arriving and departing with nelson

Noted happily this weekend that Nelson Algren's The Neon Wilderness was on the shelves of the O'Hare Barbara's Bookstore, peeking out from behind the Jane Austen. 

peering through the high window

Raymond Chandler's 1942 novel The High Window isn't his best-known or even his best work, but it is one of his better glimpses into the soul of Chandler's celebrated anti-hero/private eye Philip Marlowe.  There's a very rare coin, an elderly, port-drinking, ethically twisted bulldog of a wealthy widow, the widow's ineffectual son, a fragile and fractured secretary, a wannabe detective, along with the usual beautiful yet cold-hearted women, flinty cops, hoods and other memorable Chandleresque characters.

The plot fabric stretches a little thin at times and the ending has more humanity than dramatic payoff, but all in all, reading Raymond Chandler is a wonderful experience.  His narrative and dialogue are just so good that each page is enjoyable.  Chandler was undoubtedly a writer who adapted well to the screen -- as especially evidenced by The Big Sleep and Farewell My Lovely -- but it's a whole other experience to actually read his work.  Cinematic detective voiceover narration can only capture so much of the finely honed words and descriptions, and when it comes to using voiceover in movies, less always seems better than more.  But would you really want to miss snippets like these:

"From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class.  From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away."

****

"A large black and gold butterfly fishtailed in and landed on a hydrangea bush...moved its wings slowly up and down a few times, then took off heavily and staggered away through the motionless hot scented air."

****

"She looked as flustered as a side of beef."

****

"I had a funny feeling...as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again...."

****

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. -- Raymond Chandler

bibliophile cats

Well, we don't know that they're bibliophiles, but most likely cats who live in bookstores enjoy prowling through the stacks and meeting respectful patrons.  (And pretending to take naps while keeping secret watch to be sure no one takes any French Impressionist art books into the bathroom à la George Costanza.)  Here's a great link to an Ode to Bookstore Cats, and this picture of Hodge the Cat at Chicago's Selected Works Used Books is a re-post, but you can never get enough Hodge.  Hodge is a bookstore cat who along with the bookstore itself has many appreciative Yelp fans, and it would seem that he's pretty much running the show there at 410 South Michigan Ave., Suite 210. 

tales of prince felix

March 24th was once the birthday of Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov or Yussopov (1887-1967), one of the wealthiest members of the Russian aristocracy and a rather colorful character.  Aside from his riches and slenderly handsome style, Yusupov found further distinction by being a key figure in the assassination of Grigori Rasputin.  Rasputin, the charismatic mystic who came to have a great deal of influence over Tsarina Alexandra, deeply concerned Yusupov and his fellow aristocrats/assassins until they felt it was time he was stopped.  As in murdered.  Felix befriended Rasputin by claiming to have a medical problem that he wanted Rasputin to heal with his mystical powers, and eventually this friendship led to a little get-together that turned out to be Rasputin's last party.

Though Yusupov and his companions tried to plan Rasputin's murder with care and plenty of cyanide, the man just wouldn't die, despite Yusopov's account that Rasputin had consumed several deadly doses.  So then they shot him, and then they clubbed him.  According to Felix's memoirs, originally published in 1952 and titled Lost Splendor:

I stood rooted to the flagstones as if caught in the toils of a nightmare.

Then a terrible thing happened: with a sudden violent effort Rasputin leapt to his feet, foaming at the mouth. A wild roar echoed through the vaulted rooms, and his hands convulsively thrashed the air. He rushed at me, trying to get at my throat, and sank his fingers into my shoulder like steel claws. His eyes were bursting from their sockets, blood oozed from his lips. And all the time be called me by name, in a low raucous voice....[t]his devil who was dying of poison, who had a bullet in his heart, must have been raised from the dead by the powers of evil. There was something appalling and monstrous in his diabolical refusal to die.

There are varying versions and facts surrounding Rasputin's death, and an autopsy report noted that there was no cyanide found in his system.  He was shot and beaten as Yusopov later detailed, and his body was found in the Neva River.  Felix and his accomplices had wrapped Rasputin in a carpet and slipped him through an opening in the ice.  Yusopov would recount the story throughout his life and in his memoirs with pride, and it doesn't seem that he or his buddies faced any criminal charges for the murder.  Yusupov and his wife Irina left Russia following the 1917 Revolution and spent the rest of their days in Paris in elegant exile.

Yusupov was said to be something of a braggart regarding the Rasputin incident and a tad spoiled, although given his wealth and pampered upbringing that's hardly a surprise.  He was also praised for his generosity and charm.  His memoirs are most interesting reading, however, and can be found online here.  Whether more fiction than truth or whether Felix penned them himself or had a ghost writer, the tone is sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant, sometimes dramatic -- and otherwise a recounting of a time and place long gone, even though it was only just a century or so ago.

Night and day, I could think of nothing but the ethereal being who held whole audiences under her spell, fascinated by the quivering of the swan's snow-white feathers on which a huge ruby blazed like a great drop of blood. In my eyes, Anna Pavlova was not just a great artist and as beautiful as an angel: she brought the world a message from Heaven! She lived in Hampstead at Ivy House, a charming place, and I often went to see her there. She had a genius for friendship, which she rightly held to be the noblest of all sentiments...[s]he knew me inside out: "You have God in one eye and the devil in the other," she used to say to me sometimes.

[Felix Yusopov's memories of ballerina Anna Pavlova, from Lost Splendor.]

______________________________________________________

Pictured:  Prince Felix Yusupov and Grigori Rasputin -- Wikimedia Commons

becoming and being a writer

First published in 1934, Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer has often been noted for its progressive approach to tapping into the creative subconscious.  Beyond that impressive effort, Brande further suggests that once the writer has learned to loosen up her/his unique and free-flowing self, that she or he then trains the creative brain to work with the practical part of the mind.  No more of the creative side being too sensitive or undisciplined, just as the pragmatic mind cannot be bullying or overly critical.  Because even wonderful prose usually needs a skilled editor, and even the most vivid and spellbinding tale has to be ultimately structured into coherent form.  Also,  career writers tend to write every day in an organic yet regular manner, rather than in fits and starts; with practice, they have learned to focus their thoughts and impressions into a constant internal narrative. 

Brande recommended setting up a personal daily appointment to write for just 15 minutes, urging that if the appointment was at four o'clock it could not be broken:

"If at four o'clock you find yourself deep in conversation, you must excuse yourself and keep your engagement...[i]f you must climb out over the heads of your friends at that hour, then be ruthless...[i]f to get the solitude that is necessary you must go into a washroom, go there...and write.  Write...anything at all...write what you think of your employer or your secretary or your teacher...write a story synopsis or a fragment of dialogue, or the description of someone you have recently noticed.  However halting or perfunctory the writing is, write."

Though we have far more laptop and notebook and PDA options to write with now than in Dorothea's day, and while all of those options are excellent in terms of the daily quarter-hour writing assignation, there is something about just putting pen or pencil to paper instead.  Firstly, your handwriting will improve and in my case, that's highly desired -- in these QWERTY keyboard-happy times, my penmanship has gotten weak and sloppy and totally annoying to look at.  And you will intrigue and perhaps confuse anyone around by scribbling into a notebook, and then you can write how you are intriguing and perhaps confusing someone as you sit there scribbling. 

Though Dorothea recommends sneaking off to a private place, it's almost more fun not to isolate yourself and to write amid the moment.  (As long as you're not driving a car or performing brain surgery, et al.)  Therefore, rather than stressing the private appointment with your writing, perhaps just the appointment with your writing will do the trick.  Are you on a bus?  Then write about the bus.  Drinking a martini?  Take note of what bar you're in and whether you prefer pearly little cocktail onions, briny olives, or both.  At work?  Look busy by writing about your coworkers and the vast amount of flaws and idiosyncrasies they surely have.  And check out Becoming A Writer if you haven't already read it -- there is so much more to discover in this curious gem of a book.  As the late great John Gardner wrote in his introduction, Brande's focus is almost entirely on not technique but the writer's psyche, which is a "very valuable focus indeed."

american hustle, george f. babbitt style

As he approached the office he walked faster and faster, muttering, "Guess better hustle." All about him the city was hustling, for hustling's sake. Men in motors were hustling to pass one another in the hustling traffic. Men were hustling to catch trolleys, with another trolley a minute behind, and to leap from the trolleys, to gallop across the sidewalk, to hurl themselves into buildings, into hustling express elevators. Men in dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down the food which cooks had hustled to fry. Men in barber shops were snapping, "Jus' shave me once over. Gotta hustle." Men were feverishly getting rid of visitors in offices adorned with the signs, "This Is My Busy Day" and "The Lord Created the World in Six Days—You Can Spiel All You Got to Say in Six Minutes." Men who had made five thousand, year before last, and ten thousand last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and parched brains so that they might make twenty thousand this year; and the men who had broken down immediately after making their twenty thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the vacations which the hustling doctors had ordered. 

Among them Babbitt hustled back to his office, to sit down with nothing much to do except see that the staff looked as though they were hustling....

Babbitt -- Sinclair Lewis (1922)