18/1/2007 - Book review - 'Camus at Combat'

When the Allied forces invaded North Africa in 1942, the Germans occupied the southern 'free zone' in France. This meant that Albert Camus was cut off from his wife and mother in Algeria, unable to return home. The publication of his first novel The Stranger and the long essay The myth of Sysiphus had granted him fame in literary circles. At the time he was working on what was to become his next big novel, The Pest, which would appear after the war in 1946. In Paris he started working as a proof reader for his publisher Gallimard, where he met Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

Camus often felt lonely and the sombre weather in occupied France made him miss Algeria even more. He found a solution for his loneliness by joining the Resistance movement Combat, which had been founded in 1941. Over the years, Camus' role in the resistance movement has grown into a myth as he only engaged in some illegal activities. This was partly due to the leaders of Combat themselves. They acknowledged the importance of the writer Camus and it was in this role that he would prove most valuable for Combat after they started publishing the underground newspaper.

The first article by Camus appeared in March 1944, even though he didn't sign the article with his own name for security reasons. However, most scholars attribute the article Against total war, Total resistance to Camus. In this article Camus referred to one of the issues that would soon become part of his recurrent themes: The fact that war affected us all. 'For even is there are those who would prefer to remain in the comfortable position of judges, that is not possible. You cannot say, "This doesn't concern me." Because it does concern you.'

To underline this idea, Camus wrote the article For three Hours they shot Frenchmen for the May issue of Combat. On April 1, 1944, an attack was launched on a railway line, leading to the derailment of two cars of a German troop train. Even though there were no casualties, the Germans killed eighty-six men from the nearby village of Ascq. 'Eighty-six men just like you, the readers of this newspaper, passed before the German guns. Eighty-six men: enough to fill three or four rooms the size of the room you're sitting in. Eighty-six faces, drawn or defiant, eighty-six faces overwhelmed by horror or by hatred.'

This early piece is one of the strongest, most emphatic articles Camus wrote for Combat. In his foreword David Carroll rightfully states that more than for their historical or literary value, the importance of these articles is above all a political one. The four years that span these articles see the optimistic tone in the last months of the war and in the first post-war articles change dramatically into a more bitter and resigned tone in the years that would follow. The naive idea that the horror of the occupation and especially the fate of so many of its victims, including many members of the resistance, might create an atmosphere of unity in which all parties would combine their forces proved to be an illusion. That may seem like an obvious statement in our times, it was nothing less than a bitter deception in the enthusiasm that permeated the first post-war months. Next to the three above mentioned values, I would like to add one more dimension this publication shows more than anything else: that of the disillusioned mind. After a few months Camus started to realise that the unity he longed and hoped for would not be achieved. Post-war France was united in its disgust for the occupiers and those collaborating with the enemy but the pre-war divisions would begin to show soon enough. Camus shifted his attention completely to what he considered his main task: to defend justice and to make sure that France would not completely return to the pre-war situation. He often mentions the word 'revolution', but to him this meant a society based on social-democratic values, with equality for everyone. 'We shall therefore define "justice" as a social state in which each individual is granted every opportunity at the outset and in which the majority of the country's population is not kept in a shameful condition by a privileged minority.'

These aims in themselves were difficult enough. France had to deal with some very strong and divisive issues. How to deal with the traitors? When and how to impose the death penalty, if it could be imposed at all? Camus' opposition to the death penalty would grow over the years. 'It is with this dreadful precedent still fresh in our minds that we must take a position. Will we approve of this sentence or won't we? That is the heart of the issue, and it is a terribly difficult one.' Once and for all Camus wanted to make clear that France owed it to itself to exert full justice, even and maybe especially if that involved its harshest collaborators. The fact that Camus signed a petition against the death penalty for collaborationist writer Robert Brasillach is illustrative enough. It didn't save Brasillach from execution.

The risk of turning into the embodiment of evil that would rival the crimes of the occupiers might seem far away, the new democracy would have to make sure that it would do anything possible to avoid excesses. 'The cowardly crimes of our adversaries do not excuse our becoming cowardly and criminal in turn.' This was extra hard considering the embarrassing and painful Vichy-legacy. The South of France was the domain of the so-called 'free zone' lead by General Pétain, a World War I veteran who turned into a collaborator when he became the head of the Vichy government in 1940. The Pétain government remained officially in power after the Germans occupied the free zone in 1942, but of course the new situation diminished their authority dramatically.

Camus' ideas definitely resonate in discussions on actual current affairs. In many of the articles that have been brought together in this volume, we read the stance that Camus would elaborate in his long essay The Rebel, to be published in 1951, in which Camus shows himself a strong advocate against the killing of innocent civilians, no matter what the final political aim might be. 'For terror can be legitimised only if one adopts the principle that the end justifies the means. And this principle can be embraced only if the efficacy of an action is taken to be an absolute end, as in nihilist ideologies (...) or philosophies that take history as an absolute.' As this statement implied a strong opposition to Stalin's gulags, it would result in Camus' definitive break with Sartre, who saw in Camus a traitor of the world revolution. Simone de Beauvoir would show herself even harsher in her judgement.

As stated above, these articles may at times seem flawed by the initial naiveté that was so overwhelming right after the liberation, and with the legacy of the horror of World War II and four years of occupation. But at the same time the articles are most interesting for the new light they shine on Camus' thoughts and work. It goes too far to mention every aspect, but it may suffice to quote the following remark, which is another echo of the actual situation: 'The Western nations must stop looking upon the Middle East as a closed preserve over which ownership is to be asserted. (...) Clearly the conflicts in the Middle East would not have turned this bitter is not for the presence of rich oil fields.'

The publication of Camus at Combat seems to be part of a renewed interest in his works. The exemplary translation by Arthur Goldhammer offers very interesting reading, for all the above mentioned reasons. It is a political and historical document, it shows the seeds of Camus' ideas about justice and judgement that would come to full bloom in The Rebel and in his last famous short novel The Fall (1957). At his best moments Camus shows why he was the compelling author that would grow to gain literary world fame.

KB

16/1/2007 - Personal documents - 'The Journals' by John Cheever

'When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand. It is a headache, a slight case of indigestion, an infected finger; but you miss the 8:20 and arrive late at the meeting on credit extensions. The old friend that you meet for lunch suddenly exhausts your patience and in an effort to be pleasant you drink three cocktails, but by now the day has lost its form, its sense and meaning. To try and restore some purpose and beauty to it you drink too much at cocktails you talk too much you make a pass at somebody's wife and you end with doing something foolish and obscene and wish in the morning that you were dead. But when you try to trace back the way you came into this abyss all you find is a grain of sand.'

In this (fifties) entry John Cheever describes in one paragraph the tone you can expect if you read one of his Collected Stories. More than qualifying a story like the above as 'depressing', it shows how much John Cheever was a truely 'emotional' writer in the non-sentimental sense of the word (I'd rather speak of a 'human' sense). Honest (Cheever only overcame his long battle with alcohol at a later stage in his life), straightforward and oh so beautiful. It made John Cheever into one of the best, most famous and most prolific short story writers of post-war America.

9/1/2007 - Tagged...and it's another Bukowksi entry

I have officially been tagged by Deena. The rules are as follows:

Find the nearest book.-
Name the book and the author.-
Turn to page 123.-
Go to the fifth sentence on the page.-
Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog.-
Tag three more folks.

So, having just finished Selected Letters 1 by Charles Bukowski, I started to read volume 2 yesterday. What better candidate to choose for this subject? And here's page 123, fifth sentence and following:

'I am still listening to Bruckner 9th. do you think I am cultured, little girl? I like this stuff. if I weren't so poor I'd make a beautiful snob. even now I think I could be a music critic for the New York Times if they's let me. but they wouldn't. before I was finished they'd burn the Times down or some music lover would assassinate me. ' 

[The 'little girl' is Carl Weissner, publisher and Bukowski's future literary agent in Germany. As you can see, Bukowski didn't care too much for placing a capital at the beginning of a sentence.]

[Charles Bukowski, Selected Letters Volume 2: 1965-1970, Virgin Books - If you are interested in this book and live in Melbourne, try Horton Books, 100 Smith Street, Collingwood. That's where I found all my copies!]

As to the last part of the 'tagged' task: I really couldn't come up with three names, so anybody reading this, please feel free to join the game!

[For more Bukowski, please see entries 13 and 28 december 2006]

28/12/2006 - Personal documents - 'Selected Letters' by Charles Bukowski

As I enjoy Bukoswki's letters very much, here's another quote from a letter dated May 1962, most probably the 15th:

You would expect Bukowski to prefer jazz or rock, but in these letters he refers many times to his love for classical music, even though the above described setting is very 'Bukowskian'. I love this quote, as I often have the same thoughts (be it not in these 'eloquent' words) whenever I visit a classical concert. But I must say I prefer the crowds in Sydney to the 'stiff phoney crows' I usually came across at concerts in the Amsterdam Concert Gebouw.

Charles Bukowski: Selected Letters Volume 1, 1958-1965. This edition published by Virgin Books, 2004.

For more Bukowski, see entry 13/12/2006

13/12/2006 - Personal documents - 'Selected Letters' by Charles Bukowski

'You can piss on death and forget it until it finds you. Most people do this. That is why they cry at funerals.'

Charles Bukowski in a letter to John William Corrington, December 3, 1961

Charles Bukowski: Selected Letters Volume 1, 1958-1965. This edition published by Virgin Books, 2004.

Last week I spent a few days in Melbourne, where I discovered Horton Books at 100 Smith Street, Collingwood. Great book store! The four volumes Selected Letters by American poet and short story writer Charles Bukowski had just arrived. I like Bukowski, but I have never been a really dedicated fan. That may change now that I have these four volumes Selected Letters. I read one paragraph, decided to buy two volumes, read some more and decided to buy the other two volumes as well. Practically every letter has some great quotes. Bukowski is honest, cinical in the right sense of the word, down to earth and often very funny. What a delight to read this! 

22/11/2006 - Personal documents - 'Selected Letters' by Gustave Flaubert

'There is another thing that seemed to me slightly bourgeois in this same individual*: his saying "I have never been able to go with a whore."

Well, let me declare that I have, and often!. [...] Speaking of disgust, all these disgusted people disgust me profoundly. Did he think he wasn't wallowing in prostitution when he wiped from his body the leavings of the husband? The little lady doubtless had a third, and, in the arms of all three, was thinking of a fourth. Oh the irony of love-making! [...]

[...] How many nice young men I have known who had a pious horror of "houses" and yet picked up the most beautiful cases of clap you can imagine from their so-called mistresses. The Latin Quarter is full of this doctrine and such occurrences. It is perhaps a perverse taste, but I like prostitution - and for its own sake, independently of what lies underneath. My heart has never failed to pound at the sight of one of those provocatively dressed women walking in the rain under the gas lamps, just as the sight of monks in their robes and knotted girdles touches some ascetic, hidden corner of my soul. Prostitution is a meeting-point of so many elements-lechery, frustration, total lack of any human relation, physical frenzy, the clink of gold - that a glance into its depths makes one giddy and teaches one all manner of things. It fills you with such sadness! And makes you dream so of love! Ah, elegy-makers, it is not on ruins that you should lean, but on the breasts of these light women.'

The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857, p.186/187, letter to Louise Colet, June 1, 1853.

* Flaubert is talking about French poet Leconte de Lisle.

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was one of the most famous French writers of the 19th century. His first novel Madame Bovary (1856) ranks amongst the most famous novels ever written in French and most likely it is one of the most famous novels in world literature. The story of the woman that ruined her life all because of love caused a schandal upon its publication in France.

Flaubert took his profession very seriously. Sometimes it took him a day to find the right words for a paragraph. It is no surprise that it took him five years to finish Madame Bovary.

For Flaubert, the writer himself should be invisible in his work. This means that we would have hardly known anything about him, if it weren't for the letters he wrote on a daily basis after he had finished his 'official' writing for the day. I think I am among many admirers who think that these letters are Flaubert's real masterpiece.

The letters were never intended to be published and that may be one of the reasons why they are so frank and direct. Due to the precarious financial situation of his niece Caroline, the first edition of Flaubert's letters was published only a few years after his death, although many lines were omitted or changed by the publishers. 'Turkish whores f**king soldiers' was changed into 'Turkish girls meeting their fiancees', etc.

Flaubert is always honest, he is sharp,funny and cynical, he attacks both the 'bourgeois' (who could be anyone, not just the rich) and the hypocrite, like in the letter quoted above. More than anything it is his style that makes it such a joy to read these letters.

From 1846-1848 and 1851-1855, Louise Colet was Flaubert's lover. However, he never wanted their relationship to become 'official' as he feared it would have too much of a (negative) impact on his writing, which to him was more important than anything else in life.

The Selected Letters by Gustave Flaubert is available in Penguin Classics, just like all of his novels and stories.

You can also find Flaubert's novels on line: http://www.classicbookshelf.com/library/gustave_flaubert

14/11/2006 - Personal documents - 'The Journals' by John Cheever

‘I get up at half past six to get breakfast - in a fair humor, I think, but while I am shaving, so to speak, Mary also rises, scowls, coughs, makes small noises of pain, and I speak meanly. "Can I do anything to help you, short of dropping dead?" I am offered no breakfast, so I have none - but that we, at this time of life and time of day, should reënact the bitter and ugly quarrels of our parents, circling angrily around the toaster and the orange-juice squeezer like bent and toothless gladiators exhaling venom, bile, detestation, and petulance in one another's direction! "Can I make a piece of toast?" "Would you mind waiting until I've made mine?" Mother finally grabbing her breakfast plate off the table and eating from the sideboard, her back to the room, tears streaming down her cheeks. Dad sitting at the table asking, "For Christ's sake, what have I done to deserve this?" "Leave me alone, just leave me alone is all I ask," says she. "All I want," he says, "is a boiled egg. Is that too much to ask?" "Well, boil yourself an egg then," she screams; and this is the full voice of tragedy, the goat cry. "Boil yourself an egg then, but leave me alone." "But how in hell can I boil an egg," he shouts, "if you won't let me use the pot?" "I'd let you use the pot," she screams, "but you leave it so filthy. I don't know what it is, but you leave everything you touch covered with filth." "I bought the pot," he roars, "the soap, the eggs, I pay the water and the gas bills, and here I sit in my own house unable to boil an egg. Starving." "Here," she screams, "eat my breakfast. I can't eat it. You've ruined my appetite. You've ruined my day." She thrusts her breakfast plate at him and drops it on the table. "But I don't want your breakfast," he says. "I don't like fried eggs. I detest fried eggs. Why should I be expected to eat your breakfast?" "Because I can't eat it," she screams, "I couldn't eat anything in an atmosphere like this. Eat my breakfast. Eat it, enjoy it, but shut up and leave me alone." He pushes the plate away from him, and buries his face in his hands. She takes the plate and throws the fried eggs into the garbage, sobbing horribly. She goes upstairs. The children, who have been waked by this calamitous and heroic dialogue, wonder why this good day that the Lord hath made should seem so calamitous.’

John Cheever, The Journals (chapter: The Sixties)

Cheever sees in his marriage quarrels the reënactment of his parents’ quarrels. This scene almost gets a sort of Woody Allen-like undertone, if it wouldn’t be so bitter and so true.

John Cheever, the ‘master story teller of post war American suburbia’, was extremely frank about his marriage in his Journals, which were published posthumously. In my previous entry on Cheever (see Archive), I said how I was introduced to his work through a documentary that focused on his Journals and his life. I was amazed at the frankness of his wife Mary and his three children, who agreed in publication of the Journals, following Cheever’s wish as expressed to his son Benjamin shortly before he died in 1982. More than anything, this documentary made clear to me how bitter fights and intense love can live side by side. That may be nothing new, but it is hard to find anyone who expresses this better than John Cheever in his Journals.

22/10/2006 - Biography - 'Ava Gardner' by Lee Server

In 1952 Ava Gardner attended a concert of third husband Frank Sinatra. His career was going downhill in these days, it was just months before his Oscar-triumph for his role in From here to Eternity. 'Hey Ava', somebody said, 'Sinatra's career is over, he can't sing anymore...What do you see in this guy? He's just a hundred-and-nineteen-pound has been.' In her typically cool way Gardner replied: 'Well, I'll tell you - nineteen pounds is cock.'

Ava Gardner (1922-1990) was just as famous for her roles on as well as off the white screen. When she was 19 years old, she married film star Mickey Rooney. Her parents had always made it clear that there were only two types of women: the whore and the madonna. Ava kept her promise to herself and married while still a virgin. But once she had discovered sex, the Rooney couple spent hours in bed, often on Ava's initiative. 'Ava approached the sex act with an animal enthusiasm, wanted to make love all the time, in all ways. She would signal her need with a smouldering look or a provocatively raised eyebrow or come to greet him in a pair of panties and nothing else. Or dispense with subtleties altogether, growling at him: "Let's fuck!"'

It was also during this period that Ava Gardner discovered the relaxing effect of alcohol. She hated the taste, but the state of mind alcohol created made it all worthwhile. It would remain a defining factor for the rest of her life, cause of many mood swings between the Dr.Jekkyl and the Dr.Hyde in Ava Gardner. Her love for alcohol was even intensified during her second marriage with band leader Artie Shaw. He treated her in a belittling way, made scornful remarks about her supposed lack of cultural baggage and Ava felt more and more unhappy in her marriage, that followed the same fate as her marriage to Rooney. Both marriages didn't last very long.

In 1949 Ava Gardner met the love of her life. The romance between Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner would become one of the most famous Hollywood love stories, maybe even the most famous of them all. It definitely was the one that stirred the imagination more than any other Hollywood affair. It got off to a very bad start, because Sinatra was still married with Nancy, the mother of his three children. The public was willing to shut it’s eyes for Sinatra's womanising, but leaving your wife and children for that whore was too much for post-war America.

But Gardner and Sinatra were persistent and they got married in 1951. Many scandals, marital fights (often in public), reconciliations and new fights later, the marriage was on the rocks. 'We never fought in bed. The fight would begin on the way to the bidet', so said Gardner later. The marriage was dissolved in 1956, but in fact it was already over in 1953. Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner were the proverbial lovers that couldn't live without but especially not with each other. Jealousy, suspicious minds, loads and loads of alcohol (both were notorious for their love of the bottle), broken glasses, ash trays or whatever object they could lay their hands upon, the love between Sinatra and Ava Gardner was larger than life. The deep feelings they had for each other never disappeared and they kept in touch until Gardner's death in 1990. '"Love" could only very loosely be the proper word to describe the traumatising obsession he felt for her,' says Server about Sinatra's life long feelings for Gardner.

It is significant that Gardner never remarried, in spite of a long and apparently never ending string of lovers, amongst whom several bull fighters form her new home in Spain. ‘All I got from 25 years in Hollywood is three lousy ex-husbands‘, she said later, more resigned than bitter. When Sinatra married Mia Farrow in 1966, Gardner could hardly hide her disappointment. 'I always knew Frank wanted to sleep with a guy'. She called Farrow ‘a fag with a pussy’.

Most of her movies have been forgotten. The Barefoot Contessa (with Humphrey Bogart) was a big hit, but if you take a look at it now, it’s hard to deny that it’s quite dated. John Huston's The night of the iguana has dealt better with the ravages of time, maybe because it was based on Tennessee Williams' play. More than any other movie, this one shows how much the on screen-actress had become interchangeable with the off-screen Ava Gardner. The impression you get while watching this movie, is that there was little difference between Ava Gardner and uninhabited innkeeper Maxine Faulk, who can hardly resist any man approaching her. With her continuous presence Liz Taylor made sure that Gardner would not get a single chance to lay her hands on fellow actor and alcohol sponge Richard Burton.

The many stereotypes that have accompanied Ava Gardner during and after her life have never been able to affect the myth. If anything, this string of clichés has only enhanced her status. That doesn't mean that she never lost the plot. Most notorious is the incident in The Ritz in Madrid, where a drunk Gardner one night squatted down in the vestibule to piss on the floor. As a result, she would never ever be able to enter the hotel again in her life, in spite of several attempts.

But above all Gardner remained the woman that was admired for her beauty and for her captivating personality that lacked the slightest hint of pretentiousness. In the later stage of her career, after she moved to London, she played a leading role in the movie Tam Lin. Joanna Lumley was a young actress at the beginning of her career, one amongst a large group of young actresses playing a small part in the movie. The two ladies hit it off very well together, but Lumley didn't dare to invite the big star to the party at her humble London apartment. When Gardner heard about the party, she invited herself. She climbed the stairs to Lumley's apartment carrying a big basket of bottles. She poured the rum, whiskey and gin all together in a big tumbler and called it 'Mommy's little mixture'. It kick-started the party that lasted till the early morning hours.

In her final years Ava Gardner led a quiet life, far from the spotlights. She enjoyed dinner parties with friends (one of whom was actress Penelope Keith) or just being by herself with lifelong assistant and friend Reenie Jordan and her inseparable dog, the corgi Cara. While she watched her own movies, she thought about life, about the way things had happened and all she had missed out on. Her parents' simple happiness had been an example for her and she realised that in the end she would have loved nothing more than a quiet life with husband and kids. To say it in her own words: 'I'm a plain simple girl off the farm, and I've never pretended to be anything else.'

Lee Server: Ava Gardner, Bloomsbury, 552 pages.