The Collector

"I know what I am to him. A butterfly he has always wanted to catch." 

With the onslaught of formulaic TV crime procedurals these days, I had to read this book with a different frame of mind. I even had to expel a bit of what I remember about the (excellent) 1965 William Wyler-directed film, starring Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar, because as much as the film is chilling and influenced future twisted thrillers (here's looking at you, Silence of the Lambs and Misery...) it only peeled back just a few of the layers John Fowles' cleverly constructed in the pages of his debut novel. 

The Collector is a psychological suspense thriller, and depending on your opinion, the first of its kind. It involves a butterfly collecting sociopath who after winning the football pools decides to put his winnings into remodeling a countryside manor so he can kidnap and 'collect' a young woman he's been obsessed with. Since such a storyline is blurred between fiction and fact these days, The Collector by summary feels a tad less compelling, but even when I knew every turn I still managed to feel unsettled, engaged, and even conflicted while reading. There was something so stirringly captivating about Fowles pitting these two characters in this disturbing power struggle, becoming audience to how they both perceive their situation, and how complex it all was.

For the first part, you go inside the warped mind of Fredrick Clegg as he stalks and then prepares to kidnap the object of his obsession, a young art student named Miranda Grey. From Fredrick's perspective, you view Miranda as a difficulty, and you oddly start to victim blame, because well, Fredrick comes off being oh so "nice". He's fixing fancy meals, he's bought Miranda everything her heart's desire, and he's made a nice comfortable spot for her in a cellar surrounded by books and painting tools. He even states he only wants her as his "guest". The internal dialogue has you almost sympathizing with Fredrick (yeah, gross I know), as he comes off as this lonely and socially awkward guy who is looking for a friend, and just goes about it in the most ineptest way imaginable.

But the record scratch of reality comes in the middle as the narrative switches gears and we become privy of Miranda's thoughts through a secret diary she keeps between the mattress. At first this transition was jarring, and since she recounts most of everything you have read for the last 100 pages it all seems like a bad literary decision, but it's not, in fact it's a brilliant turn of character building. Miranda is now not bound and gagged by her captor, she is 'free' to speak her mind in her secret diary and we begin to understand the claustrophobic nightmare she is desperately trying to claw out of. From these pages, we learn that Miranda is quite intelligent and resourceful as she tries to figure out ways to best Fredrick, submitting to and resisting him all for the sake of survival. It's devastating to read how she slowly realizes just how insane Fredrick is and how day-by-day she becomes less of a human in his eyes, but more of an inanimate object that is only to be admired, likened to his framed butterflies. 

"I’m meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive, but it’s the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead."  

Devil's In The Details

This is no dream, she thought, this is really happening...

Ira Levin isn't concerned about taking things at face value, about what's on the outside, on the surface. His forte is what's skittering, squirming underneath the mask of human nature. Rosemary's Baby is notorious for its Satanism motifs, it being the definitive tale of woman becoming impregnated by Satan himself, but between the lines the real horror isn't the devil --- no, that's to stir the curiosity --- the real horror is the shattering of seemingly docile domesticity. Where the quiet muffles screams. Where the ordinary reveals its odious odor. 

Levin is so good at this, masterful even. After reading The Stepford Wives and The Boys From Brazil, I became enamored over his knack for shattering the sense of so-called "normalcy". Nothing is "normal", there isn't such a word, a feeling, and I like that Levin is blunt about that as he wriggles a little subtext into the mix. Little warnings to not trust that a neat suburban neighborhood is tranquil, or that just because Hitler is dead that right-wing Nazism can't be resurrected in his Führer's image. "Horror" as genre isn't associated with Levin, and even the man himself didn't ascribe to being a practitioner of the genre, but I do think he taps into a realistic, naked horror that explores the enduring nature of evil within ordinary settings, the type that can't be considered terrifying at first glance --- well, that is depending on what one considers terrifying. 

I'm late to the devil baby party of Rosemary's Baby. A paperback has lounged about my house for years (and wouldn't you know it goes MIA when I want to read it most...), and the book isn't out of print, or difficult to find, just that I admit after partaking in super famous film adaptions first and hearing things such as "this movie is EXACTLY like the book" (see The Shawshank Redemption), that I tend to ignore the source material. I know. I suck. It pains me to even type that I have such a reflex, but Roman Polanski's 1968 film adaptation made such a deep impression on me over the years, to where reading the text felt...redundant.

For me, Rosemary's Baby as a film is ingenious and intriguing for its details. Those tiny, blink-and-you-might-miss-them details that are sprinkled throughout retain a delicious sense of unsettling ambiguity. Polanski is a terrible person (and the gross irony of him directing a film about a woman's rape isn't lost on me...), but he crafted a classic blueprint for domestic horror with this film (...and we will dare not speak of the dismal 1976 TV sequel, Look What Happened To Rosemary's Baby or the even more ill-advised 're-imagined' 2014 miniseries). It raised the bar on taking horror films from the b-movie mire into the mainstream and approaching them from a more psychological perspective where the details mattered. Details that would take on larger, more unnerving forms and meanings of uncertainty to where, by film's end, everything is not what it appears to be --- while being exactly what it appears to be.

I never watch this movie the same way as I did before. I'm always finding something new that I missed, some little quote spoken that takes on new meaning or those fine-tuned little visual details that spring up to change my perspective or question others motives. I know every twist and turn, and of course, the doomed outcome, but it still feels fresh with each viewing, and never am I not trying to warn Rosemary to get away from those meddling neighbors and that shifty-eyed husband of hers. I'm also never not chilled over the fact that a woman's pregnancy --- something that is supposed to be intimate and innocent --- is turned into something so perverse and terrorizing. 

Still, without Levin's wonderful text, his attention to every detail from the start, there wouldn't have been this brilliant film affair. Polanski studied Levin's text to the letter to where character ticks, whole dialogues, and even the food that is consumed is replicated on film. It's about as faithful as an adaptation as you'll get, a film that complements the book, extending the terror it has laid bare. The genius Levin flexes in text, (and I repeat) shows that that everything is not what it appears to be, but then sentence by sentence, detail by detail, everything is exactly what it appears to be --- and then the rug is yanked beneath our once stable conscious.

March On

I couldn't help but roll my eyes when I saw the trailer. Another Little Women adaptation? Groundbreaking.

From operas to television miniseries, there are a lot of Little Women adaptations, seven film treatments alone --- this including two lost silent films and anime adaptations. Lousia May Alcott with one book penned an ode to sisterhood that can be crowned the OG of reboots, predating the reboot craze of today. A craze that far too often in its eagerness to cash in on nostalgic comfort, disappoints at renovating its source anew for richer thought.

Little Women, in all of its 151 years of shelf life, has endured as a classic text as it's not just a product of its era, but can be read as a timeless portrait of family dynamics and coming of age during uncertain times. Is it a universal tale? Somewhat. Verdict is out on that as one could argue that for all the times that Little Women has been adapted for a new generation a tale of girlhood from a diverse voice isn't given the chance to speak, but the question of relevancy rises more so when it's brought to life on screen. When each generation gets a re-introduction to the March sisters I do tend to wonder: Do we really need another film about four sisters who are growing up in the midst of the Civil War, this in 2020, this when there has been so much social upheaval for women's rights, and this when there are other stories and novels worthy to be told about the turmoil and wonder of growing up girl?

Be Kind Rewind --- one of my favorite YouTube channels --- answered my question, and then some as it not only nudged me into giving the 2019 Greta Gerwig-directed version a shot after being indifferent about it initially, but to see Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy come alive for the umpteenth time isn't as stale or redundant at first glance.

BKR focuses on the 1939, 1949 and 1994 versions (skipping the 2018 Hallmark-y modernized one --- yeah, there's a modernized Little Women), giving ample discussion on how each film is approached by its prospective release era, and what it meant for the social climate of the time. Being raised on, and showing some bias with the 1994 Winona Ryder-led version, it was interesting to understand that the tone of the film, though being set in the 1860s, echoed the '90s being in the throes of the 2nd wave of women's movements, as it emphasized more on the March sisters career choices and desires to be seen equal to men much more than previous adaptations.

Whatever the opinion on reboots and refashions (please...STOP!), it is fascinating how one story --- written over two centuries ago --- can be told with such variance, and yet never once lose its message and its literary achievement.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

"Maybe it's just the whole damn world is like Central Casting. They got it all rigged before you ever show up." 

Numerous books were released during the Great Depression, but no book struck more of a cultural chord or contained a decade's worth of human resilience during economic and social disparity better than John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Even if you haven't read it (*coughs and looks away*), you know something about it, as the title alone has almost become synonymous for the era of hardship it represents within its pages. Just Google "The Great Depression", and its at the top of the results. A teacher you once had probably assigned it in class. It no doubt resides on a bunch of required read-before-you're-casket-ready reading lists. It's a book that is just impossible to ignore.

Now, no disrespect to Steinbeck, but Grapes wasn't the only book to explore one of America's most harrowing hours. Okay, maybe these books weren't out there winning Pulitzer Prizes, but they did exist. Coming up blank? Let me steer you over to a neglected corner, where you'll see cussing and fussing for attention Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, the anti-Grapes...the anti-everything, really.

Horses was released in 1935, in the thick of the Great Depression, and it's with no surprise that it ended up faring better with French existentialists such as Simone de Beauvoir (who dubbed it the first "American existentialist novel"), and Albert Camus (who'd seven years later would pen a similar sketch of human doom with The Stranger). Americans wanted hope and relief and sympathetic characters they could relate to --- not someone extolling pessimism and framing them as farm animals being led to the slaughter. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? doesn't offer a mustard seed of faith, or even a 'this too shall pass' reassuring pat on the shoulder. This lean, mean novella instead sneers at the migrant farming sojourn of the Joad brood as it ensnares its disparate youths Robert Syverton and Gloria Beatty in a thorny fate, all while lifting a soiled middle finger towards the sweet apple pie of Americana optimism and prosperity.

Union Street

Who wants to read a book about working class women and girls who live in squalor in the back avenues of an industrial city north east of London?

Well, I do.

See, my hand is raised?

Still I'm not everybody.

Hollywood couldn't handle what British author Pat Barker was trying to convey in the pages of this book because in 1990 they released it as a sweet romance story called Stanley & Iris, starring Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro. In the film Fonda and De Niro play two working class individuals who are at a standstill in their lives, with Fonda's character later on teaching De Niro’s how to read and write, the two of them falling in love during the process. I admit, it's an excellent film, and one of my favorite romance stories, Fonda is fun to watch and De Niro pulls out one of his best performances in it --- but the film isn't Baker's 1982 debut Union Street. Fonda's Iris King, the cake factory, a pregnant teen, and a man who can't read are the only elements that have any sort of association to this book, and these elements are still sprinkled with sugar crystals on it when they made it to screen.

Book publishers couldn't handle what realism Barker had written as she had a difficult time trying to find a publisher for the book. Nobody wanted to give Union Street the time of day because it isn't a pretty book. It just isn't a book that goes down easy. It's a book about worn-out, hard-working women and young girls, but it's not in the Norma Rae-rah-rah spirit, or wraps itself in warm camaraderie like Gloria Naylor's classic Women of Brewster Place. Baker wrote a book that is a stark and unsettling contrast to the usual working-class woman narrative.

Novella November: Seasons Change

"Things come in three major degrees in the human experience, I think. There's good, bad, and terrible. And as you go down into progressive darkness toward terrible, it gets harder and harder to make subdivisions."

"An ill-defined and disreputable literary banana republic" is how Stephen King described the novella in the afterword of this collection, and of course he of all authors would say that.

King laughs in the face of the 'slim novel' as even his leaner efforts seem to feel wide, and wander around in their labyrinths longer than the norm. It's why I wondered if placing this book among the miscellany of novellas I read and revisited for this monthly series was a bit fair. Different Seasons is a whopper at 600+ pages, as it contains not one little novel, but four B-I-G novels. The stories pack a punch, and have in a way, outgrown the spines they've been sewn in as three of the four novels have all gone on to become feature films, two of them  (Rita Hayworth & The Shawshank Redemption and The Body) now considered to be classics and some of King's best adaptations set to celluloid.

Different Seasons itself is also considered to be his best collected work of shorts and novellas for this reason, and I concur. For a time I thought Night Shift had that title on lock, but nah, Different Seasons yanks that crown off of its head, as he doles out some of his finest writing and introduces us to some of his most enduring characters in this collection.

Released in 1982, Different Seasons was considered "un-publishable" at the time due the four tales detouring away from the horror genre that made King serious coin, and it's true, this collection is devoid of supernatural elements, but there are things present that are tangible to terrify and evoke shivers. King excels at putting a lens on humanity (and inhumanity), making humans being as monstrous as we are capable to be, and this collection knows no different. The "monsters" in Different Seasons, whether it be the occupants in a looming maximum penitentiary, a former Nazi war criminal and his psychopathic adolescent tormentor, or four young boys who come face to face with death, do roam, and roam a range that only King himself could concoct.

Novella November: Breakfast Of Fancy Fakery With Holly Golighty

"Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell", Holly advised him. "You can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get."

I must be in the minority, but as much as I adore me some Audrey Hepburn, I never warmed to her role as Holly Golightly in Blake Edwards' 1961 cinema classic, Breakfast at Tiffany's. I truly disliked the movie when I first saw it, and when I tried watching it again about a year ago, I still felt cold towards it. The iconic and stylish fashions Audrey sported throughout was the only thing that kept my eyes on it, and can we just say that Mickey Rooney in "yellow face" is about the most offensive on-screen performance next to well… Flex Alexander slapping chalk and wet baby powder on his face to portray Michael Jackson? (Yes, that was an actual thing that some people spent money on, recorded, and foisted upon human eyes…welcome to your future nightmares...)

So why read the source material for a film I have such an aversion too? Because books are always often better than the movie (duh) and Truman Capote is one hell of a writer (double duh). He is. He's a natural born storyteller who during his reign possessed the sassiest tongue from the South, and if he was alive today would have the shadiest Twitter log ever. His prose is so delightful and dagger-sharp, and tinged with just the right balance of purple. It's more so lavender and plum --- the relatives of purple --- to where you're whisked into word wonderment while reading, but never do you feel like you're suffocating on adjectives the whole time. He’s also a master at autopsying his characters right down to the atom. Holly Golightly would just be some insufferable white girl in someone’s inexperienced hands, but in Capote's she’s a "wild thing", untamable and feral, with dimensions that rival the facets on the diamonds she longs for from Tiffany's window displays.

Most consider In Cold Blood as Capote's masterpiece, but I don't know, as much as it is the godfather of true crime novels, I enjoyed reading Breakfast At Tiffany's a lot more and found it lingering in my mind longer. Of course, these two tales are incomparable. One is written as fiction, the other as fact; one is set in the rural Midwest, the other in the bustle of New York City. Night and day these stories are, but both books are about desperate, lost people who make poor choices over and over, because they don’t know another way and don’t care to find the exit sign, even when its glowing red in their face.

The Quiet Madness of 'Séance on a Wet Afternoon'

I'm often drawn to the more muted mystery thrillers. The ones that star quiet, unbalanced individuals who promenade in gloomy, claustrophobic habitats that tend to close in ever so slowly with every page turn. Where the only explosions that occur are the synapses of the mind, when mental slippage is in its most sinister, and secreted form.

Written by Australian author Martin McShane in 1961, Séance on a Wet Afternoon checks all those boxes for me when it comes to psychological thrillers, as it takes an unsettling dive into the disturbed mind of Myra Savage.

Myra is a middle-aged medium who believes she possesses special sensory "gifts", "gifts" that have her foresee the future and has her in touch with spirits from other dimensions. She supports her unemployed, asthmatic husband, Bill, through this "gift" by conducting seances out of the couple's isolated Victorian dwelling.

As quaint as it all sounds, Myra isn't content. She vies to be world-renowned for her "gifts" and abandon the meager existence her and Bill share, thus, she hatches a plan to kidnap the child of a prominent businessman, and to use her "gifts" to find the "missing" child and collect the ransom, with camera bulb flashes, congratulatory headlines, and patrons lined up at the door to soon follow. Ensnaring the assistance of her hapless hen-pecked husband into the plot, Myra is convinced that the plan possesses no flaws, but it's obvious to the reader that the signs are there for a flurry of disaster to unfold.