Things are picking up

Yes dear readers I have returned from the ether. Having gone back to work has kept me hopping all day. However, this new job is not so cumbersome that I can't take a few minutes and catch up on my reading.

So when we last left Mikael Blomqvist and company, things were plodding along. Mr. Blomqvist has since served his sentence for libel thereby paying his debt to society. Imagine that, a country where you can actually go to jail for libel. He has since returned from his "three month uneventful holiday" to investigating the disappearance of Harriet Vanger. Simultaneously, our girl Lisbeth is still in the depth of guardianship, having fallen and taken her revenge on a real sleaze bag of a guardian.

Now things are starting to pick up. In combing through the Hedeby newspaper's photographic archives, our hero makes a startling discovery, which confirms his theory. Blomqvist believes that the key to Harriet's disappearance lay in something that was going that day. Lo and behold, he stumbled on to something. In reviewing the images for a Children's Day parade, Blomqvist discovers pictures of Harriet with a frightened look on her face. Aha, the key to our mystery. Just what that thing is has yet to be discovered. Like Christie's Poirot,Blomqvist is meticulously combing through the evidence searching for and finding hidden clues. I'll have to keep reading to find out.

Stay Tuned.

Hip Deep Into the Story

So I'm now hip into the The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and I must say things are getting interesting. There seems to be a connection to Harriet Vanger's disappearance and one of her uncle's connections to Swedish Nazis. Yes Swedish Nazis did exist and you can google this if you want. What that connection is will hopefully be revealed in the third part. In the meantime we have a parallel development. It would seem that our

girl

Lisbeth has a new guardian to look after her affairs. After all, being so sullen and occasionally prone to bursts of violence, in the cause of defending herself, has rendered her by the state mentally incompetent. Therefore, she must have someone to look manage her life. This new guardian, it would seem, has a sadistic streak which he expressed by raping Lisbeth twice before she exacted a measure of punishment in the form of blackmail. So who's the crazy one now?

In the meantime, our hero, Mikael Blomkvist (soon to be played on the big screen by Daniel Craig making the price of a ticket worth it) has been getting comfortable in exile. He has managed to ingratiate himself among the locals of Hedeby and begin a clandestine affair with Cecila Vanger, the head mistress of the local school. All the while, under the cover of writing Henrik Vanger's biography, Blomkvist has been investigating the mysterious Harriet and slowly assembling the suspects. Like Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, he methodically reviews the evidence, examining each piece with exacting detail. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.

A bit of a side note. Stieg Larsson seemed to be a bit obsessed with consumerism because of blatant use of product placement. It would seem that every chapter or two has a reference to an electronic product (Apple), a grocery chain (Konsum), or some other product. Just a thought.

Stay Tuned,
Lenore

Some Thoughts

Some thoughts and observations inspired by The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Author Steig Larsson provides amusing insight into the Swedish mindset regarding certain behaviors. For example, in doctors and social workers' descriptions of Lisbeth Salander's refusals to answer any of their question, the author uses words like

shy

or

retarded

. One supposes that if one were asked rather personal questions about one's sex life or finances by strangers who seem to have made up their minds about you, one would decline to answer also. In describing members of the Vanger family's racist, fascist political leanings the phrase

politically insane

is used. I suppose from this we can begin to make assumptions about the Swedes and the way they deal with what may or may not be considered deviant behavior. In the case of Lisbeth Salander's evaluations, we can say that the social workers, doctors, and advocates have either made up their minds about or they have not tried to find a way to talk to her. As to the fascist leanings of the members of the Vanger family, it almost sounds like the Swedes put their collective heads in the sand and write some one off as insane.

Another observation is related to the prologue. In the prologue of the book, Henrik Vanger receives and exotic pressed and framed flower for his birthday. To the reader this may seem like an unrelated episode, yet later in part one of the story, it is explained that the flower has significance. Without giving too much away, let's just say it's a clue to the mysterious disappearance of Harriet Vanger.

Stay tuned

How much of this is necessary?

In The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo author Steig Larsson goes into detail about the main characters' biographical histories. We learn that Mikael Blomkvist grew up in a fairly middle class stable household in contrast to Lisbeth Salander's dysfunctional upbringing. Henrik Vanger is descended from a Dutch family that settled in Sweden in the twelfth century and has a branch in America. So I ask why is it necessary to into such depth about their backgrounds? In the case of Vanger, it might be necessary only if to produce a list of suspects in the mysterious disappearance of Vanger's niece Harriet, which Blomkvist does. However, I'm not so sure about Larsson's reasons for detailing Blomkvist's or Salander's life history. Perhaps it is to provide some sort of empathy for the character or to assist any actor taking on those roles for the film version. Perhaps in later chapters we'll find out why.

As a side note I did get the kindle edition of The Thousand Autumns of jacob de Zoet, which I'll be tackling next.

Stayed tuned

First Impressions

Well I finally completed the first part of theThe Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by the late Stieg Larson. I must say this book reminds me a bit of the work by American mystery writers Dashiel Hammet and Raymond Chandler. The resemblance is in the way Larson, a former journalist, structures his syntax; using on the minimum required words to convey thoughts, dialogs, and descriptions. This is something that can be appreciated by a reader who does not take to flowery prose and necessary for a mystery novel. A mystery novel that gets too caught up in descriptive phrasing detracts from the story at hand. In this case, a murder mystery with far reaching consequences. I won't give away too much of the plot, I'll you the reader figure it out for yourself but I will say this, in part one the reader is not only introduced to the main characters, Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, but also get a keen sense of their back story. It'll be fascinating to see how this story develops. Like any good mystery novel there are the usual plot twists, which not doubt make for a great ride.

The novel takes place in modern day Sweden and centers around disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist, who has been fined and sentenced to jail for libel. He is commissioned by industrialist Henrik Vanger to investigate the disappearance/apparent murder of his beloved niece Harriet. Meanwhile, the reader is introduced to Lisbeth Salander, a computer hacker and investigator for a security company. She is asked to investigate Blomkvist for Vanger by Vanger's attorney Frode. What ensues will be subject for the next blog.

Stay tuned.

At First Glance

The subject of Japan's sakoku ("Chained Nation") period has been an endless source of fascination for writers and historians alike. The idea of a far off island nation cut off from the rest of the world; no on is allowed to leave or enter, has provided an endless source for the imagination. So it's no wonder that The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel by David Mitchell aroused the curiosity of reviewers the world over and has inspired your intrepid reviewer to chime in with a few thoughts on the matter.

First, a bit of historical background. Japan was not completely cut off from the world. The third Tokugawa shogun Iemitsu instituted Japan's "isolation" as a response to the growing threat of Christianity to his supremacy. Spanish and Portuguese Catholic missionaries made their first appearance in Japan in the mid-sixteenth centuries along with merchant ships. Spain and Portugal, in addition to demanding trade agreements from the shogun, brought with them Jesuit and Franciscan priests with the express purpose of converting the masses. Their influence grew so strong that they became a threat to the shogun. Both Conrad Totman, Japan Before Perry and Paul Varley Japanese Culture-available on Amazon-chronicle this history quite well. So, you ask, where does a Dutchman like the fictional Jacob de Zoet come in?The answer is simple. The Dutch and the English first landed on Japan in 1600 aboard the Erasmus. Both nations were Protestant and interested in doing business with the Japanese not converting the masses to their particular religion. For a terrific account of the English/Dutch experience in Japan, check out not only the above mentioned books but also Milton Giles' book Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan. The fact that the Dutch were not interested in proselytizing endeared them a bit more to the shogun. During the periodic Christian persecutions, the Dutch and the English were harassed but not condemned like the Spanish and Portuguese and their converts. Finally, Tokugawa Iemistsu put an end to the growing intrusion of the Catholic missionaries by ordering them out of the country or face sever penalties and closing the nation off to outsiders including other nations.

However, Japan was not completely closed off because non-Japanese people, i.e. the Dutch, English, Germans, and other Asian nations, could make contact on a fan-shaped man-made island called Deshima, where Mitchell's story takes place. Deshima was located off the coast of Kyushu, where Westerners made first contact with Japan. This was the place where Japanese and foreigners could come together. To be sure that no outside influence got in or the Westerners were not plotting a coup, translators (spies) were ordered to report to local officials. Mitchell sets the story in 1799, during a time when Japanese society, particularly at the upper strata, was under going a major change.

The samurai caste saw its power and influence dwindling during the eighteenth century as the chonin caste rose in prominence. Thechonin were the town folk who established businesses that catered to the samurai making their biannual pilgrimage to Edo (Tokyo). They grew wealthy and most of all they began to grow restless about dealing with the outside world. Mitchell introduces the reader to the character Aibagawa Orito, a Japanese midwife studying

Dutch medicine.

Dutch medicine

was a euphemism for Western medicine, in fact there was a whole school of study devoted to all things Western referred to as

Dutch Studies.

The term is derived from the fact that by the eighteenth century the shogun lifted the ban on certain Western books so it would have been possible for our midwife to have access to such knowledge. Possible but not likely since universal education was not introduced until the Meiji period (1868-1912).

Nonetheless, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel appears to make for a good, light read for those interested in Japan.

Modernism, A History in Brief

"Make it New!" This simple three-word slogan was introduced by the poet Ezra Pound following World War I. It succinctly summed up the aspirations of a generation of artistically minded individuals. What did Pound mean? Professor Peter Gay attempts to define this epigram in his wonderful chronicle of Modernism, Modernism: The Lure of Heresy From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond (2008, W.W. Norton and Company). In this text, Professor Gay looks at the history of the modern arts, painting, architecture, literature, music and dance, et cetera and how their makers pushed and went beyond the established academic boundaries to create something that was completely innovative. Right of the bat, Gay admits that modernism is far easier to exemplify than to explain. He further states that any all attempts to present a cohesive history has been muddled by commentators and scholars. Gay expresses a lack of surprise over the fact that cultural historians have been cowed by the ever evolving concept resulting in reducing the idea to the plural "modernisms." Therefore, the point of the book is to show that a substanial body of evidence has been gathered from across the scope of high culture providing unity of a single aesthetic-modernism. So what is the author's criteria for modernism?

Modernism, according to Gay, share two distinct attributes: the lure of heresy and they confront convention and a commitment to principles self-examination. The lure of heresy is no big mystery. The architect who strips away all superfluous ornament or the composer who deliberately violates rules of harmony and composition. In each case, they and their contemporaries have drawn real satisfaction in tweaking convention so hard until it screams, a recurring theme in the book

Modernism was not something exclusive to the early twentieth century. Professor Gay begins his tome with a brief look at the

professional outsider.

These were writers such as Charles Baudelaire who was active in the mid-nineteenth century. Baudelaire lived during a time of upheaval in France. Twice the monarchy was restored promising freedoms and moderate policies not seen during the previous monarchical periods and twice they failed. The failed Revolution of 1848 permanently soured Baudelaire on politics however it was his writing that saved him. His scandalous Les Fleur du mal took aim at the corruption and libertinism that permeated high society. This volume of poems so shocked Paris that the author was put on trial for blasphemy and obscenity. Gay speculates that Baudelaire's trial was more of a preemptive strike. Baudelaire was not alone in shocking

proper Parisiennes.

Eduard Manet's Olympia, an Impressionist take on Titian's Venus of Urbino, presented, not a chaste, idealized nude but a prostitute matter-of-fact staring out at the viewer. It should come as no surprise to the reader that Baudelaire and Manet were friends and that their respective works were intended as commentary on the decadence of French society.

The art and architecture of the nineteenth century could be characterized as a search for defining images. The fifteenth century was characterized by the art and architecture of Leonardo Da Vinci and Fillipo Brunelleschi. The eighteenth century was defined, first by the Rococo then the Neo-Classical. The nineteenth century was a period in search of an artistic movement. The Industrial Revolution had the most impact on the nineteenth century and created new building types: the train stations, high-rises, and factories. This left architects and planners in a quandary. Do they continue to fall back on academic styles, strongly advocated by the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts or create something new. Additionally, the invention of the Bessemer steel process made it possible to create steel framed buildings-i.e. the high rise- which could accomendate the influx of new urban dwellers and businesses.

In chapter six,

Architecture and Design,

A New Factor In Human Affairs,Professor Gay provides a concise yet detailed summary of the direction of architecture and design from the late nineteenth century through the nineteen thirties. Here, he emphasizes the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, no doubt a giant in the field. Interwoven into his summary of Wright's career, is the work of another giant, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. Gay touches on the work of William Morris and the Arts and Craft movement and its Viennese counterpart the Werkstatte, who are given a good amount space. Perhaps the most fascinating discussion is that of Futurists.

The Futurists were a group of Italian modernists who advocated a total rejection of the classics, unlike their German and Austrian counterparts who admired them. The leader of the Futurists, Antonio Sant'Elia saw architecture, for all of its utilitarian qualities, as art. He declared the recent technological inventions were suitable for aesthetic judgment. Interestingly it was Sant'Elia, not Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who first declared the house a machine for living. There is no doubt that, the modern movement in architecture fulfilled Gay's criteria for modernity by stripping away the superfluous ornament as Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffman and their successors did. They challenged the norms of conventional architecture and continuously created work that has withstood the test of time.

Professor Gay continues the theme of tweaking convention and self-examination throughout the book. Perhaps less effectively in the chapter dealing with dance and music. True, Igor Stravinsky's

Rites of Spring

and Arnold Schoenberg's work with atonal music were complete breaks from the norm of fluffy orchestrations but there seems to less self-examination on the part of musicians, composers, and dancers than their artistic contemporaries. Although the work of Schoenberg deserves some discussion. Schoenberg's music had impact on the paintings of Vladimir Kandinsky. In fact it was following a concert in December 1908 that they painter began work on Impression III (Concert), an ode on canvas to the atonal compositions of Schoenberg. The painting owes its black splotch to the piano and the cluster of primitive shapes to the audience. Schoenberg went on to inspire other painters such as Franz Marc who painted Tower of Blue Horses and then collaborated with the composer on a volume of essays, photographs, scores, and compositions The Blue Rider Alamanc.

As a counterpoint, we have the chapter

Eccentrics and Barbarians,

individuals who were modernists but less radical, anti-modernist modernists. The eccentrics also challenged the conventions of their professions as well as most of contemporary culture they found objectionable. By contrast, the Barbarians practiced their version of modernism with the idea of creating a better society. T.S. Elliot was one example of an anti-modernist, too radical for the conservatives and to conservative for the radicals. In lectures, Elliot often used derogatory racial and ethnic slurs as code for his fundamental truth, the United States had fallen victim to

worm-eaten liberalism.

His poetry, according to Gay, was a mix of unimpeachable modernism and intense anti-modernism. The Barbarians, according to Gay, were the National Socialists, the Communists, and Fascists, who co-opted art and design to serve the nefarious state purpose.

In Germany, the National Socialists were the most consistent in their efforts to suppress any independent thought and taste and link it to its leader. In one of its first acts, the National Socialists attempted to

purify

German society by labeling anything it found offensive as

Jewish

collapsing it into the term entarte-i.e. degenerate. This meant that the majority of the canon of modernity was considered unacceptable and the causation of cultural depravity. Soon, scholars, musicians, architects, and so forth were summarily dismissed from their positions and were forced to flee. conversely, the National Socialists did make use of modern technology to rearm itself and re-orient German industry towards war.

The final section

Coda

looks at modernity in the late twentieth century. Much space is devoted to Frank Gehry's stunning Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. In a prior chapter

Life after Death?

Gay examines late twentieth century modernism and its emergence outside the West. The question mark in the chapter title implies the question whether or not modernity died with World War II. The answer is not at all, rather it reinvented itself not only in Europe and the United States but also in South America with architect Oscar Niemayer and author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. They and their contemporaries adapted modernism to suit their needs and locals giving new life to the movement.

In all an enlightening read that encompasses the canon of modernity that informs without being condescending. Professor Gay does an admirable job in distilling the libraries' worth of information into a volume that would be a great addition to anyone's book shelf. This book is for both the art patron and lay man who is interested in a cultural history of the twentieth century.