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And that's how we take it underground

So earlier tonight I went to my fifth Burns Supper with the Serious Burns Unit and my fourth with

derspatchel. There was whisky and singing and haggis. It was a nice way to spend an evening. Afterward I visited my cats, whom I miss constantly; then I came home and found my contributor's copy of Go Now, the latest annual not-Not One of Us publication, containing my poem "Anybody That Looked Like That." This is the poem inspired by Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) and some of the ways that film looks at outsiderness. The table of contents includes work by Patricia Russo, Mat Joiner, Erik Amundsen, Russell Hemmell, and Alexandra Seidel, among others. The cover art is fantastic. The epigraph is from the Moody Blues.

nineweaving gave me a cup in a style I am calling Kaiju Delft—blue and white pottery with the usual assortment of bridges, pavilions, and gracefully trailing willows, plus atomic robots, pterodactyls, sea monsters, flying saucers, mysterious tentacles, a gigantic toad . . . It makes me very happy.

I feel very much as though the week since Arisia went by in a single sleepless slur. On Thursday I took Rob to Loyal Nine for his birthday, where we enjoyed sea urchin with bone marrow crostini and blowtorched scallop with fennel and pulled pork shoulder with handmade triticale macaroni and I was reminded that I can never take triticale quite seriously as a real grain instead of a science fiction MacGuffin. Adding mezcal to a Corpse Reviver #2 produces a cocktail I would drink on a regular basis if I could afford it. The sourdough chocolate brewis was so decadent we could not actually finish it, although to be fair that was also because it is huge. I made a much plainer cake for Rob on Saturday, when the rest of my family was available to celebrate his birthday observed: it was a waffle cake, because it turns out that you can stack four freshly made waffles with strawberry purée and whipped cream in between each layer and frost the whole thing with more whipped cream and stick some candles on top and it will hold together just long enough to make an attractive cross-section when sliced, after which everyone is on their own. My niece left most of hers on the scenery, but this is the same kid who celebrated her first birthday by headbutting the first slice of cake with which she was ever presented. Rob and I watched Playhouse 90's The Comedian (1957), a devastating triple threat of a live television drama directed by John Frankenheimer from a script by Rod Serling and Ernest Lehman with Mickey Rooney in the title role. A barrel of laughs, it is not, but it's riveting. I have to take Mel Tormé seriously as an actor now. Sunday was shoveling and I've already mentioned how that turned out.

I can't believe I have already read Herman Wouk's The Winds of War (1971) and the majority of War and Remembrance (1978) when I care about exactly one plot thread in the entire impressively researched, two-thousand-page megillah. It's an ambitious experiment, to write a family novel that tries to have an angle on every facet of the mainstream American experience of World War II, but I keep looking at individual episodes and thinking that they would have made perfectly fine novels on their own if the author could have been persuaded to extricate them from the surrounding matrix of historical significance. I've had exactly the same reaction to the miniseries, too, which at least confirms that I am consistent in my interests.¹ The acting helps with the prose, but nothing helps with the amount of narrative convenience required to get the various characters into the different theaters of war in order to provide the necessary first-hand views on historic events. I think it was the point where a central character was sent to Moscow just to get Stalin into the narrative that I stopped being able to take it seriously. I mean, I don't need a member of the Henry family to talk to Stalin in order to believe he exists! He left a considerable historical footprint! (Like this joke.) He can make decisions offscreen and they can affect the war in Europe and I'll take the author's word for it! But, no. We go to Moscow and there's face time with Stalin and at least I got some scenes with the character I cared about. I am finding this whole experience fascinating, but I'm not sure I can recommend it to anyone who isn't making a survey of historical novels about World War II.² It's a Holocaust novel, too, of course. It is very strange for me to read a Jewish author writing about Jewish characters as if from the outside, for the presumed identification of non-Jewish readers. I'm fairly certain that's the reason I don't care as much as I should about the primary female protagonist. Maybe Wouk's just not great with women.

I need to review some movies.

1. For those who keep track of such things: the thread I care about centers on the diplomat Leslie Slote, played in both series by David Dukes. His character arc went sadly where I had been half afraid it would, but I really enjoyed him until then. I don't know why I'm talking vaguely about a pair of forty-year-old novels and thirty-year-old miniseries, Wikipedia and TV Tropes will tell you what happened to everyone if you care, but I find it interesting to watch people who are wrong about the sort of people they believe they are.

2. Not, I suspect, in the way its author intended, it has been reminding me of my sole experience of War and Peace (1869), which occurred when I was in seventh grade and had just burned through the last of Mikhail Sholokhov's Don books and for some reason looked at the Russian literature on my mother's shelves and decided the obvious next step was Tolstoy. I don't know which translation it was. I don't think it mattered. I can't remember a thing about the novel itself; my total memory of the book is a seemingly endless alternation between battle scenes where I understood none of the tactics and ballroom scenes where I understood none of the etiquette and every now and then someone would say something that made sense to me and I could go, "Yes, I don't want to get shot in a cavalry charge, either!" Fortunately I got to college and discovered Gogol, Bulgakov, and Akhmatova and was not scared off Russian literature for life, but man, don't read War and Peace when you're twelve.

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I read a little bit of War and Peace in high school, but I couldn't go on. I was about fifty pages in, and I was already really eager for all of the characters to die so that I could be done with the book. When I realized that, I just put the book down and didn't pick it up again. I don't think I've tried much other Russian literature-- The only thing I can think of is Ivan Denisovich (which my high school chemistry teacher loaned to me). I got all the way through that. I'm not sure that I can say that I enjoyed it exactly, but I wanted to read it while I was reading it which is pretty close to enjoyment.

As far as Wouk goes, we read The Caine Mutiny in high school, probably junior year. About the only thing I remember about the book is the defense attorney. I know I also read City Boy, but I remember even less about that. I'm pretty sure that the main character in City Boy is Jewish.

I don't think I've tried much other Russian literature--

I recommend Bulgakov on general principle. The Master and Margarita is a novel I just like. He also writes some amazing short fiction (further discussion in comments).

I feel I should re-read War and Peace one of these days, just to see if my understanding of tactics, etiquette, and narrative structure has improved. At the moment I'm just really enjoying

moon_custafer's notes.

As far as Wouk goes, we read The Caine Mutiny in high school, probably junior year. About the only thing I remember about the book is the defense attorney.

I've never read the novel; I was considering it recently because of the 1954 movie, which I saw once and was really impressed by, but now I'm feeling a lot warier of Wouk's prose. If I'm lucky, he's much better at ordinary novel length rather than STALINGRAD AND THE KITCHEN SINK.

Edited 2016-01-26 20:29 (UTC)

Wow, I remember watching those miniseries with my parents when they originally aired (because I am older than dirt) and they were Prestige TV, as far as Movies of the Week could be, and astoundingly dull.

I tried to read War and Peace when I was in jr high and bounced off it astoundingly. I have no idea why -- probably because I liked Chekhov? Anyway then I discovered Notes from Underground instead, which was a v good thing.

and they were Prestige TV, as far as Movies of the Week could be, and astoundingly dull.

I've enjoyed all the scenes with Leslie Slote! It's a case where the actor is a physical mismatch for the character as written except for being tallish and slender with rimless glasses (book-Leslie is a gawky straw-colored weed; miniseries-Leslie reminds me of some nerds I have known, with his brushed-back black hair and a chagrined quirk of a smile), but his character arc and his acting are so much more interesting than almost anyone else around him that I don't care. A lot of the rest of the casting confuses me and a hiatus of five years between the two series can't have helped anything. They seem to have been nominated for all the Emmys, though.

Anyway then I discovered Notes from Underground instead, which was a v good thing.

Agreed. It took me a little while to warm up to Dostoyevsky, probably because the first fictional character I ever encountered with my name was Crime and Punishment's prostitute with a heart of gold.

I read War and Peace when I was 12! An irritating person at the synagogue essentially dared me to by jokingly asking if I'd read it every time I encountered him. "I liked the peace bits, got bored during the war," is what I said at the time.

(Now, having just seen the musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet and also seeing someone on my Tumblr enthusiastically liveblog their way through it, I have been thinking about it again for the first time in almost twenty years. Maybe someday I'll try again!)

"I liked the peace bits, got bored during the war," is what I said at the time.

That sounds like a valid response to me.

Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet

How was it? I saw the posters at the A.R.T.

and also seeing someone on my Tumblr enthusiastically liveblog their way through it

Link? Unless it's Moon Custafer, in which case we're following the same person.

Maybe someday I'll try again!

Well, if you get to it before I do, please provide a full report!

It was charming! My favorite was the intro song, where they rotate through all the stock character introductions, 'I'm going to grandmother's house and I'm taking x, y, and z' iterative-style, to make sure we know who's who: "Marya is old-school, Sonya is good, Natasha is young, and Andrei isn't here!" (Also, the guy who played Dolokhov, who looked a bit like Oscar Isaac, enjoyed himself immensely rocking out on the line "Dolokhov is fierce but not too important!")

It is not Moon Custafar! war and peace and liveblogging tag over at eugeniedanglars.tumblr.com. GREAT DETAIL, MANY FEELINGS.

(Also, the guy who played Dolokhov, who looked a bit like Oscar Isaac, enjoyed himself immensely rocking out on the line "Dolokhov is fierce but not too important!")

That is an excellent introduction.

war and peace and liveblogging tag over at eugeniedanglars.tumblr.com.

Thank you!

it turns out that you can stack four freshly made waffles with strawberry purée and whipped cream in between each layer and frost the whole thing with more whipped cream and stick some candles on top and it will hold together just long enough to make an attractive cross-section when sliced, after which everyone is on their own.

This is a wonderful idea. I may steal it. (If I do, I'll be sure to tell folks you were my inspiration.)

man, don't read War and Peace when you're twelve. Now I'm stuck thinking of how best to go back and warn 12-year-old self! Thanks, Obama!

This is a wonderful idea. I may steal it. (If I do, I'll be sure to tell folks you were my inspiration.)

Of course! Enjoy!

Thanks, Obama!

I am sorry to ask: is this an autocorrect problem or did I miss a reference?

It's a meme in which you blame any and everything on Obama (e.g., "Wow, my toast got burnt this morning--thanks Obama!") I gather it was a liberal/Democratic response to the perception that conservatives/Republicans were blaming things on Obama that he couldn't conceivably be held responsible for.

ETA (could be something mainly my kids & their friends do... hard to know how widespread it is...)

Edited 2016-01-26 19:26 (UTC)

It's a meme in which you blame any and everything on Obama (e.g., "Wow, my toast got burnt this morning--thanks Obama!")

Gotcha! I've never heard it before. I feel like I live under a rock.

[edited to mitigate Tiny Wittgenstein]

Edited 2016-01-26 19:39 (UTC)

Not just your kids and their friends, unless they have an unusually large overlap with my distant FB Friends.

I remember reading the first Wouk when I was a teen, and thinking it was like the Howard Hughes gigantic plane that never quite got off the ground.

I remember reading the first Wouk when I was a teen, and thinking it was like the Howard Hughes gigantic plane that never quite got off the ground.

I will now think of these novels as the Spruce Goose of WWII literature forever. Thank you.

[edit] I think I can see how they were meant to work: not just as a simultaneous block of historical narrative, but as four or five interlocking novels with shared but not identical casts of characters, sometimes interacting with one another and sometimes pursuing parallel tracks of history, converging at critical moments. The problem then becomes (a) that's a really neat structure, but I still only really care about one of these stories (b) I don't think it worked.

Edited 2016-01-26 19:38 (UTC)

Yeah--I could see that as a teen. I felt the structure twisting to get the characters at moments of great import, and yet my emotions never rose to match the gravitas of those moments. I felt more like I was being pushed along on one of those "If it's Tuesday it must be Belgium" tours. But I remember standing in the kitchen and saying to my dad, who asked what I thought of it, "It's like that giant Howard Hughes plane that can't get off the ground." (At the time it was housed about three miles from where I lived, so we all knew about it.)

I felt the structure twisting to get the characters at moments of great import, and yet my emotions never rose to match the gravitas of those moments.

I really think that organizing it from the start as a family saga did the story no favors. Even when the narrative gets a degree or two out from the Henry family, there's just too much coincidence in the historical meet-ups—it's the Battle of Midway! It's the Manhattan Project! It's the Red Cross at Terezín! With a less related cast of characters, the novels might still have turned out overdesigned and unwieldy, but at least I wouldn't have lost my suspension of disbelief when we went to visit Stalin.

(At the time it was housed about three miles from where I lived, so we all knew about it.)

That's really neat.

You beat me to the Tolstoy comparison, but *he's* been having his characters occasionally meet Napoleon; though at least he doesn't have to ship them across the world to make it happen.

his characters occasionally meet Napoleon; though at least he doesn't have to ship them across the world to make it happen.

See, I think that makes a difference. I don't object to the presence of the Duke of Wellington in Georgette Heyer's An Infamous Army (1937); most of her fictional characters are in his army and not uncommonly run into their commanding officer!

(I like Heyer's Wellington, actually. She writes him as someone who doesn't have a lot of social skills. Not in the sense of having no time for the elaborate courtesies of Regency England: in the sense that when he's working, he's ferociously concentrated on all aspects of his campaign (down to the brass kettles his soldiers use for boiling water; he has decided ideas about their quality and engineering) and extremely cranky when interrupted or inconvenienced or just confronted with a new problem; he dashes off endless tetchy notes and cannot keep his mouth shut on a critical remark and is constitutionally incapable of apologizing to anyone he's blown a fuse at, but does find rather stiff ways of letting them know he's no longer upset and it wasn't their fault. At parties, he generally disappoints guests who've come for a glimpse of greatness: he has no small talk and responds to queries about the war with the kind of overhearty jocularity that causes him to appear foolish, because his default setting is reserved and somewhat deadpan and he's never figured out how to pretend to be personable, and yet he has one of those explosive, undisciplined laughs that go off like a firecracker when nobody's expecting it. Heyer contrasts him explicitly with his older brother Richard, who got all the looks and social finesse in the family and is incredibly fond of beaky, awkward Arthur, the middle son who was entirely unpromising until his late twenties and India and then vaulted ahead of everyone in his field without ever learning how to say a proper hello. His men would—and do—die for him. He knows what he's doing. I found it a believable portrait of a military genius and the historically excerpted dialogue seemed consistent with Heyer's portrayal, but I still don't know whether it matches the historical consensus or whether it's mostly Heyer's headcanon or what. Either way, he walks off with most of his scenes.)

Edited 2016-01-26 23:28 (UTC)

It weirded me out when I read it, and the occasional appearances by the Tsar and the Austrian emperor even more so. I've been trying to work out why and I think it's a combination of factors:
1. The descriptions of the war are believable enough that I'd begun to mentally associate it with modern wars -- in other words, the kind where the heads of the states involved are nowhere remotely near the actual fighting. I could buy Napoleon being somewhere near the front, because he's Napoleon, but my reaction to the emperors was "wait, they're *allowed* to leave their palaces, much less be in a battle?"
2. Of the characters with speaking parts and more than one scene, about two-thirds have actual aristocratic titles, and the remainder have enough connections to be hanging out with the titled crowd. Logically this should make it less surprising that one of them might meet the Tsar, but with no lower-class characters for contrast, you sort of forget about their rank. They might as well all be middle management at a nationwide chain, and a military cadet, even if he's the son of a count, meeting the Emperor seems about as likely as the owner of the local retail outlet hobnobbing with the company president.

I've been curious about the TV versions of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, because they were produced and directed by Dan Curtis, the Dark Shadows creator. But so far I haven't liked much of Curtis's other work (aside from his TV movie of The Turn of the Screw).

I've been curious about the TV versions of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, because they were produced and directed by Dan Curtis, the Dark Shadows creator. But so far I haven't liked much of Curtis's other work (aside from his TV movie of The Turn of the Screw).

I don't know what to tell you. The miniseries are monumental and at least the first one feels like it structures its material better than the novel, but a lot of the casting perplexes me and I don't have much to say about the direction except that it must exist. The music is rather bombastic and the costuming has a galloping case of '80's hair. That said, it's as ambitious as the books and in several respects works better for me in action than reading—the prose really is a roadblock—so I can understand why the first series was a major television event, although not why it then took five years to adapt the second book. I can see a better version of the miniseries having been made in the same decade, but this is the one we got. You could try the first episode and see if it hooks you. The whole thing's on YouTube, which is how I got here. For a while the thread with Natalie Jastrow (Ali MacGraw), Byron Henry (Jan-Michael Vincent), and Leslie Slote (David Dukes) was one of the few three-cornered relationships I didn't want to heave a brick at. MacGraw is one of the casting decisions that confuses me, though.

[edit] I wrote to

nineweaving when I started watching, "I realize this is probably heresy when half of the other plotlines are about Nazi Germany and the impending Holocaust, but despite being some kind of landmark television production, the miniseries is way more melodrama than I am up for. I should care about the strong-minded Jewish-American girl negotiating two love affairs while trying to pry her uncle out of Italy before he gets steamrollered by the Shoah, but she's played by Ali MacGraw and not doing much for me. Then there's Dukes, with his brushed-back black hair and his rimless glasses and the slight nervous twitch at the edge of his mouth, playing a low-level bureaucrat discovering way too late that he has blown the one great passion of his life—that he has the capacity for great passion and he's blown it—and I'll watch that, even while the war gathers like a very obvious metaphor . . . Much of my reaction has been along the lines of OH LATE-CAREER ROBERT MITCHUM YOU ARE HANDLING THIS SO PROFESSIONALLY OH ALI MACGRAW I LIKED YOU SO MUCH BETTER IN THAT ONE FILM BY SAM PECKINPAH oh hello David Dukes your character is interesting and you can act GOOD LORD WHOEVER'S PLAYING HITLER STOP IT STOP IT RIGHT NOW" with the postscript "OH HELLO TOPOL YOU ACTUALLY ARE JEWISH GOOD JOB THERE GOODBYE." Which is a lot less erudite than my previous response, but may contain more useful information.

Edited 2016-01-26 23:44 (UTC)

the costuming has a galloping case of '80's hair

Now I'm wondering whether Frock Flicks/Snark Week (http://www.frockflicks.com/category/blog/snark-week/) has ever reviewed it on that count.

Now I'm wondering whether Frock Flicks/Snark Week has ever reviewed it on that count.

Not that I can find by searching, but wow is that site a time sink.

Heh. Ali MacGraw was ubiquitous for awhile, but in general I don't think her performances have aged all that well.

I probably would enjoy these in an Eighties Overload/Spot the Guest Stars kind of way, if nothing else!

Ali MacGraw was ubiquitous for awhile, but in general I don't think her performances have aged all that well.

I did like her in Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway (1972), even if I have problems with the film itself; I know she was also in Peckinpah's Convoy (1978), but that was an astoundingly stupid movie about which I cannot remember very much except for Ernest Borgnine, Madge Sinclair, and a lot of trucks. I think part of the problem with the character of Natalie Jastrow is the writing, but I don't think the casting helped. I absolutely can't believe MacGraw in a WWII setting, among other problems.

I probably would enjoy these in an Eighties Overload/Spot the Guest Stars kind of way, if nothing else!

That's true! You should please write about the miniseries if you watch them. I am not well versed in guest stars of the '80's and would find it tremendously entertaining.

Edited 2016-01-27 02:36 (UTC)

You should please write about the miniseries if you watch them. I am not well versed in guest stars of the '80's and would find it tremendously entertaining.

I will!

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/25/464338343/harvey-weinstein-promises-his-war-and-peace-miniseries-isnt-homework

If you're Harvey Weinstein, you end up with a very Brit-filled
TV adaptation. I watched about half an hour of it, and that was enough for me.

If you're Harvey Weinstein, you end up with a very Brit-filled TV adaptation. I watched about half an hour of it, and that was enough for me.

Honestly, even if it turned into bad TV, I'm delighted to know that there are twelve-year-olds who love War and Peace.

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And that's how we take it underground

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what comes of reading W&P at age 12

Re: what comes of reading W&P at age 12