The Burghers of Calais

From 1346 to 1347 England’s King Edward III laid siege to the city of Calais.

The citizens of Calais were by now near starvation; the commander had already expelled “all poore and meane people” — those who could not contribute to the defence of the town and simply constituted extra mouths to feed — to the number of 1,700. Further resistance was pointless. [Garrison commander Jean de Vienne] now signalled his readiness to surrender, provided only that the King would promise safe conduct for all the citizens. Edward first refused point-blank: Calais had cost him vast quantities of money and the lives of countless soldiers and sailors, together with almost a year of his own. But when his two envoys, Lord Basset and Sir Walter Manny, returned to report that in that event the city would continue to resist, he relented. Manny was sent back to Jean de Vienne with new conditions: six of the principal citizens must present themselves before the King, barefoot and bare-headed, with halters round their necks and the keys of the city and of the castle in their hands. With them he would do as he pleased; the rest of the population would be spared.

The English terms were proclaimed in the marketplace, and immediately the richest of all the burghers, Master Eustache de Sainte-Pierre, stepped forward. Five others joined him. There and then the six stripped to their shirts and breeches, donned the halters, took the keys and made their way to the gates, led by Jean de Vienne himself mounted on a pony, his sword reversed in token of submission. On their arrival before the King they knelt before him, presented him with the keys and begged for mercy. Edward refused to listen, and ordered their immediate execution. Sir Walter pleaded with him in vain. Only when Queen Philippa, then heavily pregnant, threw herself on her knees before her husband and begged him to spare them did he finally relent.

You can learn the entire story of the 14th century Siege of Calais as well as read about the lives and times of the English Kings from Edward II all the way to Henry VII in John Julius Norwich’s lively Shakespeare’s Kings — from which the lengthy quote above was filched. Norwich examines the eight (plus one) “history plays” of Shakespeare, outlining the bare (albeit sometimes hair-raising) facts as determined by punctilious historians and comparing them with the story as made zippy by Shakespeare who, after all, had a theater to keep filled with satisfied customers.

The photo at the top of this post is of a grouping of six slightly larger-than-life-sized bronzes by Rodin from 1889 entitled The Burghers of Calais. It stands near the entrance of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, CA.

Shakespeare’s Kings
The Great Plays and the History of England in the Middle Ages: 1337-1485
by John Julius Norwich
(Scribner Book Company, Paperback, 432pp.)

Back of Jack Mack Back (Scarecrow Review Part II)

I finished Michael Connelly’s new excitmobook, The Scarecrow, in part because I want to be an honest book reviewer, not one who scans a volume, perhaps reading the first and last pages, and who then concocts a bit of fiction for the pages of the local paper confident no one will ever read either the faux review or its subject. Duty to you, reader, drove me forward. But more than duty, burning curiosity motivated my need to scan each and every page of the thriller. Would the good guys win? Would the bad guys lose?

Because the good guy portions of the story are narrated in the first person I was fairly certain the narrator at least survived to tell the tale, but hasn’t Agatha Christie so cleverly shown us how there is no convention of novel writing that cannot be subverted to the purpose of tricking the reader? See Dame Agatha’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd if you don’t believe me.

And so I breezed through the bloody tale of Jack McEvoy and Rachel Walling (a crime reporter and an FBI agent respectively) as they closed in on Mr. Scarecrow and his scheme involving the use of his data storage company to snare hapless dancin’ girls. (Not a spoiler. Revealed in the opening pages.) Having done so, I am able to report to you with a clean conscience that Connelly delivers again. You liked Void Moon? You will like The Scarecrow. You liked Chasing the Dime? You will like, etc.

I was so caught up in the action — including guns-aplenty, surprise corpse discovery, an endangered pooch, a knife vs lamp fight, a thirteen story plunge, a CO2 gas attack, a deteriorating banana, and a menacingly brandished shovel — that I sped right on by the final page of the book, like Wile E. Coyote running off the edge of a cliff, and was startled by back cover author photo. Reader, I screamed!

The Scarecrow
by Michael Connelly
(Little Brown and Company, Hardcover, 448pp.)

Jack Mack Back (Scarecrow Review Part I)

Michael Connelly, not an author to waste a character, brings back the crime reporter hero of a previous thrillah, The Poet (1996). As the curtain rises on The Scarecrow, we find Jack McEvoy, late of the late Rocky Mountain News, dashing around the mean streets of Los Angeles gathering stories of urban homicide for a dwindling handful of morbid LA Times readers.

I know all this because on the day of its publication I zipped out and snagged my shiny copy of The Scarecrow, the new Boschless novel from Mr. Connelly. This one, like it’s prequel, is named after the antagonist, another one of those annoying serial killers. The dander of the police, the FBI and McEvoy, upon whom are inflicted the dead bodies of many pretty young things stuffed in car trunks and other less traditional places, is gotten up. The Scarecrow details the working out of that getting up of dander.

I’m only halfway through my wide-eyed reading of Mr. McEvoy’s life and death struggle contra Mr. Scarecrow, and so I am unable to justly render a final judgment, but I can no more resist the compulsion to hurry onward to the presumably exciting conclusion than I can see a cow while I’m driving and not say “Moo.” Isn’t that judgment enough for a thrillah?

No? Well, besides the page-turning Connelly knows so well how to command, the reader (that’s me, maybe you) gets the author’s trademark location work: You Are There. The Los Angeles landscape gets such vivid description in The Scarecrow, the book could be given a new jacket design and remarketed as a city guide. I’ve always liked Connelly’s LA, but now, as a new Angeleno, I enjoy even more the scene-setting, getting a kick, for example, out having been in the very spot where the first body is dumped. Not, I hasten to add, at the time of the dumping. As a former Chicagoan I can tell you, too, that Connelly’s descriptions of the Northside in McEvoy’s previous star vehicle, The Poet, are accurate down to the brickwork of the police station at Western and Belmont. There’s that.

Then there’s Connelly’s meticulous and plausible descriptions of the minutiae of newspaper work — the same sort of careful exposition he brings to the nuts and bolts of policework in his Bosch books. If learning about budget meetings, deadline strategies and deployment of the GA group (“general assignment” reporters) doesn’t excite the same bloody-minded curiousity as does the cop stuff, at least in this age of the decline of paper papers it serves as a sort of historical preservation — like Colonial Williamsburg — for future generations to wonder at.

The Scarecrow
by Michael Connelly
(Little Brown and Company, Hardcover, 448pp.)

Here Today

For those who have obtained oodles of vicarious thrills from the [er...look up number on Google] novels in Lee Child’s hardboiled series about hardboiled Jack Reacher, but who, like me, felt cast down after reading the last one, Nothing to Lose, I have glad tidings: Mr Child is back in the saddle again.

Jack Reacher returns in Gone Tomorrow the [remember to check Google for number of Jack Reacher adventures]th in a series of novels which wonderfully exemplify that fiction genre I term the Lone Wolf vs Seemingly Overwhelming Number of Sociopathic Opponents Whose Confidence in their Superior Numbers Turns Out to be False Confidence Indeed (and Often a Fatal Error) in the Face of the Lone Wolf’s Superior Tactical Skills and Size and Sheer Brutality Novel.

Reacher, ex-MP, loner and drifter who owns nothing more than he can carry in his pockets, finds himself, novel after novel, in the middle of situations screaming out to be set straight. Keen on justice, he does so. He hits bad people hard. They go away.

The last novel was a stinker: The situation screaming out to be set right was the whole darned evil capitalist system of the whole darned United States of Greedy Fat Cats. Mr Child had taken the opportunity afforded by the writing of a bestseller thriller to air his mundane British Lefty politics. Readers looking for the simple pleasure of Jack Reacher’s whupping villians felt cheated. We wanted a boxing ring, not a soapbox.

I wasn’t even going to read the next one — twice-shy and all that –  but I peeked inside and was instantly seduced by the well-calculated first line:

“Suicide bombers are easy to spot.”

Oh really? They are? Tell me more, my man. I handed over a wad of electronic funds transfer.

The transfer was rewarded. With Gone Tomorrow we readers who squander on potboilers the effort our first grade teachers invested in teaching us to read may rejoice in the knowledge that Mr. Child delivers a rock’em sock’em good time.

Well, true, he does indulge in a few eurosnarky comments about Reagan, the Bush White House and Gitmo-happy Homeland Security — Child is a Brit, after all, as evidenced by his slip in Reacher’s reference to bathroom “fitments” instead of “fittings” — and snarky comments about the red, white and blue sleeved hand that feeds him evidently cannot be bitten back. But he then gets down to thriller business, sticking to his guns (mostly 9mm) right up to an unusually bloody finale in which a het-up Reacher with only thirty rounds is pitted against eight armed-to-the-teeth homicidal Mujahideen nutballs holed up in Manhattan.

That, plus three other tooth-looseners, two harrowing escapes in the subways of New York, and some cleverly foreshadowed surprises (i.e. Sure, you could have seen them coming from sly little hints, but — ha! — you didn’t did you?) make for the very sort of yikes-almighty! thriller you plunk your devalued dollars down for.

Gone Tomorrow
by Lee Child
(Delacorte Press, Hardcover, 432pp.)

A Handle on Art

We needed to escape the house late this morning because of noisy workmen; or, more accurately, because of calm, quiet, dignified workmen with noisy power tools. Ear splitting. So we filled our insulated go-cups with stimulants and fled to LACMA.

Our initial intention of checking out the exhibit of Roman goodies dug up from ill-fated Pompeii (and even more ill-fated Herculaneum; more ill-fated because always second-billed) dwindled away as we lazily munched turkey sandwiches in the Plaza Cafe and debated which U.S. city would be the best to bury in lava for the sake of future curiosity-seekers. (The winner: Orlando, Florida. Imagine the pathos excited two millenia hence by plaster casts of Disney costumed figures.)

Too filled with lunch-gladness to face the sorrows of of 79 A.D., we thought it better to save Pompeii for a future trip. We chose instead to trot over to a couple of galleries where we could enjoy leaning into the gale-force blasts of hue given off by so-called “color field painters” like (fave) Sam Francis, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still.

No use pencil sketching these guys — too minimalist. Nor any use taking photos of them; half their effect depends on their size. So all I can offer as decoration for this wee post is a photo (above) of a stimulant-filled go cup and another (below) of the glass door of the Plaza Cafe where we had eaten turkey sandwiches and discussed urban volcanic catastrophe. The reason I took the latter photo was the shadow of the door handle on the floor. Who would have guessed that a handle shaped like this would produce a shadow shaped like that? Not me.

In the Face of Adversity

Sure, times are tough. Money is scarce; plans hatched in enthusiasm sputter out in despair; the ground yawns and swallows tourist buses; the restless spirits of the dead roam the earth and make sarcastic comments; dogs start at the sound of unseen Klaxon horns; in sandwich shops, individual packets of mustard and ketchup and mayonaisse split open, spewing condiments; firemen forget to wait a moment before sliding down the firepole and pile up in unseemly heaps; little girls are sassy; chunks of masonry the size of Smart Cars fall out of the blue sky; cows talk but not about anything interesting; every 5,000th ATM card bursts into blue flame; flowers smell like Oscar Meyer lunch meats; jet-ski riders simply fall over on their sides for no apparent reason; glee clubs arm themselves and do battle; week after week the crops in the fields refuse to grow then they all shoot up about twelve feet in less than a second; joggers veer into ditches; calendar pages neither turn nor tear; airplane seat trays will not stay latched; zoo animals become painfully shy; thousands of words lose their meaning; brooms stick to the floor; candles blow themselves out; wristwatches begin to make an upleasant grinding sound; dry cleaners panic at the sight of formal wear; iPods randomly sound air raid warnings; pool toys rebel; stop signs command no respect; clouds snap in two.

But if this little squirrel guy can smile, so can you.

Advertising Art

Museums, along with every other institution, are taking a hit in these straitened times; or so I dimly gather from Tweets, weblogs and half-read newspaper articles. Museum investments (the interest on which keeps the Monets on the wall) have taken a hit. Donors, too, having taken hits themselves, are not donating at those gracious levels that make curators do their little victory dances after successful fundraisers. Worst of all, economic distress has resulted in museum employees being layed off.

All tough news. I don’t know what I’d do without art museums. Schmooz tycoons? The section in my Rolodex where I list all the wealthy art-collectors  who I can drop in on for a bit of cultural uplift is pretty thin. Empty actually.

So I was pleased to see these clever ads for two of my art-gawking mainstays: the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and The Getty Art Museum. I fervently hope the ads return whatever they cost with a stampede of new art-hungry visitors and museum gift shop spenders.

These particular posters which I spent long minutes studying — I assume there are others placed strategically around the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area — curve about one side of cylindrical advertising pillars, sharing space with notices about new movies and places to make one’s skin silky smooth. The pillars themselves stand in the Calabasas Commons, a somewhat upscale mall where women shop for overpriced clothing while their bored husbands stand around abjectly on the sidewalk taking pictures of pillars with ads for local art museums.

May the notices call as strongly to the monied hordes as they called to me.

The Presses, Stopped

As I walked back up the driveway this morning with my copy of the LA Times I scanned the headlines. One of the stories the editors deemed important enough to put on the front page — though, mercifully, “below the fold” — was an article about “eco-friendly” kosher foods. Stop the presses.

This is not the first or worst example of how newspapers have become increasingly silly and irrelevant — whether you see the story as yet another bit of environmentalist advocacy posing as reporting or view it as too trivial to be given front page priority — but it gave me a sort of ominous chill, like when a parent first exhibits some minor symptom of Alzheimers.

A few moments later I was looking in frustration for the weather map of LA, ordinarily printed in color and easily found on the back of section B. I eventually discoverd the weather buried in the business section and in black and white — nor with a map that had been designed as in earlier decades to be understandable in b/w, but rather with the usual color map printed gray, all the color cues lost or at least difficult to distinguish one from another. This gave me a second chill — this time like hearing a doctor deliver a long-dreaded diagnosis.

They’re doomed, aren’t they?

The passing of newpapers — no matter how goofy they may have become, or maybe always were — doesn’t make me glad. I’ll miss rustling those non-virtual paper papers when they’re gone; miss snapping the sheets flat when I run across something interesting to read. But then I suppose there were thousands who missed gathering ’round the old upright and singing “Love’s Old Sweet Song” after the piano in the parlor succumbed to whatever it was — the Victrola? radio? the talkies? — that crowded it out.

The Ball and the Cross

“Here is the only symbol, my boy. So fat. So satisfied. Not like that scraggy individual, stretching his arms in stark weariness.” And he pointed up to the cross, his face dark with a grin. “I was telling you just now, Michael, that I can prove the best part of the rationalist case and the Christian humbug from any symbol you liked to give me, from any instance I came across. Here is an instance with a vengeance. What could possibly express your philosophy and my philosophy better than the shape of that cross and the shape of this ball? This globe is reasonable; that cross is unreasonable. It is a four-legged animal, with one leg longer than the others. The globe is inevitable. The cross is arbitrary. Above all the globe is at unity with itself; the cross is primarily and above all things at enmity with itself. The cross is the conflict of two hostile lines, of irreconcilable direction. That silent thing up there is essentially a collision, a crash, a struggle in stone. Pah! that sacred symbol of yours has actually given its name to a description of desperation and muddle. When we speak of men at once ignorant of each other and frustrated by each other, we say they are at cross-purposes. Away with the thing! The very shape of it is a contradiction in terms.”

“What you say is perfectly true,” said Michael, with serenity. “But we like contradictions in terms. Man is a contradiction in terms; he is a beast whose superiority to other beasts consists in having fallen. That cross is, as you say, an eternal collision; so am I. That is a struggle in stone. Every form of life is a struggle in flesh. The shape of the cross is irrational, just as the shape of the human animal is irrational. You say the cross is a quadruped with one limb longer than the rest. I say man is a quadruped who only uses two of his legs.”

The Professor frowned thoughtfully for an instant, and said: “Of course everything is relative, and I would not deny that the element of struggle and self-contradiction, represented by that cross, has a necessary place at a certain evolutionary stage. But surely the cross is the lower development and the sphere the higher. After all it is easy enough to see what is really wrong with Wren’s architectural arrangement.”

“And what is that, pray?” inquired Michael, meekly.

“The cross is on top of the ball,” said Professor Lucifer, simply. “That is surely wrong. The ball should be on top of the cross. The cross is a mere barbaric prop; the ball is perfection. The cross at its best is but the bitter tree of man’s history; the ball is the rounded, the ripe and final fruit. And the fruit should be at the top of the tree, not at the bottom of it.”

“Oh!” said the monk, a wrinkle coming into his forehead, “so you think that in a rationalistic scheme of symbolism the ball should be on top of the cross?”

“It sums up my whole allegory,” said the professor.

“Well, that is really very interesting,” resumed Michael slowly, “because I think in that case you would see a most singular effect, an effect that has generally been achieved by all those able and powerful systems which rationalism, or the religion of the ball, has produced to lead or teach mankind. You would see, I think, that thing happen which is always the ultimate embodiment and logical outcome of your logical scheme.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Lucifer. “What would happen?”

“I mean it would fall down,” said the monk, looking wistfully into the void.

–from G.K. Chesterton’s novel, The Ball and the Cross,

First published March 24, 1909

Image of the cross atop St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, courtesy of FREEPHOTO.COM.

At The Huntington

We went to the Huntington Library this weekend to marvel at its world famous collection of rare books. Of course we pocketed our Spy Cam so we could enliven our verbal report with images.

When our eyes had adjusted from the San Marino sun to the twilight of the high-ceilinged hall we saw a vast array of dimly lit display cases, each housing dimly lit books –  books ranging from Medieval illuminated manuscripts to one of W. H. Auden’s notebooks.

We saw and exclaimed, but — our apologies, bibliophiles — we did not photograph. Stern signs forbade the taking of those photos which we so ached to share with you. Nor did we dare a surreptitious spysnap, for steely-eyed guards stalked, ready to pounce.

But we did not come away imageless: We have drawings! All the pencils on this page were done from memory, set down immediately after we exited the library while the details were yet fresh in our mind.

Figure A

Figure A. The Gutenberg Bible. Not a patch on those individually illuminated Bibles we admired recently at the Getty. But the mechanically printed version, we admit, is nice and neat; all those heavy metal letters lined up in tidy rows; also it is more affordable for us commoners. And just in time for the Reformation!

Figure B

Figure B. An actual First Folio, the volume of Shakespeare’s plays assembled by his theater friends seven years after he shuffled off. The Folio is much bigger than we had imagined– also prettier; gilt edges and everything. His chums did right by him.

Figure C

Figure C. The Ellesmere Canterbury Tales, so named because… ah, well, actually we don’t know why it’s called Ellesmere. Maybe Ellesmere drew the pictures. We were so focussed on fixing a mental image of the large vellum pages that we neglected to read the museum info card. Sorry.

Figure D

Figure D. John Milton’s Paradise Lost. A first edition, too! Bedtime reading for the nostalgic Roundhead.

Figure E

Figure E. Another first edition, this one from the 18th century: James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, open to the intro page. You can almost sense the original owner of the book already chuckling in anticipation of the zingers gotten off by the “Great Cham” in his cups.

We’d entertain you with a Johnsonian anecdote right now — we have in mind the one about Doctor Johnson’s correcting the imprecise vocabulary of a woman who had complained that he “smelled” — but our little battered Penguin edition seems so sad and tawdry next to these grand old tomes and we are abashed. It stays shelved.

You must leave now. The dog will see you out.