The Creative Life Adventure

Now that I’m beginning to run out of it, time has begun to click past me faster than a hot taxi meter.

Barney’s Version by Mordecai Richler, p. 265

I finished reading Barney’s Version by Mordecai Richler this week. What a funny and heartbreaking novel. Offended by his portrayal in a rival’s autobiography, Barney Panofsky resolves to tell his story in his own words. Living in Montreal but spending time in Paris, Toronto, and other destinations, Barney is brutally honest, about himself as much as anyone else. I hope to re-watch the 2010 film adaptation soon.

• P. 4: “I was a voracious reader, but you would be mistaken if you took that as evidence of my quality.”

• P. 196: “The young today. … Privileged beyond compare. Born too late to remember the Battle of Stalingrad, D-Day, Rita Hayworth peeling off that elbow-length glove in Gilda, Maurice Richard charging over the blue line, the siege of Jerusalem, Jackie Robinson breaking in with the Montreal Royals, Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, or a beaming Harry Truman holding up the front page of the Chicago Tribune with the banner headline DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.”

• P. 354: “…Barney Panofsky clung to two cherished beliefs: Life was absurd, and nobody ever truly understood anybody else.”

I was less impressed with Carnal Knowledge (1971), currently available for streaming on FreeVee. Regarded by many as a classic. With Mike Nichols directing and that powerful cast, this would seem like a sure thing. Instead, Carnal Knowledge suffers from what I call the Raging Bull Syndrome. A movie that is brilliantly written, acted, and directed, somehow never convinces me that its boring and narcissistic protagonists deserve the viewer’s attention. I’ll gladly recommend any number of Mike Nichols’ other movies – Catch-22 (1970), Primary Colors (1998), Wolf (1994), Working Girl (1988), even The Day of the Dolphin (1973), which is much better than you might think from the description.

I was honestly more impressed by Flash Gordon: Deadly Ray From Mars, also currently streaming on FreeVee. Deadly Ray From Mars is a repackaging of the 1938 serial Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars, the second of three Flash Gordon serials from that era. You can find the original on YouTube in serial form and I recommend that version. Deadly Ray From Mars combines all the episodes into one movie-length feature but it’s so heavily edited you’ll think Mr. Magoo was in charge of the editing process. Still, for what it is, Deadly Ray From Mars is entertaining, the visual effects are pretty good for the time period, and it’s free of the curse of “fan service” that we’ve inflicted on a lot of modern-day franchises.

And I continue reading Lewis Mumford’s The City in History (see my posts for June 9, June 16, and June 23). Mumford does an excellent job of connecting contemporary circumstances – the book was published in 1961 but much of it remains relevant today – to historic developments, or at times demonstrating how much we’ve lost.

• P. 301-302: “A similar form does not necessarily have a similar significance in a different culture; again, similar functions may produce quite different forms. As we have seen the rectangle meant one thing to an Etruscan priest, another to Hippodamos, a third to the Roman legionary, spading his camp for the night, and a fourth to the City Plan Commissioners of New York in 1811, seeking to provide in advance the maximum number of building lots. To the first, the rectangle might symbolize cosmic law; to the last, it meant simply the most favorable possibilities for real-estate speculation.”

• P 314: “The medieval pattern was that of many small cities and subordinate villages in active association with their neighboring towns, distributed widely over the landscape. Elisée Reclus discovered, indeed, that the villages and towns of France could be plotted with amazing regularity, forming the pattern of a day’s walk from the most distant point to and from the market. In other words, the pedestrian’s needs dominated: he who could use his legs had access to a city. The urban pattern conformed to the economic one; and both favored the small unit and direct face-to-face communication.”

• Plate 47: “Currently the most popular and effective means of destroying a city is the introduction of multiple-lane expressways, especially elevated ones, into the central core. This came about immediately after elevated railways for passenger service were being demolished as public nuisances! Though Los Angeles presents the hugest example of large-scale urban demolition by incontinent expressway building, Boston is perhaps an even more pitiable victim, because it had more to lose, since it boasts a valuable historic core, where every facility is within walking distance, and a metropolitan transit system that, as far back as the 1890s, was a model of effective unification. As with current military plans based on nuclear extermination, Boston’s planners are attempting to cover over their initial mistakes by repeating them on a wider scale.”

• Plate 48: “When only one means of transportation is available, the activity itself must be pushed out of the city, even for such occasional mobilizations as that shown in the Pasadena Rose Bowl. The notion that no American will willingly walk even a quarter of a mile is sardonically contradicted by the formidable distances they actually plow through in shopping centers and in parking lots. Needless to say, these paved deserts remain expensively idle and empty when no crowd activity takes place.”

• P. 346: “In the social disorganization that followed [the sixteenth century], power came into the hands of those who controlled armies, trade routes, and great accumulations of capital. With the rise of military despotisms, came the suppression of academic freedom in the universities, and the studious suppression of the independence of the spiritual powers, in the interests of the temporal rulers. All this has a familiar ring today: it parallels what went on in Russia, Germany, Italy, and various other parts of Europe after the First World War, and what went on, even in the physically remote United States, after the Second World War. The transformation of the medieval universities from international associations of scholars to nationalistic organizations, servile to the new despots, impervious to ‘dangerous thoughts,’ bound by loyalty oaths, went on steadily; and it had its parallels in the Church and the city.”