A Savior for all Seasons
For many centuries people strived and died to embrace Him. Today, they often struggle as hard to quit Him. All the time, His image keeps popping up like that of some genial, persistent old boyfriend.
Just how does one see the world through the prism of Jesus Christ?
A Clockwork Orange is something that shouldn’t exist in nature but does: bracing social comment that also works as pure pulp fiction. Should man be free to choose; or if not, does he cease being a man? Never mind that, what about all that ultra-violence!
When reading A Clockwork Orange today, two other things jump out. One is the unique lingo of the narrative, the so-called “Nadsat” slang of our juvenile-delinquent protagonist, Alex. The other is it being made into an even more famous Stanley Kubrick film.
More on that later.
When it comes to the history of the American labor movement, the biggest question for many of us is not the interests of workers or what constitutes a fair wage. It’s what happened to Jimmy Hoffa.
James Riddle Hoffa was no ideologue, but even before he became the most famous missing person in my lifetime he was the most notorious and consequential labor figure of his century. In The Teamsters, Steven Brill examines the union and its Hoffa imprint in the immediate aftermath of his 1975 disappearance.
Certainly you see Shakespeare reacting to the success of his first Henry IV play by giving audiences more of the same. More rebel plotting, more Prince Henry antagonizing the squares, and especially more hijinks from Sir John Falstaff, who proved a comic sensation in his debut.
There is a Shakespeare quote that springs to mind when reading Henry IV, Part I, but not from that play. Rather, it’s from As You Like It.
“All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts…”
In Henry IV, Part I, that man is Prince Henry, heir to the throne held by our title character. The Prince will play many parts in the course of his career, most notably two he develops in tandem here: a dissolute ruffian inspired by his friendship with the disgraced Sir John Falstaff; and a bold knight modeled on Hotspur, who leads an army against his father.
Reading this brought to mind a line in that great Mozart movie Amadeus, when Wolfgang asks the Habsburg court why their emperor doesn’t like his latest piece. One courtier answers: “Too many notes.”
It’s a comic scene, and on the face of it ridiculous, particularly directed at Mozart. But I kind of knew what that hapless lackey meant. There can be too much of a good thing, at least as I see it, a surplus of invention, particularly when it comes to writing mysteries.
Thus came my wonderment and annoyance about this novel. P. D. James’ ability to create involving, multi-dimensional characters and settings ultimately gets in the way of what a mystery should be about.
If it is true that what one loves in life are the things that fade, at least fading is a process that doesn’t happen overnight.
But it literally did just that for the golden age of maverick film directors, barreling through Manhattan on the night of Wednesday, November 19, 1980, bearing a title very appropriate for the many career deaths it would reap, Heaven’s Gate.
Steven Bach, who greenlit this overpriced art film for United Artists, was out of work by 1981. In his memoir about the experience, he explains how good life was, how fast it went, and the razor-thin line between genius and crazy he discovered in Heaven’s Gate director Michael Cimino, known on-set as the Ayatollah and in the corridors of UA by less friendly terms.
