True Confessions - I'm reading Michael Caine's From Elephant to Hollywood

Billingsgate Fish Market Image: Tom Curtis / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

From Elephant to Hollywood is, I shamefully admit, just the sort of thing I like. Michael Caine's memoir is literate, thoughtful, more than a little sentimental, thoroughly respectable, without a harsh word for anyone but a few charmingly self-deprecating anecdotes.

Caine is actually the author of two other books, What's It All About, about his earlier career and Acting in Film, meant to explain what he knows about naturalistic acting for the camera. On Amazon, I see that it is paired with other acting technique books which I take to mean that actors read it to improve their technique.

Michael Caine is a storyteller and I greatly admire his interest in literature -- no surprise, really, because after all, I like that sort of thing too.

The enthusiasm he shows for his friends, his family, and the people who have helped him in his career is winning and probably a good template for anyone who wishes also to be successful.


I have read the first half of the book and the end of the book -- as I often do, I lost my place and somehow lost a big chunk of the middle. Having read the end of the book, I am startled to discover how many of his recent films I've seen: Sleuth, as directed by Kenneth Branagh, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Inception, The Prestige, Children of Men, The Quiet American, and Miss Congeniality.

One of the anecdotes I enjoyed most was the story of how he met his wife. It's a charming story that conveys both the storyteller's sense of himself as the darling of the gods and his immense good fortune to find a much-loved wife. One thinks of Homer.

His description of his father helped me to understand my own world. Although his father lived through the voting in of Labour after the war and the new opportunities for health care and education provided by Labour, his father remained unchanged in his firm belief that no one could help him. I found Caine's explanation of that psychology very helpful to me in trying to understand my own life; and I see that Caine presented a huge contrast to his father in his belief in the possibility of becoming a success.

Caine is a fine storyteller, and he tells a story so perfectly shaped I'm almost embarrassed to repeat it. Caine's father worked as a porter (I think) at the Billingsgate Fish Market on the north side of the Thames, the site of a centuries-old fish market. In 1982, the market was relocated to Canary Wharf and the Victorian building housing it was converted into a banquet hall.

There, Caine subsequently attended a party given by a wealthy friend. The strangeness of the journey that led him to be present at a luxurious party in what had been his father's workplace struck him and he shed a tear. Princess Michael of Kent asked him if he was all right and he told said it was only that his allergies were acting up.

At the end of the book, Caine offers a list of ten favorite films. After reading this list, I checked out No. 10 from the library because I'd never seen it and I did think it was wonderful. I love that even with his list he's giving a mention to something fine and helping to ensure it will find an audience. In reverse order then, his personal top ten favorites are Tell No One, the 2006 French thriller (distributed in the US by Music Box Films, a local company), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Gone With the Wind, All That Jazz, The Maltese Falcon, Some Like It Hot, Charade, On the Waterfront, The Third Man, and Casablanca.

Skinny Dip by Carl Hiassen

I'd always meant to read Carl Hiassen after seeing him speak at a book event. He's funny and smart.
And, Skinny Dip shows that Hiassen is both funny and smart.

The novel opens when the heroine is tossed overboard, on a cruise she took with her husband to celebrate their second anniversary, by that same husband.

Luckily for her, she's a championship swimmer. She survives, and while it takes her some time to recover from the shock of what's happened to her, she undertakes a complicated scheme to get revenge on her husband.

Along the way, we meet a wonderful cast of highly original characters. One is the police detective investigating her disappearance, Rolvaag. As in the best thrillers, the investigation of one crime leads to the discovery of another -- the systematic destruction of Florida's Everglades by agricultural polluters.

Hiassen is a newspaper reporter from Miami who's crafted a mystery/romance/revenge fantasy/satire/farce out of the sobering facts of south Florida's economy.

As a reader, I was delighted by Hiassen's many literary allusions, from the copy of Madame Bovary the detective finds by the disappeared woman's bedside, to his own name, to the name of the criminal mastermind Samuel Johnson Hammernut, to his enforcer, a character right out of Flannery O'Connor.

If you enjoyed the movie The Orchid Thief, you'll definitely enjoy this novel. While I was reading it, I was frequently asked, "Is it funny?" by a friend and I said, "It's not ha ha funny." But when I read a passage between Rolvaag and his commander out loud to her, we both laughed.

Hiassen is a masterful writer. The novel is well-structured and he has a gift for dialogue that is both funny and rings true. While the plot's twists and turns would leave any sensible reader saying, "This could never happen in real life," Hiassen builds his plot on current economic realities that give his prose the ring of truth.

I see this novel has having something for everyone: a cop who's a masterful player of office politics; a world-weary retired cop; a lovelorn heroine who finds herself; some southern Gothic characters; a satisfying ending and a briskly-paced plot. Enjoy.

A Quick Bite by Lynsay Sands and Some Girls Bite by Chloe Neill

Paranormal romance is hot, hot, hot. So I decided to read a couple to learn more about the genre.

A Quick Bite is the "first" book in the Argeneau series about a Canadian vampire family (Sands's first publisher published only later books in the series, so this first novel was published after some books from later in the saga).

Lissianna is a vampire with a problem (aren't they all?): she has problems feeding. She's unable to feed from bags of blood, as is the current "civilized" practice in vampire circles: she has a fear of the sight of blood.

For her 30th birthday, Lissianna's mother uses her powers of mesmerism and mind control to kidnap a psychologist she believes can cure Lissianna of her fear of blood.

Unfortunately, that psychologist is very good looking (and a professional man, no less). What no one reckoned on was the marvelous chemistry Lissianna would find with her new friend, complicating matters for the entire family.

Merit (she goes by one name, like Cher) is the former graduate student -- and reluctant vampire -- at the heart of Some Girls Bite. She crosses the quad at the U of C one late night on the way to her office when she's attacked by a vampire. Barely conscious, her attacker is startled by another vampire, who "converts" Merit -- saving her life by making her a vampire.

Overnight, her life is turned upside down. She's forced to leave the University of Chicago -- they don't admit vampires, unfortunately. Her social-climbing father, a well-known real estate developer, is shocked and dismayed by this social lapse on his daughter's part, and the man who rescued her wants her to "pledge" his "house" -- a kind of vampire dorm/corporation. Merit doesn't want to be a vampire; she doesn't want to pledge her fealty to this strange man; but, she doesn't want to be a vampire on her own and she can see that the bossy vampire who saved her life -- without her consent -- is really, very, very good-looking.

Along with the romance, there's a mystery: there's a been a murder, by a vampire, in Grant Park. Perhaps Merit was the next intended victim. Is she safe? And who's the killer?

Some Girls Bite interested me particularly because the protagonist is a Chicagoan -- a graduate student from the University of Chicago. There are some familiar characters here: imperious good looking-men, faithful best friends, a semi-retired cop who's the salt of the earth, a social climbing real estate developer. There are a few references to Chicago places like the University of Chicago, Bucktown, and Oak Park.

Something Neill does well is "world-building." She spends a good bit of time helping us to understand the politics and organization of the vampire world, which mirrors our own to a surprising degree. Here, too, a lot of time is spent on exposition; the ending is a little less satisfying because the book is meant to be the first in a trilogy.

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

I just finished Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin last night. I believe that Brooklyn was selected for the Big Read of the Chicago Public Library last year, and was generally well regarded by critics. I believe that there was a blurb on my copy of the book that stated that Toibin had twice been short-listed for the Booker Prize.

I found Brooklyn to be compelling reading -- I read it in the space of two or three sittings and found that last night I just couldn't put it down. Toibin is a fine prose stylist and a good storyteller. When I finished the novel, I was really moved by it and perplexed. I so wished I had someone who'd also read the novel I could talk to about it. I wanted to know if the way that I perceived the story - and the writing, the construction of the story - was how others perceived it, too.

Eilis is a young girl living Enniscorthy, Ireland, in the '50's. She's finished with school but the only job she can find is working Sundays only at a high-end grocery. Her dynamic older sister arranges, through an Irish priest, to get her a job at a department store in Brooklyn. Eilis is reluctant to go but feels unable to protest.

A post-script: I find myself turning the events and characters of Brooklyn over and over in my mind; to me, that's generally a sign of a good book. Many of the books' reviewers, according to the blurbs published on the book's cover, compared Toibin to James. I see the relationship to James but after thought, the work that this novel reminds me most of is Elizabeth Bowen's Death of the Heart.

After I finished the novel, I puzzled over whether Eilis ever had a chance to escape her fate. I also wondered what was the best path for Eilis, and whether the folks in her life advised her well or not. I wondered how Eilis would feel about her choices in the years to come.

Scarecrow by Michael Connelly

I'd long looked forward to reading Michael Connelly because I know a few people who are very enthusiastic fans.

I'd enjoyed The Reversal but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I'd read the other books in the series first because I was not as familiar with the characters.

I was delighted, therefore, to discover the Scarecrow is a almost a stand-alone novel .. a sequel to The Poet, I believe.

I enjoyed Jack McEvoy's relationship with FBI agent Rachel Walling, the information I picked up about the world of computer security (something about which I knew very little), and the little elegy for the dying newspaper business (Jack is a crime reporter at the L.A. Times).

Jack is a prize-winning reporter for the L.A. Times. The newspaper is slowly laying off all of its reporters, and Jack gets a pink slip. He is asked to train his replacement, a "cub" reporter who will take over his crime beat but whose salary will be considerably less.

The same day he learns that he's to leave in two weeks, Jack gets a phone call from the distraught mother of a murder suspect. He'd written about the son in routine news story, but the mother insists that her son is innocent. Jack decides he'll investigate the mother's claims and try to write one last story about crime in Los Angeles. Only thing is, he soon discovers that the kid almost certainly is innocent. And his cub reporter colleague starts to put details together and begins to suspect the murder was actually carried out by a serial killer. Things start to get interesting.

A little nostalgia - it's Christmas

It's out of print now  but a book I loved as a child was The Children in the Jungle. (It's out of date in its cultural attitudes but it features an anarchical sense of creativity that's fun.)

Generally, what I've been reading lately

For myself, I just want to make a record of what I've been reading lately.

I'm currently reading The Scarecrow, by Michael Connelly.

Before that, I read Elegy for April, by Benjamin Black. Before that, I read The Reversal, also by Michael Connelly. Somewhere in there, I read Connie Briscoe's Sisters and Husbands.

Before that, I read Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization. Before that, I read Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney, which I found interesting but can't quite recommend. It was a little dour-spirited.

Before that, I read Night and Stars by Maeve Binchy. Before that, I read Persuasion by Jane Austen, for my book group. Since then, I've been reading Jane Austen for Dummies which I have greatly enjoyed and highly recommend.

Before that, I think, I read Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath. That was also for my book group. I loved it. I also read a book on building buzz (word-of-mouth) for libraries by Peggy Barber and Linda Wallace.

Elegy for April by Benjamin Black

(I do not know the photographer of this image, but it came from structurae .net, an international database and gallery of structures on 8/18/19). 

Elegy for April by Benjamin Black (the pen name of Irish mystery writer John Banville) is the third in the Quirke series.

Quirke is a pathologist living and working in Dublin in the 1950's. His grown daughter, Phoebe, lives in town and works in a hat shop. She socializes with a group of four very disparate friends: Jimmy Minor, a reporter for a Dublin paper; Isabel Galloway, an actress at the Gate Theatre; Patrick Ojukwu, a Nigerian surgery student; and April Latimer, a well-connected junior doctor at a Dublin hospital.

After Phoebe doesn't hear from April for a week, she shares her concern with her friend, Jimmy. Jimmy laughs off her concerns -- after all, their friend April is known to be a little wild and certainly impulsive. She may have left town for an short holiday. As time passes with no word of April, Phoebe slowly realizes how much she misses April and how little she knows her.

She turns to Quirke for help. Quirke, awkwardly recovering from a stint in rehab, uses his contacts in the police and medical establishments to begin to investigate April's disappearance.

After I finished this novel, I went onto Amazon to see what other readers thought of it. One reader complained about the plotting but acknowledged that if you're reading Benjamin Black, you're not reading for the plot. (As for the plot of this novel, I imagine many readers might find the conclusion less than satisfactory -- not all the ends are tied up -- but I think it's an ending entirely consistent with the novel and a drizzly Dublin winter). For as another reader pointed out, Black is a poetical prose stylist.

His poetry is hidden. It's in the colorful and sometimes abrupt adjectives he uses. Gosh, I'm so impressed.

Sometimes when I have wondered, "What is it that I love about cities? Why do I love the Near North Side or Southwark?" I try to answer myself by saying, "I love abrupt juxtapositions." Certainly, city life gives us plenty of those. And so does Black's prose.

Here's a little bit from the novel:

"The light from the lamp on Huband Bridge was a soft, gray globe streaming outwards in all directions. It glimmered on the stone arch and made a ghost of the young willow tree leaning on the canal bank there .. Dimly for a moment he seemed to catch the babbling voices of all of his dead."

The Reversal by Michael Connelly

The Reversal is the latest in the Harry Bosch series. It's the story of the retrial of a man convicted of killing a little girl 20 years ago before DNA testing technology was available.

The defendant successfully sues for a new trial when he has the evidence in the case DNA tested and the DNA proves not to be his.

Mickey Haller appears here as well, this time working for the prosecutor's office, improbably, as a special prosecutor.

Perhaps because of his skill as a defense attorney, his work as a prosecutor is masterly, even though he's not familiar with the role.

Harry works as the investigator on the case, at Mickey's request. Maggie, Mickey's ex-wife, serves as his second chair.

This story gives you a chance to see Harry (and Mickey) as a father. Harry's daughter has returned from Hong Kong to live with him after the death of her mother. Her adjustment is awkward and slow and worries Harry. By the end of the novel, some of those domestic pieces are beginning to fall into place.

If you read this novel, "ripped from the headlines" as it is, I think you will be surprised. I certainly was!

Sisters and Husbands, by Connie Briscoe

I've been meaning to get to this novel for a long time. I'd call it a light read: it moves right along.

It's about 3 sisters and a friend. Beverly is about to get married, but everyone around her is afraid she'll have cold feet at the last minute because she's called off two weddings before.

Her sister, Charmaine, has recently remarried for the third time. Her marriage is strained by her husband's relationship with his daughter.

Evelyn, the oldest, the stable one, the responsible one, and the professional one (she's a therapist), seems to be the only sister with no problems. What her sisters, who resent her for being so seemingly perfect, don't know is that Evelyn has a secret: she's having trouble in her marriage and she's not only crushed, she's bewildered.

Beverly's closest friend is going through some things, too. Her boyfriend struck her. Beverly thinks that there's no way that relationship should be repaired. As far as Beverly is concerned, violence of any kind crosses the line and she can't understand why her friend can't see that.

All of these issues weigh on Beverly and increase her anxiety about whether getting married is really the right thing to do. Her fiance is kind and sexy, a professional, and seemingly everything a girl could want but Beverly sees her sisters' problems and feels deeply uneasy.

One thing surprised me. As Evelyn's marital problems escalate, she remains determined to stay calm and not make any rash decisions. She feels that as a marriage counselor, she of all people should know that marriages have their ups and downs and she is committed to do whatever's needed to save her marriage. But then she does something that seems to me to be completely out of character, and I needed that explained. But perhaps that's part of the fun of this book: that Evelyn steps out the patterns of her current life when her husband leaves her -- that his abrupt departure opens her up to viewing herself and her life in a new way.

A brisk read with an eventful story and interesting characters.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

My book group is reading Persuasion and I'm ecstatic.

I think other folks in my book group are also enthusiastic about reading Persuasion and that, as a result, we'll have a lively discussion.

I guess I'm a Janeite although I'm unsure when I underwent the change. Sometime between when, as a college sophomore, I was present as two professors discussed Emma and I thought that they meant Emma Bovary and the end of college, at which point I'd read all six of the finished novels.

Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel. I suppose that's because it's been described as a novel of second chances. At the beginning of the novel, Anne seems to be destined to be an old maid although she hasn't quite arrived there yet: Lady Russell says that she's been "too little seen," which I took to imply that Lady Russell that socializing only at home with her family prevented Anne from meeting men whom she might marry.

Her fine qualities are overlooked by her immediate family. Lady Russell is her close friend but seems not to understand how deeply she regrets her lost chance to marry Captain Wentworth. Her sister insists that she be accompanied to Bath and says that Anne had better go visit their married sister because she's sure "no one will want" Anne.

As much as it embarrasses her, she is forced to meet Wentworth frequently when his sister and brother-in-law move into Anne's old home (rented to help meet an embarrassing level of indebtedness). After their first meeting in seven years, Wentworth opines to her sisters-in-law that she is much changed -- so much so that he wouldn't recognize her. I'm not sure exactly what he means but I know it isn't meant to be complimentary.

But, by the end of the novel, things have changed: one acquaintance is thought to have been interested in her (Captain Benwick, although that interest does not last long) and another, Mr. Elliot, has proposed. Most significantly, she is now to be married to the man she's always loved, Captain Wentworth.

So Anne is the underdog and you're rooting for her once you understand her situation. But she's not just the underdog but "really nice." She strives to control her emotions in public and mostly succeeds, almost too well; she's a good nurse and a loyal friend; she supports and shows concern for others.

I read Fanny Burney's Evelina earlier this year and saw that that novel is greatly concerned with proper conduct. Austen's work also shows much concern for proper conduct but entertains us at the same time with humor, satire and romantic stories that all end happily.

Part of the delight I take in this novel is that the happy ending could not happened to a nicer person. Anne Elliot is so deserving. I read somewhere once that Jane Austen said of Anne something like that she was "too good." I'm delighted to know that Anne's creator can appreciate that it's pretty hard to be as patient and restrained as Anne is. But while I recognize that Anne Elliot is too good to be true I still enjoy her virtue and I'm happy that the ending is "virtue rewarded."

I thought about the Elliots and the "Elliot pride," a common enough failing, as I was reading the book. Pride seems to me to rarely be considered seriously. It is a failing but also has positive aspects. In short, it's a complicated topic. Mary Elliot is not just proud; she's someone who desperately needs attention. That, too is a familiar quality I've noticed in myself and others. I suppose this portrait of human nature, a little exaggerated (but possibly not much) for comic effect, is timeless and another attraction of this novel.

Faceless Killers and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

With mysteries, especially, I think it's important not to spoil the ending for those who haven't yet read the book.

For myself, I find preserving the suspense of storytelling important, whether it's a book, TV, or movies. I can't tell you how delighted I was to discover the happy ending of Orfeo ed Euridice. Oops! Gave away the ending!

I enjoyed both of these novels but despite the huge popularity of Stieg Larsson's The Girl series, I actually liked Faceless Killers more.

Both novels are by Swedes, set in Sweden, and both of them display an intense anxiety about the seamy underside of modern life that reminds me of the Len Deighton and Alistair MacLean novels about the espionage during the Cold War that I read as a child.

In this, they're really very similar to the police procedurals on TV that deal with corruption and terrible crimes. That perhaps explains part of their popularity.

One of the things I really admired about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was that Larsson, whose work as a journalist seemed to focus on business reporting, especially exposes of criminal corporate behavior, uses that knowledge in his novel but also introduces many other classic elements of popular novels. I'm sure that this, too, is part of its popularity.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a murder mystery, a business thriller, a family saga, and, most interestingly, a critique of violence against women. It has surprised me that this aspect of the novel, the presentation of violence against women, is so little discussed.

As befits a long novel, the exposition begins slowly and indirectly.

With great sadness, an elderly man opens a package. It contains a rare flower, pressed and framed. He regards the collection of similar flowers he’s received every year on his birthday, for forty years. Who is sending these mysterious gifts and why are they sending them? He calls another retired man, a former detective, as he always does when he receives these somber packages.

Mikael Blomkvist is a disgraced investigative journalist, convicted in court of libel. He's lost his reputation and is going to jail. The fate of his once-prestigious business magazine is now uncertain. The man who brought Blomkvist to court is a businessman named Wennerstrom.

And Wennerstrom is being investigated by Armansky. Armansky is an interesting man with an unusual background and an unusual helper, the tattooed hacker Lisbeth Salander.

What connects these people? An aged, retired Swedish industrialist who is haunted by the loss of a beloved niece. It turns out that he thinks that there's something fishy about the Wennerstrom case, and he decides to take advantage of Blomkvist's unemployment to entice him to look into the disappearance of his niece, so many years before.

And that's just the very beginning of this intricate and varied novel. There are other people to meet, and many other stories to tell.

Lisabeth Salander is a fascinating character. I don't know how to describe her. She's a little wild although really very reclusive, very tough and well -- almost fearless. This first novel in the series has so much in it, so many characters and so many pieces of a large, intricate plot that Salander isn't as central here as she is in the other two books of the trilogy.
Blomkvist is fairly unconventional, too, but less so. I'd say that although he's quiet about it, Blomkvist is a lover of women and so perhaps it's fitting that his character is here not only as a detective but as a witness.

The strength of Faceless Killers, in my eyes, is its sharper focus. It's a more character-driven novel. Wallander is a senior police detective in a obscure, mid-size Swedish town. He's divorced and still misses his ex-wife. He's estranged from his daughter. He sees his father but not nearly as much as he should: his father is quite angry that Wallander can't find more time for him. He misses the people in his life, his people, but he doesn't seem to really see them.

He would never say this himself but he is married to his work. It fills his waking thoughts. He's a good man nearly crushed by loneliness and love of his work which, while fascinating, is hardly emotionally sustaining. This aspect of the novel is, I think, realistic. It's hard to be a cop -- it can be draining or worse.

This novel is filled with anxiety as well. Here, the anxiety is less about the crimes of the past than it is about profound social change. The plot turns on the murder of an elderly couple on their farm in the middle of the night. Their neighbors realize something is wrong because they hear the couple's horse neighing. The isolation of this couple intensifies the horror of the case.

A media feeding frenzy erupts when someone leaks to the press that the dying woman's last word sounded like, "foreigners," igniting a murderous backlash of anti-immigrant feeling and revealing the existence of Swedish fascists.

Wallander is a complicated character, a man who has the best of intentions but can't sustain relationships. Wallander is someone whose sometimes inappropriate behavior is quietly tolerated by those around them, I think as a mark of respect. His subordinates say nothing but drive him home when they find him driving up to a checkpoint with liquor on his breath. He makes a clumsy pass at a local prosecutor who eventually dates him. Its this complexity that makes him such an appealing character to me.

Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, translated from the French novel by Muriel Barbery, is a remarkable book in so many ways.

It lingered on the New York Times bestseller lists for over a year, and that's a rarer achievement given that it's a novel translated from the French.

It's also a novel with twin and very different protagonists: a young French girl and the concierge of her expensive Parisian apartment building. The young girl, Paloma, is painfully precocious and the concierge, Renee, is surprising, too: a woman who pretends to have no interests "above her station" and yet is an avid reader of philosophy and viewer of Japanese film.

And, finally, it is not only a novel that discusses philosophy and philosophers but is itself about the central question of philosophy: how should we live?

All this highfalutin' philosophy and class consciousness is wrapped up in a sprightly and very conventionally plotted novel. The exposition at the beginning of the novel may move a little slowly but the pace of events picks up very strongly after that. The suspense I felt about what was going to happen to the concierge, whom I'd grown to love, was just as gripping as if I were reading a mystery and waiting to discover the true identity of the killer.

Let me assure you that I'm no philosopher: I dropped two philosophy classes in college. I dreaded reading this novel because I feared the philosophy I'd heard it contained: I thought it would be way over my head and would put me to sleep.

I can't tell you that I understood the philosophy but I can tell you that the story held my attention from start to finish. If we used this phrase in talking about novels, I'd call this novel well-made. And, while I'm no philosopher, the struggle of our protagonists to decide how to live was moving to me and very immediate. I cared tremendously about both of these characters.

My book group read this book for their inaugural book. I was a little disappointed that no one else seemed to love it quite as much as I did. I think I was more than prepared to overlook some of the lack of sentiment Paloma expressed because I thought that what she had to say was interesting.

I wondered if I found it a little more accessible because the question of how we should live never seems to come up again after college and I was actually eager to hear some earnest and also jaded people talk about that.