Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old

Review of “Mansfield Park” by Jane Austin

Long ago and far away, a friend of mine in high school read all six Jane Austen novels and loved them. I wasn’t interested in reading them then.

However, in her memory, I picked up Pride and Prejudice a year or two ago and discovered how much fun it is. Yes, there’s the stilted language, and people telling each other, “I’m sure,” more than they need to, and a whole class of people—women of the right sort—forced into indolence whose sole purpose in life is to chase down the right man and make it legal without giving away their “virtue.” But it is funny! Austen is a sly, understated wit.

This is my third novel.

Plot:

Our hero, ten-year-old Fanny Price, comes from a poor branch of the family, the daughter of one of three sisters who married poorly and procreated prodigiously. At the urging of her aunt, Mrs. Norris, she comes to live with another aunt, Lady Bertram, and her husband, Sir Thomas, at their estate, Mansfield Park. The Bertrams have four children, all older than Fanny: Tom, Edmund, Maria, and Julia. The only one who shows Fanny any kindness is Edmund.

Aunt Norris would take her in herself, not having any children of her own, you know, but she has to take care of her husband, who is not in the best of health. Her husband is the clergyman in charge of the parsonage at Mansfield.

Some five years later, the Reverend Norris passes away, leaving Aunt Norris a widow. She moves into a cottage on the estate with a spare bedroom for any friend who might visit. She might have room for Fanny, but Fanny isn’t coming to live with her.

No one is happier than Fanny about that arrangement.

In the meantime, a new clergyman, Mr. Grant, and his wife come to take up the living at the parsonage. Eldest Bertram son William is learning how to play billiards. Sir Thomas leaves to check on some sugar plantations he owns in Antigua. He’ll take William with him and expects to be be gone at least a year.

Mrs. Norris spends more time at the main house. Edmund decides to become a clergyman. Mrs. Norris introduces Maria to a Mr. Rushworth, who is rich and not ugly, but has, well, straw for brains and a backbone of mush. Maria accepts. She likes the money.

The half-sister and half-brother of Mrs. Grant, the wife of the new clergyman, show up. Their names are Henry Crawford and Mary. (Oh, come on, Jane! We’ve already got a Maria. Now you throw a Mary into the mix?)

Sir Thomas sends Tom home from Antigua early. A friend of his named John Yates appears.

So what are all these people going to do? Put on a play, of course. And argue first about which play, then about who gets what part…

Sir Thomas’ arrival spoils their fun.

Thoughts:

The copy I borrowed from the library was a facsimile of the second edition printed in 1816.

An odd aspect of the book I was unable to explain is that the last word on the left page was repeated as the first on the opposite page. At first, I thought it was merely a boo-boo, but the entire book is printed this way. I assume it’s still a boo-boo, but how it came about so consistently is beyond me.

The stray “must” on the bottom of the left-hand page mirrors the entire book.

One thing that annoyed me about the book was Fanny herself. Everyone and everything tells her to shut up, sit down, and be grateful for the wonderful opportunity she has to live in her aunt’s house, where, aside from waiting on her aunt hand and foot, she gets to read books and go for walks for entertainment. Her two female cousins consider her beneath them. Edmund advocates for her but also lectures her—sweetly. Fanny disappears into the woodwork, and she’s content with that. The last thing she wants is to disappoint her her uncle or aunt.

When notorious Henry Crawford makes a play for her, behaving honorably and correctly to her uncle, no one understands why she refuses him. He’s good-looking, and he has money. Fanny won’t speak up and say she saw him flirting with her cousins, Sir Henry’s daughters, while Maria was engaged, because that would cast Maria’s character into doubt.

Maybe Maria’s character should be cast into doubt? Just a thought, Fanny.

Fanny gets punished for being obstinate.

I trust I give nothing away when I say that it all works out in the end.

Austin’s sly humor and poking fun at the British monied class is on full display here. With few exceptions, the best of British youth, the recipients of the best education available, don’t seem very bright. They are long-winded, however.

This book is not as fun as Pride and Prejudice, but it is fun. Like a Pride and Prejudice, there is a lot of talking to get through, and one good scandal to witness.

I can recommend this for people who enjoy reading things that are not in a hurry to get to the end.

Title: Mansfield Park
Author: Jane Austin (1775-1817)
First published: 1814
Length: novel

Review of “The Seven Who Were Hanged” by Leonid Andreyev

I read this novella in an anthology of horror and ghost stories and would normally include it in my Countdown to Halloween series, but it struck me as misplaced. It lacks a supernatural element, and the horror is from human beings. Only two of the condemned are criminals in the traditional sense. The rest are doing their jobs or trying to improve the world, albeit by violence. One person’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist.

Plot:

The police inform the Minister that they have uncovered a plot to assassinate him. They are careful not to give him too many details because he’s “predisposed to apoplexy,” that is, likely to have a stroke if he’s too upset. However, they do tell him the terrorists planned the attack for one o’clock the next day.

The Minister is spirited away to safety, where he cannot sleep and obsesses about the plot to kill at one o’clock. So little time to live! He is alone. He first calls the police, “Brave fellows! Brave fellows!” then calls them “Fools! Fools!” He grows fearful. The last the reader knows of the Minister is that he rings the alarm to summon help and collapses.

The police arrest three men and a woman in front of the steps of the Minister’s residence. The assailants carry bombs, revolvers, and “infernal machines” (never described beyond that term). The police later arrest another woman at her home, where the weapons were manufactured, and the conspiracy was planned. The eldest of the arrested men is twenty-eight, and the younger of the women is nineteen.

They are tried quickly and in secret, as was the custom of the time. “In everything that happened,” the author tells the reader, “they manifested that distant and attenuated curiosity peculiar to people seriously ill or possessed by a single all-powerful idea.”

They are all sentenced to be hanged.

The condemned are:

1) Sergey Golovin, a former officer, son of a retired colonel. “He was very young, with broad shoulders, and so robust that neither the prison or the expectation of certain death had been able to dim the color of his cheeks or the expression of happy innocence in his blue eyes. Throughout the trial he twisted his thick blond beard, to which he had not yet become accustomed, and gazed steadily at the window, knitting his brows.”

He follows the eighteen exercises of the Müller System.

2) An unknown young girl surnamed Musya. She is younger than Golovin, but “seemed his elder because of the severity, the gravity, of her proud and loyal eyes.”

“The judges pitied Sergey Golovin and hated Musya.”

3) An unknown man surnamed Werner. Of him, the narrator says, “If one can bolt a face as one bolts a heavy door, the unknown had bolted his face as if it were a door of iron. He gazed steadily at the floor, and it was impossible to tell where he was calm or deeply moved, whether he was thinking of something or listening to the testimony of the policemen.”

4) Vasily Kashiri: The narrator says, “a frightful moral struggle was going on between the intolerable terror of death and the desperate desire to subdue this fear and conceal it from the judges.”

5) Tanya Kovalchuk “sheltered her comrades with a maternal look. She was still very young; her cheeks seemed as highly colored as those of Sergey Golovin; and yet she seemed to be the mother of all the accused, so full of tender anxiety and infinite love were her looks, her smile, her fear. The progress of the trial did not interest her. She listened to her comrades simply to see if their voices trembled, if they were afraid, if they needed water.”

The two additional condemned are non-political. A fortnight earlier, Ivan Yanson, a peasant farmhand, stabbed his master and tried to rape the master’s wife. He is Estonian and doesn’t speak Russian well. He keeps repeating, “She said I must hang,” but I must not be hanged,” and “I don’t want to be hanged.”

The last person is Michael Goloubetz, known as Michka the Tzigane (Hungarian gypsy), a peasant charged with robbery and the assassination of three people. He is a self-proclaimed brigand.

The sentence is carried out within a few days. Devastated family members show up to say their final goodbyes before the prisoners are removed by train to a remote location for the execution.

Thoughts:

Over the days in prison, each person undergoes a transformation while dealing with their imminent death. It is here that Andreyev’s writing approaches the metaphysical. There is no single answer. Each person faces death from a unique perspective.

Of Musya, the reader is told:

Musya was happy

“Is this really death? My God, how beautiful it is! Or is it life? I do not know! I am going to see and hear…”

From the first day of her imprisonment she had been a prey to hallucinations. She had a very musical ear; her sense of hearing, sharpened by the silence, gathered in the slightest echoes of life; the footsteps of the sentinels in the corridor, the striking of the clock; the whispering of the wind over the zinc roof, the creaking of a lantern, all blended for her in a vast and mysterious symphony.

Unfortunately, what she hears at one point is nothing more than a military marching band making its way past the prison.

These dreams and/or visions brought to my mind Perpetua’s Passion, the account of a 3rd-century CE Roman Christian woman condemned to die by wild beast for refusing to renounce Christianity. She, too, had vivid dreams in prison in the nights leading up to her death. The dreams are often seen by people who know these things as Perpetua preparing herself for death.

The writing is not without humor. Sergey Golovin has always excelled at everything he’s done in life: boating, marksmanship, and so on. He’s resolved to die well. His one fault is that he’s a wretched singer and doesn’t know it. He even butchers revolutionary anthems.

In his introduction to the 1909 English translation, Andreyev wrote:

My task was to point out the horror and the iniquity of capital punishment under any circumstances. The horror of capital punishment is great when it falls to the lot of courageous and honest people whose only guilt is their excess of love and the sense of righteousness—in such instances, conscience revolts. But the rope is still more horrible when it forms the noose around the necks of weak and ignorant people.

This BBC article claims that this story started the First World War by inspiring the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in 1914. The ringleader of the anarchists who carried out the assassination, Danilo Ilić, read the book, translated it, and wrote about it. He was hanged in 1915. The gunman, Gavrilo Princip, was considered too young to be executed and later died in prison of complications of tuberculosis and malnutrition.

I doubt the Great War could have been avoided merely if Ilić had read the story more carefully, but it is a scary thought.

All that aside, the depictions of people facing death without regret make this a piece of writing worth reading. It is moving. Even the most violent and the thickest skulls change. They are not angels, but they remain human. I think that is the author’s message.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (3:37:14)

Bio: Author Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919) was born in the city of Orel, located about 229 miles (368 km) outside Moscow. While working as a police court reporter, he published a few poems that came to the attention of the Russian literary giant Maxim Gorky, who encouraged him to pursue literature. Among Andreyev’s best-known works are the 1908 novella The Seven Who Were Hanged and the 1915 play He Who Gets Slapped. His horror short story works, published in translation in Weird Tales, influenced H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian.

Title: The Seven That Were Hanged
Author: Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919)
First published: (Russian) 1908; first English translation 1909
Length: novella

Review of “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe

Plot:

This novel follows the fortunes of our hero, Okonkwo, in the 1890s in the (fictional) Ibo (modern spelling Igbo) village of Umuofia in what would become Nigeria. Okonkwo wants to be nothing like his father, Unoka, who is lazy and cannot support his family. Unoka likes to play his flute.

Okonkwo, on the other hand, becomes a fierce warrior and a renowned wrestler. After his father dies, Okonkwo pays off his debts. He works hard to build a prosperous farm and support three wives.

In recompense for the murder of a woman of Umuofia in a neighboring village, a 15-year-old boy named Ikemefuna, the son of the killer, comes to live in the village. The elders decide he should stay in Okonkwo’s compound. His son Nwoye is a few years younger than Ikemefuna. The two become good friends. Ikemefuna starts calling Okonkwo “father.”

After three years, the village Oracle decides that Ikemefuna must die. This news saddens Okonkwo. Nwoye is inconsolable. An elder warns Okonkwo not to take part in the killing (which must happen to appease the earth. The Oracle said so) because the boy calls him father.

Okonkwo ignores the elder’s advice and kills the unsuspecting Ikemefuna. From then, a series of mistakes and misfortunes plagues him. Eventually, British colonial authorities and missionaries arrive. To his chagrin, Okonkwo’s son becomes a Christian.

Thoughts:

Author Achebe draws his title from W. B. Yeats’ 1919 poem, “The Second Coming”:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

This book came out in 1958, when most of what the Western world knew of Africa was depicted by Westerners. Achebe wrote, in part, to present an African world—or at least a little part of it—as Africans saw it. Achebe’s Africans were not saints or noble savages, but humans with their own complex society.

The main character, Okonkwo, is admired by his society, but the reader probably feels at best ambivalent toward him. He is a violent man living in a violent culture. He beats his wives and his children. It’s the only way he knows how to keep them in line. His greatest fear is appearing weak or lazy, like his father.

Yet, I think that’s part of the point. Okonkwo is not there to be admired, but rather to be sympathized with. The pre-colonial Igbo society, like Okonkwo, is depicted, warts and all, in simple prose to be shown as it is. Or was.

Achebe wrote an essay about his work as an answer to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Conrad’s novella had long been regarded as anti-colonial. Achebe points out that it is also racist. He notes the contrast between its depictions of the civilized people along the Thames and the not-quite-human people along the (putative) Congo. For example, while Conrad’s Africans generally are given to savage grunting rather than speaking, Achebe’s characters are eloquent and rely on storytelling and proverbs.

Conrad’s Africa is a set piece for Europeans to work out their problems or to fall apart. Achebe’s Umuofia is a place where people are born, grow up, fall in love, marry, fight, die, grow yams, die, etc.

That’s my take on it, anyway.

Is the book readable to the average person? I would say yes. Anyone interested in the topic should enjoy the book, even with foreknowledge that a happy ending is not coming. It is less than 200 pages long. The prose is straightforward and easy to read.

Bio: Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) was a Nigerian novelist, essayist, and poet, according to Britannica, “acclaimed for his unsentimental depictions of the social and psychological disorientation accompanying the imposition of Western customs and values upon traditional African society.”

He studied English and literature at University College (now the University of Ibadan), and he taught for a short time before joining the staff of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in Lagos. A car accident left him partially paralyzed. He later taught at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and then joined the faculty of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Among his most noted works are Things Fall Apart (1958). Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah (1987).

Title: Things Fall Apart
Author: Chinua Achebe (1930-2013)
First published: 1958
Length: novel

Review of “James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity” by Harry Ammon

The Stuff:

This book is a biography of the fifth U.S. President, James Monroe (1758-1831; in office 1817-1825). He’s probably best known to those of us who went to school in the US for the Monroe Doctrine, which grew out of a State of the Union address he delivered in 1823 and warned European powers to keep their colonizing paws off the Americas. Many Latin American countries were declaring independence at the time.

I remember a high school social studies teacher in the days of yore describing the Monroe Doctrine as the United States declaring, “The Caribbean is our lake!”

Monroe is also regarded as the last of the generation of Founding Fathers to serve in high political office. Like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, he died on July 4^th. (Jefferson and Adams in 1826, Monroe in 1831). He was good friends with Jefferson and James Madison, and lived near Jefferson.

All that aside, the book describes Monroe’s early years—what little is known of them—his dropping out of William and Mary College to serve in the Continental Army in the Revolution, during which he received a serious wound. He later practiced law, served in the Congress of Confederation (the Articles of Confederation), and served various terms as a diplomat in France, England, and Spain. He also served as the Governor of Virginia and Secretary of State.

He was a busy boy, but the book reveals little about his inner life and thoughts, probably because he was not in the habit of committing much of the same to paper. Only one letter to his wife survives. Author Ammon draws a lot of his material for what transpired during Monroe’s presidency from the journals of his secretary of state and successor, John Quincy Adams.

Thoughts:

This seems to be a historian’s rather than a general reader’s book. The reader will hear in exquisite detail all the minutiae of the diplomatic back and forth of Monroe’s career, whether instructions from Washington (the human) while Monroe was in France, or whether he’s debating the ethical concerns with his cabinet about spending federal taxpayers’ money on the Cumberland Road (“internal improvements”).

He regarded himself as a republican, which at the time meant concern for individual rights, states’ rights, and agrarian rights. He seems to have been a true believer in that respect and did not want too much power concentrated in the federal government.

However, he was also a man of his time. The franchise belonged only to certain people, namely, white landowning men who could pay the poll tax. He worked against the smuggling of slaves in the US (importing slaves was officially banned in 1807). In 1820, an act was passed that designated smuggling slaves as piracy and a capital crime, but enforcement…?

He showed ambivalence toward the idea of slavery. He owned slaves himself, but envisioned an end to slavery not by emancipation but by sending black people to set up their own country in Africa. His view was similar with respect to native Americans, though he thought they should be civilized for their own good.

And that is how long ago 200 years was.

There are some indications that the author assumes knowledge among his readers such as comments like, “Although many regretted the unhappy fate of [Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette] and the execution of the [French] King…” (p. 98)

This note confused me because I seemed to recall Lafayette living a long time. What “unhappy fate” was he talking about? What did it have to do with the execution of the French king?

Whatever did we do without the internet?

Lafayette was imprisoned along with his wife for five years during the French Revolution, something the author doesn’t mention for another forty pages or so when Monroe is in France as a “minister.” Lafayette lived long enough to tour the United States during the 50th anniversary celebrations of the American Revolution.

Speaking of the French Revolution, the author also casually drops terms like “Jacobin” and “Thermidorian” without further explanation. Again, what would we do without the internet?

While I have to confess there were interesting things in this book, overall it was a slog. Those, like myself, who are not terribly well-informed about the era (even if history class was a lot closer in time to the American Revolution), will certainly learn something about it, but only after wading through a lot of detail to get there. And it is lo-o-ong.

Bio: Harry Ammon (1917-2016) was Professor of History at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He attended Georgetown University and received his doctorate from the University of Virginia in 1948. He retired from Carbondale in 1984. He is also the author of The Genet Mission (1973

Title: James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity
Author: Harry Ammon (1917-2016)
First published: 1971
Length: nonfiction book

Review of “Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today’s World” by Karen Armstrong

Warning: This is longer than usual.

The Stuff:

Author Karen Armstrong informs the reader: “The central thesis of this book is that there is a strong connection between the medieval Crusades in the Holy Land and the conflict between the Arabs and Jews in the Middle East today.” (p. 373)

Armstrong seeks to view history through what she terms “triple vision,” that is, seeing the events through the eyes of the Christians, Jews, and Muslims in turn.

According to Armstrong, at the time of the First Crusade, Christians, Muslims, and Jews had been living in acceptance of one another in the Middle East. In Europe, they also tolerated one another, if to a lesser degree. The Church taught against killing Jews. Indeed, there were no anti-Semitic pogroms in Europe until the First Crusade.

(This last statement is not entirely accurate, but certainly crusaders indulged in trashing Jewish places and killing Jewish people on their way to and back from the Holy Land. “Deus vult,” you know.)

The author claims that the idea of crusading grew out of the Cluniac monastic reforms that began in Cluny, France, in the mid-10^th century (p. 54 ff). These led to several significant changes, not only regarding the property of the monastic houses but also with a return to prayer and liturgy, among many other things.

While she mentions the reforms often, the only aspect of them she dwells on for any length of time is the idea that the orders no longer report to secular authorities but to the pope alone. This “liberation” from secular authorities made the church more interested in expanding, tying violence, including anti-Semitic pogroms, to Christian piety. Pope Urban II (in office 1088-1099), who had been the grand prior at Cluny, called for the First Crusade beginning in 1095. Crusading would continue into the 13^th century.

Exploitation, colonization, and invasion of the Middle East by several parties continued for centuries—something Armstrong refers to as “the crusader spirit”—building ill will that persists to this day.

With 540 pages of text, there is more to her arguments, of course, but this is the crux of the matter.

Thoughts:

I have to preface the following ~~rant~~ remarks with a note that I am not a professionally trained—or even amateur—historian. Nor is the author. Her degrees are in literature, and I concede that she may know a thing or two I don’t. My degree is in damnit I ran out of money.

The book’s narration is not chronological, though it begins around the time of the First Crusade and ends with a summary of events after the last Crusade (13^th century) through the late 20^th century.

The book was originally written in 1988 with a new preface added after the September 11 attacks in 2001, in which Armstrong points to George Bush’s unfortunate use of the term “crusade.” She notes that it has more specific meanings in the Middle East and conjures up bitter memories of invasion and oppression.

She writes:

…Arab historians have developed an entirely new interest in crusading and…they see the Crusaders as the first Western Imperialists and the Zionists as either new Crusaders or tools of Western imperialism. Similarly, crusader studies flourish at the Hebrew University at Jerusalem; whenever Israelis travel in their small country, they see the great castles, churches, and cities built by the Crusaders some nine hundred years ago. These ruins are eloquent reminders of another colonizing movement which has powerful Western backing and which tried to establish itself in the hostile Muslim world of the Near East. (p. 373)

While I have no wish to minimize the destructiveness of the Crusades, I cannot accept that there is only a single root cause of the present violence and hatred in the Middle East. On the contrary, there seems to be an infinite progression of causes, which makes it all the sadder and more tragic. The Crusaders were not alone in cruelty, but their excesses stand out in a cruel place and time.

One of the pleasant surprises was the author’s turn to literature, particularly 20th-century novels, to reflect the Zeitgeist. No doubt, this reflects her specialty in literature, something not often seen in historical accounts.

An exception to that is her examination of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. She admits Rushdie couldn’t have foreseen the backlash and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s death sentence, and understands that Khomeini had non-religious reasons for issuing the fatwa, but she also states that Rushdie’s book appears among Muslims to be “only the latest in a long line of books written in the West, supported and, even promoted by the establishment, which have presented Islam and its Prophet in a distorted light.” (p. 537)

The “long line of books” she talks about were xenophobic tomes claiming “scientific” reasons why Arabs were inferior to Europeans, and Islam was an inferior religion to good ol’ Christianity. Rushdie’s work of fiction speaks to human nature. He writes: “From the beginning, men used God to justify the unjustifiable.”

To understand this, one would, you know, have to read the book, something that doesn’t involve the satisfying righteous indignation of screaming, “She’s a witch!”

But I digress.

If Armstrong is guilty of any sin, it is perhaps the old idea of post hoc ergo propter hoc, that is, the present-day troubles follow—at a distance—the Crusades; therefore, the Crusades must have caused—or at least contributed to—the present-day troubles.

I remain unconvinced. The Crusades are more of a stepping stone on a long road. What caused them, other than greed and delusion? Perhaps a need to ensure safe passage for pilgrims to the Holy Land? A self-interested desire to answer a call from fellow Christians in Constantinople to help fend off an invasion of Seljuk Turks? Worry that Europe’s doorstep wasn’t safe from invasion by Muslims in occupied Spain? How far back does one have to go? My guess (and it is only that) is that there are enough threads in the weave that blaming one is to distort the work.

The Crusades were bloody, cruel, and destructive, but there was a lot of that going around.

There remains a lot of that going around, sadly.

One more brief complaint. The book is densely written, with few breaks. A random page below:

All this to say that Armstrong’s book is worth reading, but it takes effort. She is a thoughtful writer. Not all readers will find themselves arguing with her as forcefully or as often as I did.

Bio: Karen Armstrong (b. 1944) is a British author and commentator. She is a former Roman Catholic nun, an experience she wrote about in Through the Narrow Gate (1982) and The Spiral Staircase (2004). She writes mostly about comparative religion. Among her most well-known books are A History of God (1993), Islam: A Short History (2000), and The Case for God (2009). She has also written documentaries for the BBC

Title: Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today’s World
Author: Karen Armstrong (b. 1944)
First published: 1988
Length: nonfiction book

Review of “Godzilla Raids Again” (1955)

from YouTube with annoying music

The Saturday night pizza and bad movie was a black-and-white old-fashioned Kaiju flick that had just about everything—Godzilla crushing buildings in a couple of smackdowns with another monster, Japanese people running through Osaka, tanks firing futilely at monsters, and Japan’s finest fleeing the seaside. It was, alas! a little light on the story, but it was still fun.

Plot:

When dashing young pilot Shoichi Tsukioka (Hiroshi Koizumi) of Kaiyo Fishing spots a school of bonito, he radios in his position to base, so operator Hidemi (Setsuko Wakayama) can forward the information to the fishing fleet. He and Hidemi flirt. Her coworker Yasuko Inouye (Mayuri Mokushô) warns her that it’s against the rules, even if she is the boss’s daughter. Tsukioka and Hidemi make a date.

Another pilot, Kôji Kobayashi (Minoru Chiaki), radios to report engine trouble. He’s going to try to land near Iwato Island. Tsukioka changes course to rescue him. He finds Kobayashi’s plane. Kobayashi himself is on the beach, signalling, unhurt. Tsukioka lands and joins him. Before they can leave, a strange sound comes from behind some rocky cliffs. The two hide.

While rocks and dirt fall around them, they witness Godzilla (Haruo Nakajima) fighting another monster (Katsumi Tezuka). The earth trembles. The new monster is a quadruped with back armor reminiscent of a rubber-pronged curry brush. They tussle and eventually (*SPLASH*) crash into the sea.

Back in Osaka (can’t let Tokyo have all the fun), the two pilots, looking a bit worse for wear, sit before a board of important-looking men at Osaka Police Headquarters. Some are in uniform. The zoologist Dr. Tadokoro (Masao Shimizu) asks the two pilots to thumb through picture books of dinosaurs to see if they can identify the monster Godzilla fought with. When they settle on a picture, Dr. Tadokoro names the beast Anguirus, a particularly aggressive critter.

Dr. Yamane (Takashi Shimura) shows the assembly a soundless film of the earlier attack on Tokyo, so the important men know what they’re up against. The inventor of the device that took out Godzilla last time has passed away, so there are no remedies should the monster return. (Come on, guys. Wasn’t anyone taking notes?)

Dr. Yamane says Godzilla appeared to react to bright light during his last attack, perhaps as a reminder of the nuclear bomb. He suggests using drop flares to lure him out to sea and issuing evacuation and blackout orders for the coast.

They put their plan into effect when a pilot spots Godzilla swimming toward Osaka. It seems to be working until Anguirus shows up, perhaps drawn to the same lights meant to drive Godzilla away. Osaka isn’t big enough for the two of them, and they pick up where they left off on Iwato Island.

One casualty is Osaka Castle:

In the meantime, some prisoners being transported overwhelm their guards and steal a fuel truck. Uh-oh. So much for that blackout.

Thoughts:

We borrowed a Japanese-language version with English subtitles from the library. There is an English-dubbed version titled Gigantis, the Fire Monster, released in 1959. It was shown as a double feature with Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) back in the day.

This film has a reputation as a slapdash attempt to cash in on the popularity of 1954’s Godzilla. This view is not without virtue. The movie echoes the theme of monsters resulting from continued nuclear testing, but does not develop it further. While the acting is solid—especially from the leads—few of the characters grow or learn anything.

On the other hand, the addition of another monster is a nice idea. That they battle each other, rather than stomp on Japanese cities, introduces another wrinkle. Why they fight is never explored. The two main characters, Tsukioka and Kobayashi, appear to have a genuine friendship. They are average Joes, not military leaders, scientists, or politicians. Yet, they end up being among those who finally deal with the menace of Godzilla.

During the monster attack, Hidemi is safe in a blacked-out house in the hills above the city. After the stolen fuel truck runs into a refinery and sets off a series of explosions, she looks out the window and sees what appears to be a mushroom cloud in the distance.

I imagine this would be particularly haunting to a population that experienced nuclear attacks barely ten years earlier.

If your Japanese is as rotten as mine (that is, nonexistent), reading the subtitles takes a little effort, but I found it worth it. There are cute scenes and disturbing scenes. After Tsukioka returns from facing death on Iwato Island, he tells Hidemi, “All I could think of was you.”

I guess that means they’re engaged.

There is also a scene with a ballroom dance and a legendary drinking dinner with singing.

I haven’t watched Gigantis, the Fire Monster. However, the clips I have seen have pretty much satisfied my curiosity. For some reason, the filmmakers decided to rename Godzilla Gigantis. Stock footage of missiles and Japanese farm workers is cut into it, along with a mind-blowingly insipid narration by Tsukioka’s character. That’s not to mention the dash of jingoism.

While the 1955 Japanese version Godzilla Raids Again may be lackluster at worst, the 1959 Gigantis, the Fire Monster is vapid. Subtitles over snores.

I couldn’t find a free way to download it, though it’s available on some subscription services. If you’re interested in seeing the movie, I’d try the library.

Title: Godzilla Raids Again (1955) Original title: Gojira no gyakushû

Directors:
Motoyoshi Oda
Ishirô Honda
earlier film clips (uncredited)

Writers:
Takeo Murata
&
Shigeaki Hidaka
Shigeru Kayama…novelization
Ib Melchior…original story (“The Volcano Monsters”, American version)
Ed Watson…original story ( “The Volcano Monsters,” American version)

Cast: (in credits order)
Hiroshi Koizumi…Shoichi Tsukioka
Setsuko Wakayama…Hidemi Yamaji – Koehi’s Daughter
Minoru Chiaki…Kôji Kobayashi
Takashi Shimura…Kyohei Yamane-hakase
Masao Shimizu…Zoologist Dr. Tadokoro
Released: 1955
Length: 1 hour, 18 minutes

Review of “The Gorgon” (1964)

from YouTube

This was a fun little Saturday pizza and bad movie flick, not to be taken seriously.

Plot:

In the German (?) village of Vandorf in the early 20^th century, Sascha Cass (Toni Gilpin), viewed from behind, is modeling for her artist boyfriend, Bruno Heitz (Jeremy Longhurst). She asks him when they’re going to get married.

Oh, you know. As soon as he can get some money together, pay off some debts, and so on.

Sascha says it better be a little sooner than that, or she won’t look very good in a wedding dress. Bruno says he’ll meet his obligations and leaves to talk to Sascha’s dad.

“No!” she cries. “He’ll kill you!”

He’s already gone. She gets her shirt on and follows him into the woods but quickly loses him. Someone—something?—is following them through the trees. It’s a full moon. Sascha passes a small shrine with a crucifix, then stops short. She screams and appears to drop to the ground. Presumably, that’s the end of her.

Later, Sascha’s body is brought into the office of Dr. Namaroff (Peter Cushing), who will examine the decedent. Police Inspector Kanof (Patrick Troughton)* asks Dr. Namaroff about the cause of death (like it’s a mystery?). Could it be different from the others? There have been seven deaths in five years.

Dr. Namaroff’s assistant, the lovely Carla Hoffman (Barbara Shelley), pushes the gurney with Sascha’s body into the lab. In doing so, a protruding hand brushes against a cabinet. A finger breaks off and falls to the floor. It looks like a piece of stone. Carla is startled but doesn’t go into hysterics. She’s a nurse, after all, not some silly, empty-headed woman.

The body of the unfortunate Bruno is soon found hanging from a tree, his face scratched and bloodied. At the inquest, the coroner (Joseph O’Conor) determines that this is a case of murder-suicide. The libertine artist Bruno killed his lady friend when he found out she was in the family way, then, overcome with remorse, hanged himself. (Killed her by turning her to stone?)

Present at the inquest is Bruno’s father, Professor Jules Heitz (Michael Goodliffe), who vows to clear his son’s name. He stays long enough to draw an angry mob (no German village is complete without one) to the hotel where he’s staying and to learn that there has been a spate of unsolved murders over the years in the area. They seem to center on the abandoned Castle Borski outside Vandorf. Hmm. A trip there seems like just the thing.

He returns from the castle with just enough time to write a letter to his son and the University of Leipzig before shuffling off this mortal coil.

Thoughts:

What this little flick lacks in substance, it makes up for in atmosphere. It is creepy from the get-go. The sets are nicely overdone in mid-century monster flick with candelabras and telephones. Dr. Namaroff gets a classic mad scientist spread, complete with small animal cages. I heard squeaks, but I didn’t see any critters. He had rows of test tubes filled with liquids of various hues. I imagined them serving as various mixers for after-hours cast parties.

However, there is a high body count. For a movie that borrows from Greek mythology, it seems to also borrow from Greek tragedy: nearly everyone dies at the end. And that’s another complaint: people knew they were up against a Gorgon. They even had a name for her—Megaera. Her two sisters had been killed. And now she lived around Vandorf, a fair way away from Hellas. Didn’t anyone think of Perseus’s trick?

Hmmm… wasn’t the only Gorgon to die Medusa? Perseus cut off her head by looking at her in his polished bronze shield. And Megaera… wasn’t she a Fury, one of the Erinyes, an avenger of family squabbles? Oh, never mind. All these thoughts are the result of a misspent youth reading too much mythology, and this was just a silly movie. Did I want it to make sense?

The great reveal was a saw-it-coming. Nevertheless, it was fun seeing Megaera-as-human sitting on her throne in the decaying Castle Borski. A couple of reviewers said the not-quite-credible snakes around the Gorgon’s head detracted from the movie, but cheesy special effects don’t bother me.

I had fun with this movie, warts and all. It might have been better had those putting it together spent more time ironing out plot holes and smoothing rough patches, but it had no aspirations of being more than it was.

There is a 2024 movie by the same name, but as far as I can tell, it had nothing to do with this movie.

* Patrick Troughton would later travel the known universe as the Second Doctor beginning in 1966.

This movie can be watched here:

Title: The Gorgon (1964)

Director
Terence Fisher

Writers
John Gilling
screenplay by
J. Llewellyn Devine
based on an original story by

Cast (in credits order) verified
Christopher Lee…Prof. Karl Meister
Peter Cushing…Dr. Namaroff
Richard Pasco…Paul Heitz
Barbara Shelley…Carla Hoffman
Michael Goodliffe…Professor Jules Heitz

Released: 1964
Length: 1 hour, 23 minutes

Review of “King Kong vs. Godzilla” (1963)

from YouTube

For our Saturday pizza-and-bad-movie night, we watched an old-fashioned kaiju fest. It was as silly as advertised. It included everything: a train derailment, buildings smashed, Godzilla’s atomic breath, an earthquake, two monsters thumping on each other, and important-looking men in black-frame glasses proclaiming important-sounding nonsense.

Plot:

United Nations reporter (is there such an animal?) Eric Carter (Michael Keith) broadcasts news that he received from newsrooms in Chile via a satellite that looks like a tilted child’s toy top. Icebergs are moving through the Bering Sea.

Carter also mentions the discovery of berries with non-addictive narcotic properties. He means they put people to sleep without hooking them. A sample of the too-red “berries” sits in a tall cylinder jar on a table near him. They look like overgrown marachino cherries. The berries can only be found on Farou (Skull?) Island off the coast of Japan. The natives will part with just a few.

When Mr. Tako (Ichirô Arishima), the head of a pharmaceutical company, hears that there is a giant monster on Farou Island, he wants to capture the monster to promote his company. Why doesn’t anyone watch their TV show? It’s boring. He dispatches employees Osamu Sakurai (Tadao Takashima) and Kazuo Fujita (Kenji Sahara) to Farou Island to bring back this monster.

What could go wrong?

About the same time, a US (or maybe a UN?) sub patrolling the Arctic with corporate executives aboard for… some reason spots an iceberg lighting up like a Christmas tree. They move closer to investigate and— OOOPS—collide with the iceberg. The shot of the sub’s rear end sticking out of the iceberg, with the propeller spinning, is one of the silliest images in a silly movie. The captain eventually has to declare abandon ship. (In a sub, underwater? OOO. Hope the life rafts haven’t gotten stuck in that iceberg.) A few moments later, a helicopter comes to rescue them (good luck with that, fellas), but the crew sees the iceberg breaking apart to reveal—Godzilla!

Thoughts:

This is an American version of an earlier Japanese version, with extra scenes cut in and some deleted. According to the wisdom of the web, the original Japanese version was written as a parody of Japanese television promotional stunts. This didn’t translate well into English, which is a shame. The version I saw had silly moments and slapstick, but the parody was hard to see.

According to IMDB, this is Godzilla’s first appearance in color. He’s gray, not green like the movie posters.

When Sakurai and Fujita get to ~~Skull~~ Farou Island, the locals tell them to go home. The outsiders eventually charm locals with the introduction of a transistor radio and cigarettes, some of which end up in the hands and mouth of a child. The locals appear to be Japanese in blackface. Granted, it’s all silly, but it’s still quite demeaning.

Of course, Kong drinks some of the crushed berry juice, takes a nap, and, somehow, Sakuri and Fujita get him on a raft and tow him toward Japan. Whodathunk?

The best part of the whole flick is the throwdown between the two monsters. Kong’s outfit is just goofy.

He walks away from their first encounter with singed fur (which, according to the lore, posed a danger to the guy in that suit, Shôichi Hirose). Kong also had to grow a bit to stand up to Godzilla. The final match lasts about ten to fifteen minutes and counts a model of the Japanese Diet Building

and the scenic Atami Castle among its victims.

The American and Japanese versions end slightly differently. Only one monster swims away after the two crash into the sea following an earthquake and a landslide (why not): the Japanese version allows two vocalizations, hinting at two survivors.

This movie is only for those who like the Japanese monster movies, of course. Without seeing the Japanese version, I can’t tell how much this version has been watered down, but I get the feeling it’s missing a bit. I probably won’t be becoming fluent in Japanese in this lifetime, however. Nevertheless, even with some vagueness in it and the aspects that didn’t age well, it was fun to watch the two monsters smash models and duke it out.

Title: King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963)

Directors
Ishirô Honda (as Inoshiro Honda)
Tom Montgomery (as Thomas Montgomery)

Writers
Shin’ichi Sekizawa…written by
Paul Mason…written by (English version) and
Bruce Howard…written by (English version)
Edgar Wallace…Kingu Kongu Created by
John Beck…story “King Kong vs. Prometheus” (uncredited)
Willis H. O’Brien…story “King Kong vs. Frankenstein” (uncredited)

Cast (in credits order)
Michael Keith…Eric Carter
Harry Holcombe…Dr. Arnold Johnson
James Yagi…Yutaka Omura
Tadao Takashima…Osamu Sakurai
Kenji Sahara…Kazuo Fujita (as Keji Sahaka)
Ichirô Arishima…Mr. Tako

Released: 1963
Length: 1 hour, 31 minutes
Rated: Approved

Review of “Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Faith Behind” by Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola

Nicias:
But can we? Oh, no, no,
I’m frightened. Better go and cling somewhere
To a holy image.

Demosthenes:
Holy grandmother!
You don’t believe in the gods!

Nicias:
Of course I do.

Demosthenes:
What reason have you?

Nicias:
Reason? Why, I know
I’m a God-help-us failure. That enough?
–from The Knights by Aristophanes (c. 424 BCE), trans. Gilbert Murray

The Stuff:

This nonfiction book grew out of a study published in 2010 as an Evolutionary Psychology article, “Preachers Who Are Not Believers,” examining preachers who do not believe in God. The study focused on five Protestant ministers who lost their faith. The book expands the number of people interviewed to about thirty-five and includes a Roman Catholic priest and an Orthodox rabbi, among others.

Unless the subjects have permitted their real name to be used, the authors have understandably assigned the people in the study pseudonyms.

The cover depicts a black-robed (white) guy with his right hand raised, perhaps in blessing, to an unseen congregation. His back is turned toward the viewer. His left hand, behind his back, shows his fingers crossed. This is perhaps a little unfair; most of the clergy who stayed in their positions saw their loss of faith as a struggle.

The book begins with a discussion of qualitative research, author Linda LaScola’s specialty. Author Dennett discusses The Clergy Project, an online forum for present and former clergy people who no longer hold supernatural beliefs. Dennett himself is not involved as the forum is for clergy only. It is private and closed, intended only for its users.

The authors make a distinction between the “literals,” those who take the Bible literally, and the liberals, those who see more metaphor in the Bible. The more education one receives, the more one leans toward metaphor, the authors seem to hint. Of course, it is possible to educate oneself into non-belief.

A few examples: “Bill” is an Episcopal priest in a college town in a conservative state. He began doubting in seminary and now considers himself an atheist, but does not press anyone into disbelief. Instead, he views his position as one of service. He sees it as a privilege to be “invited into the most intimate aspects of a person’s life—birth, dying, divorce, losing a child.” (pp. 131-132)

Similar to his experience is the Humanist rabbi, “Jacob,” who speaks of humanist Jews: “They’re certainly not theistic. But they like being Jewish. They love the holidays. They love that affect component. And when I teach—and I do very clearly and accurately and forcefully teach about this history—they like it.” (p. 132)

A dilemma of sorts opens up between the pastor and the congregation. The pastor knows more about the Scripture, the history, and church history than the congregation does. S/he has been to seminary. Does the congregation want to know the difficult stuff or stick with the comforting stuff, the Jesus-loves-you stuff?

Interestingly enough, most people began losing their belief in seminary. Many believe the phenomenon is widespread but seldom discussed. Some said preachers have a coded vocabulary when seeking other non-believers out, even comparing it to gay people seeking other gay people out in the days when homosexuality was not discussed.

Thoughts:

Some anecdotes and excerpts from some interviews are moving and reflect the deep conflicts of the person involved. Others are puzzling. This is understandable. Participation in a religious community is more than a belief in God or the supernatural. It is also a community and can involve the observation of rites of passage (First Communion, bar mitzvah, and so on). If you’re a preacher, it’s also a job. How do you feed your family if you walk away from that?

However, there is a lot of data—tables and lists—so the book also reads like a sociology study. Small wonder that it does so, because that’s what it primarily is. Nevertheless, some very human and very poignant stories emerge. The reader sees a lot of people forever caught between two worlds.

While this was interesting and at times moving, mostly it was sad. The idea of a clergy person keeping their job despite not believing conjures up all sorts of cynical ideas. No doubt a few Elmer Gantrys exist, and are in no hurry to unburden their consciences to such a project, but the portrait that emerges from Dennett and LaScola’s study is more complex.

My dearly beloved told me he received advice on meeting women (before we met) from the father of a friend many years ago: “Go to church.”

“But I hate religion,” the dearly beloved said.

“Doesn’t matter,” the friend’s father said. “Just smile and nod your head.”

I long imagined there was a lot of smiling and nodding of heads, particularly back in the day when there was more social pressure to go to Sunday meetin’, but I didn’t expect a lot of preachers to be doing the same.

Like so many books, this is not for everyone. If the topic is of interest to you, the book should be a worthwhile read.

Bios:

Richard Dawkins (foreword) (b. 1941 is a British evolutionary biologist, ethologist, and popular-science writer born in Kenya, where his father was stationed. He earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in zoology. His first book, The Selfish Gene (1976), argued that natural selection takes place at the genetic rather than the individual level. Other books include The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Climbing Mount Improbable (1996), and The Ancestor’s Tale (2004). He is a fierce advocate for evolution and atheism.

Daniel C. Dennett (1942-2024) was an American naturalist philosopher specializing in the philosophy of mind. He was also active in the atheist movement. Among his books are Consciousness Explained (1991) and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995).

Linda LaScola (b. 1945) is a qualitative researcher, clinical social worker, and Clergy Project co-founder. She holds a Master’s in Social Work. This is her first book.

Title: Caught in The Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind
Author: Daniel C. Dennett, Linda LaScola; foreword by Richard Dawkins
First published: 2013
Length: nonfiction book

Review of “Flight 7500” (2014)

From YouTube

Our latest Saturday pizza and bad movie offering was something of a departure. Though it’s called “supernatural horror,” this flick at first brought to mind 70s disaster movies like Airport.

Plot:

Vista Pacific Airlines flight 7500 departs from Los Angeles to Tokyo Haneda. Lyn (Aja Evans) and Jack Hafey (Ben Sharples) are vacationing with their friends, and Brad (Ryan Kwanten) and Pia Martin (Amy Smart), who have recently broken up. They didn’t want to tell their friends because they’ve already paid for the trip for them.

A young man with dark hair named Jake (Alex Frost) tries to sell a hot phone to a young woman named Raquel Mendoza (Christian Serratos). Raquel declines the offer and keeps on working on her sketches.

A businessman, Lance Morrell (Rick Kelly), traveling with a strange wooden box, makes the viewer wonder: Is that a bomb? Is he transporting stolen money? Drugs? Hmmm…

Newlywed Rick (Jerry Ferrara) gets to watch his bride, Liz (Nicky Whelan), go through their wedding pics one more time—again. Liz likes to wipe down the seat handles, especially after a young goth girl, Jacinta Bloch (Scout Taylor-Compton), sits down next to her.

In the galley, flight attendants Laura Baxter (Leslie Bibb) and Suzy Lee (Jamie Chung) talk about Suzy’s engagement and Laura’s affair with the married Captain Pete Haining (Johnathon Schaech).

The plane takes off (no snowstorm in sight), and all seems well until they hit a bit of turbulence. It’s over quickly, except for Lance, who appears to be in some sort of cardiac distress. Brad, a paramedic, tries to help him. Lance can’t breathe. Blood drips from his lips. Despite Brad’s best efforts, Lance seizes and dies.

Captain Pete decides not to turn the plane around, but to continue. (Wouldn’t you want to land as soon as possible, especially if Lance’s death was possibly caused by disease and not a heart attack?) He clears out the first-class section (upstairs) and has the passengers brought downstairs with promises of vouchers for later flights. As the late Lance Morrow is carried by, the goth Jacinta seems intrigued. She later tells the newlywed Rick, “Death is part of life.”

Back in his seat, Brad notices his thumb turning black, a sign of hypoxia. His sealed water bottle is compressing, another bad sign. (I’m given to believe that a sealed water bottle would actually expand during rapid decompression. Details.)

Uh-oh. It looks like some good stuff is about to hit the fan.

Thoughts:

After poor Lance shuffles off his mortal coil, the four vacationing friends become Scooby and the Gang and begin looking for clues about him. By going through his wooden box, they turn up some creepy and puzzling stuff about him. Flight attendant Laura also goes sleuthing, including dropping down into the baggage compartment. Was someone down there?

These elements struck me as incredibly unlikely. They also don’t make a whole lot of sense. Is this a dream sequence? Is it real? Or is something else happening?

Adding to the feeling of unreality, or perhaps irrationality, are events like the moment when one passenger is viewing something on his phone, and scenes from the old Twilight Zone episode (“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”) showing William Shatner watching a gremlin tear up a wing of an airplane flash on his screen.

The plight of the passengers resembles a real-life tragedy from some years ago, which, to discuss further, would spoil some plot points. This also adds to the feeling of reality v. illusion. What’s going on here?

At one point, I turned to the dearly beloved and said something to the effect of, “Huh?”

An explanation arises, and it’s not quite what the view has been led to think. Part of me wants to say this could have been a moving and poignant story, even with the creepy horror. Another part of me says some of the events served as mere distractions that detracted from the story. I liked what it was trying to convey, however. I’m on the fence about this one.

I could not find a place to download it for free, but YouTube will rent it or sell it to you.

Title: Flight 7500 (2014)

Director
Takashi Shimizu

Writer
Craig Rosenberg
written by

Cast
(in credits order)
Ryan Kwanten…Brad Martin
Amy Smart…Pia Martin
Leslie Bibb…Laura Baxter
Jamie Chung…Suzy Lee
Scout Taylor-Compton…Jacinta Bloch

Released: 2014
Length: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Rated: PG-13