Paul Auster– Baumgartner – Comment.

 

Paul Auster died last month due to complications from his lung cancer therapy. The author’s body of work is vast including all genres from novels, short stories, biographies, screenplays, poetry, several translations, plays and an extensive collection of essays. Baumgartner, to my knowledge, is his last published novel. For me, reading an author for over 35 years creates an ostensive relationship, a manifest emotional connection that one imagines to be a close friendship. When hearing the news of his death, it felt as powerful as losing a close, physical friend. Reading his last novel on many levels was emotional though never mawkish or overly sentimental. Baumgartner is a truly honest and beautiful piece of fiction.  

Sy Baumgartner is a philosophy professor at Princeton University. He has lived in the same house for over forty years with his beloved wife, Anna. Although the last ten years have been without Anna, for she drowned in a freak accident while swimming in the sea. She died in his arms.  

The novel focuses on Sy and Anna’s extraordinary relationship through the memories of the protagonist. The grieving process is different for everyone, though it feels that Sy’s pain has only diminished slightly over the ten years since her death.  

Anna is a poet. She worked for a small publishing company in the city. Over the years she translated poetry for the company, publishing well-known and obscure poets and writers. Her adeptness of French and Portuguese is second to none. Anna is a gifted writer in her own right. We discover this when Baumgartner visits her little study rummaging through her extensive files. We are introduced to her poetry and snippets of her autobiographical pieces, describing meeting Sy and experiences as a child. Anna is a bright woman, true to herself, self-determined, and that special energy that most people are drawn to when around her.  

There is a scene in the novel where Baumgartner wakes up in the middle of the night. He hears a distinctive sound but cannot recognize it. He struggles out of bed and slowly moves down the stairs to find the sound coming from Anna’s study. It is her red phone ringing off the hook. This is of course impossible because the phone is not connected. Sy sits on her chair behind her desk and the ringing stops. A minute later the phone rings again, and reluctantly he picks up the receiver and answers, “Hello.” It is the voice of his wife describing her existence and how much she misses him. The conversation is an explanation or description of life after death. The absolute love she has for Sy has never abated despite her physical departure. The next day Sy rationalizes the scene as a hypnogogic experience, that space between dreaming and wakefulness. For me as the reader, the scene is another example of intense grieving and loss.  

Through Sy Baumgartner's memories the reader is shown the difficulties of a life and love worth living. The details in the trivial things that ignite memories of profound experiences are what makes this novel great.  

For Baumgartner to be Paul Auster’s last novel is prescient and profound, as we experience the feelings and thoughts of an elderly man at the end of his life, about literature, art, and poetry, the beauty of love in a life well lived.  

 

The Queen’s Conjuror – the Life and Magic of Dr. Dee.

 

Comment.

Dr. John Dee is now considered to be the English Renaissance person. This was not always the case, however, because his first biographers, as the author of this fine biography points out, were either `hard-headed rationalists or muddle-headed mystics.' In present time, researchers and historians agree that Dee was a true Renaissance person because he sought to connect or reconcile rationalism with magic, science and the supernatural. This was not unusual for the time. Copernicus cited the mystic Hermes Trismegistus in his Magnum Opus, proposing the heliocentric universe. Isaac Newton began his career as an alchemist, before moving on to modern methods of pure science. John Dee was the most important scientist of the Elizabethan age. But this is only a recent recognition because throughout the ages he was considered a charlatan, crook, blockhead and "companion of hellhounds".

Benjamin Woolley's fine biography combines history, science, espionage, and common sense and attempts to answer how a man of genius that had such a major influence in mathematics, astronomy, cartography, navigation, and science in general, could die a pauper and in obscurity. 

In 1659, a scholar by the name of Meric Casaubon copied and published a collection of Dee's documents, which contained recordings of spiritual conversations with angels and archangels, and other dialogues, which could be interpreted dubious at best. After the publication Dee's reputation as a credible philosopher went steadily downhill and has taken centuries to recover. Woolley has done some fine research, using Dee's actual diaries, and has painstakingly pieced together his life and career. 
 
The Elizabethan age was a turning point in Western history. The Reformation was a battle for power and knowledge and a bloody war in the name of religion. But it also set the stage for the Enlightenment, and Dr. John Dee was a precursor to the Age of Reason. He was a man of `science', collecting and studying every ancient text he could get his hands on, (his library is the stuff of legend) but rational knowledge, he honestly believed, would only take him so far - he desired heavenly knowledge and wisdom. And it is possible that his spiritual research into divine nature could have been the cause of his downfall. Dee did not seek worldly gain, riches, and material pleasure; his only desire was to attain the secrets of the Holy. Did he pay the ultimate price for this activity? 
 
The Queen's Conjurer is not a dense historical text, but an informative and enlightening piece of research. It casts some light on an intriguing figure, removing him from modern occult history and into the mainstream. 

Dir. John Cromwell – Enchanted Cottage (1945) - Comment.

 

This is the first film I have ever seen that begins with a 10 minute `Overture'; the music is excellent and the composer, Max Steiner, won the 1945 Oscar for Best Music. The film was nominated for 9 Oscars, directed by John Cromwell, (The Enchanted Cottage) and written & produced by the man himself, David O. Selznick. Selznick intended this film to reach the box office and epic movie success of `Gone with the Wind', however popular at the time and now considered one of the top twenty 40's films ever made, never reached Selznick's expectations. 

The film follows the lives of the Hunter family after Mr. Hunter leaves to go and fight in the war. Claudette Colbert in the role of Mrs. Hunter carries the film throughout the three hours but is well supported by the Hunter girls', Jane (The beautiful Jennifer Jones) and Brig (An older Shirley Temple) including a close friend of the family, Anthony Willett (Joseph Cotton). 
 

What makes this film unique for its time is its perspective of the wives and children left behind as husbands, fathers and sons went to war. 
 

The film not only includes an `Overture" but an actual Intermission, where the beautiful soundtrack continues to play in the background. 

 

The clergyman played by the regal Lionel Barrymore gives a sermon in a moving monologue representing America's Ideals of preserving liberty. Barrymore is a legend and this short speech in the film affirms his legendary status. 
 

Personally, my favorite character is the irascible Colonel Smollet (Monty Woolly) as his character is the type one never sees anymore, old-worldly, traditional, strong, and a man of principles. 
 

For some of us living in the 21st century this film may appear too sentimental and possibly `corny', but it represents America's high values: the importance of family and strength of character during war time. Values that continue to be important today as our boys continue to leave their homes and families to fight (in most cases) senseless wars. 
 

We forget that those left behind, particularly the women, fought hard to even survive and supported their respective families and the war effort in ways that should be acknowledged more than it currently is or in the past. 
 

Ian McEwan – Enduring Love: A Novel – Comment.

 

The first chapter of this novel captures the imagination with such force that it is extremely difficult to close the book at any point in the reading. As the tale unfolds, it becomes an intense psychological thriller about obsessive love, after a professional couple witness a terrible accident in the English countryside of a man falling to his gruesome death from a hot air balloon. For anyone, witnessing a senseless death can have dire emotional consequences. Ian McEwan is an expert at creating emotional suspense as we experience the thoughts and actions of his characters. One feels the paranoia and sheer anger of Joe Rose as a strange man, J. Parry, stalks him relentlessly, writing endless letters, standing outside his apartment, and following him through the streets of London. The problem is that no one, including his wife and the police, believes the situation to be serious, until the man's obsession turns dangerously psychotic. 

 McEwan describes homo-erotic obsession with religious overtones in such realistic detail that it is simply chilling to follow Joe Roses reactions to the obsessive actions of his stalker. Pure erotomania is a strange disease as the subject is under the delusional belief that the `object' of their obsession is in love with them. Their mind will conveniently cast aside any facts to the contrary of their self-created delusion, even to the extent of denying the fact that the `object' is married. One of the most frightening aspects about this mental disease is that it can continue for years, not entirely ending until the patient's death. 
 

The stalker does not let up and Joe Rose's life spins out of control. His beautiful wife simply does not see the seriousness of the situation and believes the real problem to be with Joe. There is a brilliant chapter in the novel where the narrative switches from the first person to the third, giving the reader access to his wife's point of view during an intense argument. We gain sympathy for the wife but realize she is not listening, and not understanding what Joe is saying because she is so caught up in her life. And like most relationships or marriages, it is difficult to be selfless. However, even at the end, she continues not to see her husband's point of view, despite the harrowing events that take place. 
 

This book is about love in its many forms, from the `normal' to the psychotic. McEwan displays great insight into the human psyche and the numerous contradictions it contains. Enduring Love is an exciting narrative and truly haunting in its depiction of human obsession.