Johnny Depp + Roman Polanski = *%#!!

Ninth Gate [1999] comprehends a number of diverse talents to produce a B movie which has all the makings of a cult classic. Since Roman Polanski removed to Europe to evade prosecution for statutory rape charges, his career has been predictably uneven. After Chinatown [1974], and Tess [1979], his output has been severely curtailed. Still serenely gifted (The Pianist won him a well-deserved Best Director Oscar in 2003), he's capable of conceiving of interesting cinema, on a short budget or a large one.

Ninth Gate is loosely based on Perez-Reverte's novel The Club Dumas [1993]. The original novel was centered on a literary "club" focused on the work of Alexander Dumas. Polanski's version, however, delves into satanism, setting up Depp's persona as an unscrupulous antiquarian book scout who becomes involved with a group of devil-worshippers, along the usual Faustian lines. This narrative has special interest for me; as a rare book trader, I'm often tantalized by the machinations of book acquisition and marketing. 

Traditionally, the book trade has been conflicted over the ethics of practice. Polanski exploits the half-serious implications of Depp's capitulation to his mercenary tendencies, in the context of satanic ritual and power. The film on its face is a spoof, but it's played straight-up as a sophisticated horror-cum-mystery film, replete with an evil angel (played by Polanski's real life spouse Emmanuelle Seigner), and a would-be devil's disciple brilliantly played by Frank Langella, a set of satanic twins (played by Jose Lopez Rodero), and a full-fledged would-be witch (played stylishly by Lena Olin).  

             

What if the devil had co-authored a limited edition text in pre-Renaissance Italy, which contained a riddle for the summoning of ultimate super-powers--but which required the collation of three separate, unique copies to complete the infernal code? Depp (Dean Corso) is hired by Boris Balkan (Langella) to travel to Europe to steal the two copies of the book which he needs to complete the set. One copy resides with a bitter, old wheelchair case living in Paris, the other with a gentle old decayed Spanish gentleman book collector living in an empty crumbling villa. People keep turning up dead. The protector-angel appears at opportune moments to save Depp/Corso from his own ineptitudes.    

  

The riddle of the three texts involves the interpretation of a set of engravings, each of which differs slightly--together, they form a magical code to summon the devil's power. Seigner possesses the most hypnotic green eyes in the history of cinema, and Polanski focuses on them to equally hypnotic use in the plot. In the end, almost by accident (or fate?) she seduces him, and we are led to imagine that he will pass through the ninth gate to achieve satanic power. 

 

The movie is similar to the Mickey Rourke vehicle Angel Heart [1987], another Faustian satanic possession flick. 

 

Depp's career has taken some wrong turns since he made Ninth Gate. He's made three Caribbean Pirates movies, and a fourth is in the planning stages--this exploitation stuff really seems beneath him, and you wonder why, given his skills and successes in straight roles, he has to waste time with this stuff, when he could be making movies as good as Jack Nicholson's. Depp has range:  He can do drop dead serious stuff, and he's also capable of comic range (as is Nicholson). But doing campy pirate movies isn't challenging enough. If he were as adventurous as John Malkovich, or Alfred Molina, he might have a career as impressive as the first ranks, like Guinness or Tom Hanks. But for the time being, he seems stuck in a rut. It's often been reported that he reads a lot of scripts and proposals, but has trouble finding decent ones. Certainly, at this point, he doesn't need the money. One of the key skills any successful actor must have, is the ability to intuit what will work for him, and to choose the right parts that both challenge his aptitude and exploit his gifts.  

 

Ninth Gate is one of my top 10 cult classics.  

My Summer in Kyoto

Writing about Philip Whalen this week stirred memories of the time I spent in Kyoto, Japan in 1985. My wife had secured a foreign assignment as a computer software support person at the U.S.-Japan joint AFB in Misawa (Aomori Prefecture) up near the northwest corner of the main island. I had originally intended to work for the local Defense Contractor as a grounds planner, but this fell through and I ended up with unlimited time on my hands. After spending two weeks together in Kyoto, I went back for another month intending to photograph the gardens with my new view camera, using 4x5 Ektachrome sheet film. 

At loose ends in Misawa, I'd begun to explore the countryside in Aomori. Japan is a crowded country, and the Japanese have no compunctions about ripping it up whenever the spirit moves them, but Northern Japan has much unspoiled (mostly) agricultural acreage, and it's farmed in much the same way it has been for hundreds of years, and much of the architecture and rural infrastructure appears much as it would have a hundred years ago, save for the paved roads and automobiles. I spent many days, in good weather and bad, wandering the countryside photographing rice racks, weathered barns, and elegantly shaped trees there. 

I hadn't photographed seriously before this, but the opportunities were inspiring, and I quickly stepped up from 35 millimeter, to medium (square) format, to large format (4x5 with an accordion bellows etc, which required a sturdy tripod, and a big camera bag to hold the film holders, several lenses, light meter, etc.). As tourist attractions, Kyoto, Tokyo and Nara present almost limitless examples of preserved architecture and gardens. I decided I'd focus my energies on Kyoto, rather than try to take in the other sites nearby. 

   

In Kyoto, I stayed in a 500 year old Ryokan (a traditional kind of hotel). Unlike Western lodgings, Ryokans are constructed in the Japanese manner, their room dimensions and amenities laid out according to the tatami mat dimensions; you sleep on the floor with a rice pillow, and you share the bathing facilities; no shoes are worn indoors (all the shoes are lined up outside near the door), and traditional meals are provided. This Ryokan was owned and operated by a family which had lived there through many generations. The structure was original--dark wooden beams and planks which creaked when you walked on them. There wasn't much privacy--you could hear other boarders between the paper-thin walls--there were televisions, but nothing in English! Usually I bathed in the mornings, frequently having to spend an extra 10 minutes filling the huge square tub with cold water, lest I be boiled alive by the steaming hot water the maid had drawn for me!  

Kyoto is a large modern city, but, like San Francisco (bounded by water on three sides), its growth is limited, by steep encircling mountains, where many of the temples are situated. My day would begin with an odd fish-y breakfast (their version of scrambled eggs involved a neat rolling of the egg mass into a rectangular layer cake leavened with pickle peppers). 

I often went out to eat in the evening. Since I had no Japanese, this could be awkward at times. I remember once, strolling around the middle of town, I came upon a big coffee house with dozens of outdoor tables. As I approached the cafe, hundreds of high school and college students in groups or with their dates suddenly turned to look at me in horror! A gaijin! I had accidentally walked into a forbidden zone! I felt as if I were striding onto the stage at the academy awards! Murmurs like a thousand bees! Consternation at my long brown trenchcoat, a giant (I'm 6'4")!   

In all, I visited over 40 gardens, often seeing two in the same day. My primary mode of transport was taxis. The Japanese taxi system is without doubt the most efficient and impressive as any in the world. It's a closely regulated service, the cars are immaculate and new (they're all a pale, polished green color), the drivers are competent and anxious to please, but of course all this doesn't come cheap. And they're ubiquitous--never any fear, unless you're way, way out of town, of finding one. 

          

Kyoto is a tourist center, but unlike many such precincts, it's not been allowed to be cheapened and trashed. The gardens--both royal (secular) and holy (religious)--are visually stunning examples of the management of, and integration with, natural landscape forms. Many of the temples have been, and still are, in continuous use for hundreds of years. One of my best color shots was taken while a group of seated monks chanted morning prayers on the other side of an open porch facing the lush garden view. Many of the temples have become wary of tourist exploitation, and won't allow you to set up tripods on the premises. Many also charge entrance fees, and restrict access to certain designated areas. Some, like Katsura or Saiho-ji, have organized tours and you have to stay with your group. 

Among the most popular is the Golden Temple (Kinkaku-ji), a shimmering gold (real gold leaf!) three-story pavilion set at the edge of a small landscaped lake. The subject of countless tourist pictures, the temple was burned down by a deranged monk in 1950, and was rebuilt. This episode forms the basis of Mishima's novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. One overwhelming problem immediately becomes evident when attempting to photograph it, from across the water, which presents the best views. The pathway which encircles the lake normally is crowded with visitors, and as they pass beside the pavilion, they get in the way of the composition. As anyone who has visited Japan knows, Japanese school children are routinely taken on field trips to these sights; these kids, about age 5 or 6, come in class groups, dressed uniformly in shorts, cotton shirts, and little bright pastel colored hats (almost like teams). As one group passes, followed by a few stubborn stragglers, the next group comes, and the process starts all over again. 

I would set up the composition for the pavilion, and wait patiently as the little yellow-hatted group would slowly pass, then I'd have, say, a second or less, to take the shot, hoping the sun hadn't slipped behind a cloud, before the next little red-hatted group began to pass, until the orange-hatted group took its turn, etc. This went on for hours! I went back twice, but only got a fair shot of the Golden Pavilion.  

           

Another great attraction is the Saiho-ji, or Moss Garden (Koke-dera). In order to visit this, visitors are required to attend a kind of short seminar on Japanese brush calligraphy. Following a brief lecture, you have to sit on the floor and copy out a page full of Kanji characters with your black paintbrush. Everyone tries to hurry through the task, in order to spend as much time in the garden as possible! 

It should be noted--with respect to the moss--that Japan is a humid country! After a while, you don't mind it too much, but it's important to be aware of the consequences. Typically, in Japan, you'll find a light bulb fixture sticking out near the floor in closets--this is intended to mitigate the growth of mold inside your shoes--which I was astounded to discover one morning when I reached for my dress bucks--filled with hazy grey-green mold! 

Nevertheless, this humidity provides the basis for the growth of moss, and the Japanese have learned to exploit its intensely green carpeting aspect to enhance the look and tactile sensation of their garden compositions. The Moss Garden--pictured above and at the top of this piece--is probably the best example of its use. Its primary drawback is the difficulty of maintenance. Dry leaves and detritus are continually falling upon it, which must be groomed meticulously on a daily or twice-daily basis by moccasined monk gardeners using crude (but soft) grass brooms, in order not to damage the delicate moss covering.   

      

The best way to visit the gardens is to allow yourself adequate time to appreciate their meditative calmness and atmosphere. Many of the smaller, less popular ones, allow guests to sit and meditate, and will even offer you free tea. Small donations are appreciated but not demanded. I spent many happy moments basking in the peace and relative solitude of a perfectly sited and constructed garden. It was late Summer, early Fall, and the maples were orange and yellow--like tomatoes--and they would oscillate and bend gently in the stirring breezes.      

I have a big cache of hundreds of 4x5 chromes of Kyoto, which I need someday to get printed, probably by the silver-chrome emulsion process (Zibachrome). I went to considerable difficulty to make them, but under the most wonderful of circumstances. I will never forget my month in Kyoto in the late Summer of 1985. In another post soon, I'll discuss the Ryoan-ji or sand garden.      

Whalen Again - Portrait From Another Direction

You can talk about the writing or you can talk about the man. Does a man's writing stand for the man, or does the man stand beside his writing (taking full credit and responsibility for it)? Whalen might have said that selflessness is close to godliness, in that we are mere vessels through which divine inspiration may--or may not--come. Whalen was a man who never seemed to take his luck for granted. Many of his poems come roundabout to a provisional conclusion, wary of satisfaction, respectful of fate, and modest in expectation. 

Haiku, for Gary Snyder

                               I S

Here's a dragonfly

                              ( T O T A L L Y )

Where it was,

                           that place no longer exists.

                                                                                    15:i:60

 

This is a poem from Braincandy 1962-1965, a section of poems from On Bear's Head [1969]. It's a very simple poem, which is why I chose to talk about it (long poems use up a lot of space in a blog, and are likely to put people off, is my take).

We've all had the experience of watching a dragonfly light on a twig or a rock nearby, or just hover nervously in mid-air. Dragonflies are among the most primitive of living things that still survive; they've been around since the dinosaurs, in fact they were around 100 million years before that, so you could say these little guys are a talisman of duration--the perfect formula to carry the DNA of life through time's adversity. 

They're also extremely agile in flight, can hover, change direction, land and take off, with astonishing speed. They're carnivores of the insect kingdom, eating smaller insects than themselves. In their nymph form, they live in water, and breathe through gills in their rectum, and can rapidly propel themselves by suddenly expelling water through the anus (a neat trick!). 

You can be looking at a dragonfly hovering beside you, its twin sets of wings quivering, and suddenly it's gone--they're that fast, your eye can't follow them. Metaphorically, this astonishing speed suggests a form of transubstantiation, or the instantaneous transfer of matter from one place to another, without literal apparent means. 

Is the poem a true haiku? Well, that depends. Classic haiku, the three lines, traditionally defined 5/7/5 syllable scheme. Given a little latitude, one could almost call any short English poem of this approximate length a haiku, especially if it functions as one--that is, through the juxtaposition of two things (as, an image and a comment upon). Clearly, Whalen's self-conscious decision to make a haiku poem implies a Zen content, and is well within the haiku tradition as it comes down to us through translations in the West. 

It differs, however, from its antecedents by not simply setting up a contemplative observation, but in some sense enacting what it describes. It is not simply static, but a live current to transmit energy! This notion of an energy construct is a post-Modern idea, one which Charles Olson referred to in his essay "Projective Verse" [1951]. The embodiment of an energetic charge--or linguistic discharge--is crucial to much of post-Modern poetic theory. 

The poem sets up a dialectic between two sets of narrative. The ostensible "poem" (or traditional haiku) is in the lines "Here's a dragonfly/Where it was,/that place no longer exists." This is a fairly straightforward, if somewhat predictable, haiku sentiment--the transitoriness of nature, of matter in any temporary form, or the ephemeral nature of visual perception, or of the mystical "disappearance" of an observed "moment" in the continuum. It's a Bergsonian idea: that Duration is unextended yet heterogeneous, and its parts cannot be juxtaposed as a succession of distinct parts, with one causing the other, thereby making determinism an impossibility and free-will pure mobility, which he called Duration. Perception of instantaneous fleeting moments suggests that we can capture frames or images from time, like putting an insect on a pin, but our sense of the continuous flux of "everything" proves that this is an illusion. Nothing stops. Nothing stands still. Everything is moving. Everything is irretrievable. 

The other half of the dialectic is the capitalized simultaneous parallel words "I S" and "( T O T A L L Y )". How do these two juxtaposed words function within the narrative of the poem? They're both "inside" the poem and "outside" it. You could say they represent a sort of deus ex of the world will (or universal spirit). Everything simply "is"--beyond human agency or blessing. This "is"-ness is totally encompassing (the universe), not limited either by our perceptual apprehension, or by the means of expression (language, mental processes).

The poet's perception of the being of the dragonfly--its "being"-ness--represented by its physical body existing in one place, then vanishing--inspires the realization that matter and empirical observation are illusions. As we sit on the earth, studying this hovering dragonfly, we're upsidedown, spinning around a planetary gyroscope, in an elegant dance of multifarious energy and matter of which we, the dragonfly, the twig it rests/ed upon, the air and the light and the moment in time, are all an involuntary, accidental part. 

This superconsciousness of awareness of the universe is a very Buddhist concept, not altogether alien to Western thought, but difficult to express except in formulaic terms. This poem is another example of the concise equational quality of the best short poems, which can express things that 1000 pages of dense philosophical analysis can't. It's like a summary of one of the important points of Wittgenstein's Tractatus: That in signifying what can be said, it will signify what cannot be said. 

Whalen's poem is an attempt to say the unsayable. The simultaneous hovering analagous capitalized letters (words) are symbolically linked to the hovering of the dragonfly: The moment in time which seems to hover precariously, and then vanishes before our eyes. The "I S" is an expression of the pure energy of the body of the insect--the energy which holds it together as a formal structure, the energy by which it throbs and flits decisively through the continuum, and of the flux of everything else as well. "( T O T A L L Y )" functions as a modifier but it is really unnecessary. Whalen could simply have titled the poem IS and perhaps have had the same effect; though lacking the enactment of the juxtaposed parts, it probably wouldn't have signified as clearly what he intended. The dragonfly probably is the "I S" which hovers above the poem proper--it's in the poem, or hovering just above it, both in and out of time, in and out of the poem.

Before such illumination there is no choice but to accede. All effort, all struggle, is encompassed within the continuum of the universal flux.    

Philip Whalen Tribute - Better Late Than Never

I could certainly write at least a dozen blogs on Philip Whalen, a poet who was once as important to me as anyone I could name. During my early youth, I tended to idolize individual poets--we'd have a sort of honeymoon during which I would buy all their books, read everything they had written, and gather as much biographical data as could be had (in those primitive times, you couldn't simply "Google" a person's name, you had to dig for bits and pieces of information from stray sources). While I was still an undergraduate at Berkeley, Harcourt, Brace & Company had unexpectedly and improbably published On Bear's Head, in hardcover only, at $16.50 a throw. As Whalen once remarked, the story was that "you were supposed to steal that book," since no one he knew, or any potential fan of his work, would have had the necessary cash to plop down to legally buy a copy at that price. I remember taking something like two months to put the necessary money together to buy that book. (My other major purchase during this period was Larry Eigner's another time in fragments, which was, if memory serves, $6.50 (from Fulcrum in England)).           

I had already read Every Day [1965] and Like I Say [1960]. Whalen's work was very accessible--and I understood instantly what he was talking about. He seemed to have no pretensions, except possibly about Zen Buddhism, but even so, the argument and atmosphere of his poems was perfectly clear. He was a white American male who'd been in the Army, was reasonably cheerful, had a perspicacious mind, and sounded almost as abnormally normal as a poet could expect to be.

    

Beyond my easy identification with his persona, was his clarity of mind, and flat, but witty, American speech patterns. He was a colloquial writer, but with a broad range of reading and interests. His easy-going approach gave me hope that I wouldn't have to write like W.B. Yeats or Robert Lowell in order to be considered a serious writer.

   

Whalen had worked as a forest look-out. When I was just a teenager, I'd been encouraged to consider doing that very thing. My stepfather had even driven me up to Modoc County one Spring day in 1963 to interview for work with a Summer fire crew job. By that time, the look-out jobs were considered plums, and only those with political connections could get them. As it turned out, the fire crew was being manned by juvenile delinquents anyway, so that never worked out. 

The idea of having all that time to oneself, alone, atop vast vistas of wild country was endlessly attractive to me in those days. Go up there in the clouds and write! 

Whalen's great friend and contemporary Gary Snyder, whom he had attended Reed College with, also had been a look-out. It all seemed to me then a very (what we would call today) green thing to do. In the context of Whalen's and Snyder's interest in Eastern religion and mystical attitude towards nature, I felt a special kinship with the shape of their lives: West Coast men fascinated with the Far East, intellectually proficient but practical and pragmatic about the tasks and duties of ordinary living. Politically Left, but unpretentious and easy-going as comrades. 

          

By the time I'd caught up with his work, Whalen had decamped to Japan. By the time I myself had begun to write seriously, he had started on his path to Zen monkhood. I was never much interested in religion: My parents had made me go to church for about five years as a boy, while they never went; my stepfather said that it was important for me to "have the experience" of religion, to see what the whole thing was about--but in reality I think it was probably just a way of getting me out of the house for three hours each Sunday so they could have uninterrupted sex. I had had a Catholic roommate in college, and what I saw of his devotion and habit of mind didn't encourage me to explore that angle any further. I've always been an agnostic/atheist, but Whalen's attachment to Zen Buddhism seemed to make a certain amount of sense, in that it furnished a practical habitual approach to health and attention which is a fine antidote to the selfish-go-getter-anxiety of American Puritanism. I never felt the need to "escape" from society, though in the late 60's and 70's the pull of hippy ruralism intrigued me.         

In most of the interviews and statements Whalen made in later life, he tried to present himself as the hapless flower to whom things happened, as if he couldn't summon the gumption to get up in the morning. This is of course only partly true, though his passivity is a big component of his Buddhism, accepting and acknowledging, rather than striving and overcoming.    

I always found his poetry to be nicely balanced between these two tendencies--the desire to make and build, and the need to wait and watch (submissiveness). He seems to have found in the practice of Zen, a discipline that gave shape and meaning to a rather haphazard approach to living. Another expression of this balance, is his native humor, which counterbalances his keen intellectual curiosity. Like all closet academicians, Whalen tended towards the erudite and complex, but his modesty (one might even call it lack of self-esteem) usually kept him from taking himself too seriously. In the poems, this had the effect of infusing the writing with a kind of nutty energy and unexpected elisions. His work is never laborious, or unrelieved.     

After On Bear's Head came out, Whalen continued to publish more books of poems, in much the same style as he had since the early 1950's. 

The other side of his production was the two novels, You Didnt' Even Try [Coyote, 1967], and Imaginary Speeches to a Brazen Head [Black Sparrow, 1972]. These two fictions in many ways provide a deeper insight into Whalen's mind than any of his poetry, since they address actual relationships and situations, without being limited by the more formal manner of his poetry. Basically, they are "bohemian" narratives of young artists living and working and loving in the Bay Area during the 1950's and 1960's. This is subject matter which has been explored by many other writers, such as Herb Gold, Alice Adams, etc., but Whalen's approach is more insideout. In one sense, all of the characters in his novels are different aspects of himself--simply expressed through different "bodies" and "heads." In a sense the "imaginary speeches" are the verbalized versions of what any person thinks or wishes to say as a declamation of identity or belief. Anyone who is so inclined, spends much of his/her life composing such speeches as a form of self-expression or argument. It is the eternal dialogue that humanity carries on with itself and history.    

When Whalen's collected poems appeared, it felt like an anti-climax to me. Whalen had always said that On Bear's Head wasn't a collected poems--and, given his compositional style--there was every reason to believe that there were a lot of unpublished poems in his closet. But the collected poems didn't bear that out. 

Perhaps one of the most revolutionary aspects of his work, which has never been given its fair share of attention, is his calligraphic/illustrated holographs. Highgrade [1966], Monday in the Evening [1964], and The Diamond Noodle [1980] are limited examples of his notebook compositions, and they present tantalizing evidence of what might have been a fully developed enterprise of quasi-Eastern painting-poems, had anyone had the energy and money to do it. With the demise of the manual typewriter, and the advent of the personal computer, poets continue to be alienated from the means of textual production. Whalen's preoccupation with Eastern texts, and his own calligraphic practice (which he picked up, along with Snyder, at Reed College where Lloyd Reynolds was teaching it), are crucial interlocked components of his sense of the act of writing. 

When I lived in Japan for a year in 1985, I had the opportunity to explore some of the same sources of inspiration that Whalen and Snyder had years earlier.  My next post will address some of that experience.        

Roderick Haig-Brown Tribute

The British-Canadian naturalist, writer and sportsman Roderick Haig-Brown was born 101 years ago in England. After his father was killed in WWI, he washed out of prep-school, and later emigrated to Canada in the early 1930's, specifically to Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Rural Northwestern Canada in those days was rough country. Haig-Brown worked in the logging and fisheries industry, married a Seattle girl, and settled in Campbell River. An avid fisherman since he was a teenager, he'd already published two books by this time on angling, Silver: The Life of an Atlantic Salmon, and Pool and Rapid (1932). He would go on to write and publish some 25 more books, both fiction and non-fiction, juvenile and adult titles.        

I first discovered Haig-Brown as a budding fly-fisherman in the 1970's. Flyfishermen may come to the hobby in childhood, or discover it later on their own. In my case, it was a little bit of each.

My stepfather, Harry W. Faville, who had grown up in Wisconsin, had fly-fished as a boy. In the 1930's, following the break-up of his first marriage, he wandered around the West in an old jalopy, taking odd jobs and wetting his line in the trout streams of the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest. He would tell stories about great days trout-fishing on the Yellowstone and Madison, and Steelheading on the Klamath and Eel River. Before WWII, vast tracts of the West were largely unspoiled, and unregulated. An enterprising sportsman could find plenty of good water and fish for the taking.

By the time I was coming of age in the 1960's, the Vietnam War and the Student Protests had driven a stake into the heart of my relationship with my parents, and what enterprise might have developed between my stepfather and me, quickly evaporated when I went off to college. All I had were a few scattered memories of a day casting spinners to "half-pounders" on the Klamath and a couple of trips to remote back country Sierra Nevada lakes. But there were those stories....

I never suspected that "fishing" writing could be as compelling as true literature. Who would have thought that a Canadian naturalist could be as good a writer as John Steinbeck? The new generation of nature writers that emerged in the 1960's has really given the green movement a shot in the arm: Edward Hoagland, Edward Abbey, John McPhee, Barry Lopez, and a host of others. Anyway, the first book of Haig-Brown's I picked up was Fisherman's Summer [1959]. There were four books in the series, for the four seasons, and I was hooked with the first one. Prose style is a combination of several things: Clarity of purpose, graceful phrasing, balance between sentence lengths, judicious measure, fairness, passion for subject. Haig-Brown had all these things and more. Flyfishing--wading, stalking, casting, watching, playing--requires discipline; it's not unlike playing baseball, periods of waiting followed by sudden spasms of action and emergency. No one who has tried to do it methodically would deny this. Haig-Brown was the one writer capable of imparting accurately the simple clarity of physical, emotional and mental impressions of flyfishing with complete fidelity--he has a bracing quality, the freshness of action, of the feel and sparkle of wild fish in hand--which can be thrilling. But he was so much more than that. 

Haig-Brown was sensitive to nature in ways that all great naturalists have been. His sense of the power, and fragility of plants, animals, weather, streams--their beauty, and mortality--is touching, and sobering. In the latter half of his life he studied and wrote about the natural history and environment of British Columbia, and actively participated in environmental preservation. On the imaginative side, he wrote effective first-person accounts, as well as "animal" fictions about the natural world, neither condescendingly nor stuffily; on the practical side, he strove to bring about protections and sensible attitudes that would help preserve the countryside he loved. He was one of the first to understand that we have to change how people think about nature before you can convince them to conserve and value it. As exciting and seductive as his "sportsman's" essays are, it's his wider concern for preservation which marks him as a crucial figure in the world environmental movement.                    

The ethics and culture of modern dry-fly fishing was in its infancy then when Haig-Brown first began to write about his experiences. Over-exploitation was the order of the day. Wild fish were still regarded then largely as a food source. We're all familiar with those sightly embarrassing old photos of "lucky anglers" standing beside a clothesline of fish hanging in rows, the "haul" of a single afternoon's "harvest." Those days are over. Haig-Brown was among the first to see how catch & release, the deliberate returning of caught fish back to the water--as a way of perpetuating the species and maintaining runs--would eventually be the standard by which sport-fishing would survive.

As a provincial magistrate [1941-1974], Haig-Brown meted out justice to his fellow citizens. The same sure hand he used on "the bench" he used in all his dealings. In 1974, he sold his house and land along the Campbell River to the BC government, now used as a B&B and Canadian Council's Writer In Residence. A provincial park and a mountain are named after him, in honor of his contributions to preservation of the Fraser River and its tributaries, the salmon runs and spawning grounds. 

Reading his works now, 50, 60 or 70 years after they were written, is to be taken back to a time before the West had been overrun, before it had been fished and logged and mined and paved to near-extinction. His ability to evoke the felicities of streams and rivers, and the lively fish that lived in them, along with all the other aspects of unspoiled nature--for those who care about such things--is endlessly romantic. Who would you rather have as a companion on a cold Fall day on the water, than Roderick Haig-Brown? 

When I was first married, my wife and I read Measure of the Year [1950] together, in which Haig-Brown sets out the parameters of a consciously frugal and responsible family life, which naturally included the piecemeal acquisition of a fine private second-hand library. What better advice could anyone give?         

        

Max Beerbohm - Dandy Cartoonist (& Excellent Essayist Too!)

Of all the figures of the fin-de-siecle--the "Gay Ninetees"--the Yellow Decade--last hurrah of the 19th Century's decadence and indulgent refinement(s), Max Beerbohm [1872-1956] is probably the most interesting of all. Wilde's scandalous biography notwithstanding, no one else possessed a comparable talent, perceptivity, clarity of mind, equanimity, rich humor, and sense of purpose that Beerbohm did. As a precocious 19th Century Dandy, he lived on well into the 20th, a tolerant and bemused witness to the revolutionary changes in civilization, and a perfectly preserved example of the spirit and outlook of another age.

I first discovered this fascinating writer and caricaturist through S.N. Behrman's affectionate extended Portrait of Max [Random House, 1960], which appeared first as a New Yorker Profile. I immediately fell in love with his delightful caricatures (cartoons), and his elegant, modest, and refined personality, accurately recorded by Behrman over a series of visits he made to Beerbohm's villa in Rapallo, Italy. (Rapallo, it will be recalled, was the one-time hang-out of Ezra Pound, Basil Bunting, and other literary lights.) 

 

Beerbohm became my introduction to late Victorian and Edwardian English culture: Shaw, Wilde, Yeats, Rothenstein, Bennett, Conrad, Hardy, Swinburne, Beardsley, Kipling, etc., all turn up in familiar garb and attitude as subjects of Beerbohm's razor-sharp artist's pencil. In Beerbohm's cartoons and reminiscences, these figures came alive: Rather than stuffy, respectful subjects, he saw them as fragile, vulnerable human beings with all their flaws and peccadilloes. 

 

The first thing to note about Beerbohm was that he was precocious. As the youngest member of a talented generation of writers and artists, he was destined to survive the longest, the last witness to the guttering gaslight of late Victorian aesthetic pretensions, a superannuated mock-historian and charming wax-museum piece, still chuckling, 50 years on, about the fads and foibles of a simpler time. The only other octogenarian with whom he shares this privileged vantage--to my knowledge--was E.M. Forster [1879-1970].   

 

By the time Behrman began to interview him, Max had long since abandoned England, departing to live in Italy, with his new bride Florence Kahn, in 1910. This removal has always fascinated me--not sure quite why. Max had "conquered" London society, albeit as a fun-poking observer of its excesses; it was almost as if, sensing the falling curtain on a whole phase of cultural history, he made his neat escape "out of history" and into a half-century's exile in an indefinite twilight of nostalgia and superannuated self-preservation. 

Max excelled in several media. His reputation in posterity will doubtless always depend upon his cartoons, or caricatures. (I once had an argument with one of my English professors about just what made a caricature a caricature. She insisted that the head of the subject had to be several times larger than the body, but in many of Beerbohm's best caricatures this isn't the case at all--in fact, in many of them, the head is actually smaller in relation to the size of the body than it should be, but there was no arguing with this woman--she couldn't imagine any of her students knowing more about anything than she did, and couldn't admit a fault.) In any case, caricature as a form is primarily a satiric medium, designed and practiced as an amused imitation of a figure, often a well-known one (the better well-known the better, actually), with or without a caption. Cartoons routinely tell a kind of story, have a narrative, or impart a message or present a visual editorial. Caricatures are primarily an explication of character, poking fun at excesses or eccentricities of physical impression, or manner of address. Beerbohm produced hundreds of these studies over his lifetime, in a characteristic style, and they are, nearly all of them, classics of the genre. 

                              

     

Some of his wickedest caricatures were of Wilde, Kipling, and Prince Edward. Though he was usually gently mocking, Max could be vicious and pitiless, as this exaggerated mask of Oscar Wilde (below) shows--  

--or, as this portrait of Watts-Dunton and Swinburne shows, even harsh in his implied judgment.

 

Beerbohm's artistic contemporaries included, of course, Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley's more violently distorted imaginary portraits belong to the same tradition as some of Beerbohm's most audaciously bizarre ones. Whether these are true caricatures, or some more elaborate form of serious art, I can't say. This one of Beardsley himself, seems to belong on the edge between silliness and total abstraction. Like all of Max's best work, it's stylish and chic without seeming totally dated. Those tiny trees, for instance, like a sort of child-like freize, as a weird backdrop,--what exactly do they signify?

      

Max's next great gift, a twin to his graphic, was for literary parody. Parody and caricature are allied, since both forms use the assumption of style and method to create an impression through exaggeration and mimicry. Max's collection of parodies, A Christmas Garland [1912]--all developed on the theme of Christmas--contains what are probably the finest examples in that form ever done. Dwight MacDonald, who edited Parodies: An Anthology from Chaucer to Beerbohm and After [1960], flatly states that Beerbohm was the greatest parodist in history. His "versions" of James, Kipling, Conrad, Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Chesterton, Frank Harris, etc., are sheer genius, capturing perfectly the tone and manner of each writer's characteristic style, while preserving a sense of fun and games at the same time (not an easy feat at all!).    

In addition to these ventriloquist's gifts, Max was also a serious essayist and reviewer, having replaced Shaw as the drama critic at the Saturday Review for twelve years. As a casual essayist, Beerbohm's interests were neither philosophical, nor political, nor scientific--as an essayist he was a lightweight, but a charming lightweight, and a masterful stylist. Pick up any example of his prose, and admire the balance and rhythm of his sentences, his paragraphs. Never before, or since, has anyone managed to lavish so much skill of so little subject matter.   

Last but not least, Beerbohm was a novelist. Zuleika Dobson; or an Oxford Love Story [1911], was his only fiction, but it has held a special place of honor as the most perfect example of the spirit of its age. A fantasy on the theme of unrequited love, it involves the mass suicide of a host of Oxford undergraduate suitors to a classic femme fatale. The book has been in continuous print since its initial appearance, and continues to draw admirers after nearly 100 years. It is modern in its limpid ironies, and never takes itself seriously. These are qualities too often lacking in the world today, as indeed they are at any time.

      

Original Beerbohm drawings regularly come up at auction, though I have never been moved to own one. There were ten editions of his drawings published during his lifetime, and they can be had for a fraction of the cost of originals. If you want to see what the "yellow" nineties were like, or how people thought about things in the Edwardian era, Beerbohm's essays, caricatures and parodies are a good place to start. 

 

Beerbohm himself was quite modest. He determined early on that his gift was a limited one, and he set about exploiting it in the most efficient manner. Every age deserves a Beerbohm, to keep it honest, to puncture egos and pretensions, and to make it laugh at itself. Calvin Trillin has done yeoman's work on George W. Bush--certainly one of the easiest targets of satire ever to rise to high office in our political history--churning out light-hearted doggerel on the theme of corruption in the executive office. But we need more. The best antidote for bad governance is humor--wicked and sharp and vicious!    

The Third Man [1949] - Classic Noir with a Twist

The Third Man is probably the most exotic of all the classic noir films--an amalgam of shadowy menace, seductive corruption, and deeply ironic fatalism. 

Most unusually, the screenplay (by Graham Greene), was a cinematic original, later turned into a crime "entertainment" novella for the literary market. The film was, in addition, a brilliant vehicle for Orson Welles, whose career had been in eclipse since the release of Citizen Kane [1941], having to endure a de facto blacklisting initiated by the Hearst Corporation. It is in many ways, Welles's best role outside of Kane, and the character he portrays is so close to the skin it almost feels like real life. Joseph Cotton, who'd shared billing with Welles in Kane, also stars, as does the unforgettable, drop-dead seductive beauty Alida Valli, and Trevor Howard. 

The film is many things: A murder mystery, a triangle love-story, a comedy, a chase, and not least, an expressionistic portrait of the city of Vienna, where the filming was done on location. All these elements co-exist in a shifting, improbable series of black and white narrative set-pieces. The cinematography is masterful, and the theme music played on the zither, a "plucky" stringed instrument, is profoundly evocative of place and time.

Briefly, it's the story of an American "Westerns" writer, Holly Martens, who is called to Vienna by his old friend Harry Lime. Just as Martins arrives, he learns that Harry has died. Poking around post-War Vienna--jointly run in four sectors by Britain, America, France and the Soviet Union--Holly insinuates himself into Harry's shady corrupt world of black market drugs and small-time crooks. He falls (predictably) for Harry's girlfriend Anna Schmidt (played flawlessly by the hypnotic Valli) and eventually tracks Harry down. Their meetings are furtive and picturesque: The first time, riding a huge ferris wheel in the Prater park, then later, down dark, wet cobbled streets in the dead of night. Eventually, Martins is forced to acknowledge his old friend's evil nature, finally agreeing to help set a trap for him, which leads to a suspenseful pursuit through Vienna's complex system of underground sewers. Along the way, Martins ends up delivering a "talk" to a high-minded little literary society about "Mr. James Joyce"--an absurdist subplot typical of Greene.                    

The whole movie is a surrealistic romp. Everyone, except perhaps Martins--who's so disingenuous and naive that he seems to have stepped out of a 1940's cigarette ad--is into deception. Even Anna sort of pretends to be falling in love with him, though she's irretrievably stuck on Harry, the ultimate ambiguous charmer, and is merely playing along to be reunited with her vampire lover. 

 

One favorite scene of mine's set along a dark abandoned street, Martins and a British officer are lurking in the shadows of a building, when an ancient (goat-footed???) balloon-man, with enough balloons he appears capable of levitating, notices them, and not realizing the suspense afoot, insists that they buy a balloon:  "Mein herr, balloon...balloon...balloon"--it's like a scene straight out of an Antonioni flick, crazy and hilarious at once,. teetering (as does the film) precariously between farce and tragedy. 

Everyone, it seems, in this decadent, layered, metaphorically catacombed (worm-eaten) ancient city has become cynical and selfish. In the end, after Lime has been killed, Martins, hoping against hope that Anna will accept his advances, meets her at the graveyard. Standing at the edge of the long allee, lined in perfect perspective with barren trees, he waits as she walks, in measured, deliberate strides towards him, autumn leaves drifting softly down, and watches with a kind of defeatist's stoicism, as she walks right by him and out of his life. Would having had Anna have been the triumph he imagines? All these characters know is hunger:  For love, sustenance, excitement, comradeship, hope. The war years are like a deep chasm of devastation, out of which Europe claws its way upward towards redemption, and the promise of happiness.