There is something scary, suspenseful and mesmerizing about mountain climbing. It has the power to grab the attention of people who wouldn’t even begin to consider participating in the sport. Climbing stories, fiction and non-fiction, have a compelling quality with all the suspense of a John LeCarre thriller. There’s Maurice Herzog’s Annapurna that tells the story of the first conquest of an 8000-meter peak by a team of French climbers and James Salter’s fictional Solo Faces that contrasts the purity of climbing with the tugs of ordinary life. Then, every spring the media breathlessly reports on climbers attempting the summit of Mt. Everest. Last year’s earthquake added yet another dangerous and catastrophic dimension to the appeal. Mountain climbing is not for everyone, but the stories are.
Archive for Film/Television – Page 16
Lately, for some inexplicable reason, I’ve been drawn to the sick and wicked of the 19th Century, and while summer is traditionally the time to grab a potboiler and head for the beach I’ve found myself watching multiple film versions of several enduring 19th Century novels, reading online bios and book reviews.
It started innocently enough last month when the thermometer busted 90F for the third straight day and we decided to take in an air-conditioned late afternoon movie to beat the heat. That movie, Gemma Bovery, took us back to Flaubert’s novel and triggered a surprising amount of curiosity leading to an avalanche of late night videos, online searches, and bookstore visits. One thing led to another, one novel to another, and almost immediately a renewed appreciation for Victorian-era naturalist writers and their modern film translators
In the fall of 1958 my friend, Hoddy Schepman, started his PhD. work in Comparative Literature at Cornell. Before he left for Ithaca he told me he was taking a course in the modern novel taught by Vladimir Nabokov, whose notoriety and fame had rocketed with the US publication of Lolita earlier in the year.
When he came home at Christmas, he told me that there was nothing comparative or maybe even modern about Nabakov’s course. According to Vlad the “modern novel” began and ended with Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, so it was the only one he planned to teach that fall. Hoddy said it was the best class he’d ever taken.
ex·ot·ic [ig-zot-ik] adjective
1. of foreign origin or character; not native; introduced from abroad, but not fully naturalized or acclimatized: exotic foods; exotic plants.
2. strikingly unusual or strange in effect or appearance: an exotic hairstyle.
3. of a uniquely new or experimental nature: exotic weapons.
4. of, pertaining to, or involving stripteasing: the exotic clubs where strippers are featured.
Webster is too clinical for me. Exotic has danger implicit. It has romance. The air is heavy and moist. There is a little mold forming under things. You feel different. The air is charged. The mind is altered. And, yes, it is not native.
Sometimes I’m living the dream… safe and sound in America. But sometimes I behold the nightmare on the flipside of my dream. In the dream I am a child of privilege – born healthy, of middle class white parents, in the middle of the 20th century in America. It’s all about timing and location. Too young to know the deprivation of the Great Depression. Too young to fight in WWII and Korea. Military service before Vietnam. Too old for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two public universities while they were still free, and now receiving full Social Security and Medicare just as it was promised. I can’t imagine a better dream but it’s not a dream it’s my reality.
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