back and forth to reconstruct everyone’s movements in the theatre, conveniently located near Grand Central Station, and the private railway car.
This is largely incoherent but gives the players a chance to act. All the while Smart Mouth cracks wise while concealing evidence and after protests Plod complies with Smart Mouth’s directions. There are some bon mots and even a few surprises.
In a twist on the formula we do not find out the cause of Goldie’s death until near the very end, and the means implicated a very unlikely villain. Indeed my disbelief vaporised at this point. Would the top-hatted and white silk-scarfed senior gentleman of sixty, if a day, clamber around the third rail in a top hat with electrician’s gloves on….?
The pace is fast enough to paper over the plot gaps and the players are lively. And none of the women are the stumbling, fainting ilk so common in films of the era. Indeed Mrs Smart Mouth gives as good as she gets.
It was released in May 1942 and ends with an appeal for War Bonds. The Doolittle Raid had been in April 1942. The Battle of the Coral Sea occurred in early May and blunted Japanese plans to cut off shipping between Australia and the USA. The last Filipinos and Americans on Corregidor had surrendered to a terrible fate. At the end of May a Japanese midget submarines entered Sydney Harbour and torpedoed a naval training craft, while the raid was a failure it did alarm authorities and Harbour defences were enhanced and a blackout was more vigorously enforced.
IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 13 long minutes, rated the 5.4 by 1152 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy
Verdict: Jekyll and Hyde part.
Dauntless globe trotting foreign correspondent goes to interview a reclusive Japanese Mad Scientist in a lab located on a remote mountain fastness before returning to home and hearth. In a step up from the norm, this Mad Scientist has a Fetching assistant rather than a deformed Igor(ess). Journalist turns on the worldly charm by lighting cigarettes. S-m-o-o-t-h.
Mad Scientist has been experimenting on his family and has succeeded in turning them into monsters. Well, monsters are good, but he wants expand the boundaries of knowledge still more to control evolution or devolution. The fraternity brothers wanted to rush some of these monsters.
Mad Scientist has run out family and invites the journalist to hang around…the fetching assistant, while he prepares a new experiment! In no time at all, well it seemed a lot longer, Foreign Correspondent gets an injection of (d)evolution juice in the neck! While the drug is working he whines and dines Fetching, ignoring telephone calls from his New York wife to come home and fix the backdoor. Whines is right. He feels very sorry for himself.
Then, like some deans I have known, Foreign Correspondent grows a second head! Yes, if one dean is bad, imagine a double dose demanding budget cuts, throughput increases, and improved morale! Two budget cuts! Twice as much teaching! Twice as many research grants! Half as many staff. Dancing in the hallways!
At the denouement there is an unexpected but rather striking division of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde into two creatures: the monster and the man, hence manster. Oops, that is a spoiler.
There are some discernible themes in this mishmash. One is the Japanese culture is threatening, corrupt, lascivious, decadent, and it weakens the moral resolve of American Foreign Correspondent. He goes all animal when overexposed to Japisms, Geishas, sushi, public bathing, sake, and…..[see Geishas above].
Everyone smokes and drinks like real men. His distant wife is a clinging vine. Why Fetching shuts herself away on the mountain top with Mad Scientist is a puzzle and stays that way. Correspondent spends a lot of time feeling sorry for himself because of how hardworking he is, yet the only thing we see him do is chat, drink, and smoke. Exhausting! The ostensible interview with Mad Scientist consisted of smoking and drinking. No notes are taken, no information is imparted and Correspondent seems happy with that.
It is a Japanese production with United Artists shot in English with European leads. Currency restrictions meant profits from United Artists films shown in Japan could not all be taken out, so some was used to make films like this. Though, rather unusual for the time, some of the extras speak Japanese, but all of the principle Japanese speak English.
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 26 minutes, rated 5.0 by 2321 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy
Verdict: Cheap and nasty.
Near a secret research laboratory men are dying…of cardiac arrest…after sex. Time to send in a top agent who flashes his way into the library. Cheap.
One of the best moments is a town meeting dominated by the beer-swilling bully. Seems realistic to me.
That top agent orders a pizza delivered while his new girlfriend is nearly raped. Nasty. He comes in time to beat up the three drooling NRA members, and another guy to keep in practice.
The body count rises, but we see more deaths, than agent man is aware off, and he never does catch on. S l o w.
By accident cosmic rays have turned the women at the laboratory into queen bees who seduce men into drones. In the middle is a tedious documentary about bees to add to the pace. Not.
The film has hints of lesbianism, women’s liberation, Amazon warriors, safe sex, and stupidity to go with the sexploitation.
For a comparison seen Roger Corman’s Wasp Woman (1959), though truth to be told those wasps were bees in disguise.
Whenever I learn of another rant on hate radio 2GB I pause. The ‘GB’ in the name comes from the initials of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) who inspired the founders of the station in 1926. This fact is absent from both the station’s current website and its Wikipedia entry.
Bruno championed science, fact, religious toleration, freedoms for women. He ridiculed corrupt authority in the Vatican as a giant Ponzi scheme. He could never ingratiate himself with established authority in universities. Not enough nationally competitive grants. He was also a scientific peer of Galileo.
This statue of him is in Rome near the spot where the hate masters burned him.
He was pursued by the Inquisition across Europe until, exhausted, he finally succumbed for refusing to compromise the truth of scientific fact for the ideology of the Roman Church, just as Socrates did for refusing to pander to the idiocracy. The shock jocks of the age rejoiced as Bruno was burned at the stake as they had done when Socrates was poisoned. Hollow triumphs for the shock jocks, because their names are forgotten while those of Socrates and Bruno live on. Obscurity likewise awaits all of today’s the kings of hate.
Though hate radio has a large following, no doubt it’s practitioners view these followers with contempt. See A Face in the Crowd (1957) with Andy Griffith for the illustration. Or check out Jimmy ‘Drink the Kool-Aid’ Jones.
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour 19 minutes, rated 3.80 by 1062 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy FY.
Verdict: Time stood still.
Mars Needs women again (see below). Rather than place ads on Facebook to recruit airheads, they send a cute little Tardis space ship, three times as big inside as outside. Head of Mission is a snide queen of the Nile abetted by a bald garden gnome with triple ears that you want to tweak.
At the same time NASA, which is presented as a military operation, has found the perfect astronaut: handsome for photo ops, silent so as not to give anything away, and stupid enough accept this role. He is great grandpa Data, an android. This fact is super secret least the American public fail to support spending money on droids.
The two missions cross paths when Droid aborts, ejects, and bails over Puerto Rico! Why? Good question. Would the answer be tax credits to film there? There is a little travelogue of beaches and seaside.
Nile’s minions in white overalls and fishbowl helmets round up party girls who seem to take it is all as part of the fun. Meanwhile, Droid’s keepers have come looking for him. The trauma of the abort injured him and now, as a public service, he goes around strangling people listening to pop music.
Of the 79 minutes, perhaps 35 of them are stock footage of beaches and waves and USAF planes taking off, landing, parking, sitting, more sitting. This footage insures there is no momentum or pace. Splicing this free footage then shows the minders boarding one kind of jet in Miami, flying on another, and landing in San Juan in a third. Mid-air refuelling we have all heard of, but mid-air passenger transfer was a new one.
The ears have it!
Nile keeps a retreaded monster ITT for devouring bystanders as an accessory on the spaceship and Droid and ITT duke it out. The fraternity brothers claimed the monster was a well-known Delt whose name they have forgotten, like their own some mornings.
Noteworthy moments in this parson’s egg include:
1.When Droid froze at the press conference, and the assembled blood suckers did not seem to notice.
2.The following scene when Droid’s coif is peeled to reveal the heartless brain of McKinsey manager.
3.The several sidelong, sneering glances exchanged between Nile and her Gnome reminded me of the reaction of some one-time colleagues to any sensible suggestion.
4.The many bikini-clad Anglas who party-on.
5.The complete absence of Hispanics in Puerto Rico.
6.The many off-duty GIs who stand around at parade rest, earning a few dollars as film extras. Plus see point (4) above.
The end, these were such welcome words as I watched this film on Isle de Saint Vincent.
Mars seems to lurch from one shortage to another. For proof see the following:
The Devil Girl from Mars (1954) – who come for men!
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) – who went with toys
IMDb meta-data runtime of 1 hour and 31 minutes, rated 6.7 by 923 cinematizens.
Genre: ODH wanna be (that is, Old Dark House).
Verdict: energetic clichés.
In mid-career a much published krimi writer seeks inspiration in a change of scene, and reluctantly moves to Greenwich Village with his vivacious and enthusiastic helpmate who has neither a career nor a mind of her own. Credit Loretta Young’s extraordinary thespian talents to sell such a pretence. He is the droll Brian Aherne who is reluctant because wanted to live by a lake or stream, not a busy street.
While he has published a lot of krimis, to judge from the piles he moves around, none has been a best seller or satisfying.
The apartment (old dark) House has a cast of boarders from the doleful owner, to the snoopy restauranteur, oily art dealer, the terrified ingenue with an over-protective husband, the hysterical cleaning woman…. but no black stereotype for which omission much thanks, though it meant no pay-check for Will Best.
It is a great cast that includes Charlie Chan Tolar as the police officer come to sort out the body in the garden. Spider Woman is also on hand, though underemployed compared to the turtle.
Good scenes include the bed clothes slowly slipping off…. In 1945 that must have been close the censorship line. And it happens twice. And that’s the problem with the whole film: repetition.
The sticking door was amusing the first three or four times but not thereafter, and certainly not at the fifteenth time with musical accompaniment. The door is never explained and does nothing for the plot.
The plot holes were many. It was said that the corpus delicti in the garden was naked; if so why? Where did the clothes go? What was the motive for that murder? Indeed what was the whole blackmail narrative about? How did any of that relate to the cab driver’s opening comment about hauling away two stiffs? Did any of it relate to the missing previous half-owner of the establishment?
Released on 10 December 1942 there is no reference to war. In that month the Australian 7th Division pushed the Japanese from Buna, trailhead for the purgatory of the Kokoda Track. More generally, the Afrika Korps was trapped (by forces that included the Australian 9th Division) in Tunisia, the Germans were encircled in Stalingrad, and the Japanese had lost Guadalcanal where Royal Australian Navy ships served). Hindsight reveals that it was the beginning of the end for them.
Literati note. These books were published late 1942. I have read them all. What’s holding you back?
Le Silence de la mer by Vercors (Jean Bruller) – an idealistic German soldier gradually realises the fake news he had accepted when billeted with a silent French family.
The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck – an austere dialogue about the time to act set in rural Norway. Completely different from his other novels, a roman à clef.
Crazy Horse by Mari Sandoz – a fictional autobiography of a reluctant charismatic leader.
Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner – the grief of the title figure when his wife dies and the actions of those around him the very Deep South.
L’étranger by Albert Camus – Meursault stays ice cold under the blinding Algerian sun.
GoodReads Meta-data is 336 pages, rated 3.65 by 519 litizens.
Genre: Popular Philosophy (as is Popular Science).
Verdict: More!
Classical historian Edith Hall delves into the mind and works of the one and only Aristotle her BFF. He is the leader of the pack as far she is concerned and there is no one else. The enthusiasm for the subject with the light touch, simple prose, punctuated with real life examples and references to the popular culture are delight. Though I doubt it got her tenure or promotion. On that more below.
At the outset she briskly dispatches two of the rotten tomatoes thrown at Aristotle. His remark that women lack deliberative capacity has empowered generations of the virtuous to hurl rotten fruit at him. Yet in the Politics there is a more fine-grained remark that women have deliberative capacity but it is not authoritative; if an interpreter were less interested in scoring retrospective points, this remark could be taken as a sociological fact of the time and place. In subsequent passages he goes to refer to wives running (ruling) the households of slaves, servants, extended family, provenders, tradesmen, and the like. This oikos is the economy which has become the god all worship now. Though, of course, he concedes less to woman than Plato does twice over.
The most common trope used to justify ignoring Aristotle is this remark:
‘Males have more teeth than females in the case of men, sheep, goats, and swine; in the case of other animals observations have not yet been made’ (Animalia 3). This obscure passage and paraphrases of it abound among those who specialise in cheap shots. Yes, Aristotle was wrong, but he was wrong because he was misinformed about observations, not because he did not value observations, though that it the drum most often thumped when this passage is cited. Let’s take that drumbeat seriously for a minute.
Though this statement is joyfully repeated on thousands of web sites, none of these bloggers themselves settle the empirical question empirically. No writer who has belaboured Aristotle with this remark has ever then said, and I counted (to be strictly parallel) my wife’s teeth and we have the same number. Think about that.
As any dentist will say, counting teeth is easier said than done. It is not just a matter of saying Aaah. Any ten people people on Oxford Street today may well not have the same number of teeth. Ditto dead bodies for the ghoulish. There are congenital omissions (I never had two adult molars), damage in childhood, and in Ari’s world most adult simply lost a lot of rotten teeth which accounts partly for all the soft food: olives, cheese, figs. But her main defence of him on this point is simply that it was a passing, incidental point in his biological studies which he cited from other sources as a fact. He neither proclaimed it himself, not declared it a priori. In the passage where it is cited, he draws no grand conclusion about the inferiority of women as thus proven by teeth. At most it proves difference.
The female of 1940s popular culture in film and fiction was flighty, easily frightened, weak, lacking concentration, physically inept stereotype. It continued into 1950s television where its steady diet went some way to make real the fiction it portrayed, repeatedly showing it so did make it so. It took a great effort — intellectual as well as social — to see through those shadows on the cave wall, single them out, test, and reject them, and for that All Hail.
The book is thematic starting the governing narrative of happiness, which is not an ephemeral feeling but a contentment and calm perhaps like zen, but she does not go that far. When I look at the gang leaders on television news these days… oh, did I say ‘gang leaders,’ I meant world leaders, none of them look contented and calm. They look driven, angry, confused even, bitter, overwhelmed, determined, purposeful in some cases. There are far too many angry old men who have never had anything to be angry about and aren’t going to take it any longer!
She does not mention Jean Vanier, Happiness – Aristotle for a New Century (2002). But it is a companion piece, though it lacks the depth of the volume at hand.
She goes on to treat such topics as Family, Friendship, and Mortality. There is also a discussion of discretion that made me uncomfortable. In my years as Associate Dean, Institute Director, Head of Department I made it a point not to exercise discretion. My rule was: what cannot be done for all that cannot be done for one. Believe me there were a great many instances of special pleading, mostly by staff, but some by students. But I knew that to concede one would set off an avalanche of more pleaders. To say yes, would be to open the flood gates.
Confession: I did make one exception. As Associate Dean there was always tsunami of special pleading about admission. Students whose track record made it abundantly clear they could not do the work of the course, wanted to pay the tuition. I aways rejected them on the ground that no one should be admitted to fail. Even so on one occasion a letter of appeal got through the buffers from one Veronica. She had done the HSC fifteen years before and hashed it. Since then she had done all manner of things including very successful study on TAFE, and she wanted to go to University to do things not available at TAFE. If she had applied on the basis of the TAFE results, she would have been admitted. However, in NSW one never escapes the HSC score and hers was so lousy that it pulled down the TAFE results. That ghostly and ghoulish HSC result was always going to be there. I admitted her. (Though I never made her acquaintance I noted that she graduated in minimum time with a credit average.)
Back to Aristotle and our author, who went to and spent time everywhere Aristotle did, walking where he walked. Who paid for that junket? Well whoever did spent the money did well. That tactile immersion adds depth to the page.
It is a book by an Aristotelian scholar but not one that is not written for Aristotelian scholars, and therein lies the reference to tenure above. Nor is it a textbook which a promotions committee might grudgingly acknowledge at a heavy discount.
Edth Hall who has many more titles for me to read.
When I gathered the meta-data from GoodReads my eye fell on a few of the niggardly comments, reminding me why I don’t read them. So pompous, so self-centred, so much like a department meeting.
Peersonal note. When we traversed the Anatolian plateau in 2015 one of our stops was Assos on the Aegan Coast. I was keen on this when I saw it in the program because Aristotle lived there for a time and married a woman from there. The tour guide assured me that in 2009 a statue of Ari had been erected to affirm the connection.
Our stay at Assos was rainy and the roads were clogged with desperate Syrian refugees who could see the European Union a few miles away across the water in the Greek island of Lesbos. The plinth for the statue of Aristotle was there but not the likeness. It had been vandalised and dismounted for repairs. I have since learned it was replaced in 2017.
I stood in front of the plinth for some snaps now lost in the labyrinth of computer bits and bytes. It was rainy and because I wanted the snap we missed the bus and had to walk back in the rain, getting soaked and never quite drying out for the rested of the trip.
IMDb meta-data is 49 episodes of 50 minutes each, rated 7.3 by 6734 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy FY
Verdict: Zzzzzzz.
The moon has solved Earth’s only problem, namely, where to bury the spent uranium to keep Kim Ill Jung’s hands off it.
The leads are a catatonic Martin Landau and confused Barbara Bain, the latter’s entire script consists of screenwriterese for medical gobbledegook. To create tension between playing with toys, see below, she objects to his actions on cue with the nonsense. No wonder she split.
So underwritten I watched only one episode in 1975 and painfully another in 2020.
In one part, it was an effort to cash-in on the market revealed by syndication of Star Trek, and also to continue where UFO (1970), another Anderson production, had left off. The Andersons, say no more. See below for more!
The leads were Americans with a following from their tenure on Mission: Impossible (1968+) but the production was Brit and Empire (including one Strine).
Some of the toys on display.
All of that is reduced to Lego toys by those very British producers Gerry and Sylvia Anderson (yes, Thunderbirds Are Go) from swinging London. Toys. Check. The second hallmark of an Anderson production is the absence of script. Check. The third is the absence of any humour, wit, or insight in favour of boring mechanical movement so we can see the toy models. Check. In spite of the Anderson kiss of death, it lasted two seasons, but took a hit below the waterline when the Andersons divorced and their lawyers fought over the IP, before the concept existed.
A few differences from ST are quick to see. The cast is only human. No Spock. But the biggest difference is the approach to problem-solving. When the usual problems are thrown-up (yes, that is exactly the right word), the response is for all eyes to turn to Landau. Leaden direction. Check. Another Anderson hallmark. He then goes into a catatonic close up. The fraternity brothers went the fridge for beer, and stayed there at this point. Then ignoring evidence or suggestions of others, he embarks on derring do. Still on the Anderson check list: stupid. Check.
Whoa! Martin Landau as an action hero? Hardly.
In ST for all of his action-hero posturing, Kirk always put the team to work, had conferences with them in private to canvass options, asked for evidence, delegated research for precedents. Two of his common lines in staff meetings were: ‘We need options’ and ‘Find answers.’ Off the specialists then went to seek and find…. along way Kirk would fight bare chested a few aliens and turn his bedside manner on for woman, human or not. The point is his staff didn’t stare at him waiting for oracular utterances, but instead worked at enlightenment pseudo science.
Fashions in space.
Then there are the nylon double-knit body suits with flared pant legs in beige. The less said about the fashions, the better. That is Barry Morse crouching in the lower left, trying to hide from the camera. At least he had enough sense to do that.
GoodReads meta-data is 428 pages, rated as 4.26 by 1301 litizens.
Genre: Biography.
Verdict: Unique.
Crazy Horse (1840-1877) was born an odd man out in the Sandhill country of Nebraska. He was of fair hair and fair skin relative to his people. There is no reason to suppose any European connection in his gene pool, just an aberration like Peter the Great’s height. When he was teenager a European described him as an albino with red eyes. Set apart from birth by appearance he became moody teenage loner, often preferring his own company to that of his peers. Aloof, he played little role in the tribe, though his father and brothers were leaders.
There had long been a trickle of European immigrants travelling west on the Holy Trail in the Platte River Valley, but the trickle changed after 1865 in two ways: first, Europeans established ever more permanent settlements along the way. They were coming to stay. Second, after the end of Civil War the trickle became a flood. These changes coincided with Crazy Horse’s manhood.
There were many conflicts, first, with the traditional enemies the Crow, Pawnee, and Utes for hunting grounds and winter quarters; there were few with the immigrants who passed though but when the army began to build forts the conflicts with the immigrants and army increased. The linguistic and cultural barriers provided much room for misunderstanding and conflict, as did the sense of superiority held both by the Sioux and the Europeans. Each thought the other primitive.
Even in Crazy Horse’s youth the demographics were clear. There were many more white men than red men at any one place. But it is also true that the many Indians had no history of cooperation, and for a long time many of them still perceived other Indians as the real enemy, which was reinforced by cultural norms that praised horse theft, ambush of traditional rivals, and the like. There were no cultural values for dealing with the white man and his guns and cannons. In addition, the usual Indian methods of warfare emphasised the individual warrior and not teamwork, coordination, or planning. Ergo even within one tribe like the Ogalala Sioux there was neither experience nor cultural reward for teamwork, coordination, or planning. The impetuous hothead who struck out on his own was the ideal.
Add to that the temptation of demon whiskey and some tribesmen sold out others to get the burning cup.
But the capstone was gold in Black Hills. Once it was found the whites did not pass through or stay in the forts, but penetrated the hinterland and spread out to find and to mine gold, and the army followed to protect them. This exploration led, inevitably, to many conflicts and escalating violence. Once the Civil War ended many in the eastern and southern United States looked to the West for a new life, to forget the past and gold was magnet for them and those who would live off them selling coffee, shovels, and the like. The demand for protection from Indians increased exponentially as the white population increased.
Crazy Horse proved to be skilful warrior and had many successes. He was thus anointed as a shirt-wearer, or leading warrior, who embodied the tribe. Later he lost this honour in a quarrel over a woman. Sioux leaders were supposed to be above such personal concerns, think Philosopher Kings, and he lost the title, though he remained the best warrior.
There were peace-makers and peace-keepers, straight arrows, and negotiators among both the Red and White, but there were also self-serving scoundrels, liars, hotheads, and the greedy on both sides. The Indian social unit was a clan and any joint action with other Indians was difficult after years or rivalry, hostility, and worse. It is also true that in the army were many officers who had learned that the gun solved all problems. They applied the Appomattox solution of overwhelming force to the Indians. The irony is that many of the US troopers in the Indians Wars were veterans of the Confederate army who had nothing and no one to go home to and no other means of livelihood but soldiering. They were determined to be on the winning side this time.
The white buffalo was a rarity and when one appeared it was taken by the Sioux to be sign from the gods. That Crazy Horse was so pale associated him in the minds of many of the tribesmen with this holy sign. Moreover, he himself came to find several of the white buffalo which was remarkable. The white buffalo is not a sacred cow, but rather is killed and returned to the earth as an offering to the gods. It was rare for a warrior to kill one white buffalo when Crazy Horse had killed two. In this way he was further set apart from his fellows.
There were also other signs of charisma. He survived being shot in the face by a jealous rival when all thought he would die. He was indeed marked out. His successes attracted envy and the envious started rumours to blacken his name, but his persistent modesty and serenity were proof against these innuendoes.
The sad story ends when Crazy Horse surrendered to live on a reservation, but was killed. How and why he was murdered is unclear, but murdered he was at a fort while under the protection of the United States Army. No inquiry was held and no one held responsible. Sounds like something that could happen today.
This book is written from the Sioux point of view, using the idioms and references of the Lakota. One might almost might call it a fictional autobiography. At the end is long list of the individuals whom she interviewed, and the archives consulted. Sandoz grew up in the Sandhills among the Sioux and they were a lifetime preoccupation for her.
Mari Sandoz
Following Charles van Doren’s advice from long ago, I usually skip the front matter of a book to read the book and make up my own mind, but for some reason I started to read introduction by the reprint series editor and found is self-deprecating, honest, devoid of clichés, self-promotion, and corporate-speak, and penetrating. I read it to the end, a rarity that.
A decade ago or so we went to Mount Rushmore and saw the site of the Crazy Horse memorial. The mental note I made then to find out more about this legendary figure was redeemed with reading this book.
Crazy Horse echoes: An Excelsior class starship bears his name in StarTrek: The Next Generation.
Like an NBA shooting guard, a writer needs a short memory to forget the mistakes, errors, misses, and rejections. Sandoz once said she had had more than 7000 rejections for her short stories, novels, essays, and non-fiction. She was so depressed by word ‘No’ at one time that she burned a bathtub full of manuscripts. In the early years she made a living as a school teacher by day.
Sandoz’s first book was rejected by fourteen major publishers before it won a prize sponsored by a magazine for a new writer’s first book. That was Old Jules (1935), followed by many others including Cheyenne Autumn (1953) and These were the Sioux (1961). The more she published about the treatment of Sioux the more persona non grata she became in Nebraska and she finally relocated to the East Coast to be near the publishers. Though now her likeness graces the state capital building in a hall of notables.
Alan Wilkinson’s Red House on the Niobrara (2012) is a tribute to Sandoz. It is discussed elsewhere on this blog.
