Review: Marat/Sade

Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This edition starts with a wonderful introduction/essay by Peter Brook, the English theatre and film director. Not only does he analyze the play and its reception but tackles the topic of what makes theatre good, in general.

The play itself is one of Sade's swan songs from imprisonment at Charenton, the final imprisonment and the place of his death. In it, the imaginary meeting between the Marquis and Marat is a departure point for Sade, who had said, "It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others", to feel resentment over his own condition:

"Give up Marat
You said yourself nothing can be achieved by
scribbling
Long ago I abandoned my masterpiece a roll of paper
in my dungeon years ago
It vanished when the Bastille fell
it vanished as everything written
everything thought and planned
will disappear."

and echo the French soul's buyer's remorse over buying revolution heavily seasoned with violence:

"We're all so clogged with dead ideas
passed from generation to generation
that even the best of us don't know the way out
We invented the Revolution
but we don't know how to run it
Look everyone wants to keep something from the past
a souvenir of the old regime
This man decides to keep a painting
This one keeps his mistress
He [pointing] keeps his garden
He [pointing] keeps his estate
He keeps his country house
He keeps his factories
This man couldn't part with his shipyards
This one kept his army
and that one keeps his king"

Marat and Sade both saw the need for revolutionary change and in answering the call, they were killed by the demons they themselves helped to summon:

"...you came one day to the Revolution because you saw the most important vision
That our circumstances must be changed fundamentally
and without these changes everything we try to do must fail"



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Review: X-Rated: The Mitchell Brothers: A True Story of Sex, Money, and Death

X-Rated: The Mitchell Brothers: A True Story of Sex, Money, and Death by David McCumber

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



If you can set aside the fact that the Mitchell brothers were pornographers, this true crime work documents there legal advancements for free speech and their pioneering efforts in the sex enterntainment. This adds flesh to the murder story where one brother kills the other. I saw the documentary on that crime on cable and that prompted me to seek out this book. The last thrid of the book is the trial testimony which was one of the first cases after Prop. 115 in California, the "Crime Victims Justice Reform Act" (1990), and is thus historical in its own right.



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Review: American Psycho

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Of all the ways to highlight Patrick Bateman's hieghtened materialism and shallow set of values, I think this episode of group business card envy is among my favorites:

“New card.” I try to act casual about it but I’m smiling proudly. “What do you think?”

“Whoa,” McDermott says, lifting it up, fingering the card, genuinely impressed. “Very nice. Take a look.” He hands it to Van Patten.

“Picked them up from the printer’s yesterday,” I mention.

“Cool coloring,” Van Patten says, studying the card closely.

“That’s bone,” I point out. “And the lettering is something called Silian Rail.”

“Silian Rail?” McDermott asks.

“Yeah. Not bad, huh?”

“It is very cool, Bateman,” Van Patten says guardedly, the jealous bastard, “but that’s nothing….” He pulls out his wallet and slaps a card next to an ashtray. “Look at this.”

We all lean over and inspect David’s card and Price quietly says, “That’s really nice.” A brief spasm of jealousy courses through me when I notice the elegance of the color and the classy type. I clench my fist as Van Patten says, smugly, “Eggshell with Romalian type…” He turns to me. “What do you think?”


I don’t read much fiction, so it is hard not to compare this in my mind with Bonfire of the Vanities, both novels that offer commentary on empty ‘80s lives funded by Wall Street careers. It seems Wolfe and Ellis both explored vapid personae that emerged from these money-filled pools. Wolfe found a frailty there, a glass palace that could easily be shattered by chance and happenstance. Ellis explored the self-destruction of and destruction fantasized by an exaggerated amoral stereotype that could prosper unmoored from real work and purpose.

I like how Ellis takes from anti-hero Patrick Bateman’s cruel and perhaps murderous reality to the failure to compartmentalize his insanity and it leaks out into his reality until Bigfoot and a Cheerio are among the interview guests on The Patty Winters Show. However, the Dahmer/Gein victim desecration acts became merely irritating as Ellis amplified the excess and I found it too contradictory for a character so obsesses with personal hygiene and fashion. As a true crime read, it seems more like someone so obsesses with such acts would be himself filthy and unkempt.




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Review: Bonfire of the Vanities

Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I don’t read much fiction, so it is hard not to compare this in my mind with American Psycho, both novels that offer commentary on empty ‘80s lives funded by Wall Street careers. It seems Wolfe and Ellis both explored vapid personae that emerged from these money-filled pools. Wolfe found a frailty there, a glass palace that could easily be shattered by chance and happenstance. Ellis explored the self-destruction of and destruction fantasized by an exaggerated amoral stereotype that could prosper unmoored from real work and purpose.



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Review: The Portable Hawthorne

The Portable Hawthorne by Nathaniel Hawthorne

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This ia a very good compendium of Hawthorne's writing, the largest selection is a complete "Scarlet Letter". Commentary from the editor Malcolm Crowley is light and unobtrusive yet insightful. Hawthorne could be so heavy-handed in his largely nationalist/Christian/righteous metaphor and this can get tiring (as in "The Grey Champion" or "The Scarlet Letter"), but in small doses this book is a wonderfully entertaining collection of top-notch writing. I find Hawthorne at his best unmoored from his principles and exploring witchcraft, evil and the other darker imaginings as in "Feathertop", "The Marble Faun" (only in excerpt here) and even "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832) which over time has lost its overt nationalism.

Other treats here include his European travel observations and notebooks of stories written and never written.



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Review: The New York Times Collection of Crossword Puzzles

The New York Times Collection of Crossword Puzzles by The New York Times

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Containing puzzles from each year of the NYT that had them, this is an interesting historical arc. It seesm as if most puzzles, especially from the 50s on where picked that ran on holidays - from Xmas to Valentine's Day - and this have predicatable themes. Also, the mid-40's ones are suprisingly large in type size and include the once popular diagramless styles. I had the most trouble with the WWII era ones. They are in the clues-from-the-news category and so much of remote Asian, Russian, and European towns and figures were part of the tribal knowledge than that are now only in the purview of WWII historians...



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Review: American Psycho

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

My rating: 0 of 5 stars



Of all the ways to highlight Patrick Bateman's hieghtened materialism and shallow set of values, I think this episode of group business card envy is among my favorites:

“New card.” I try to act casual about it but I’m smiling proudly. “What do you think?”

“Whoa,” McDermott says, lifting it up, fingering the card, genuinely impressed. “Very nice. Take a look.” He hands it to Van Patten.

“Picked them up from the printer’s yesterday,” I mention.

“Cool coloring,” Van Patten says, studying the card closely.

“That’s bone,” I point out. “And the lettering is something called Silian Rail.”

“Silian Rail?” McDermott asks.

“Yeah. Not bad, huh?”

“It is very cool, Bateman,” Van Patten says guardedly, the jealous bastard, “but that’s nothing….” He pulls out his wallet and slaps a card next to an ashtray. “Look at this.”

We all lean over and inspect David’s card and Price quietly says, “That’s really nice.” A brief spasm of jealousy courses through me when I notice the elegance of the color and the classy type. I clench my fist as Van Patten says, smugly, “Eggshell with Romalian type…” He turns to me. “What do you think?”




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