the razor's edge and oscar gold

W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge is one of my favorite books, with many fine turns of phrase and dialogue and memorable main and side characters.  The 1944 novel was made into a 1946 film starring romantic leads Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney, along with Herbert Marshall as Maugham himself, gliding in and out of scenes as the worldly but not always present narrator.  Clifton Webb as shrewdly snobbish and haute Uncle Elliott Templeton steals the show, as does Anne Baxter in the more tragic role of Sophie.  Baxter earned an Academy Award for her performance; Webb was nominated but didn't win an Oscar (he did, however, score a Golden Globe).  The 1946 film is very good but doesn't totally capture the essence of the novel -- though that was unlikely to happen in Hollywood at the time.  The 1984 remake with Bill Murray seemed to have high hopes to come closer to the book, but didn't quite make it either for different reasons.

As noted, the original novel is full of great quotes and descriptives, but one of the best lines from the 1946 movie is Elliott's frank observation: "I do not like the propinquity of the hoi polloi." And regarding Maugham's character being invited to dinner, Elliott advises his guests:  "He's an English author. He's quite alright. In fact he's quite famous. So pretend you've heard of him even if you haven't."

Indeed.

(Pictured:  Clifton Webb as Elliott Templeton snobbing it up while Herbert Marshall/Somerset Maugham listens.)

man of mystery

Are you a fan of unflappable pipe-smoking French detective Jules Maigret? Georges Simenon, the Belgian mind and man behind the sleuth was born today in 1903 (d. 1989) -- and perhaps having a birthdate on the cusp of Valentine's Day gave him special powers involving the opposite sex, as he claimed to have had some 10,000 female lovers throughout his lifetime.  (Reportedly many of these were prostitutes but maybe he just considered it like going to Starbucks every morning.)  With such a busy extracurricular schedule, it's a wonder that he found enough time to peck away at the typewriter as well and write his literal hundreds of novels, but it seems that from sheer determination, focus, organization and a realistic scope of what he wanted to put into a literary work, he managed to get it all done.

The idea condition for the reader is to have time to read a whole book in one evening.  ** Georges Simenon, "Chez Simenon" -- NY Times, Oct. 24, 1971

eating well

It's about a month or so into the New Year and if one of your resolves was to eat healthier, here are four cookbooks to think about perusing while menu-planning.  Anna Getty's Easy Green Organic features basic organic living tips along with recipes -- and some especially delicious soup offerings.  There's also a dessert treat that involves dipping olives into dark chocolate; if you're among the olive lovers of the world, these two ingredients combined will most likely delight rather than disconcert.  I was lucky enough to find a flawless copy of Didi Emmons' Vegetarian Planet for 50 cents at a thrift store and became a big fan upon making the Ratatouille with Soft Basil Dumplings.  With 500+ pages of other creative recipes, Vegetarian Planet really puts a fun spin on vegetarian (but not vegan) cuisine.  Another nice thick cookbook full of tasty and healthy variations on vegetarian/pescetarian themes is The Moosewood Restaurant Favorites, which I was also lucky enough to win a free and autographed copy of.  If you can't get to Ithaca, NY to dine there in person, you can bring Ithaca to your own kitchen (two favorite recipes of all-time are the Moosewood's variation on the Mulligatawny theme and their Indian Stuffed Eggplant).

And finally, A Painter's Kitchen compiles recipes from the surely very uncluttered and tidy home and hearth of artist Georgia O'Keeffe.  Authored by Margaret Wood, who was O'Keeffe's companion and mentee when the artist was in her nineties, A Painter's Kitchen includes classic yet distinctive recipes (meat included) with the same rich simplicity of O'Keeffe's artwork.  Organic long before it became trendy, O'Keeffe had a large garden at her New Mexico ranch.  As Wood details:  "Miss O'Keeffe owned a small mill for stone-grinding her flour, and most of her bread was homemade.  She bought eggs and local honey from various neighbors and preferred to use herb salt rather than the commercial iodized variety."  The White Fruit Cake from A Painter's Kitchen is delicious and a lighter, tarter version of the traditional holiday staple, using lemon juice and golden raisins and pecans instead of molasses and candied fruit and walnuts.

"There were rows of squash and corn and tomatoes, lettuce and peppers...raspberries, apples for applesauce, peaches and pears.  What was not eaten in the summer was put up for the winter, just as had been done in the kitchen at Sun Prairie sixty years earlier."  From Georgia O'Keeffe:  A Life -- Roxana Robinson

(Pictured:  Two Pears -- Georgia O'Keeffe, 1921)

a london life

Though not one of his best-known works, Henry James' 1888 novella A London Life is still definitely worth reading.  Laura Wing is the principled young American heroine -- to the point of being almost exasperating -- but James never allows Laura to compromise, even though her strong moral character doesn't make her London life an easy one.

Laura's beautiful sister Selina is hardly inclined to let morals get in the way of her own enjoyment of life; Selina has married up and is the ersatz mother of two adorable little boys, but she and husband Lionel are pretty much ready to part ways.  Selina has a lover and isn't discreet about it, which torments Laura to no end.  The plot follows a slightly winding path to a realistic conclusion (for Selina and her husband at least), and then Laura makes her disenchanted way back to America, specifically Virginia.  However, anyone who's read Edith Wharton will know that America at the end of the 19th century wasn't quite a haven free of social subterfuge and adultery -- we can only hope that Laura remains in Virginia, which perhaps had more virtuous standards back then than Lily Bart's New York.

Among A London Life's better points are the side characters, such as the quirky and intriguingly named Lady Ringrose -- "a clever little woman with a single eye glass and short hair."  There's also the wonderful and wise Lady Davenant, who urges Laura to be more pragmatic in her dealings with people and situations.  James describes the near-octogenarian as "full of life, old as she was" with "a witty expression" which "shone like a lamp through the ground-glass of her good breeding."  When asked whether she had a crush on Lord Byron back in her youthful days, Lady Davenant replies, "Bless me, yes...[h]e was very nice-looking but he was very vulgar."

James also distinguishes himself as usual with fine turns of phrase or dialogue.  Selina is noted as being uniquely lovely, with curiously charming "long eyes" and a tendency to float through her days "with a serenity not disturbed by a general tardiness."  Selina's husband Lionel is an coarse yet upper-crusty Brit who states bluntly that Selina can't stand him and hates him "as she'd hate a hump on her back.  There isn't a feeling of loathing that she doesn't have for me!  She'd like to stamp on me and hear me crack, like a black beetle...."

At the end, we don't know whether Laura ends up with her offbeat suitor and fellow American Mr. Wendover, just that he has followed her back to the States and that her general inclination towards him is not surprisingly morally upright.  Though he has "worthy eyes" and seems to be a "good young man," he tends to treat all subjects "as if they were equally important," whereas Laura feels one needs to teach him be more discerning.  Which she no doubt will.

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.