No matter how much she achieves, she could never achieve one thing she desperately needed as a child, her father's approval and love. He is a high profile general and a selfish man in that his career, his standards, his name is everything. Perhaps a male heir would beat him at his own game, perhaps not, who knows! But a daughter has no chance whatsoever no matter how high an achiever in his own field, because she has other needs too, of love and admiration, and if she does not get them from him she could only go frigid and die within or do something that would inevitably blot the father's escutcheon, since respectable ways of a happy life with love do not match requirements of a life with high achieving career if you are a woman, not in west, certainly not in military.
So when she is dead in a position incompatible with her father's position, he must order an inquiry but makes his requirements clear, hush. And the setup of the inquiry is as suitable for the purpose, or so those that arranged it think.
Only, those that are given the job have more of a conscience and integrity. They will go to the end to discover truth, and will not hush it up. And truth is, however much others in the base hated her or whatever, for whatever reason, it is her own father that is responsible for her murder, in a more literal way than the slow torture of her life from childhood on.
.............................................
All that assuming the general is well meaning and honest, sincere at all times. But that is an assumption demolished cruelly for the daughter in her hour of most need of a father, when he turns out to be not merely less of a father than a marionette to be commanded by his paymasters, but far worse - he takes orders to hush her up, have no inquiry to ascertain who were participants in the gang rape she suffered from her own colleagues - which in US military happens often enough in individual setting for most women in military, but with just as little redress - but tells her to forget it ever happened and assures her it is for the best. How would he know any better? Women usually do not rape men, much less gang rape with all the repercussions involved, being made feel like trash being only one, and open laughter amongst colleagues around her for another.
Only, if he were a father - which he biologically was but never grew up enough to be, perhaps not even as much a human as a machine aiming at one thing, his own career - he ought to have known, and more. He ought to have felt all her pain and humiliation and outrage, and ought to have moved heaven and earth and hell too if necessary to get justice for her and punishment for the miscreants, beasts that raped her, only for being superior to all her colleagues. If he were human, if he were grown up enough to be a father more than in biological terms.
He however was far more concerned about his own career, although the issue was dressed up in terms he and others could dress up suitably so as to not seem like he exchanged his daughter's life for his own medals - interests of nation, military, future of women in military, whatever blah would sound right.
Only, this veil of secrecy, pretense of nothing happened, forgetting, did not save future for women in US military - on the contrary.
It was a subterfuge everyone could clearly see through, and from that day one it was not only his own daughter that was presented to all males who could and wished to rape her - it was any and every woman, in military or otherwise. For sake of medals for him and anonymity of rapists heart's desire, all women of world were officially sacrificed to the base ignoble males of military of US and elsewhere. It was regression at its worst.
And the daughter's sense of justice would not give up, either, just as much as her heart bleeding tears of blood for the father she had needed in her most dire moment continued to force him to look at her, to acknowledge it did happen.
...............................................................
Fortunately for her the investigating team did hear her - after her death. And they chose not to overlook and pretend and forget.
In this perhaps she was luckier than most women of the world, and not because she was the general's daughter.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
The Letter And Other Stories: by W. Somerset Maugham.
Stories of Maugham are favourite for their wry wit along with a fresh look a tlife and virtues, or at least those of the virtues that often cause mayhem in lives and society, and more. He writes without blinkers about most affairs of any sort, be they of social or of hearts or of colonial empire.
His stories of south seas in particular deal with the colonial empire and its men and women, thrown in situations away from home and dealing with them in ways perhaps they would not at home due to social considerations - although that can at best be a guess - and hence a portrayal of human mind, heart and behaviour at its more original picture, of how people deal with life left to their own resources.
.................................................
The Letter:-
A murder of a paramour that happened in a moment of rage following frustration of losing the lover, gone wrong due to his having left a letter with his preferred mistress, who extorts the full value, which results in the husband coming to realise the wife was not an innocent pure woman assaulted by the loose character after all. They won't separate, not legally anyway, but their marriage and life together is now only a show for social reasons.
...................................................
His stories of south seas in particular deal with the colonial empire and its men and women, thrown in situations away from home and dealing with them in ways perhaps they would not at home due to social considerations - although that can at best be a guess - and hence a portrayal of human mind, heart and behaviour at its more original picture, of how people deal with life left to their own resources.
.................................................
The Letter:-
A murder of a paramour that happened in a moment of rage following frustration of losing the lover, gone wrong due to his having left a letter with his preferred mistress, who extorts the full value, which results in the husband coming to realise the wife was not an innocent pure woman assaulted by the loose character after all. They won't separate, not legally anyway, but their marriage and life together is now only a show for social reasons.
...................................................
The Complete Short Stories Of W. Somerset Maugham: by W. Somerset Maugham (Of course! who else!)
So many favourites in this - most people like Rain more than any other, at any rate it is the most discussed one. My personal favourite however is Virtue, an unforgettable one.
There are many, many others of course - Round Dozen for one, with amusing details of a much married man aggrieved by one of his wives turning him in.
Then there is the heartbreaking one of love and loss that I can't think of the name and it is a rare one for lack of cynical or otherwise bringing the reader down to earth sort of twist.
There is Letter with its murder of a paramour gone wrong due to his having left a letter with his mistress who extorts the full value,
There is the story about a widow who married a friend of her murdered husband and the daughter who looks like the second husband.
And there is another one with the Italian husband murdering his own father on suspicion of an affair between his father and his wife.
And all these are only what I can recall off hand after three decades or so.
I suppose the one of love and death with grief and heartbreak remains close to heart, along with Virtue that remains close to conviction, with total agreement with the protagonist by the time the story is over.
I wish I could remember if the story about the expensive wife becoming beautiful is here, or it is by another writer.
.................................................................................
The Round Dozen:-
About a much marrying man who was much aggrieved and felt a genuine sense of injury and grievance when one of his wives informed the law - not particularly handsome or accomplished in any way whatsoever, middle aged and lower class and not educated nor sophisticated nor well to do, he had nevertheless developed a talent for marrying successfully by his own definition. He found lonely older women of certain financial independence at holiday places and paid them attention, and post marriage gave them a good time until their money ran out. Then it was time to move on. To his chagrin, there was a small matter of having married only eleven times. Most of his wives were in fact willing to take him back.
After his leaving prison, the protagonist received a post card from him one day, and understood he had made his round dozen to his satisfaction after all.
.....................................................................................
Rain:-
This must have been terribly shocking to the hypocritical and pious while being nothing new to those without blinkers, when published first - 20th century was nothing if not one that shredded many such veils of pretension from established societies of west.
The story takes place on a voyage in Pacific where a woman of certain profession is having fun along with a few of males around - after all being alone most of their lives far away from home was tough on the guys, and an accommodating woman who was not merely paid goods but one with some spirit, some heart and joy, was a blessing.
Unfortunately for them there is not merely a usual contingent of the disapproving couples and other respectable members of society but also a preacher very sure and proud of himself, who goes after the woman with denunciation and promised hell fire to all that would consort with her. She is brought to abject surrender and is entirely dependent on him subsequently in her submission to a pious life henceforth. And the preacher is willing to sacrifice himself, to go to her at any hour of day or night she might need him, as his wife very proudly testifies to his selfless sacrifice of his own comforts.
The preacher meanwhile has dreams of hills of Nebraska (having read it so long ago I could be wrong about the name of the particular state) - and then one day the preacher is found dead, having committed suicide, while there is sound of phonograph and laughter and dancing from the room of the woman who was trying to reform, and a note of bitter victory.
She was sincere in her repentance and her attempt to reform, but the high minded preacher all too fallible and unaware of his own Achilles's heel shared with all life, if not more than a little hypocritical in his imposition of his will and his standards of virtue on all and sundry.
..............................................................
Virtue:-
We are begun on a gentle note with the story of a forty odd year old man, caustic and yet much loved but admittedly difficult, finding love and being completely smitten with his wife he considers himself fortunate to marry - he is the same man but now happy and his acerbic nature is taken now as wit due to his basking in his wife's love, a much loved woman in society, and their insistence on being put up together when invited is an amusing embarrassment for hostesses who lack room and are used to couples wishing to be put up rather apart.
And then there is an acquaintance of the writer (protagonist really, except one tends to assume he is the writer) from colonies in Malaya, a young man who needs to have some company and is introduced to the couple. Some time later, the couple is separated, and the wife is adamant in not returning to the husband, and he commits suicide.
The protagonist is called to interpret a letter from the young man in Malaya who has now returned, and informed that he is responsible for the love that the young man and the not so young wife (now widow) fell into since he introduced them. The letter is cautious and sympathetic about her loss but equivocal about her prospects of being able to come to Malaya to marry him.
The hostess, a friend of the protagonist makes the observation that it is up to him to make the young man realise his responsibility having gone into the love affair and caused the separation, which is when it becomes clear that the wife in love with another man had never crossed her limits being a virtuous woman.
"Virtue be damned" informs her the protagonist, since it had caused so much grief and a death of a loving husband - if only the wife had quietly had had her affair and finished it the man would still be alive.
And while to some pompous hypocrites it would be an opportunity to gasp and act shocked, today the reality of that statement is only too obvious, what with "the lack of commitment" of males being so huge a problem in US.
..........................................................
There are many, many others of course - Round Dozen for one, with amusing details of a much married man aggrieved by one of his wives turning him in.
Then there is the heartbreaking one of love and loss that I can't think of the name and it is a rare one for lack of cynical or otherwise bringing the reader down to earth sort of twist.
There is Letter with its murder of a paramour gone wrong due to his having left a letter with his mistress who extorts the full value,
There is the story about a widow who married a friend of her murdered husband and the daughter who looks like the second husband.
And there is another one with the Italian husband murdering his own father on suspicion of an affair between his father and his wife.
And all these are only what I can recall off hand after three decades or so.
I suppose the one of love and death with grief and heartbreak remains close to heart, along with Virtue that remains close to conviction, with total agreement with the protagonist by the time the story is over.
I wish I could remember if the story about the expensive wife becoming beautiful is here, or it is by another writer.
.................................................................................
The Round Dozen:-
About a much marrying man who was much aggrieved and felt a genuine sense of injury and grievance when one of his wives informed the law - not particularly handsome or accomplished in any way whatsoever, middle aged and lower class and not educated nor sophisticated nor well to do, he had nevertheless developed a talent for marrying successfully by his own definition. He found lonely older women of certain financial independence at holiday places and paid them attention, and post marriage gave them a good time until their money ran out. Then it was time to move on. To his chagrin, there was a small matter of having married only eleven times. Most of his wives were in fact willing to take him back.
After his leaving prison, the protagonist received a post card from him one day, and understood he had made his round dozen to his satisfaction after all.
.....................................................................................
Rain:-
This must have been terribly shocking to the hypocritical and pious while being nothing new to those without blinkers, when published first - 20th century was nothing if not one that shredded many such veils of pretension from established societies of west.
The story takes place on a voyage in Pacific where a woman of certain profession is having fun along with a few of males around - after all being alone most of their lives far away from home was tough on the guys, and an accommodating woman who was not merely paid goods but one with some spirit, some heart and joy, was a blessing.
Unfortunately for them there is not merely a usual contingent of the disapproving couples and other respectable members of society but also a preacher very sure and proud of himself, who goes after the woman with denunciation and promised hell fire to all that would consort with her. She is brought to abject surrender and is entirely dependent on him subsequently in her submission to a pious life henceforth. And the preacher is willing to sacrifice himself, to go to her at any hour of day or night she might need him, as his wife very proudly testifies to his selfless sacrifice of his own comforts.
The preacher meanwhile has dreams of hills of Nebraska (having read it so long ago I could be wrong about the name of the particular state) - and then one day the preacher is found dead, having committed suicide, while there is sound of phonograph and laughter and dancing from the room of the woman who was trying to reform, and a note of bitter victory.
She was sincere in her repentance and her attempt to reform, but the high minded preacher all too fallible and unaware of his own Achilles's heel shared with all life, if not more than a little hypocritical in his imposition of his will and his standards of virtue on all and sundry.
..............................................................
Virtue:-
We are begun on a gentle note with the story of a forty odd year old man, caustic and yet much loved but admittedly difficult, finding love and being completely smitten with his wife he considers himself fortunate to marry - he is the same man but now happy and his acerbic nature is taken now as wit due to his basking in his wife's love, a much loved woman in society, and their insistence on being put up together when invited is an amusing embarrassment for hostesses who lack room and are used to couples wishing to be put up rather apart.
And then there is an acquaintance of the writer (protagonist really, except one tends to assume he is the writer) from colonies in Malaya, a young man who needs to have some company and is introduced to the couple. Some time later, the couple is separated, and the wife is adamant in not returning to the husband, and he commits suicide.
The protagonist is called to interpret a letter from the young man in Malaya who has now returned, and informed that he is responsible for the love that the young man and the not so young wife (now widow) fell into since he introduced them. The letter is cautious and sympathetic about her loss but equivocal about her prospects of being able to come to Malaya to marry him.
The hostess, a friend of the protagonist makes the observation that it is up to him to make the young man realise his responsibility having gone into the love affair and caused the separation, which is when it becomes clear that the wife in love with another man had never crossed her limits being a virtuous woman.
"Virtue be damned" informs her the protagonist, since it had caused so much grief and a death of a loving husband - if only the wife had quietly had had her affair and finished it the man would still be alive.
And while to some pompous hypocrites it would be an opportunity to gasp and act shocked, today the reality of that statement is only too obvious, what with "the lack of commitment" of males being so huge a problem in US.
..........................................................
Rain and Other South Seas Stories: by William Somerset Maugham.
Rain:-
This must have been terribly shocking to the hypocritical and pious while being nothing new to those without blinkers, when published first - 20th century was nothing if not one that shredded many such veils of pretension from established societies of west.
The story takes place on a voyage in Pacific where a woman of certain profession is having fun along with a few of males around - after all being alone most of their lives far away from home was tough on the guys, and an accommodating woman who was not merely paid goods but one with some spirit, some heart and joy, was a blessing.
Unfortunately for them there is not merely a usual contingent of the disapproving couples and other respectable members of society but also a preacher very sure and proud of himself, who goes after the woman with denunciation and promised hell fire to all that would consort with her. She is brought to abject surrender and is entirely dependent on him subsequently in her submission to a pious life henceforth. And the preacher is willing to sacrifice himself, to go to her at any hour of day or night she might need him, as his wife very proudly testifies to his selfless sacrifice of his own comforts.
The preacher meanwhile has dreams of hills of Nebraska (having read it so long ago I could be wrong about the name of the particular state) - and then one day the preacher is found dead, having committed suicide, while there is sound of phonograph and laughter and dancing from the room of the woman who was trying to reform, and a note of bitter victory.
She was sincere in her repentance and her attempt to reform, but the high minded preacher all too fallible and unaware of his own Achilles's heel shared with all life, if not more than a little hypocritical in his imposition of his will and his standards of virtue on all and sundry.
..............................................................
Pool:-
About a young and self assured woman who bathed in the pool in the forest - and the story around that enchanting scenario.
.................................................................
MacIntosh:-
The elder man was the sort who would dress for dinner, in heat of Malaya, every single day - for years and decades that he spent alone in his bungalow on the plantation. The younger one is not quite from the same class, and is disapproved of by the elder. It takes time for him - the younger one - to realise it is not all about class and money, and that values imparted by upbringing is a vital part of it.
While not every upper class person brought up in cushy circumstances does always behave appropriately, the story is about values, essentially.
..................................................
This must have been terribly shocking to the hypocritical and pious while being nothing new to those without blinkers, when published first - 20th century was nothing if not one that shredded many such veils of pretension from established societies of west.
The story takes place on a voyage in Pacific where a woman of certain profession is having fun along with a few of males around - after all being alone most of their lives far away from home was tough on the guys, and an accommodating woman who was not merely paid goods but one with some spirit, some heart and joy, was a blessing.
Unfortunately for them there is not merely a usual contingent of the disapproving couples and other respectable members of society but also a preacher very sure and proud of himself, who goes after the woman with denunciation and promised hell fire to all that would consort with her. She is brought to abject surrender and is entirely dependent on him subsequently in her submission to a pious life henceforth. And the preacher is willing to sacrifice himself, to go to her at any hour of day or night she might need him, as his wife very proudly testifies to his selfless sacrifice of his own comforts.
The preacher meanwhile has dreams of hills of Nebraska (having read it so long ago I could be wrong about the name of the particular state) - and then one day the preacher is found dead, having committed suicide, while there is sound of phonograph and laughter and dancing from the room of the woman who was trying to reform, and a note of bitter victory.
She was sincere in her repentance and her attempt to reform, but the high minded preacher all too fallible and unaware of his own Achilles's heel shared with all life, if not more than a little hypocritical in his imposition of his will and his standards of virtue on all and sundry.
..............................................................
Pool:-
About a young and self assured woman who bathed in the pool in the forest - and the story around that enchanting scenario.
.................................................................
MacIntosh:-
The elder man was the sort who would dress for dinner, in heat of Malaya, every single day - for years and decades that he spent alone in his bungalow on the plantation. The younger one is not quite from the same class, and is disapproved of by the elder. It takes time for him - the younger one - to realise it is not all about class and money, and that values imparted by upbringing is a vital part of it.
While not every upper class person brought up in cushy circumstances does always behave appropriately, the story is about values, essentially.
..................................................
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Moon And Sixpence: by W. Somerset Maugham.
About Gaugin.
(12092008)
Unlike his other contemporaries Gauguin was not young when he took to painting but middle aged, with a family that he abandoned for the purpose of being free to paint. From there to his life in South Pacific islands where he spent his last years and did some of his most astounding paintings, his life story is the base of this book.
(13092010)
The story by Maugham goes into a crescendo after the artist leaves for Pacific islands, and the last part where the protagonist sees the ultimate artistic achievement of the artist in his final abode is unforgettable, with his realisation that those final works of the artist are neither possible to transport to elsewhere where they would create sensation and fetch tremendous price, nor would it be appropriate for the simple reason that they belong where they are, where they stem from and live, are a part of the life the artist found - and that he did this, intentionally, having realised as much, paying his tribute to to place where he found the greatest expression of his talent possible due to the place so full of life and peace.
Looking at some of the works of Gauguin after reading this brings one shivers, not in the smallest part due to the sheer beauty and life of the work.
(22092010)
(12092008)
Unlike his other contemporaries Gauguin was not young when he took to painting but middle aged, with a family that he abandoned for the purpose of being free to paint. From there to his life in South Pacific islands where he spent his last years and did some of his most astounding paintings, his life story is the base of this book.
(13092010)
The story by Maugham goes into a crescendo after the artist leaves for Pacific islands, and the last part where the protagonist sees the ultimate artistic achievement of the artist in his final abode is unforgettable, with his realisation that those final works of the artist are neither possible to transport to elsewhere where they would create sensation and fetch tremendous price, nor would it be appropriate for the simple reason that they belong where they are, where they stem from and live, are a part of the life the artist found - and that he did this, intentionally, having realised as much, paying his tribute to to place where he found the greatest expression of his talent possible due to the place so full of life and peace.
Looking at some of the works of Gauguin after reading this brings one shivers, not in the smallest part due to the sheer beauty and life of the work.
(22092010)
Of Human Bondage: by W. Somerset Maugham.
Love is not always sweet or fun, if it is indeed love, and not a pleasant social connection one has cranked up into thinking of as love so one might feel proper about going ahead into intimacy or marriage. Love can be heart wrenching and painful, and one can be helpless in love with someone one might not approve of, someone who despises one in spite of the lover's superiority and the inferiority of the object of love. Life and love do not follow convenient patterns of paths to happiness, one has to hack out one's path and climb up with difficulty.
This is somewhat a sense of what Maugham describes far more beautifully.
This is somewhat a sense of what Maugham describes far more beautifully.
Theatre: by W. Somerset Maugham.
Long ago, someone well rounded in education and interest in much of arts and other spheres, had once said reflectively, that of all the fine arts painting was comparatively most suitable for someone not interested in (or unable to) sell oneself; any performance art in giving one any success does take into account one's own looks, and while one might be extremely accomplished, if the audience does not like to see one that is the end of it, while anyone with good looks has his or her - especially her - talents ignored or disparaged by those that envy and therefore pretend to disparage beauty.
This is all the more so when age comes in, and even more for any woman, in most performing arts. As it is women in any field whatsoever, nowadays even in marriages in lands where divorces are easy and an everyday reality, tend to lose whatever interest their talent had generated and whatever level of respect they had earned due to their achievements, with age. Most judges are male or young, and respect for age, experience and wisdom is gone down during last century while the only criteria for respect seem to be looks apart from power of money or sheer physical power to hurt the other. Since women rarely are geared toward acquiring one, tend to lose if any of the other, and are seen merely as old even when extremely beautiful, age is seen as a tragedy without solution for women on the whole, with no roles and no regard for anyone over reproductive youth.
Today moreover arts are marketed through other media than personal viewing, and the only winner in this respect is music where it is no longer quite entirely a performing art, what with radio, recording and distribution of recorded music having made watching and listening in person more a luxury post success rather than a necessity before success.
But arts like dance and even acting do depend on looks, and it gets worse with age. Unless one has another sort of clout such as an underworld don approving of one and issuing orders to the contrary an actress or a dancer is pushed aside with age, and the bar is lowered all the time. In this respect thirty is the new eighty. Dance does give a performer another window in starting a school and training others, and thus imparting the skills perfected with age. Acting merely pushes an aged actress to do elderly roles and the bar is lowered on that where an actress playing a mother might in fact even be younger than her screen "son" in real life.
...............................................................
Maugham writes in this book about matters as they were in his time, a century ago. An actress with beauty and accomplishments and consequent fame, with a handsome theatre producer and director for a husband and a perfect son with a perfect life, and wonderful career due to very adoring audiences and long fame well into her forties, might in privacy realise she was not that young and be anxious about losing her youth, her popularity, her fame, her career, while it is still going strong and she is not yet history. And when an opportunity arrives to regain her youth in spirit - perhaps even in fact as a result of the affair - she takes it, and blooms with a return of youth and beauty. This is a story of such an affair and twists and turns.
Julia has more than one adoring fan, and a long standing friend who has always waited on side with proposals over the years and has comfortably settled into a companionship of dinners and other harmless activities together, giving her a glow of not only a perfect home life but also being desired and seen publicly to be so desired.
Now, at a moment of age creeping in, with producers etcetera looking at other - younger and newly established - actresses for the younger roles such as Juliet while making it clear she is intended to play Juliet's mother, she notices a very young man paying her attention, and in a moment of despondence with the loss of her popularity looming on horizon condescends to visit him in his lower middle class bachelor digs. It is as unexpected to her as to the reader when he makes advances without preamble or professing love and she - taken aback at this affront - ends up having sex for sheer lack of protest or defence.
She is surprised, pleased at this proof of her still being attractive, and this continues until she finds him in bed with another, new and very young aspiring actress. He in fact asks her to help the new woman, unaware of her having found about the affair. And he is sullen when confronted with the relationship.
Julia is in a quandary - if she says no, she might not only lose face in being seen as spiteful older woman but in fact might lose it all if the young man blabs about his having had sex with the older woman and her being interested while his dalliance was not serious. If she does help the younger woman, this is a sure step to her being sided to oblivion.
How she deals with this, and to the surprise of reader succeeds completely, having made fools of everyone concerned and regained her supremacy in her position as the reigning diva, is the story told delightfully by Maugham as usual.
Her art, her mastery of her art of acting, is half the reason for her being able to turn the tables and not only keep but regain all that is hers, to keep or discard as she would choose. Her sharp mind and connecting with her son is another factor, while her friend and his support being now discovered for its truth is yet another side story in this to bring a smile to the reader.
Entirely delightful.
This is all the more so when age comes in, and even more for any woman, in most performing arts. As it is women in any field whatsoever, nowadays even in marriages in lands where divorces are easy and an everyday reality, tend to lose whatever interest their talent had generated and whatever level of respect they had earned due to their achievements, with age. Most judges are male or young, and respect for age, experience and wisdom is gone down during last century while the only criteria for respect seem to be looks apart from power of money or sheer physical power to hurt the other. Since women rarely are geared toward acquiring one, tend to lose if any of the other, and are seen merely as old even when extremely beautiful, age is seen as a tragedy without solution for women on the whole, with no roles and no regard for anyone over reproductive youth.
Today moreover arts are marketed through other media than personal viewing, and the only winner in this respect is music where it is no longer quite entirely a performing art, what with radio, recording and distribution of recorded music having made watching and listening in person more a luxury post success rather than a necessity before success.
But arts like dance and even acting do depend on looks, and it gets worse with age. Unless one has another sort of clout such as an underworld don approving of one and issuing orders to the contrary an actress or a dancer is pushed aside with age, and the bar is lowered all the time. In this respect thirty is the new eighty. Dance does give a performer another window in starting a school and training others, and thus imparting the skills perfected with age. Acting merely pushes an aged actress to do elderly roles and the bar is lowered on that where an actress playing a mother might in fact even be younger than her screen "son" in real life.
...............................................................
Maugham writes in this book about matters as they were in his time, a century ago. An actress with beauty and accomplishments and consequent fame, with a handsome theatre producer and director for a husband and a perfect son with a perfect life, and wonderful career due to very adoring audiences and long fame well into her forties, might in privacy realise she was not that young and be anxious about losing her youth, her popularity, her fame, her career, while it is still going strong and she is not yet history. And when an opportunity arrives to regain her youth in spirit - perhaps even in fact as a result of the affair - she takes it, and blooms with a return of youth and beauty. This is a story of such an affair and twists and turns.
Julia has more than one adoring fan, and a long standing friend who has always waited on side with proposals over the years and has comfortably settled into a companionship of dinners and other harmless activities together, giving her a glow of not only a perfect home life but also being desired and seen publicly to be so desired.
Now, at a moment of age creeping in, with producers etcetera looking at other - younger and newly established - actresses for the younger roles such as Juliet while making it clear she is intended to play Juliet's mother, she notices a very young man paying her attention, and in a moment of despondence with the loss of her popularity looming on horizon condescends to visit him in his lower middle class bachelor digs. It is as unexpected to her as to the reader when he makes advances without preamble or professing love and she - taken aback at this affront - ends up having sex for sheer lack of protest or defence.
She is surprised, pleased at this proof of her still being attractive, and this continues until she finds him in bed with another, new and very young aspiring actress. He in fact asks her to help the new woman, unaware of her having found about the affair. And he is sullen when confronted with the relationship.
Julia is in a quandary - if she says no, she might not only lose face in being seen as spiteful older woman but in fact might lose it all if the young man blabs about his having had sex with the older woman and her being interested while his dalliance was not serious. If she does help the younger woman, this is a sure step to her being sided to oblivion.
How she deals with this, and to the surprise of reader succeeds completely, having made fools of everyone concerned and regained her supremacy in her position as the reigning diva, is the story told delightfully by Maugham as usual.
Her art, her mastery of her art of acting, is half the reason for her being able to turn the tables and not only keep but regain all that is hers, to keep or discard as she would choose. Her sharp mind and connecting with her son is another factor, while her friend and his support being now discovered for its truth is yet another side story in this to bring a smile to the reader.
Entirely delightful.
Plays - W. Somerset Maugham.
The play that remains in memory after over three decades is Constant Wife, although others are good as well - and it is a softer version of the later one named Women by Claire Booth Luce. There are other differences, such as Women has no men on stage, while men are equally present in The Constant Wife, but the key difference is in the delightful twists in Maugham's English version with its dry humour while Booth Luce's Women remains sanctimonious and absolves men, as US versions of English originals often do whether sitcoms like Man About The House (copied as Three is company) or more serious comedies such as Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister (anyone remember the boring, pompous President on US television? didn't last a season, and it was too much at that!) - thereby destroying much of the delight of the original.
Constant Wife is about a husband indulging in extramarital affair, and how the wife deals with it.
He has been having an affair, and she has been trying to keep a good front for sake of the home, the children, the society.
A friend returns from abroad with love for her still in his heart, and his eyes light up when she walks into the room. She takes him up on his offer to go away - and the husband confronts her.
How she smoothly irons those difficulties is the delight and the charm of this work, this writer. She intends to go, have the holiday, and return to her home - and cannot be threatened out of her well deserved vacation or her home either, the husband has lost the moral right and does not have the courage to be exposed to the public eye as the philanderer he has been and they have all known.
Constant Wife is about a husband indulging in extramarital affair, and how the wife deals with it.
He has been having an affair, and she has been trying to keep a good front for sake of the home, the children, the society.
A friend returns from abroad with love for her still in his heart, and his eyes light up when she walks into the room. She takes him up on his offer to go away - and the husband confronts her.
How she smoothly irons those difficulties is the delight and the charm of this work, this writer. She intends to go, have the holiday, and return to her home - and cannot be threatened out of her well deserved vacation or her home either, the husband has lost the moral right and does not have the courage to be exposed to the public eye as the philanderer he has been and they have all known.
Collected Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham.
So many favourites in this - most people like Rain more than any other, at any rate it is the most discussed one. My personal favourite however is Virtue, an unforgettable one.
There are many, many others of course - Round Dozen for one, with amusing details of a much married man aggrieved by one of his wives turning him in.
Then there is the heartbreaking one of love and loss that I can't think of the name and it is a rare one for lack of cynical or otherwise bringing the reader down to earth sort of twist.
There is Letter with its murder of a paramour gone wrong due to his having left a letter with his mistress who extorts the full value,
There is the story about a widow who married a friend of her murdered husband and the daughter who looks like the second husband.
And there is another one with the Italian husband murdering his own father on suspicion of an affair between his father and his wife.
And all these are only what I can recall off hand after three decades or so.
I suppose the one of love and death with grief and heartbreak remains close to heart, along with Virtue that remains close to conviction, with total agreement with the protagonist by the time the story is over.
I wish I could remember if the story about the expensive wife becoming beautiful is here, or it is by another writer.
.................................................................................
The Round Dozen:-
About a much marrying man who was much aggrieved and felt a genuine sense of injury and grievance when one of his wives informed the law - not particularly handsome or accomplished in any way whatsoever, middle aged and lower class and not educated nor sophisticated nor well to do, he had nevertheless developed a talent for marrying successfully by his own definition. He found lonely older women of certain financial independence at holiday places and paid them attention, and post marriage gave them a good time until their money ran out. Then it was time to move on. To his chagrin, there was a small matter of having married only eleven times. Most of his wives were in fact willing to take him back.
After his leaving prison, the protagonist received a post card from him one day, and understood he had made his round dozen to his satisfaction after all.
.....................................................................................
Rain:-
This must have been terribly shocking to the hypocritical and pious while being nothing new to those without blinkers, when published first - 20th century was nothing if not one that shredded many such veils of pretension from established societies of west.
The story takes place on a voyage in Pacific where a woman of certain profession is having fun along with a few of males around - after all being alone most of their lives far away from home was tough on the guys, and an accommodating woman who was not merely paid goods but one with some spirit, some heart and joy, was a blessing.
Unfortunately for them there is not merely a usual contingent of the disapproving couples and other respectable members of society but also a preacher very sure and proud of himself, who goes after the woman with denunciation and promised hell fire to all that would consort with her. She is brought to abject surrender and is entirely dependent on him subsequently in her submission to a pious life henceforth. And the preacher is willing to sacrifice himself, to go to her at any hour of day or night she might need him, as his wife very proudly testifies to his selfless sacrifice of his own comforts.
The preacher meanwhile has dreams of hills of Nebraska (having read it so long ago I could be wrong about the name of the particular state) - and then one day the preacher is found dead, having committed suicide, while there is sound of phonograph and laughter and dancing from the room of the woman who was trying to reform, and a note of bitter victory.
She was sincere in her repentance and her attempt to reform, but the high minded preacher all too fallible and unaware of his own Achilles's heel shared with all life, if not more than a little hypocritical in his imposition of his will and his standards of virtue on all and sundry.
..............................................................
Virtue:-
We are begun on a gentle note with the story of a forty odd year old man, caustic and yet much loved but admittedly difficult, finding love and being completely smitten with his wife he considers himself fortunate to marry - he is the same man but now happy and his acerbic nature is taken now as wit due to his basking in his wife's love, a much loved woman in society, and their insistence on being put up together when invited is an amusing embarrassment for hostesses who lack room and are used to couples wishing to be put up rather apart.
And then there is an acquaintance of the writer (protagonist really, except one tends to assume he is the writer) from colonies in Malaya, a young man who needs to have some company and is introduced to the couple. Some time later, the couple is separated, and the wife is adamant in not returning to the husband, and he commits suicide.
The protagonist is called to interpret a letter from the young man in Malaya who has now returned, and informed that he is responsible for the love that the young man and the not so young wife (now widow) fell into since he introduced them. The letter is cautious and sympathetic about her loss but equivocal about her prospects of being able to come to Malaya to marry him.
The hostess, a friend of the protagonist makes the observation that it is up to him to make the young man realise his responsibility having gone into the love affair and caused the separation, which is when it becomes clear that the wife in love with another man had never crossed her limits being a virtuous woman.
"Virtue be damned" informs her the protagonist, since it had caused so much grief and a death of a loving husband - if only the wife had quietly had had her affair and finished it the man would still be alive.
And while to some pompous hypocrites it would be an opportunity to gasp and act shocked, today the reality of that statement is only too obvious, what with "the lack of commitment" of males being so huge a problem in US.
..........................................................
There are many, many others of course - Round Dozen for one, with amusing details of a much married man aggrieved by one of his wives turning him in.
Then there is the heartbreaking one of love and loss that I can't think of the name and it is a rare one for lack of cynical or otherwise bringing the reader down to earth sort of twist.
There is Letter with its murder of a paramour gone wrong due to his having left a letter with his mistress who extorts the full value,
There is the story about a widow who married a friend of her murdered husband and the daughter who looks like the second husband.
And there is another one with the Italian husband murdering his own father on suspicion of an affair between his father and his wife.
And all these are only what I can recall off hand after three decades or so.
I suppose the one of love and death with grief and heartbreak remains close to heart, along with Virtue that remains close to conviction, with total agreement with the protagonist by the time the story is over.
I wish I could remember if the story about the expensive wife becoming beautiful is here, or it is by another writer.
.................................................................................
The Round Dozen:-
About a much marrying man who was much aggrieved and felt a genuine sense of injury and grievance when one of his wives informed the law - not particularly handsome or accomplished in any way whatsoever, middle aged and lower class and not educated nor sophisticated nor well to do, he had nevertheless developed a talent for marrying successfully by his own definition. He found lonely older women of certain financial independence at holiday places and paid them attention, and post marriage gave them a good time until their money ran out. Then it was time to move on. To his chagrin, there was a small matter of having married only eleven times. Most of his wives were in fact willing to take him back.
After his leaving prison, the protagonist received a post card from him one day, and understood he had made his round dozen to his satisfaction after all.
.....................................................................................
Rain:-
This must have been terribly shocking to the hypocritical and pious while being nothing new to those without blinkers, when published first - 20th century was nothing if not one that shredded many such veils of pretension from established societies of west.
The story takes place on a voyage in Pacific where a woman of certain profession is having fun along with a few of males around - after all being alone most of their lives far away from home was tough on the guys, and an accommodating woman who was not merely paid goods but one with some spirit, some heart and joy, was a blessing.
Unfortunately for them there is not merely a usual contingent of the disapproving couples and other respectable members of society but also a preacher very sure and proud of himself, who goes after the woman with denunciation and promised hell fire to all that would consort with her. She is brought to abject surrender and is entirely dependent on him subsequently in her submission to a pious life henceforth. And the preacher is willing to sacrifice himself, to go to her at any hour of day or night she might need him, as his wife very proudly testifies to his selfless sacrifice of his own comforts.
The preacher meanwhile has dreams of hills of Nebraska (having read it so long ago I could be wrong about the name of the particular state) - and then one day the preacher is found dead, having committed suicide, while there is sound of phonograph and laughter and dancing from the room of the woman who was trying to reform, and a note of bitter victory.
She was sincere in her repentance and her attempt to reform, but the high minded preacher all too fallible and unaware of his own Achilles's heel shared with all life, if not more than a little hypocritical in his imposition of his will and his standards of virtue on all and sundry.
..............................................................
Virtue:-
We are begun on a gentle note with the story of a forty odd year old man, caustic and yet much loved but admittedly difficult, finding love and being completely smitten with his wife he considers himself fortunate to marry - he is the same man but now happy and his acerbic nature is taken now as wit due to his basking in his wife's love, a much loved woman in society, and their insistence on being put up together when invited is an amusing embarrassment for hostesses who lack room and are used to couples wishing to be put up rather apart.
And then there is an acquaintance of the writer (protagonist really, except one tends to assume he is the writer) from colonies in Malaya, a young man who needs to have some company and is introduced to the couple. Some time later, the couple is separated, and the wife is adamant in not returning to the husband, and he commits suicide.
The protagonist is called to interpret a letter from the young man in Malaya who has now returned, and informed that he is responsible for the love that the young man and the not so young wife (now widow) fell into since he introduced them. The letter is cautious and sympathetic about her loss but equivocal about her prospects of being able to come to Malaya to marry him.
The hostess, a friend of the protagonist makes the observation that it is up to him to make the young man realise his responsibility having gone into the love affair and caused the separation, which is when it becomes clear that the wife in love with another man had never crossed her limits being a virtuous woman.
"Virtue be damned" informs her the protagonist, since it had caused so much grief and a death of a loving husband - if only the wife had quietly had had her affair and finished it the man would still be alive.
And while to some pompous hypocrites it would be an opportunity to gasp and act shocked, today the reality of that statement is only too obvious, what with "the lack of commitment" of males being so huge a problem in US.
..........................................................
Up At The Villa: by W, Somerset Maugham.
The young Englishwoman who is centre of attention of the English and locals alike in prewar Italy, with fascism established but yet unable to convey its horrors to the visiting or permanent resident English diaspora, has little money but excellent gentle bringing up and is ready to be a proper wife to a suitable candidate. With her lack of dowry however the number of eligible bachelors around her is as limited as the general interest in her by males not quite suitable for marriage (without loss of class, certainly, that is). There is one, though, a prize catch - one that is older but still in prime and a certainty for a very high post in colonial British empire. The town is abuzz with his arriving in town only to ask her hand in marriage.
The older woman who befriends the younger one understands the dilemma of the young one and relates a tale about her giving herself to a poor man from sheer exhilaration of being a dream beyond dream to him. This is an impossibly romantic fantasy, and there is no sane person around to advise the younger woman against it - it is only affordable when a woman has nothing to lose thereby.
And what with the black shadow of fascism spreading over Europe, there is no dearth of handsome young poor males who are fugitives in Italy from Austria, newly occupied. There are some that are not merely poor but desperate, fleeing in fear for life from the beast and nowhere to go, starving, and all too set to see in her an angel of mercy when she acts from a natural kindness in providing a meal with human kindness rather than acting aloof suitable to a class difference.
Soon the train of events gets out of hand and the young woman finds herself in tight spots, intrigues and adventures which taken together are entirely unsuitable for wife of a man with a high level position the Empire, especially with times being so difficult - Caesar's wife and so forth. He would have to give it up before he can accept, since he is a gentleman and moreover loves her since she was young girl, and the proposal is a word of a gentleman.
The whole dilemma of a poor young woman in upper class circumstances who needs to marry well and has no prospects, and nevertheless has not only a code of conduct to follow but a heart yearning for more than staid life in public eye, is dealt with delicacy.
Amazingly parallel to the world stage and Europe in particular, this unlikely tale portrays the dilemma and the travails and the release from the old order of the world and people enslaved in various very different forms in the story of the young woman personified - there is the staid old order with security and code of conduct and secure future in public sight, the yearning for more and travails and nightmare lived through that the world lived via wars and the young woman in her romance and horrors, and the release of the world and the woman from old secure order and a secure future into a liberation with uncertainties but freedom.
Amazing and unlikely parallel, because the sanctimonious are likely to see merely a sordid scandal in the story of the young woman - and yet, it is a parable for the history of the war years, releasing people into liberation and uncertain freedom.
The older woman who befriends the younger one understands the dilemma of the young one and relates a tale about her giving herself to a poor man from sheer exhilaration of being a dream beyond dream to him. This is an impossibly romantic fantasy, and there is no sane person around to advise the younger woman against it - it is only affordable when a woman has nothing to lose thereby.
And what with the black shadow of fascism spreading over Europe, there is no dearth of handsome young poor males who are fugitives in Italy from Austria, newly occupied. There are some that are not merely poor but desperate, fleeing in fear for life from the beast and nowhere to go, starving, and all too set to see in her an angel of mercy when she acts from a natural kindness in providing a meal with human kindness rather than acting aloof suitable to a class difference.
Soon the train of events gets out of hand and the young woman finds herself in tight spots, intrigues and adventures which taken together are entirely unsuitable for wife of a man with a high level position the Empire, especially with times being so difficult - Caesar's wife and so forth. He would have to give it up before he can accept, since he is a gentleman and moreover loves her since she was young girl, and the proposal is a word of a gentleman.
The whole dilemma of a poor young woman in upper class circumstances who needs to marry well and has no prospects, and nevertheless has not only a code of conduct to follow but a heart yearning for more than staid life in public eye, is dealt with delicacy.
Amazingly parallel to the world stage and Europe in particular, this unlikely tale portrays the dilemma and the travails and the release from the old order of the world and people enslaved in various very different forms in the story of the young woman personified - there is the staid old order with security and code of conduct and secure future in public sight, the yearning for more and travails and nightmare lived through that the world lived via wars and the young woman in her romance and horrors, and the release of the world and the woman from old secure order and a secure future into a liberation with uncertainties but freedom.
Amazing and unlikely parallel, because the sanctimonious are likely to see merely a sordid scandal in the story of the young woman - and yet, it is a parable for the history of the war years, releasing people into liberation and uncertain freedom.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Christmas Holiday: by W. Somerset Maugham.
One cannot help remembering a short story by Maugham where the father sends the boy to a holiday to see Paris and arms the young man with explicit instructions about how to be safe by clinging to virtue; the boy however does gamble and win tremendously, goes back with a young woman whom he sees steal his money and when she sleeps takes it from her hiding place - only to discover that he came away with her money as well; and tells his father that he did all right in spite of breaking every rule of his father's virtuous code of conduct. The story is told by the father to the protagonist / writer with a worry about the boy going on believing his father was wrong and virtues and code of conduct means nothing, and the father is worried about the boy's future. The writer / protagonist cannot help laughing.
The similarity of this theme makes one wonder if the writer did not think of both the versions at the same time and elaborate on the story with serious twist for a novel while keeping the wry wit that was his forte for the short stories where it belonged.
The similarity of this theme makes one wonder if the writer did not think of both the versions at the same time and elaborate on the story with serious twist for a novel while keeping the wry wit that was his forte for the short stories where it belonged.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
The Eleventh Commandment: by Jeffrey Archer.
About the unwritten eleventh commandment which is generally followed as most important for politics and politicians, diplomats etcetera - thou shalt not get caught - while going on about business of assassinations in other countries, toppling their governments and generally keeping them unsettled, since fair means are difficult to fight with and wiping another's line easier than drawing a longer one for oneself.
Honour Among Thieves: by Jeffrey Archer.
A plot cooked by Saddam Hussein to steal the constitution of US and bring it to Baghdad and then burn it on television for the whole world to see, which almost succeeds but is foiled neatly by vigilant US men and the honour among thieves that won't let such an atrocity take place. Thrilling, horror, delightful in the foiling of the whole mission of insult to US, and good read.
First Among Equals: by Jeffrey Archer.
A look in political system of UK (sans royalty) via men who aspire to serve their country through working for people, with various major parties - Labour, Tory, and later on the Liberals - and the parliamentary system of the nation.
Other nations have adopted the system with one perhaps major difference - the shadow cabinet. It is a powerful tool to keep the ruling party on their tows with requirements of sharing papers and decisions, while the opposition is not free to topple the government and has in fact to assume responsibility of the nation as soon as such an event occurs.
Story of various men who rise from young aspirants to more powerful roles in their parties, their constituencies, with the family and private life of each playing a considerable role as do their personal styles and charisma. Very skillfully written and very enjoyable, as as many many of works of Archer.
Other nations have adopted the system with one perhaps major difference - the shadow cabinet. It is a powerful tool to keep the ruling party on their tows with requirements of sharing papers and decisions, while the opposition is not free to topple the government and has in fact to assume responsibility of the nation as soon as such an event occurs.
Story of various men who rise from young aspirants to more powerful roles in their parties, their constituencies, with the family and private life of each playing a considerable role as do their personal styles and charisma. Very skillfully written and very enjoyable, as as many many of works of Archer.
A Prison Diary: Book 3: Heaven: by Jeffrey Archer
The cover photo with a patch of bright sky behind bars high above in the cell shown here is probably from the last cell he occupied in the place he surprisingly names Heaven (wouldn't earth be more appropriate, with Heaven reserved for home and family and freedom?) in this last part of his prison diaries, North Sea Camp, for one day.
That itself is a shocking turn of events stamping forever the British justice and other bureaucratic systems with a blot on the escutcheon, where individuals might be decent on the whole but bullied or otherwise persuaded into officially behaving otherwise, depending on their own bent of mind and heart or on their own individual circumstances. Anyone threatened with a loss of job or pension might do something rather unfair to someone however unwillingly.
And the fact of Archer being treated with unfair persecution, overblown noise about a lie and general misuse of law to punish someone for a completely different reason has been obvious from the start of the affair, even to the lay members of public reading about it all in news. Drunken drivers getting less sentence is just one example of this in evidence, as is the protective treatment of sex offenders in prison including paedophiles. And there is more.
Other than that the book is as others in the series full of interesting stories about how and why people, specifically men, end up in prison, and moreover might be decent apart from their specific crimes. The most horrendous crimes according to prisoners is sex crimes, and paedophiles need not only segregation but a cover story to be able to stay alive in prisons full of murderers. Going by the stories from just four prisons Archer gives this gradation is truly more along what should be put in place in dealing justice.
Strangely enough while prisoners including burglars and murderers see this as well as any general family people, most legal systems don't. Another one they - the legal systems - don't see the danger really of is drivers who drink, more than once being involved in accidents. These ought to be dealt with on par with potential manslaughter and illegal substance users, but in reality get a mere few weeks and have no remorse whatsoever.
His - Archer's - observations about how to prevent spread of intoxicants (I don't see why drugs should be used as a term both for therapeutic medicines and illegal unnecessary substances as well) and how to stop people going from comparatively mild and less harmful stuff like marijuana (much less harmful than tobacco or alcohol, much less addictive, as shown by its prevalent usage in so called less developed nations without any accompanying increase in crime) to seriously harmful substances like heroin, cocaine, and so forth, are very worth paying attention to - although given the circumstances of his persecution by authorities in Britain I would not be surprised if his recommendations are put in place by nations other than Britain first, even US. After all LA was almost the first place to make smoking illegal in public.
There are some human interest, even hilarious stories, about prisoners desperate to go to prison either from being more safe or for wanting to be with someone. There are observations about the general medical system being low compared to that in prison (one gets to see the doctor within an hour without appointment, and is taken to hospital as soon as needed).
And then there is the usual mistake, probably from Archer's need to protect the real names and complete indifference about providing another genuine one.
Patels being Sikh is about as likely as Archer being Romanov prince in entirely male lineage, less in fact. Or a Dubois being entirely Siberian, or a Smith being of Turkish ancestry in entirety.
That itself is a shocking turn of events stamping forever the British justice and other bureaucratic systems with a blot on the escutcheon, where individuals might be decent on the whole but bullied or otherwise persuaded into officially behaving otherwise, depending on their own bent of mind and heart or on their own individual circumstances. Anyone threatened with a loss of job or pension might do something rather unfair to someone however unwillingly.
And the fact of Archer being treated with unfair persecution, overblown noise about a lie and general misuse of law to punish someone for a completely different reason has been obvious from the start of the affair, even to the lay members of public reading about it all in news. Drunken drivers getting less sentence is just one example of this in evidence, as is the protective treatment of sex offenders in prison including paedophiles. And there is more.
Other than that the book is as others in the series full of interesting stories about how and why people, specifically men, end up in prison, and moreover might be decent apart from their specific crimes. The most horrendous crimes according to prisoners is sex crimes, and paedophiles need not only segregation but a cover story to be able to stay alive in prisons full of murderers. Going by the stories from just four prisons Archer gives this gradation is truly more along what should be put in place in dealing justice.
Strangely enough while prisoners including burglars and murderers see this as well as any general family people, most legal systems don't. Another one they - the legal systems - don't see the danger really of is drivers who drink, more than once being involved in accidents. These ought to be dealt with on par with potential manslaughter and illegal substance users, but in reality get a mere few weeks and have no remorse whatsoever.
His - Archer's - observations about how to prevent spread of intoxicants (I don't see why drugs should be used as a term both for therapeutic medicines and illegal unnecessary substances as well) and how to stop people going from comparatively mild and less harmful stuff like marijuana (much less harmful than tobacco or alcohol, much less addictive, as shown by its prevalent usage in so called less developed nations without any accompanying increase in crime) to seriously harmful substances like heroin, cocaine, and so forth, are very worth paying attention to - although given the circumstances of his persecution by authorities in Britain I would not be surprised if his recommendations are put in place by nations other than Britain first, even US. After all LA was almost the first place to make smoking illegal in public.
There are some human interest, even hilarious stories, about prisoners desperate to go to prison either from being more safe or for wanting to be with someone. There are observations about the general medical system being low compared to that in prison (one gets to see the doctor within an hour without appointment, and is taken to hospital as soon as needed).
And then there is the usual mistake, probably from Archer's need to protect the real names and complete indifference about providing another genuine one.
Patels being Sikh is about as likely as Archer being Romanov prince in entirely male lineage, less in fact. Or a Dubois being entirely Siberian, or a Smith being of Turkish ancestry in entirety.
Friday, September 17, 2010
A Man For All Seasons: by Robert Bolt.
A man who would be careful in treading the narrow path, serving his king and his faith, with careful steps to preserve his loyalty to one and his integrity of self and soul in another realm - and yet must be hounded out due to political needs of the day, with all means used and none barred. One of my most favourite tales - and it reaches its pinnacle when the wise lawyer is debating his son-in-law about fighting those that oppose truth, and explains why "cutting down every tree in the forest that the devil might hide behind" is a bad idea.
Thomas More is known for much wisdom and scholarly achievement, during a difficult time for his nation. He did his best in keeping loyalty to his sovereign and to his faith, and if he was torn it was perhaps the fault of a demand rather than the one who is expected to fulfill it. State and faith ought never to have conflicts, and subsequent (although not immediate) Regina Queen Elizabeth was largely able to see to it that a nation is forged and made strong with conflicts of this nature put behind it.
Thus A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt.
And yet - Bolt conveniently leaves out a few details, such as the men who were burnt alive by More while he was in office working for the church and the king both, when he knew fully well the troubled relationship between the two and the fact of the king's growing disenchantment with the politics of Rome and his need to strike free, and his increasing interest in reading on Protestant or otherwise free thinking views. The crime of those burnt alive by More? Thinking, and writing, without permission of Rome.
That Bolt leaves this out says as much for him as for the strong lobby attempting to impose domination of Rome, pretty much like the threatening groups of another religion that stems from the same roots and is younger, attempting to take over the whole world by threatening death to all that do not convert.
Thomas More is known for much wisdom and scholarly achievement, during a difficult time for his nation. He did his best in keeping loyalty to his sovereign and to his faith, and if he was torn it was perhaps the fault of a demand rather than the one who is expected to fulfill it. State and faith ought never to have conflicts, and subsequent (although not immediate) Regina Queen Elizabeth was largely able to see to it that a nation is forged and made strong with conflicts of this nature put behind it.
Thus A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt.
And yet - Bolt conveniently leaves out a few details, such as the men who were burnt alive by More while he was in office working for the church and the king both, when he knew fully well the troubled relationship between the two and the fact of the king's growing disenchantment with the politics of Rome and his need to strike free, and his increasing interest in reading on Protestant or otherwise free thinking views. The crime of those burnt alive by More? Thinking, and writing, without permission of Rome.
That Bolt leaves this out says as much for him as for the strong lobby attempting to impose domination of Rome, pretty much like the threatening groups of another religion that stems from the same roots and is younger, attempting to take over the whole world by threatening death to all that do not convert.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Prison Diary part II: Purgatory: by Jeffrey Archer.
Archer was able to buy a beautiful emerald for his very worthy wife as a Christmas gift, even as he was in prison - but if he is able to figure out why he is victimised, and who are the powers really behind it, he is not saying. He is a citizen of UK, and as such won't be able to articulate the truth if he has any suspicions of where it all came from. But it was all clear even as it began, the whole smear campaign that unbelievably blew into this kangaroo court case and the incarceration.
Baroness Nicholson lied about his misdeal with red cross funds for Kurds, not for a frolic without a fear of reprieve but due to perhaps orders from above, perhaps merely a nudge that she was happy to oblige for her own satisfaction. Potts, who knows if he was pressured, blackmailed, or none of the above, merely presented a case of preservation of some authorities higher above in the nation.
Fact is he was and is victimised for being a friend of Diana, the Princess of Wales (one would say late if it were not really that it seems so unreal, even apart from the fact that there won't be another until William is married and PoW), the Queen of Hearts.
He is getting off much lighter at that, compared to Charles Spencer, the brother of Diana - he had his children taken away from him by the divorce that came after death of Diana, and who can say if that was a natural course of events or if Lady Spencer was really persuaded by those that disapproved of Charles telling it like it is and being applauded at the funeral? If she really was persuaded, moreover, who knows how it was done, with threats, or blackmail?
Fact is Charles Spencer is now alone, having lost his family for being the only relative of Diana to be able to defend her, to speak of the beautiful woman with glowing terms unlike the disparagement fashionable in highbrow circles along with a excusing of her being supplanted with a mistress by her husband with a "she was not intellectual enough" (hello, was or is her husband a Nobel prize contender in science? Even a postgraduate degree holder from Oxbridge? A first, perhaps?) - and who knows, perhaps Charles Spencer got off lightly at that, due to his wife leaving her and him losing his family; the option might have been an accident to him, too, in yet another foreign land. Or even right in England.
English history after all is replete with such disposing off of inconvenient persona.
Baroness Nicholson lied about his misdeal with red cross funds for Kurds, not for a frolic without a fear of reprieve but due to perhaps orders from above, perhaps merely a nudge that she was happy to oblige for her own satisfaction. Potts, who knows if he was pressured, blackmailed, or none of the above, merely presented a case of preservation of some authorities higher above in the nation.
Fact is he was and is victimised for being a friend of Diana, the Princess of Wales (one would say late if it were not really that it seems so unreal, even apart from the fact that there won't be another until William is married and PoW), the Queen of Hearts.
He is getting off much lighter at that, compared to Charles Spencer, the brother of Diana - he had his children taken away from him by the divorce that came after death of Diana, and who can say if that was a natural course of events or if Lady Spencer was really persuaded by those that disapproved of Charles telling it like it is and being applauded at the funeral? If she really was persuaded, moreover, who knows how it was done, with threats, or blackmail?
Fact is Charles Spencer is now alone, having lost his family for being the only relative of Diana to be able to defend her, to speak of the beautiful woman with glowing terms unlike the disparagement fashionable in highbrow circles along with a excusing of her being supplanted with a mistress by her husband with a "she was not intellectual enough" (hello, was or is her husband a Nobel prize contender in science? Even a postgraduate degree holder from Oxbridge? A first, perhaps?) - and who knows, perhaps Charles Spencer got off lightly at that, due to his wife leaving her and him losing his family; the option might have been an accident to him, too, in yet another foreign land. Or even right in England.
English history after all is replete with such disposing off of inconvenient persona.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Absolute Power: by David Baldacci.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And who has more power than the holder of the most powerful office in the most powerful nation in the world?
........................................................
A meticulously good artist, copying paintings at a museum, is also a thief that is an artist in this profession - when he decides to burgle a very wealthy man's home in DC area, he has done his meticulously good research and knows the house well, from architectural plans to various settings.
What he did not know before saves his life that night - that the vault for jewels in the bedroom separated from the main area by a glass wall is a viewing room, with the glass wall being a one way mirror.
He is in the vault when he is trapped by entrance of the mistress of the house, who happens to be returning from a rendezvous with her current lover, the US president. Only, things don't go as romantically as she was expecting. The lover is a power freak, insecure man, who slaps her around for his cheap thrills and begins to hurt her seriously when in fury she slaps him back. She fights for her life as he is strangling her, uses a letter opener and he cries out in pain. His security crew rushes in and shoot to kill, then proceed to clean up the place of traces of their visit.
All this while the artist thief has been watching, transfixed in horror, unable to move lest he reveal himself. When they leave, he comes out, discovers that the letter opener has been left behind and collects it, along with the diamond necklace lying on the night stand worn by the murdered woman that night, and manages to escape unidentified by the security personnel who have returned to collect the letter opener they had forgotten in their confusion.
They now know there is a thief who knows everything, they do not know who he is or how he looks. He has a fighting chance for survival, and they have all the state machinery to hunt him down and destroy him. And they are not above using the machinery, certainly not above killing anyone at all to save their own hides. Anyone however innocent.
He has a daughter, who happens to be a public prosecutor, and as an extra help from powers above the police chief assigned to the case happens to be honest, which is all that the now persecuted thief has on his side. The daughter is unaware of how much the father has watched her through the years he kept apart due to a need to protect her, and there is nothing to save her from the now persecuting murderers - except him.
The story weaves between the thief being prudent and horrified to coming to a steely determination to not let them get away with it (and achieving his end superbly with facing the grieving widower), as he - the thief - goes from being transfixed in horror, prudently fleeing and watching in disgust as the president lies on television, changing his decision to flee and warning the killers right in their home turf, meeting his daughter in spite of all the dangers he knows he faces and being well prepared while managing to remain alive with some luck and managing to meet her and let her know precisely what is going on. He manages to protect her, to punish the miscreants, and in the process incidentally builds back the relationship with his daughter.
And who has more power than the holder of the most powerful office in the most powerful nation in the world?
........................................................
A meticulously good artist, copying paintings at a museum, is also a thief that is an artist in this profession - when he decides to burgle a very wealthy man's home in DC area, he has done his meticulously good research and knows the house well, from architectural plans to various settings.
What he did not know before saves his life that night - that the vault for jewels in the bedroom separated from the main area by a glass wall is a viewing room, with the glass wall being a one way mirror.
He is in the vault when he is trapped by entrance of the mistress of the house, who happens to be returning from a rendezvous with her current lover, the US president. Only, things don't go as romantically as she was expecting. The lover is a power freak, insecure man, who slaps her around for his cheap thrills and begins to hurt her seriously when in fury she slaps him back. She fights for her life as he is strangling her, uses a letter opener and he cries out in pain. His security crew rushes in and shoot to kill, then proceed to clean up the place of traces of their visit.
All this while the artist thief has been watching, transfixed in horror, unable to move lest he reveal himself. When they leave, he comes out, discovers that the letter opener has been left behind and collects it, along with the diamond necklace lying on the night stand worn by the murdered woman that night, and manages to escape unidentified by the security personnel who have returned to collect the letter opener they had forgotten in their confusion.
They now know there is a thief who knows everything, they do not know who he is or how he looks. He has a fighting chance for survival, and they have all the state machinery to hunt him down and destroy him. And they are not above using the machinery, certainly not above killing anyone at all to save their own hides. Anyone however innocent.
He has a daughter, who happens to be a public prosecutor, and as an extra help from powers above the police chief assigned to the case happens to be honest, which is all that the now persecuted thief has on his side. The daughter is unaware of how much the father has watched her through the years he kept apart due to a need to protect her, and there is nothing to save her from the now persecuting murderers - except him.
The story weaves between the thief being prudent and horrified to coming to a steely determination to not let them get away with it (and achieving his end superbly with facing the grieving widower), as he - the thief - goes from being transfixed in horror, prudently fleeing and watching in disgust as the president lies on television, changing his decision to flee and warning the killers right in their home turf, meeting his daughter in spite of all the dangers he knows he faces and being well prepared while managing to remain alive with some luck and managing to meet her and let her know precisely what is going on. He manages to protect her, to punish the miscreants, and in the process incidentally builds back the relationship with his daughter.
The General's Daughter: by Nelson Demille.
No matter how much she achieves, she could never achieve one thing she desperately needed as a child, her father's approval and love. He is a high profile general and a selfish man in that his career, his standards, his name is everything. Perhaps a male heir would beat him at his own game, perhaps not, who knows! But a daughter has no chance whatsoever no matter how high an achiever in his own field, because she has other needs too, of love and admiration, and if she does not get them from him she could only go frigid and die within or do something that would inevitably blot the father's escutcheon, since respectable ways of a happy life with love do not match requirements of a life with high achieving career if you are a woman, not in west, certainly not in military.
So when she is dead in a position incompatible with her father's position, he must order an inquiry but makes his requirements clear, hush. And the setup of the inquiry is as suitable for the purpose, or so those that arranged it think.
Only, those that are given the job have more of a conscience and integrity. They will go to the end to discover truth, and will not hush it up. And truth is, however much others in the base hated her or whatever, for whatever reason, it is her own father that is responsible for her murder, in a more literal way than the slow torture of her life from childhood on.
So when she is dead in a position incompatible with her father's position, he must order an inquiry but makes his requirements clear, hush. And the setup of the inquiry is as suitable for the purpose, or so those that arranged it think.
Only, those that are given the job have more of a conscience and integrity. They will go to the end to discover truth, and will not hush it up. And truth is, however much others in the base hated her or whatever, for whatever reason, it is her own father that is responsible for her murder, in a more literal way than the slow torture of her life from childhood on.
Eye Of The Needle: by Ken Follett.
Future of civilisation and humanity depended on Allies winning, and before Normandy invasion it looked even chance - albeit not as bleak with need of fortitude as when Britain was going it alone in face of impossible odds - so all the more it was vital the invasion succeed. Allies had brought about an elaborate deception with Patton in East Anglia to give the impression that the invasion would be spearheaded from there at Calais, with shortest distance from England to France to Germany involved, and Patton being the star of various battles until then.
What if the deception was discovered, what if there was a spy, a needle in a haystack, a German who looked and spoke as an upper class Englishman and no one had a clue to his truth, and what if such a needle could get to a submarine in sea off English coast with a launch and alert them that East Anglia was a ruse after all?
If indeed it all happened, we are lucky the lonely woman who was falling for the stranger she and her husband saved after his launch crashed in a strong gale off their island was not blinded by love or even blinkered - for when she discovered her handicapped husband's death, and realised moreover that he had not fallen off a cliff after all but was murdered by the stranger, she did not hesitate in using all her mind and other faculties in trying to overcome whatever the stranger's aim in all this.
She did not know even then - although her husband had been suspicious to begin with and found out, which is why he was murdered - that it was not about jealousy but about the war and espionage. When she did discover that, she managed to stop him from giving it away. How, makes a very worth acquainting oneself with sort of a thriller. And if any of it is true history in fact, she deserves a supreme award of recognition and honour.
What if the deception was discovered, what if there was a spy, a needle in a haystack, a German who looked and spoke as an upper class Englishman and no one had a clue to his truth, and what if such a needle could get to a submarine in sea off English coast with a launch and alert them that East Anglia was a ruse after all?
If indeed it all happened, we are lucky the lonely woman who was falling for the stranger she and her husband saved after his launch crashed in a strong gale off their island was not blinded by love or even blinkered - for when she discovered her handicapped husband's death, and realised moreover that he had not fallen off a cliff after all but was murdered by the stranger, she did not hesitate in using all her mind and other faculties in trying to overcome whatever the stranger's aim in all this.
She did not know even then - although her husband had been suspicious to begin with and found out, which is why he was murdered - that it was not about jealousy but about the war and espionage. When she did discover that, she managed to stop him from giving it away. How, makes a very worth acquainting oneself with sort of a thriller. And if any of it is true history in fact, she deserves a supreme award of recognition and honour.
Lord Edgeware Dies: by Agatha Christie.
There is more than one person who might murder Lord Edgeware, but one has a watertight alibi - the wife, an actress of yore famed for beauty and style, who was at a very well attended dinner - and the other, a young man, was at late night show of film which no one can corroborate. Both had entered the house at the relevant time, and either could be the murderer.
Then there is another actress, a minor one who resembles the Lady Edgeware, found dead. Did she do it, using the name of the better known actress, and if so why?
Then there is another actress, a minor one who resembles the Lady Edgeware, found dead. Did she do it, using the name of the better known actress, and if so why?
Mrs. Dalloway: by Virginia Woolf.
Given a choice, the young woman - or man for that matter - of average sort will choose a safe everyday continuance of routine than choose life and love with all its turmoil, and prefer a safe facsimile rather than the raw truth. For growth is painful and while children can face it fearlessly, even eagerly, age for love brings fear of losing the cocoon one has grown up in - neighbourhood, people one knows, routines, familiar rituals whether parties or church or afternoon coffee sessions with neighbours - and the real risk is a loss of ego on realising one's own self. Most people would rather lose love.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Capitalism: by Ayn Rand.
Expanded version of John Galt Speech from Atlas Shrugged, with the philosophy Ayn Rand expounds generally through her works. While her thinking is not complete, and does reflect partial nature of her knowledge and thought, it nevertheless is good at exposing altruism the veil over would be slavers' face and heart.
To begin with she goes into the question of what precisely is money, and how it is seen, in her work here as well as in Atlas Shrugged; how it is seen, and what is the real reason it was needed, what is its real nature. When seen so at a level exposed of all veils much becomes clear.
When you envision a society without money, any form of money, it is impossible to work out an exchange of worth, of work and of value, unless you are in a family situation where there is a parent or two providing everything and solving all disputes - and this can only be extended to a community larger than a family if such community consist of completely achieved spiritual mendicants with no concern about whether or not needs are provided for and whether or not there is an equal or even just distribution.
Money is that which represents the worth of work and value, it is value of one's work represented in coin or paper or promissory note. Whatever the representation, and however badly it is used or stolen, the best way still is to leave everyone to bargain freely and fearlessly for worth of one's work in market.
Thus far Rand, and it is undeniable. However -
The gaps in her logic and thought are not covered by her opposite but by a complementing of her gaps. Mothers, nurses, teachers are not paid well as are artists, scientists, and inventors generally, or great writers often enough. Sales and money earned during life of such a person does not in any way reflect their true worth as is equally true of great many of corporate overpaid darks suits.
There are many such anomalies, greatest ones being a comparison of Africa and Asia with their losses - former far more than latter, since the latter has to some extent recovered - and the western societies on the other hand that benefited from physically overpowering the people of other continents and robbing them, calling it taxation but in reality a loot since the tax brought no benefits to the people in general. Think diamonds, think coffee, think chocolates. Think how much royalty ought to be paid for them their real worth, and what the natives lose when land is used for western luxury rather than natives needs of food.
Capitalism leaves much unanswered, unless one believes in physical power and threat as justification for wealth, which Ayn Rand does not. She however prefers to keep it simple, complexity defies her and she ignores it.
To begin with she goes into the question of what precisely is money, and how it is seen, in her work here as well as in Atlas Shrugged; how it is seen, and what is the real reason it was needed, what is its real nature. When seen so at a level exposed of all veils much becomes clear.
When you envision a society without money, any form of money, it is impossible to work out an exchange of worth, of work and of value, unless you are in a family situation where there is a parent or two providing everything and solving all disputes - and this can only be extended to a community larger than a family if such community consist of completely achieved spiritual mendicants with no concern about whether or not needs are provided for and whether or not there is an equal or even just distribution.
Money is that which represents the worth of work and value, it is value of one's work represented in coin or paper or promissory note. Whatever the representation, and however badly it is used or stolen, the best way still is to leave everyone to bargain freely and fearlessly for worth of one's work in market.
Thus far Rand, and it is undeniable. However -
The gaps in her logic and thought are not covered by her opposite but by a complementing of her gaps. Mothers, nurses, teachers are not paid well as are artists, scientists, and inventors generally, or great writers often enough. Sales and money earned during life of such a person does not in any way reflect their true worth as is equally true of great many of corporate overpaid darks suits.
There are many such anomalies, greatest ones being a comparison of Africa and Asia with their losses - former far more than latter, since the latter has to some extent recovered - and the western societies on the other hand that benefited from physically overpowering the people of other continents and robbing them, calling it taxation but in reality a loot since the tax brought no benefits to the people in general. Think diamonds, think coffee, think chocolates. Think how much royalty ought to be paid for them their real worth, and what the natives lose when land is used for western luxury rather than natives needs of food.
Capitalism leaves much unanswered, unless one believes in physical power and threat as justification for wealth, which Ayn Rand does not. She however prefers to keep it simple, complexity defies her and she ignores it.
Anthem: by Ayn Rand.
Reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984, with an Ayn Rand twist - the hero is a hero justifying his stature due to his discovery of the singular first person pronoun.
Pride And Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, Sense And Sensibility: by Jane Austen
Every time one reads Austen, it is a different experience.
Of course, few read a book repeatedly around the same time unless one is either studying it for an exam or one is really bored and has little other recourse to a life of mind. But a good book entices one to repeat it aftere a while, when one thinks one knows all about it and yet is not quite sure of some small details, or one wishes to refresh the joy the book gave. Some are of course repeated for the reason that one realises one did not quite understand it completely, and then again when one repeats a book one loves one may realise one had not understood it quite, or this time one might see yet another perspective and understand it at another level. In Austen's case many of the above happens - one loves her books, thinks one understood them - there is really not much there, is there, it is all about country life in England and a love story or two, some misunderstandings and resolutions one way or other.
One reads a favourite, then, a few years later, and then realises there is a whole level one had missed. One is surprised one understands a little or a lot more this time, and one gets back to life. Until one picks it up yet again a few years later, and there is a lot more. Jane Austen is deceptively simple in her style of writing - something Agatha Christie did later, in another genre - and goes about describing a little town in countryside in England and its characters, all seemingly as normal and common as everyone else's neighbours, and their concerns just as universal across time and boundaries of geography, of nations and cultures.
A volume like this, with four of her best in one, is a find one cannot pass and that was the reason to buy it - and read it with a desultory beginning, and some revelations along the time I read them through finally. The first growing revelation was an obvious one, that Austen's writing was not about amusing oneself or her reader although she did that plenty all along, what with caricatures and strongly sketched portrayals in few short strokes, with all too human follies and habits of vanity of various characters. And of course English countryside is no longer a stranger once one has read Austen, or of course Agatha Christie or P.G.Wodehouse for that matter. Austen's beautiful descriptions make it come alive in all ut soft gentle beauty. But her real objective is to give a discourse on values, as little or as successfully hidden as a quinine bottle with a clear label and yet no discernible taste when one does have to swallow one, the sugarcoating so successful. In case of Austen, moreover, no one has to prescribe that quinine either, it is so sweet to the last a child could chew a whole bottle full (I know of one naughty, very loved one who did just that) - the Austen readers seldom realise they are getting a discourse on values and cautioned about common follies leading to risking misery for life.
And then, halfway through, one begins to see her world as one, with her people living in towns near or far but her characters with startling similarities and yet with no mass produced push button delivery of justice - instead, they are indeed individuals, and their separate actions bring them their deserts, their follies bring their risks and their virtues earn their rewards. Austen does have mery as well and often rewards the deserving or sometimes even the less deserving but not evil often, still, her rewards and schemes of luck smiling are never without reasonable possibility of events.
A Wickham is not punished only because a young, innocent, spirited Lydia ought not to suffer as well, she is not that guilty - quite guileless, actually - and in the event his punishment is having to put up with himself with no fortune brought by a wife found in an heiress snared for the purpose, while her reward is her ever stout and completely unsuspecting belief that she is the luckiest of women, with a handsome and loving husband. That he is no good nor loves her she will - did, Austen assures us - never see.
A Marianne on the other hand, along with another shadow of a young girl mentioned but never actually brought up to readers' sight, suffers and how horribly, only because of a lack of prudence in allowing - in fact, positively jumping into - an attachment without any knowledge of the character of the person, going by an attractive visage and a charming persona. This is not justice, after all Marianne does not deserve it nor does the girl Elizabeth any more than the mother of the girl (also named Elizabeth) - but it is lifelike in that often innocent suffer due to the faults of others who play with them for pleasure of the moment thoughtlessly, and Austen portrays the risks in all their possible horror. Marianne is not eventually punished but recovers due to her friends and is then rewarded with a life of love and security and happiness, with the ever consistent Colonel Brandon who takes care of Elizabeth (as promised to her mother) too, and deserves to find some happiness and love in his life as well. The character with a severe fault, Willoughby who is neither willing to do justice to the woman he brought into trouble - not so trivial in those days as it might be today in another land, another culture - nor strong enough to then stand by his love and strive for a life with her and instead is cad enough to marry an heiress, for only her money, is merely awarded his life as a punishment - he chose it, after all, and has lost the love and friends he knew for a short time. He has society, but knows the heaven he lost all too well, and must live with the life he chose.
The themes, the characters, the faults and the virtues, the natures and the circumstances keep changing across the world of Austen like patters of a kaleidoscope, every changing and yet with a few pieces of coloured glass to form them - the one constant is the values. Decency, propriety, prudence, due respect and courtesy, integrity, love and friendship, and discerning the truth of what is really love from what is an attachment that might be unwise, or in fact untrue but a mere pretense for sake of a goal completely different - marrying an heiress, playing for amusement for the time - very necessary now as it was then.
One might wonder endlessly what would have happened if only the Crawfords had been brought up more properly, or one can read Emma and find out - Henry Crawford loses Fanny Price, while Frank Churchill gets to marry his love Jane Fairfax since his faults of character, and his actions therefore, are not so disastrous. Emma delights one more than any other young woman with her follies and faults one can shake one's head at, while Jane Bingley and Jane Fairfax suffer travails of love to emerge victorious. Edward Ferrer is rescued by the truely low character of the fiancée he was unwisely attached to when too young and is too noble to break up with no matter if threatened with loss of all his heritance, since the fiancée suddenly marries his brother the heir. Darcy's redemption is his character, which helps him to see his own faults and the truth of the accusations and make up for the consequences of his actions and rescue the innocent. Mary Crawford plays with her own love, and loses him by her assumption that his preference for his values can be turned around by her charms and his attraction for her. Lady Bertram accepts an offer of marriage from a suitable wealthy gentleman and lives her life almost as if she were watching a film, while her sister Frances marries a poor sailor for love and has nine or ten children at the last count, with little thought for those she lost to either benevolence of Bertrams or to death. Mrs. Norris wishes to manage everyone's affairs and is finally only good enought to stand by the foolish Mariah she pampered and encouraged to marry a rich man without love when Mariah is foolish enough to go away with Henry Crawford believing this will force Crawford to marry her.
On and on go the kaleidoscopic patterns, with a little tweak here and there making differences in destiny, and Austen provides as much of a complete world as anyone could - and yet, she wrote less than a dozen books overall, with beautifully simple storytelling about simple English country life.
Just wonder - did anyone else realise Austen carries the seed for Agatha Christie to grow so beautifully into her own genre? Reading Emma again, it was wonderful to see how many gentle clues were strewn about, how deceptively blended into the general pattern of almost old women's gossip structure so one missed them unless one was totally vigilant, something very difficult when reading either Austen or Christie.
Of course, few read a book repeatedly around the same time unless one is either studying it for an exam or one is really bored and has little other recourse to a life of mind. But a good book entices one to repeat it aftere a while, when one thinks one knows all about it and yet is not quite sure of some small details, or one wishes to refresh the joy the book gave. Some are of course repeated for the reason that one realises one did not quite understand it completely, and then again when one repeats a book one loves one may realise one had not understood it quite, or this time one might see yet another perspective and understand it at another level. In Austen's case many of the above happens - one loves her books, thinks one understood them - there is really not much there, is there, it is all about country life in England and a love story or two, some misunderstandings and resolutions one way or other.
One reads a favourite, then, a few years later, and then realises there is a whole level one had missed. One is surprised one understands a little or a lot more this time, and one gets back to life. Until one picks it up yet again a few years later, and there is a lot more. Jane Austen is deceptively simple in her style of writing - something Agatha Christie did later, in another genre - and goes about describing a little town in countryside in England and its characters, all seemingly as normal and common as everyone else's neighbours, and their concerns just as universal across time and boundaries of geography, of nations and cultures.
A volume like this, with four of her best in one, is a find one cannot pass and that was the reason to buy it - and read it with a desultory beginning, and some revelations along the time I read them through finally. The first growing revelation was an obvious one, that Austen's writing was not about amusing oneself or her reader although she did that plenty all along, what with caricatures and strongly sketched portrayals in few short strokes, with all too human follies and habits of vanity of various characters. And of course English countryside is no longer a stranger once one has read Austen, or of course Agatha Christie or P.G.Wodehouse for that matter. Austen's beautiful descriptions make it come alive in all ut soft gentle beauty. But her real objective is to give a discourse on values, as little or as successfully hidden as a quinine bottle with a clear label and yet no discernible taste when one does have to swallow one, the sugarcoating so successful. In case of Austen, moreover, no one has to prescribe that quinine either, it is so sweet to the last a child could chew a whole bottle full (I know of one naughty, very loved one who did just that) - the Austen readers seldom realise they are getting a discourse on values and cautioned about common follies leading to risking misery for life.
And then, halfway through, one begins to see her world as one, with her people living in towns near or far but her characters with startling similarities and yet with no mass produced push button delivery of justice - instead, they are indeed individuals, and their separate actions bring them their deserts, their follies bring their risks and their virtues earn their rewards. Austen does have mery as well and often rewards the deserving or sometimes even the less deserving but not evil often, still, her rewards and schemes of luck smiling are never without reasonable possibility of events.
A Wickham is not punished only because a young, innocent, spirited Lydia ought not to suffer as well, she is not that guilty - quite guileless, actually - and in the event his punishment is having to put up with himself with no fortune brought by a wife found in an heiress snared for the purpose, while her reward is her ever stout and completely unsuspecting belief that she is the luckiest of women, with a handsome and loving husband. That he is no good nor loves her she will - did, Austen assures us - never see.
A Marianne on the other hand, along with another shadow of a young girl mentioned but never actually brought up to readers' sight, suffers and how horribly, only because of a lack of prudence in allowing - in fact, positively jumping into - an attachment without any knowledge of the character of the person, going by an attractive visage and a charming persona. This is not justice, after all Marianne does not deserve it nor does the girl Elizabeth any more than the mother of the girl (also named Elizabeth) - but it is lifelike in that often innocent suffer due to the faults of others who play with them for pleasure of the moment thoughtlessly, and Austen portrays the risks in all their possible horror. Marianne is not eventually punished but recovers due to her friends and is then rewarded with a life of love and security and happiness, with the ever consistent Colonel Brandon who takes care of Elizabeth (as promised to her mother) too, and deserves to find some happiness and love in his life as well. The character with a severe fault, Willoughby who is neither willing to do justice to the woman he brought into trouble - not so trivial in those days as it might be today in another land, another culture - nor strong enough to then stand by his love and strive for a life with her and instead is cad enough to marry an heiress, for only her money, is merely awarded his life as a punishment - he chose it, after all, and has lost the love and friends he knew for a short time. He has society, but knows the heaven he lost all too well, and must live with the life he chose.
The themes, the characters, the faults and the virtues, the natures and the circumstances keep changing across the world of Austen like patters of a kaleidoscope, every changing and yet with a few pieces of coloured glass to form them - the one constant is the values. Decency, propriety, prudence, due respect and courtesy, integrity, love and friendship, and discerning the truth of what is really love from what is an attachment that might be unwise, or in fact untrue but a mere pretense for sake of a goal completely different - marrying an heiress, playing for amusement for the time - very necessary now as it was then.
One might wonder endlessly what would have happened if only the Crawfords had been brought up more properly, or one can read Emma and find out - Henry Crawford loses Fanny Price, while Frank Churchill gets to marry his love Jane Fairfax since his faults of character, and his actions therefore, are not so disastrous. Emma delights one more than any other young woman with her follies and faults one can shake one's head at, while Jane Bingley and Jane Fairfax suffer travails of love to emerge victorious. Edward Ferrer is rescued by the truely low character of the fiancée he was unwisely attached to when too young and is too noble to break up with no matter if threatened with loss of all his heritance, since the fiancée suddenly marries his brother the heir. Darcy's redemption is his character, which helps him to see his own faults and the truth of the accusations and make up for the consequences of his actions and rescue the innocent. Mary Crawford plays with her own love, and loses him by her assumption that his preference for his values can be turned around by her charms and his attraction for her. Lady Bertram accepts an offer of marriage from a suitable wealthy gentleman and lives her life almost as if she were watching a film, while her sister Frances marries a poor sailor for love and has nine or ten children at the last count, with little thought for those she lost to either benevolence of Bertrams or to death. Mrs. Norris wishes to manage everyone's affairs and is finally only good enought to stand by the foolish Mariah she pampered and encouraged to marry a rich man without love when Mariah is foolish enough to go away with Henry Crawford believing this will force Crawford to marry her.
On and on go the kaleidoscopic patterns, with a little tweak here and there making differences in destiny, and Austen provides as much of a complete world as anyone could - and yet, she wrote less than a dozen books overall, with beautifully simple storytelling about simple English country life.
Just wonder - did anyone else realise Austen carries the seed for Agatha Christie to grow so beautifully into her own genre? Reading Emma again, it was wonderful to see how many gentle clues were strewn about, how deceptively blended into the general pattern of almost old women's gossip structure so one missed them unless one was totally vigilant, something very difficult when reading either Austen or Christie.
Sleeping Murder: by Agatha Christie.
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Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple, #13)
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Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple, #13)
by Agatha Christie.
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A young woman is in England in a small town for the first time, after her marriage, and taken a house and is busy redecorating it, only she seems to know the house in a way that is not possible (giving me goosebumps as I write!) - nothing spectacular, only little things that add up and are uncanny. Then she visits a friend in London and goes out to theatre with the couple, only to run out screaming at a murder scene, claiming she was there, she had seen it ...
The friend has an aunt visiting, elderly, frail, soothing and caring, woolly white haired, twinkly eyes the only sign of any intelligence - Miss Marple. She takes the young traumatised visitor totally seriously and treats her as normal, and in fact has an explanation that needs to be supported by facts. So they set out to find the truth of the matter .......
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September 08, 2010.
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Feb 05, 2016.
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The Philadelphian: by Richard Powell.
This book is about a young lawyer whose boss's daughter falls in love with him, and the young one is persuaded by his boss to postpone the marriage a few years, thus winning - the daughter wanted to marry now! Sure enough she marries someone a couple of years later, and the young man has learned a lesson about how the old one played him.
He gets his own back, incidentally and inadvertently, when he informs an old woman and her granddaughter that they could save money in taxes if the firm informed them of one particular point, and the old lawyer's firm is up in arms against him accusing him of stealing a client and challenging him to show another point or lose his license - and he wins that one, after a couple of nights or so of poring over the accounts. The old girlfriend, now a mother of two, sends him her congratulations.
The young lawyer goes on to marry the young heiress, with the blessings of her grandmother who with her estate is now his client, and goes on to achieve more success in life and career, trumping the old fox who had prevented him marrying his daughter, trumping him more than once.
He gets his own back, incidentally and inadvertently, when he informs an old woman and her granddaughter that they could save money in taxes if the firm informed them of one particular point, and the old lawyer's firm is up in arms against him accusing him of stealing a client and challenging him to show another point or lose his license - and he wins that one, after a couple of nights or so of poring over the accounts. The old girlfriend, now a mother of two, sends him her congratulations.
The young lawyer goes on to marry the young heiress, with the blessings of her grandmother who with her estate is now his client, and goes on to achieve more success in life and career, trumping the old fox who had prevented him marrying his daughter, trumping him more than once.
Ganga Descends: by Ruskin Bond.
A collection of real life stories and pictures of the region, especially Gangaa river (known with its deformed name Ganges in the west), from Himaalayan region around the Gangaa valley where Ruskin Bond has made his home in Mussoorie situated between the Gangaa and the Yamunaa valleys.
This book is the coffee table edition with hard cover and pictures galore, while another edition has a paperback small size and more stories than photographs. This one is a pleasure to reminisce over when one is just back from a trip and would like to have stayed there forever.
And the pictures don't cover all of one's memories, of course, but add to them as well on the other hand.
This book is the coffee table edition with hard cover and pictures galore, while another edition has a paperback small size and more stories than photographs. This one is a pleasure to reminisce over when one is just back from a trip and would like to have stayed there forever.
And the pictures don't cover all of one's memories, of course, but add to them as well on the other hand.
Flight of Pidgeons and other stories: by Ruskin Bond
Flight of Pigeons is about the time of first war of independence of India - naturally termed mutiny by British, which is as false as it gets since the British rule was far from established or even ubiquitous, at that time.
This was when East India company had established offices through India, brought in soldiers supposedly to protect its own property with local rulers' permissions, and then gone about playing machiavellian political games and browbeating and dominating various rulers, of which many were far from happy or submissive.
When the war erupted with soldiers working for the British refusing to use the cartridges - the cartridges needed to be used in mouth before loading and had grease from animals that various religions in India forbade their followers from being used this way - various rulers and so forth joined hands and fought. British were able to recruit poor mainly from southern region of Madras, especially those of low castes, for little money to fight the wars in north for them and thus win a war where they had a superiority of weapons.
Subsequently Queen Victoria and the British government took over from East India company and proceeded to follow policies that would help them stay longer, of which the chief weapon was the usual British "divide and rule". A second one was to badmouth and malign the local culture, achievements, knowledge, and so forth at every turn, even falsely - just to break spirit of the ruled, a typical tactic of those who would enslave others.
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This story, from which the book takes its name, uses a flight of pigeons as an analogy for the British during the 1857 war when they might fly away - as eventually they did inf act less than a century later - having eaten their fill and having no bond of heart or otherwise to the land itself or people therein.
The story deals with various angles of the people and their relationship - there is the honest Hindu trader attempting to help the women of the slain British man's family, which consists of his half Indian wife (her mother was from family of Nawab of Rampur) with her mother and her daughter. The daughter Ruth has attracted due to her sheer beauty a Pathan who would rather marry her (needless to say, having converted her first) than give up the women to those only too happy to slaughter them. The various complications in this, and their resolution and the war raging without, is the story.
The characters are sketched well with the wife of the pathan unhappy about a new young girl - just about sixteen or so - that her husband is crazy about, the mother of the girl attempting to keep the marriage question at bay and unwilling to give up her three quarters British daughter to an Indian husband, the grandmother of the girl counseling her daughter to think it over since he is a good guy and the grandmother sees no reduction of value in such a marriage - (until then cross marriages were common, mostly with local women being married to British males who could not after all persuade their own countrywomen to come over to settle so far away, and thus grew a whole new community of Anglo Indians who were held at mid level by British subsequently, lower than themselves and higher than Indians) - and then there are those fighting the war that have contempt for this pathan raging with love for a foreigner, a girl with a British father.
The girl's mother cleverly tied up the question with the victory of the war, and for a while it looked as if she would marry him after all, but then the tide turned and they were able to get away and join the British.
This happens to be a true story, and realising this gives one goosebumps - because the fact is Ruth lived to be old enough, lived in UK, and never married. She never forgot the pathan with his ardent but distant courting.
This was when East India company had established offices through India, brought in soldiers supposedly to protect its own property with local rulers' permissions, and then gone about playing machiavellian political games and browbeating and dominating various rulers, of which many were far from happy or submissive.
When the war erupted with soldiers working for the British refusing to use the cartridges - the cartridges needed to be used in mouth before loading and had grease from animals that various religions in India forbade their followers from being used this way - various rulers and so forth joined hands and fought. British were able to recruit poor mainly from southern region of Madras, especially those of low castes, for little money to fight the wars in north for them and thus win a war where they had a superiority of weapons.
Subsequently Queen Victoria and the British government took over from East India company and proceeded to follow policies that would help them stay longer, of which the chief weapon was the usual British "divide and rule". A second one was to badmouth and malign the local culture, achievements, knowledge, and so forth at every turn, even falsely - just to break spirit of the ruled, a typical tactic of those who would enslave others.
.............................................................
This story, from which the book takes its name, uses a flight of pigeons as an analogy for the British during the 1857 war when they might fly away - as eventually they did inf act less than a century later - having eaten their fill and having no bond of heart or otherwise to the land itself or people therein.
The story deals with various angles of the people and their relationship - there is the honest Hindu trader attempting to help the women of the slain British man's family, which consists of his half Indian wife (her mother was from family of Nawab of Rampur) with her mother and her daughter. The daughter Ruth has attracted due to her sheer beauty a Pathan who would rather marry her (needless to say, having converted her first) than give up the women to those only too happy to slaughter them. The various complications in this, and their resolution and the war raging without, is the story.
The characters are sketched well with the wife of the pathan unhappy about a new young girl - just about sixteen or so - that her husband is crazy about, the mother of the girl attempting to keep the marriage question at bay and unwilling to give up her three quarters British daughter to an Indian husband, the grandmother of the girl counseling her daughter to think it over since he is a good guy and the grandmother sees no reduction of value in such a marriage - (until then cross marriages were common, mostly with local women being married to British males who could not after all persuade their own countrywomen to come over to settle so far away, and thus grew a whole new community of Anglo Indians who were held at mid level by British subsequently, lower than themselves and higher than Indians) - and then there are those fighting the war that have contempt for this pathan raging with love for a foreigner, a girl with a British father.
The girl's mother cleverly tied up the question with the victory of the war, and for a while it looked as if she would marry him after all, but then the tide turned and they were able to get away and join the British.
This happens to be a true story, and realising this gives one goosebumps - because the fact is Ruth lived to be old enough, lived in UK, and never married. She never forgot the pathan with his ardent but distant courting.
False Impression: by Jeffrey Archer.
Another intriguing mystery thriller from Archer, with murders and art works, precious masters and corrupt stock market players, WTC and heiresses, US and England and more.
A Matter of Honour: by Jeffrey Archer.
This story mesmerised me for more than one good reason, every time I read it - there is the young innocent Englishman who has been left a letter by his father that he reads after the will is read and the bequests are finished with, which takes one to the history of the father as a jailer at Nuremberg who suffered subsequent to the suicide of his most ill famed jailbird; the son is innocent and moreover has complete faith, unlike the British authorities, in his father's innocence, and goes about opening the letter left him by the prisoner before he committed suicide. The letter is in German, and he gets help from a German au pair working her way in England in student days, after some mistrials (he knows enough to know he has to be careful about not letting anyone know the contents), and implusively invites her to fly with him to Switzerland to get the gift left in a Bank for his father that is now passed on to him.
And this is only the beginning of the practically jewel studded story with its jewels in Swiss banks and other treasures, art icons and Russian revolution, theft of art of private German owners by authorities in '30s, and more. There is the chase across Switzerland, the murders and the close escapes, the brilliant schoolmate who has been surprisingly a low level bank clerk and transforms into a crisp man of command and ability when the flatmate in trouble calls him for help with escape from the murderers chasing him in Switzerland, and then there is more - the murderers themselves.
The other side is about just as much glamour and history, what with history of the Russian revolution and prior era, bankers who know secrets of various past and present people of high up, young men and women of whom much is expected in future, discoveries of past and planning for future, ...
And there is more, much, much more! It involves Russia, Soviets, Tsar Nicholas during revolution, precious secrets, German aristocracy and principalities, accidents of airplanes, US interests and involvements, MI6 or is it another number?
And an icon precious for originality and more.
And this is only the beginning of the practically jewel studded story with its jewels in Swiss banks and other treasures, art icons and Russian revolution, theft of art of private German owners by authorities in '30s, and more. There is the chase across Switzerland, the murders and the close escapes, the brilliant schoolmate who has been surprisingly a low level bank clerk and transforms into a crisp man of command and ability when the flatmate in trouble calls him for help with escape from the murderers chasing him in Switzerland, and then there is more - the murderers themselves.
The other side is about just as much glamour and history, what with history of the Russian revolution and prior era, bankers who know secrets of various past and present people of high up, young men and women of whom much is expected in future, discoveries of past and planning for future, ...
And there is more, much, much more! It involves Russia, Soviets, Tsar Nicholas during revolution, precious secrets, German aristocracy and principalities, accidents of airplanes, US interests and involvements, MI6 or is it another number?
And an icon precious for originality and more.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Ford County: by John Grisham.
The collection of stories begins with a couple of tales about people all too human, the sort no one thinks about much less write, but finds them familiar when reading as the ones one generally would like to avert eyes from and forget. Most people in the first two stories do that as well, even though in the first one it looks like it is about their neighbours caring.
Grisham comes into his own in the rest, with quiet vengeance of Sidney against casinos in one and a carefully planned exit of a lawyer from his hometown in another. One cheers with the two protagonists, never mind the overall aspects of strict ethics - they have after all been good and been dealt a not too good hand. The lawyer's disenchantment is all too justified post his decision to leave, what with his wife and daughters being more than willing, eager in case of the wife, to get rid of him. Sidney is positively a hero, and there is a danger of a stray reader or so attempting the feat. It takes far too much mental discipline though, at least.
The last one is touching, all too familiar story of a man arriving home to die and the town behaving as if he were worse than the gun toting gangsters most people in US are romanticised by even now, never mind the massacres in schools. The man so shunned has AIDS, and that is merely the topping on a series of crimes that include leaving home - backwater Mississippi - for a big town and living an alternate lifestyle, which most people still consider a choice, never mind the discoveries of science saying otherwise.
All in all a good collection, but not the more usual Grisham thrilling roller-coaster ride from a victim to a justice with vengeance - this is a more quieter journey. It fits rather somewhere between the Painted House and The Firm.
Grisham comes into his own in the rest, with quiet vengeance of Sidney against casinos in one and a carefully planned exit of a lawyer from his hometown in another. One cheers with the two protagonists, never mind the overall aspects of strict ethics - they have after all been good and been dealt a not too good hand. The lawyer's disenchantment is all too justified post his decision to leave, what with his wife and daughters being more than willing, eager in case of the wife, to get rid of him. Sidney is positively a hero, and there is a danger of a stray reader or so attempting the feat. It takes far too much mental discipline though, at least.
The last one is touching, all too familiar story of a man arriving home to die and the town behaving as if he were worse than the gun toting gangsters most people in US are romanticised by even now, never mind the massacres in schools. The man so shunned has AIDS, and that is merely the topping on a series of crimes that include leaving home - backwater Mississippi - for a big town and living an alternate lifestyle, which most people still consider a choice, never mind the discoveries of science saying otherwise.
All in all a good collection, but not the more usual Grisham thrilling roller-coaster ride from a victim to a justice with vengeance - this is a more quieter journey. It fits rather somewhere between the Painted House and The Firm.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Love Is Eternal: by Irving Stone.
He was from a family in log cabin and educated due to his mother's concern and care, she from a wealthy family with relatives in Illinois and Kentucky both, and they met when she was being courted by the man who would be his rival in politics as well, a man of her class and far more acceptable to her family on the whole. But Mary Todd found Abraham Lincoln far more intriguing and challenging, and in spite of his lack of social skills (recall the famous true story about her telling him that he had said he wanted to dance with her in the worst possible way) she accepted his proposal.
He went on to make history, and was assassinated soon; she did not remarry, even though it would be not merely possible but desirable to her relatives, and lived with the legacy.
He went on to make history, and was assassinated soon; she did not remarry, even though it would be not merely possible but desirable to her relatives, and lived with the legacy.
The Greek Treasures: by Irving Stone.
This is an astounding story of one man with comparatively little education but tremendous determination and perseverance, proving history scholars of his day wrong with sheer evidence of archeological finds. Everyone else was agreed upon Homer's work being myth; Schliemann forced them to reconsider this.
Schliemann family was of German origin as the name indicates, and not very well to do; Heinrich Schliemann had been in US since a tender age, mostly fending for himself, and the era was good to those with initiative and force and self reliance, with some sharpness and business acumen.
Not very much educated, he did very well in business on his own, but had deep interests in some matters of literature and history, one of them being Troy. He was convinced unlike the scholars of his day that Homer's work was based on history, and was determined to fond Troy.
To this end he in his middle age went to Greece, and since he was an outsider who would find it difficult to get permissions for excavation from the government, arranged through middlemen to find a Greek wife for himself so he could carry out his mission. Fortunately he found a young woman who understood and was as interested when she heard his purpose.
Sophia was from a not very well to do family, as Heinrich had been, but that does not necessarily amount to lack of higher interests and aspirations, as commonly thought in west (or pretended, at least). She cared about various aspects of the issue, and the turning point of conviction in marrying him was the fact that he intended to restore the glory of Greece to the Greek nation by turning over his finds to Greece, which he was convinced of successfully finding.
After some unsuccessful attempts he realised he needed to excavate in a region that was now in Turkey, since the boundaries of culture and state are fluid over the millennia and what was once all Greece was now divided in Greece, Turkey and other nations. (Alexander was Greek, for example, but he was from a region that is now the nation of Macedonia, independent of Greece.) So they moved to Trukey with their teams, obtained the necessary permissions - which included working with supervision of the Turkish government and promise not taking out any significant findings.
But of course no western nation or person ever intended honouring any such promises made to any eastern country (think Elgin marbles named after the man who took away inestimable treasures of Greece to be housed in British museum and referred to diminutively as marbles, as if it were playing marbles which are little glass ball toys for little boys, rather than beautiful marble statues, works of art and of inestimable significance to history, and a Greek national treasure as well) - and nor was Schliemann an exception.
When the find did happen finally against all hopes dimmed by the time, he took care to dismiss all workers for the day and for next day, and the trusted part of his contingent ran with the treasure from the country. The workers did suspect and inform and they were pursued, but escaped with most of the finds, including the treasure of gold of Troy they had found.
With this success though Heinrich was encouraged subconsciously to change his mind about restoring the treasure to Greece, which broke his young Greek wife's heart. Nevertheless he deliberated, and perhaps she might have agreed it was a safer choice to leave it to US for sake of safety of the treasure, except his final choice rested on the nation of his origin, Germany. The treasure was exhibited with great pride in Berlin before wwii.
Post wwii which followed soon enough, the treasure was missing, and there was no telling where it had gone. The government and high officials had taken away treasures of all sort including art works from private owners, especially those sent to concentration camps to be murdered, and a good deal of it was missing as well, then and now. There were guesses that alpine tunnels were used for the storage of this stolen property and were sealed, and it was impossible to go about finding them without a clue as to where, since arbitrary dynamiting of suspicious locations would destroy the very treasures that were being attempted to be located whereabouts of by any authority.
Irving Stone tells this story with his usual good way of writing historical novels, wholesome and informative.
(Troy treasure including gold was fortunately another story, as came to light post fall of Berlin wall etcetera - Russian government admitted to having taken it to Russia.)
Schliemann family was of German origin as the name indicates, and not very well to do; Heinrich Schliemann had been in US since a tender age, mostly fending for himself, and the era was good to those with initiative and force and self reliance, with some sharpness and business acumen.
Not very much educated, he did very well in business on his own, but had deep interests in some matters of literature and history, one of them being Troy. He was convinced unlike the scholars of his day that Homer's work was based on history, and was determined to fond Troy.
To this end he in his middle age went to Greece, and since he was an outsider who would find it difficult to get permissions for excavation from the government, arranged through middlemen to find a Greek wife for himself so he could carry out his mission. Fortunately he found a young woman who understood and was as interested when she heard his purpose.
Sophia was from a not very well to do family, as Heinrich had been, but that does not necessarily amount to lack of higher interests and aspirations, as commonly thought in west (or pretended, at least). She cared about various aspects of the issue, and the turning point of conviction in marrying him was the fact that he intended to restore the glory of Greece to the Greek nation by turning over his finds to Greece, which he was convinced of successfully finding.
After some unsuccessful attempts he realised he needed to excavate in a region that was now in Turkey, since the boundaries of culture and state are fluid over the millennia and what was once all Greece was now divided in Greece, Turkey and other nations. (Alexander was Greek, for example, but he was from a region that is now the nation of Macedonia, independent of Greece.) So they moved to Trukey with their teams, obtained the necessary permissions - which included working with supervision of the Turkish government and promise not taking out any significant findings.
But of course no western nation or person ever intended honouring any such promises made to any eastern country (think Elgin marbles named after the man who took away inestimable treasures of Greece to be housed in British museum and referred to diminutively as marbles, as if it were playing marbles which are little glass ball toys for little boys, rather than beautiful marble statues, works of art and of inestimable significance to history, and a Greek national treasure as well) - and nor was Schliemann an exception.
When the find did happen finally against all hopes dimmed by the time, he took care to dismiss all workers for the day and for next day, and the trusted part of his contingent ran with the treasure from the country. The workers did suspect and inform and they were pursued, but escaped with most of the finds, including the treasure of gold of Troy they had found.
With this success though Heinrich was encouraged subconsciously to change his mind about restoring the treasure to Greece, which broke his young Greek wife's heart. Nevertheless he deliberated, and perhaps she might have agreed it was a safer choice to leave it to US for sake of safety of the treasure, except his final choice rested on the nation of his origin, Germany. The treasure was exhibited with great pride in Berlin before wwii.
Post wwii which followed soon enough, the treasure was missing, and there was no telling where it had gone. The government and high officials had taken away treasures of all sort including art works from private owners, especially those sent to concentration camps to be murdered, and a good deal of it was missing as well, then and now. There were guesses that alpine tunnels were used for the storage of this stolen property and were sealed, and it was impossible to go about finding them without a clue as to where, since arbitrary dynamiting of suspicious locations would destroy the very treasures that were being attempted to be located whereabouts of by any authority.
Irving Stone tells this story with his usual good way of writing historical novels, wholesome and informative.
(Troy treasure including gold was fortunately another story, as came to light post fall of Berlin wall etcetera - Russian government admitted to having taken it to Russia.)
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