Political theory and practice – Page 44

The Silver Swan: In Search Doris Duke (2020) by Sallie Bingham.

GoodReads meta-data is 336 pages, rated 2.73 by 11 litizens.

Genre: Biography.

Verdict: Not found.

Declaration: I read only the Kindle sample.

We have been to Doris Duke’s (1912–1993) home — Shangri-la — three times, and found it interesting, impressive, intriguing, innovative, and more. The accounts of the guides and the handouts tell visitors a little about the reclusive DD, but not very much.

When I went looking for more information after our last visit I came across a reference to this forthcoming title, so I signed on for the Kindle sample when it was published. In due course it popped up on the screen.

Well, the sample includes the first two chapters which I read to the end. I am none the wiser about DD. The chapters I read have neither rhyme nor reason but dart back and forth with the breathlessness of a confused thriller writer. There is no orderly or organised examination of her origins, nature, nurture, growth, and….

Even that soft touch, GoodReads, has some stingers about the ‘shambles’ the book is and the endless ‘fluff’ and ‘distractions’ that pad it out. Two chapters was more than enough for me to press Delete.

This title was published by a very major New York City publisher from which fact draw your own conclusions, Reader. Bingham has published many short stories and other fiction.

Here’s what I already knew: Mr Duke make money from cigarettes, so much that he founded the eponymous university, Doris was the only child and a fabulously rich heiress who built on Oahu a spectacular all-modern-conveniences house, which has an Arabic water garden and pavilion. She filled the house with with Islamic decorative art. During its construction in the 1930s the film Lost Horizons (based on James Hilton’s novel) was current and the builders nicknamed the building Shangri-la; she liked that. Tall, elegant, and rich, this is one of the places where she went for solitude, hiding from the predators.

In addition to the buildings and the art work, there are also videos of its construction and some of her activities there. She was a very serious collector and the property also houses an archive documenting and authenticating the collection. She willed it all to the state of Hawaii to preserve and make public with an endowment of one billion dollars.

There are entries on Wikipedia that offer a more general account of the Dukes.

Murder at the Mansion (2015) by Alison Golden

GoodReads meta-data is 180 pages, rated 3.71 by 1376 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

Verdict: Midsomeresque.

Contemporary outsized, lumpy vicar Annabel Dixon cannot resist a mystery in picturesque England today. When Sir John Many Pounds buys a mansion in the woods she sets off to snoop, and welcome him to Upton Saint Mary in Cornwall. No sooner does she arrive at the mansion than Sir is shot dead with a crossbow arrow. (Turns out everyone in rural England is a dab hand at a crossbow.)

When not salivating over men in uniform, Vicar finds clues and then Plod arrests the most likely suspect and repeatedly ask him to confess which he does. End.

I liked the rural setting, the jolly Vicar (though not her constant swooning over men in blue), the village gossips, the cup cakes, and the cat, aptly named Biscuit, but not the plot. Do English courts really send blonde, blue-eyed, attractive, youthful men and women to prison for pilfering, when there are so many immigrants to slam-up. Do not the fairest of them all get off with words of warning, while the immigrants do porridge?

Do suspects confess when asked nicely to do so? Are there no lawyers in rustic England? This is the first of series.

Soldier, The Outer Limits – S02E01 (1964)

IMDb meta-data is: broadcast on 19 September 1964 for 52 minutes, rated 7.9 by 426 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy.

Verdict: Meow!

This IMDb summary leaves out the best part: A soldier from the far future is accidentally teleported through time back to 1964. The psychiatrist assigned to examine the soldier realizes that he has been bred purely as a killing machine, but tries to reawaken the warrior’s humanity. Meanwhile, a second soldier arrives, dedicated to hunting and killing his enemy. Yada, yada…

There is an opening scene on a vast no man’s land, potted with shell holes, mangled trees, laser blasted rocks, and a miasma hangs over it all as Cochise in body armour with a visored helmet creeps from shelter to cover.

Just as Cochise closes in to kill Enemy in single combat, the two of them trip over a script and are hurled back in time 1800 years to era of the Yankee Dynasty in MLB. Poor saps. Once there an emeritus Mike Shayne sets about boring Cochise back to his lost humanity. There is marvellous scene when the suspicious Cochise, who thinks he has been taken prisoner by a clever and deceitful enemy disguised as an inept pensioner, sees a house cat and tries to communicate with it to escape these fiendish do-gooders. This, however, is not a battle cat and scoots to the bowl.

Mike Shayne feels very smug in rekindling Cochise’s suppressed humanity with psycho-babble, right up until Enemy from that no man’s land arrives in his living room! Human or automaton, a stereotype has got to do what a stereotype has got to do.

After seeing this episode, no cat will ever look the same. I watched it again recently when I found it, after some searching, on Daily Motion, where finding anything happens by chance.

Murder at the Smithsonian (1984) by Margaret Truman.

GoodReads meta-data is 292 pages, rated 3.71 by 1399 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

Verdict: Elik (Elle + IKEA).

The setting is grand but underdeveloped in preference to descriptions of the clothes worn by everyone who passes over the page and even more detailed descriptions of furnishings and fittings of homes, offices, and elevators, but strangely — mercifully — not cars. All of that pointless detail puffs up the book far beyond plot or character.

The plot is good, too: all those items in storage a museum never has occasion to display are tempting for a thief with inside assistance who plays a long game.

But do people repeatedly tell others they have something of the utmost importance to tell them…next Friday at 3 pm. Or do they just blurt it out; do they just tell them right now! That starts it off on the wrong credibility foot and it stays that way.

An enormous red herring is so conspicuous that he could not possibly be guilty. Near the beginning there is a nice but underdeveloped incident in the First Ladies exhibit. I like some of the coming and going in DC but there is little of it. There is a distracting sidebar about a nutter claiming to be James Smithson’s heir. It adds nothing to the plot, ambience, or character. Though it does remind us that not all the idiots are in the White House.

This title is one of a series by Truman, daughter of Harry, set in D.C. For example, Murder at ….the Library of Congress, National Gallery, National Cathedral, Pentagon, Kennedy Center, Washington Tribune, and Ford’s Theatre.

The Corner Shop in Cockleberry Bay (2018) by Nicola May

GoodReads meta-data is 364 pages, rated 4.19 by 17465 litizens.

Genre: Chick Lit.

Verdict: Flip, flip go the pages.

The narrative arch is a mystery that keeps interest for a while, but the litany of drunks, hangovers, casual sex, and more of the aforementioned soon wore thin. Knit one, purl one, repeat. Fascinating. Not.

The locale offered some interest but on the page it always took second place to the drink and sex.

Our heroine is given a shop in picturesque Cockleberry by an anonymous benefactor. That is the overarching mystery. Who is the giver and why? The shop has been derelict five years (and that gap is never explained within my attention span). What will our hapless heroine make of it? (Since we know it is the first of a series, success of some kind is guaranteed.)

Without a shred of self-discipline, numeracy, or much else Heroine makes the shop a success and discovers some true(r) love. She also discovers who her benefactor is. My discovery was why some chick lit is not for me.

It is the first (and for me last) in a series set in picturesque Devon. The author published this first volume herself and has since made quite a success of the series. So be it.

I seem to recall I went down that way once by train to a PSA conference in Exeter in 1980. The Veil of Ignorance is drawn over any details.

Attack in the Library (1983) by George Arion

GoodReads meta-data is 208 pages (it seemed like a lot more), rated 3.96 by 120 relatives of the publisher.

Genre: krimi.

Verdict: slow and steady and slow.

Romanian public intellectual journalist muses on life, and death when late one afternoon with a colossal hangover he finds a dead body has disordered the books in his study – the library of the title. He vaguely recognised the victim as a passing acquaintance. What to do?

In his befuddled state he concludes that hiding the body in the cellar of the apartment building makes more sense than calling the militia (police). Sure he is a 98-pound weakling intellectual, lugging around a deadman in the dark of night is the safer option in a ruthless totalitarian state governed by a demon in a necktie.

Does it have to be said? None of that goes well.

He sets out then to resolve the mystery to make sure he is innocent, because all that pálinka the night before has undermined his confidence. The fraternity brothers have ordered a case of the stuff to see if it beats Romulean blue ale.

He romances a duchess who lives in a deuce palace with her father who disapproves of this slovenly journalist. She and he have enough misunderstandings to quality the title as Chick Lit.

After a while this hack realises someone is systematically plotting to bring him to ruin. He consults the list of people who hate him compiled in the telephone book, and settles on a likely prospect, a chicken farmer whom the journalist tried in the court of pubic opinion some years ago.

He gathers the principals in a room, and…..

Nit picking note: the dead man was not killed in the library, ergo there was no attack in the library. And as noted above a study with bookshelves does not a library make. A library has to have librarians, as well as books.

While it is set in Red Bucharest it is largely bleached of references either to communism or the regime. How such an all enveloping miasma can be filtered out is itself a wonder. After all, it was published in Romania by a regime that left nothing to chance. By the way, the femme fatale is not in fact a duchess but she lives like one and that is why he calls her that. Indeed how did anyone live like that in Romania in 1983?

This is the first in a series involving our hero, one Mladin, Andrei. In 2018 Arion was still publishing a book a year. Strength to his arm, but no more for me.

Calling Philo Vance (1940)

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 2 minutes, rated 5.9 by 290 cinematizens.

Genre: krimi

Verdict: Woof!

The dogs have been replaced by the design of a warplane, but much else is word-for-word of The Kennel Murder Case (1933). In recognition of its original two dogs feature in this version.

After twice-over befuddling the inept secret police of an unnamed foreign power Philo (autocorrect insists that he is ‘Photo,’ regrettably we know better), Philo returns to the Big Apple to thwart the nation’s Republican enemies on home soil.

While in the European power’s inner sanctum he had learned that the plans of a top hush Yankee warplane were already on file there. How did they get there? Can we close the barn door now that Pegasus has bolted? ‘Do we care,’ chorussed the fraternity brothers on the way to the beer refrigerator in a well-worn path?

This rather brash and energetic incarnation of Philo inserts himself into the household of the aircraft owner and designer only to find him dead – three times over. He was clubbed, stabbed, and shot. This is a man with enemies. Was he a dean?

Suspicion falls with a thud on the victim’s errant brother who is nowhere to be found until, thanks to one of the dogs, someone opens the hall closet. Thump. Body number two.

Not to worry, Philo sorts through it all. The jilted girlfriend, the grasping sister, the fiancée, the ever-present butler, the next door neighbour and her dog, his own dog, his buffoon sidekick who is stuck with some terrible lines but mans-up for them, and others now forgotten.

In the great tradition, the least likely suspect did it as revealed in a final punch-up.

Among the cognoscenti there are those that claim to prefer the 1933 original in which Philo was played by William Powell, who finally learned his lesson and never did that again. Me, I am agnostic on this important question, at least until I can watch The Kennel Murder Case (1933) again. N.B. I tried reading it and found it so mannered, laboured, forced, and fey that I stopped when the Kindle sample ended, leaving me a wiser and happier man.

The Nurse’s Secret (1941)

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 4 minutes run time, rated 5.8 by 150 cinematizens,

Gerne: ODH

Verdict: Lee!

After superb opening credits with an animated, silhouetted nurse in white casting the light of a torch around an Old Dark House, Lee Patrick comes to the rescue as the nurse. It seems that in the ODH the heir apparent has had his brains blown out: suicide, accident, or murder?

The deceased was a caddish wastrel unloved and unmissed, but a mess there on the floor. While there was no money to inherit from his bed-ridden mother there is a whopper of an insurance policy on Cad himself, which will not be paid for suicide! So the household preference is for accident. He shot himself in the back of the head while cleaning his finger nails. Sure.

Bernie Olds is too smart to fall for that old dodge and he insinuates into the household his squeeze, the one and only Lee Patrick to nurse the bedridden mother. She takes the lead from there on in. A steam roller she keeps at it despite roadblocks, disincentives, threats, assault, and another assault. It is her picture and the better for it.

Skulduggery abounds. Who can be trusted? The peeping butler? Cad’s jilted girlfriend? The girlfriend’s paramour de jour? The secret wife of Cad? The gloomy doctor? Assorted retainers? The ever so correct lawyer?

No prizes for guessing. When everyone else is eliminated that leaves the ever so correct least suspicious one as the cape-wearing shadow. Though it is hard to picture this geriatric villain carrying around a roof ladder.

It was released on 21 May 1941 when theatrical newsreels featured the German victories in Crete and Libya. While secretly in Moscow, the Soviet head of military intelligence argued that Germany was preparing to invade Russia. Stalin rejected the assessment and when the intelligence officer insisted, Stalin had him arrested and shot. When will that happen in DC now that the Thief-in-Chief has unlimited power.

Geekerella (2017) by Ashley Poston

GoodReads meta-data is 320 pages, rated 4.00 by 37,381 litizens.

Genre: Chick Lit.

Verdict: Ignite!

Introverted, harassed, unloved, acned, beset teenage girl dreams of the stars while her wicked stepmother and cruel step sisters torment her in a tag team. If and when she finally snaps they will get the inheritance from the deceased father and be rid of her once and for all to live unhappily ever after. (It’s pretty clear these people do not have the happiness gene.)

The evil step mother is certainly decanal material. No argument, no loyalty, no evidence, no reason, no services rendered, no compassion sways her from the KPI of seeing off Introv. That way lies promotion. Sending Introv up on the roof in a thunderstorm to fix a leak is all in a day’s meanness for her. Nothing special. Overdrawn just a tad, one might say. On the other hand, speaking of deans….[some stories are not fit to print].

Introv works in a food truck with Stud Girl, a reference to the many piercings the latter sports. They communicate in grunts. Don’t underestimate this Newtown wannabe.

Long ago and far away Introv had parents who loved her and took her (metaphorically) to the stars, as founding fans of StarField, a brief television series that subsequently won a following in syndication.The odes to the dead parents and the stars are humbling, moving, and spectacular to read. If this is Chick Lit, let there be more of it.

Meanwhile, in another world the StarField franchise is getting a re-boot these years later with a teenage Jason Bieber in the lead.* Yuck! Nothing could be more wrong which Introv boldly declares on her blog which gets taken up far and wide simply because by some quirk of time zones she was the first to voice this opinion.

We learn that despite appearances and expectations, this teen idol has a soul, one that yearns to be free of being Jason Bieber 24/7. The iron cage of celebrity is very nicely realised in these pages. Though again perhaps a tiny bit overdrawn just for fun. Still I liked the ever distracted manager and monosyllabic bodyguard. Likewise the co-star who tells the boy wonder that if he doesn’t stand up for himself now, he never will.

He wants out so bad he calls an old number he found for help to wiggle out of a commitment without a confrontation, which old number once belonged to Introv’s deceased dad, and so he makes unintended contact with her. Through this mischance they communicate, and find that they can communicate more, and more easily with texts to a stranger than with anyone around them. He is surrounded by cannibalistic fans and hangers-on; she by the equally ravenous evil step family.

We just know that somehow these two worlds are going to meet, perhaps with a jolt, and that only these two can save each other.

Along the way they learn (as do some others) that they are not alone. Introv also learns that she does have friends and does not have to push the rock up the hill everyday alone. Bieber learns to act like the hero he plays in film, just a little bit, and discovers he likes it and it works.

Did I mention the food truck that specialised in pumpkin fries with a giant pumpkin painted on the side. Did I mention that? Shoulda. Did I mention Stud Girl’s cry at the gate: ‘Today we fight!’ Shoulda.

Loved it.

First is a series of Geek Girl books.

*No it is not really Justin Bieber but I wanted name from the popular culture and so little do I know that I took this one to represent the ephemera, vacuity, and fatuousness thereof. While I am sure many others fill that bill, Jason is a good fit.

Eolomea (1972)

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 22 minutes of run time, rated 5.7 by 470 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy

Verdict: Bland leading the bland.

The chic fashions of Eastern Europe1972 abound, whence space flight is routine as far out as the Third Ring. (I took that to be a reference to Asteroids, but I’ll never know.) Then a number of space ships bound for a space station disappear. (The actors say ‘acht‘ but the subtitles say ‘ten.’) No distress calls, no nothing. Well, a lot of nothing. Then the space station itself goes dark.

Back on Earth high command ponders in a plenary session where Asians and Africans are conspicuously numbered among the socialist siblings. On the one side is Belle who wants to stop all flights and send a rescue mission. On the other is Tubby who prefers to continue as usual and wait and see. She prevails. Stress that: the head of operations is a woman and in 1972 she prevails against a male colleague.

The rescue mission sets off with Belle on board. By luck en route they encounter one the missing ships and try to board it, but it rockets off; apparently it is not a ghost ship. They continue on to the vast space station, part refinery, part parking garage, part YM/WSA (Young Men’s/Women’s Socialist Association), part science lab. It is about the size of the IKEA store in Tempe, vast and largely uncharted.

They find only starving laboratory animals, but then half of the station is sealed off, that is, the parking garage. Belle and the rescue crew show no interest in what is behind that green door.

There occurs a comic interlude with a tin man that is completely superfluous and annoying.

There has been a sidebar with a bored space miner on asteroid who misses Belle. (Who wouldn’t.). Many flashback to the good old days on Earth. Many. Too many.

Among the flash backs are some with Tubby who muses about Eolomena, which is the name acolytes have given to a point of light that appears every twenty-four years in the starry night sky. Is it a signal? He wishfully thinks so for no discernible reason. Why that name and rather than, say, Light in Sky was not explained within my attention span.

Now back to the space station for the denouement replete with SPOILERS. Tubby has by unknown means convinced the ten missing space ship crews and all the space station personnel to take one-way tickets to Eolomea. They have been sanding the wheels on their space ship wagons in the garage getting ready to blast off, while their ostensible rescuers wander about in Space Station IKEA. When the bored miner is offered a one-way ticket, he forsakes Belle and goes along. (‘What an idijit,’ cried the fraternity brothers! ). So the numerous, lengthy flashbacks to their courtship come to naught. End.

It is mercifully free of any AgitProp, beyond that implied by the composition of the plenary session where the Third World members sit quietly waiting for the assistant director’s cue to vote for Belle.

Points of interest…are two. In 1972 it portrays two things unusual for the time. First and foremost is that Belle is in charge and stays that way. There are no demeaning asides from the chaps as there were in innumerable 1972 films. Nor is she riven by self doubts – scientist versus woman – that mar so much Hollywood and Pinewood tosh from the day. Full Ost Marks for that.

Second, asteroid mining is dreary, dull, and boring blue collar work. There is no glamour in space. When Ridley Scott made space flight industrial in Alien (1979) he hailed himself a genius, but it was old news.

But overall, there is zero tension in Eolomea. There are no equipment failures, but then there were probably no low-bid contractors in the script, to generate some tension. Meteors seem to have taken the day off because there are none of them either. The debate between Belle and Tubby is oh-hum. That Tubby has suborned all those people into a one-way mission is taken as Red without explanation. Bland is the word.