The Play, the Book and the Restaurant

1.  The Play.  “Grey Gardens”, a musical about Big Edie and Little Edie Bouvier Beale, aunt and cousin of Jackie Kennedy, who lived together for many years in an estate in The Hamptons with 50+ cats, and no money and no maintenance, until the authorities threatened to condemn the house.  Eventually, Jackie Kennedy Onassis and her sister Lee Radziwill paid for repairs, Big Edie died, after which Little Edie sold the house (to Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post and Sally Quinn), and lived another 25 years.  A documentary movie was made in the 1970s, which became a cult film, and in 2006 a musical opened in New York, and played for about a year to a good reviews and many Tony nominations.  The musical is now being performed at Washington’s Studio Theatre.

A strange topic for a musical, you might say.  Indeed it is, I thought, and I found it one of the worst theater nights of recent memory.  In fact, the reviews in the Washington press were not bad, which made it doubly disappointing.

I am not going to fault the actors, or the directors, or the musicians.  Perhaps they could have done more with the script, but I don’t think that anything can save the play, irrespective of what the reviewers think.

There are two acts.  In the first act, little Edie is engaged to Joe Kennedy (Jack’s eldest brother) who calls off the engagement before the big formal announcement gala because her mother tells Joe that his fiance has a past.  At this time, they are living in splendor, although father Beale is about to jump ship and run away to get a Mexican divorce.  In the second act, thirty years have passed, and mother and daughter are torturing each other in the ruins of their once elegant home.

The second act apparently follows the documentary film fairly well, while the first action is largely fiction.  There was apparently no engagement to Joe Kennedy, and the party didn’t happen.  Little Edie, it seems, has always had a wild imagination.

I knew that this show was not to be to my liking when I heard an early rhyme, with Big Edie telling the butler to “put the chafing dishes out on the ledge, as soon as the gardeners trim the hedge”, or something close to that.  And it went steadily so far down hill, that one of the big songs in the second act has Big Edie talking about the young man who comes to visit her and keep her company at times, and for whom she makes corn on the cob.  The song is called “Jerry Likes My Corn”.

Give me a break.

The Book.  The book is entitled The Blood of His Servants, written by Malcolm C. McPherson and published about 25 years ago.  It is a book about the holocaust and its aftermath, but the story it tells is different from most, and instructive.

The central character, Pieter Menten, was a somewhat black sheep of a wealthy Dutch family, who is sent to southern Poland during the late 1920s to establish a branch of the family business.  His task is mainly to buy raw materials.  He winds up in a small town, with a largely Jewish population, and is the most sophisticated person ever to spend considerable time there.  He is tall, suave, handsome, educated, and personable.  He becomes friendly with many Jewish families in the town; he acts as a mentor to some of the Jewish young people, inspiring them and broadening their horizons.

But conditions for Jews in Poland are growing rougher, and one young man from the village, Bibi Krumholz, with the ambition to be a journalist, gets the opportunity to go to school for one year in Palestine.  He never returns to Poland.

In 1939, of course, Poland is invaded by Germany.  In 1941, there is a massacre in the village, and virtually all of the Jews are shot, having first been required to dig their own graves.  A few escape, and after the war ends, one of the escapees contacts Krumholz in Palestine, tells him what happened to his family and the others in 1941, informing him that Pieter Menten, by then a member of the German SS, was the murderer.

After the war, Menten is tried and given a relatively light war crimes sentence for conspiring with the enemy.  A small crime, it seems. Nothing about murder is known to the prosecutors.  In the meantime, Menten, because of his family money, and because after the Jews were murdered under his direction, he stole their jewelry, art work and other valuables, became one of the wealthiest men in Holland, and a world class collector of art.

Krumholz, now an Israeli journalist, decides that Menten must be brought to justice and be tried for the murders, but needs to marshall the evidence, and get the prosecutors in the Netherlands to believe him and to get them to go beyond their fear of attacking someone so prominent (and litigious) and their desire to let sleeping dogs lie and to have the past to stay in the past.

It is the story of the pursuit of Krumholz, the actions of the various European governments, police departments and journalists, the development of witnesses and evidence, the years of frustration, and the eventual trials that led to a conviction when Menten was 80 years old and resulted in an 8 year prison sentence.

The book is fact, not fiction.  It casts a different light on post-Holocaust Europe.  How many people had collaborated (not surprising when you think about it).  How the nature of their collaboration varied from the banal to the most criminal.  How many collaborators never lost a beat in picking up their civilian lives and careers. How facts were had to prove, and denials easy to accept.  How the European countries were overwhelmed by the potential number of cases, and had to carefully pick and choose.  And how, with dogged determination, case by case, facts would come to light.

The Restaurant.  The Commissary is a new restaurant on P Street, down the block from the Studio, which is at 14th and P.  Or actually it is a remodeled and renamed restaurant, with a different atmosphere from its “Latin-fusion” predecessor, which had never achieved real popularity.  I liked the Commissary, and it was quite busy early on a Saturday night.  And the prices are modest – we had a drink, an appetizer, a main course, and (the equivalent of) one-half of a cup of coffee for less than $30 per person.  That is pretty hard to beat.

Random Thoughts Two Days After Thanksgiving

1.  Once again, you must ask, if it turns out that the perpetrators of the horrors in Mumbai are self-described religiously observant Moslems, what part of the Moslem community will come out publically to condemn it?

2.  Yesterday, Black Friday as they apparently call it (have they always called it that?  and why do they?), the weather was nice and I took a walk.  I found myself in Friendship Heights across the street from Mazza Gallerie, probably the most upscale shopping mall in the greater Washington area.  Outside, activists of PETA were gathering to stage a loud 3:00 p.m. protest.  An equal number of metropolitan police officers stood near the Wisconsin Avenue door to the mall.  Signs were hoisted; handbills distributed.  Nieman Marcus seemed to be the major target.   According to this morning’s Washington Post, an official of the shopping center, when asked what he thought of the protest, said something like:  “They seem to be anti-fur”.

When you enter the mall, you see one of the world’s tallest and most elegant Christmas trees; it is very tasteful, as you might expect.  On your right, on the wall, you see one of the most ludicrous things that you could find in a shopping mall.  It is a large oil painting, in an expensive frame, of an elegant lady of a certain age, sitting on a settee, exuding well-earned satisfaction.  This is Louise Mazza, identified as “our founder”.  It is a nice painting, and would look nice on someone’s living room wall.  In Mazza Gallerie, it looks ludicrous.

I didn’t make an overall survey of the post-Thanksgiving shopping, although there were clearly a lot of people mulling (malling?) around.  I only went into one store, the Saks Fifth Avenue Men’s Store, two floors of stylish men’s clothing.  On the first floor, the signs advertised designer clothes for “up to 70% off”; upstairs, it looked like most items were being sold at 50% off.  And, of course, this is on the biggest shopping day of the year, the start of the Christmas shopping season.  The store was very crowded.

My wardrobe is not in very good shape.  As I only go to work two or so days a week, I don’t have the need for the 5 day a week suit and tie collection that I used to have and, of course, things are more casual now anyway.  And just last summer, when I went through my closets, I saw that the majority of my suits, slacks and sport coats had been discovered by a moth, so I pitched them.

Maybe this is my chance to restock my closet, I thought.  Then I looked closer.  Much of what was on the racks was clearly not for me (or for anyone else I had ever met), but putting that aside, it was the prices that got to me.  OK, so suits were half off; what good was this when the original price was over $2000.  Why buy a sport jacket for $500; only so you won’t have to spend $1,000 when the sale is over.  Isn’t $125 too much to spend on a tie on sale.  And I guess it was the tattered looking designer sport shirt that was originally listed for $735 that finally did it for me.

I am going to stick to Joseph Banks, even if it means that the clothes that I wear look exactly like the clothes I wore forty years ago.  And, after all, there is some comfort in that, isn’t there?

They did have a Santa at Mazza Gallerie, but he was not an ordinary Santa, and he looked like the loneliest Santa in the world.  He was skinny, his beard was orange, not white, he looked very disinterested in his job, and his clothes might have been Designer Santa clothes, but they did not look right.  No kids came up to him.  He was identified as a “signing Santa”, equipped to speak to deaf children.  Which led me to wonder:  how does one first believe in Santa?  How would a deaf child learn about Santa?  At what age do you first learn sign language?  Does the average deaf child learn sign language before outliving his or her belief in Santa?  I have no answers to any of these questions.

3.  Native Americans.  Do you know that yesterday was the first Native American Heritage Day, proclaimed by act of Congress, and signed into law by President Bush?  The legislation became law less than six weeks ago.

I don’t remember seeing one thing about it, do you?  There certainly weren’t visible traces of it on the streets of our nation’s capital.

But I did celebrate it, as it turns out.  I went to an afternoon free movie at the National Gallery of Art, to see a 1961 movie called “Exiles”, about a group of young Indians who had left their reservations in various parts of the Southwest and migrated to Los Angeles.  It is a black and white movie, seen before only as a part of various cinema festivals in the 1960s, and recently restored.  I guess I would call it a sort-of documentary.  The makers of the movie (not Indians) decided to film the struggles of Native Americans in Los Angeles.  They found a group of young men, who were jobless and spent their nights drinking and fighting and gambling, and a smaller group of young women, who yearned for family life, but figured that men would be men.  They interviewed a great number of them and convinced some of them to act out their lives in this movie.  So, the actors were all non-actors, reproducing fictionalized versions of their lives as they described them during the interview process.  And what a sad life it was.  These people seemed to be clearly going nowhere, and in fact, coming from reservations at a time when the reservation populations were so demoralized, they did not seem to have a past, either.

I wonder what happened to them?  I know that one of the women is still alive; according to the representative of the National Museum of the American Indian who introduced the film, she had been present at a recent, small showing of the film in New York and was “very embarrassed” about her role in the film.  In fact, she portrayed a young pregnant wife, who only saw her husband when his buddies and he lolled around the house, and who had to go to the movies, and find her way back home, by herself.  Her situation might certainly have been cause for present embarrassment.

But did any of the other actors turn their lives into something other than drinking and regretting?  It would be interesting to know.

One of the things about this 1961 movie was to look at the Los Angeles that it portrayed.  A lot of cars on the road, of course, and all of them American.  Gas was 27 cents a gallon regular, and 29 premium.  A bottle of scotch or bourbon cost $3.39, a pound of mackeral was 21 cents, a bottle of ‘kosher’ wine was 59 cents.  A rail drink was 55 cents. The beer of choice was Lucky Lager, the cigarettes Lucky Strike. The wines were Gallo and Thunderbird.  You could get your hair cut for a quarter.

At any rate, I felt I had done my thing for Native American Heritage Day.  By the way, the legislation created the day only for 2008.  Next year, they have to start all over again.

4.  Hockey.  Well, of the 20 non-goalies on the Caps roster at the start of the season in October, 8 are now injured.  I believe that 6 minor league players from Hershey have been called up to take their place.  On Wednesday, we went to the game, and saw the Caps beat Atlanta 5-3, and last night they beat Montreal, 3-0.  They now have won 9 games at home this year, and have lost one overtime game.  They have not been defeated at home in regular play.  This quite an accomplishment, and you wonder what the rest of the season will be like.

Seen on the Street (1 cent)

On Seventh Street NW, a panhandler’s sign –

Please give money

I’m Hungry and I like steak.

I need housing and a vehicle

And I’m saving to go to Harvard.

I wish him luck

Thinking about Turkey on Thanksgiving (2 cents)

I am easily geographically influenced.  If I were to spend a weekend in Youngstown Ohio, for example, I would probably be convinced that it is an extremely important place and has played a key role in the history of the world.  But with regard to Turkey, I think I am on the right track.

Turkey as the meeting place of east and west.  Western Turkey as part of the Greek and Roman empires, as the heart of Christian-Moslem conflict, as the route of great movements of invaders from west and east.  Turkey, where Europe meets Asia (just cross the bridges east over the Bosporus; “Welcome to Asia”, the signs say, and when you leave the bridge, nothing looks any different.).

Touring western Turkey, in addition to visiting the most secular of Islamic countries, you are also visiting ancient Greece and  Rome, and the most powerful of Orthodox Christian empires.  Istanbul itself, Roman and then Byzantine until 1453, the heart of the Islamic Ottoman empire through World War I, and a secular republic (with its own tensions) from 1923 forward.

You sense a lot of tragedy in this history.  Periods of prosperity, of cosmopolitan greatness, of diversity.  Followed by periods of invasion and war, and utter desolation.  This was as true of the early twentieth century as it was of the fifteenth, or the seventh centuries.  The old, tolerant Ottoman empire backed the wrong horse, as they say, siding with Germany during World War I.  The empire was doomed to extinction, and in the post-war days of glory and optimism, western European powers decided that Turkey could be theirs.  The Greeks, the Italians, the French, the British, the Russians all had eyes on sphere of influence, or boundary changes.  Which western European country, for example, would not want to control the Dardenelles and the Bosporus, and gain a virtual grip on the Black Sea and be able to limit the new Soviet Union’s access to the Mediterranean?  And the Greeks, who had broken away from the Ottoman empire in the 19th century, now saw their chance to expand their own boundaries into those areas of western Turkey, along the Dardanelles and the Aegean coast, which were not only historic Greek empire lands, but which even in the 20th century had large numbers of ethnic Greek, and Greek speaking, residents.

Sometimes, you can learn more about an area from fiction, than you can from reading histories, especially, when the characters and their problems remain in your mind long after the book has ended, along with the political and geographic factors inherent in their dramas.

If you read one book about Turkey, and you should, that book is Louis de Bernieres’ Birds Without Wings, an extraordinary historical novel, centered on a small village in southwestern Turkey, not far from the vibrant, largely Greek port of Smyrna (now renamed Izmir), a village with Turks, and Greeks, and Armenians, all of whom start the twentieth century thinking of themselves as Ottomans, and for whom the war brings unbelievable, and totally unanticipated, changes.

The book is extraordinary on so many levels.  It is a picaresque novel of the best kind.  Adventure upon adventure, more fantasy than real in conception, but at the same time credible.  It is a descriptive novel; you know exactly how the village of Eskibahce looks.  If you stumbled upon it, you would recognize it immediately.  It is a historical novel, with the ins and outs of the political and military threats that led to the collapse of the Ottoman empire, to the murder of so many Armenian Ottomans, to the mass population transfers that affected all of the Greeks of Smyrna, for example, and all of the Turks living in the Greek islands which are visibile from the Turkish coast.

In Eskibahce, you meet the imam and the priest (and their families), you meet the potter and the ice-man, and the local nobleman, and the anchorite, and the pharmacist, and the residents of the local brothel, and the former prostitute who becomes the mistress of the local aga.  You meet beautiful Philothei, and her unfortunate fiance, Ibrahim.  You meet the two young boys, who become the closest of friends (one Christian/one Moslem), and follow them through war (including some painfully but beautifully detailed scenes at Gallipoli), and afterwards.

Throughout, you are also following the life story of Mustafa, soon to be Mustafa Kemal, and finally to be Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, along with the other Young Turks who created a republic out of the remains of an empire, and you follow the European political movements and military movements that tried to thwart their plans.  And you sense the results, good and bad, of their efforts.

I cannot recommend this book too highly.  I looked on Amazon to see what others thought of the book.  Overall, it gets 4.5 of 5 stars, which is about as good as you can get for a book that has a significant number of reviews.  To be more specific, there are 44 Amazon customer reviews.  33 of the 44 reviewers give it 5 stars.  And some of the others complain not because of the book, but because they believe that the book is too sympathetic to the Turks because it does not overtly accuse them of an Armenian genocide.  (I think the criticism is misplaced; the book is equally harsh on anyone, except perhaps the few Armenians who lived in Eskibahce and were marched from the town, robbed, raped and shot.  This mini-massacre was attributed to unbridled Ottoman troops, to be sure, and not to a government policy, but the results were the same.  And there is some discussion of the Armenians having allied themselves with the Christian Russians (helping the Russians procure arms, etc.), and therefore appearing to be a fifth column during the First World War.  The times were very complicated.  And totally out of anyone’s control.

So, it is Thanksgiving, and we in the United States have, putting aside a few years 150 years or so ago, had a peaceful history on our home grounds.  There is much to be thankful for, although none of us know what will happen tomorrow.  But had we been born in Turkey in 1900, think how different things would be.

The prose is beautiful.  The book flows and flows.  It is really a book you would like to read at one sitting, although I doubt that anyone can sit still and read 630 pages at one setting, no matter how much you might want to.

An Example of Internet Technology (2 cents)

Advertisers on the web can match their ads to their audiences.  No longer, for example, does an airline have to have its ads run on web pages touting ground transportation.  Through the use of key-words and who knows what else, airlines can make sure that their ads only run on web pages where the reader would be more likely to want to fly somewhere.

www.bloomberg.com appears to one of the sites that has advertisers whose ads are given specialized placement like this.  Today, for example, one of its lead stories is a very interesting one, about the inadequacy of the sewage system in Sadr City, Baghdad, and the consequent backflows of sewage that inundate that part of the city (and many other places in Iraq as well).  It is a story of lack of resources, disinterest in this type of problem, Iraqi politics, and everything else you can imagine.

At the bottom of the page, there are three ads.  They are all from Maryland companies that will clean out your drains and your septic tanks the very same day you call.

OK, the contrast is clear.  But I don’t think this is what either Bloomberg, or the plumbing companies, had in mind.

I didn’t know that……

Whenever you read a book, you come across words or phrases that you don’t really know.  Usually, you just keep going, knowing enough to understand the context.  But, wouldn’t it be a better learning experience if you jotted down or circled what you didn’t know so that you could actually learn something?

This is what I did on my recent trans-oceanic airflight when I read The Secret Servant by Daniel Silva.  This morning, my laptop on my lap, I looked up those words and phrases, with the hope that I might remember them the next time I run across them.

Here goes –

Mcyma” – an classical architectural feature.  Think of a pediment on top of a Greek temple.  The top is flat, and then there is a reverse-s shaped piece, with another flat piece supporting it.  It is that middle piece that is the cyma.

“Memunah”, which is used in the book to describe the most respected leader of the Mossad.  I am not sure this is the best use.  It appears that “Menumah” is the name of an angel, who was both powerful and a dreamer.   To say that the Mossad’s Menumah is powerful and a leader omits this important quality.

“the Bab al-Wad”, this is the gorge which you pass through heading west from Jerusalem toward Tel Aviv, as you leave the Judean hills for the coastal plain.

“shaheed”, an Islamic martyr, including a suicide bomber

“AIVD”, the Dutch Mossad

“Katsa”, a Mossad field chief who recruits and controls its agents

“Sayanim”, volunteers outside of Israel who help the Mossad”

“Brown cafes”, coffee houses in Amsterdam

“ayin”, trackers for the Mossad

“bodel”, couriers for the Mossad

“kufi”, a white (typically) Moslem skullcap

“allochtoon”, an alien immigrant to Holland

“takfir”, the act of declaring a Moslem to have left the faith (which can lead to the death of the individual)

“ghurba”, living in a land of strangers, or feeling that you are an outsider to the community

“Sayid Qutb”, a 20th century Egyptian founder of the Moslem Brotherhood

“ibn Tamiyya”, a 13th century Turkish Moslem fundamentalist

“Maglite”, a brand of small flashlights

“Balaclava”, a ski-mask type of head covering that would allow for eyes (or eyes and nose) to show

“SSI”, Egyptian secret police

“AMAN”, security branch of the Israeli Defense Forces

“Ketamine”, a drug used for anesthesia which can also be hallucinatory

“to debride” a wound, is to clean it of any foreign matter

“galabiya”, a robe worn by men

“niqab”, same as a burqa

“Torah Prison”, prison in Cairo

“djellaba”, a galabiya

an “ibn balad”, a conservative, old fashioned, unmodern person

“COBRA”, Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, the emergency center at 10 Downing Street

“Salafist”, fundamentalist Islam (like Wahhabi), which believes that it has all gone downhill since the days of the prophet

“Ushanka”, Russian hat with earflaps

“Tasbih”, repetitive Moslem prayer, and the bead string used to count the repititions

“Misbaha”, the tasbih beads

“Funen Island”, the large Danish island (connected to the mainland by bridges) where Odense is located.

“brogans”, wide toed boots

“Makarov”, Russian semi-automatic pistol

“plinth”, the base of a column

“adhan”, the Muslim call to prayer

The Death Penalty (2 cents)

I maintain that you cannot be pro-life, and support the death penalty.  So, for me, those who call themselves pro-life because they oppose abortion, but who support the death penalty, are hypocritical when they use that term to describe themselves.

This is important because, if pro-choice forces would make such a position public, it would bring to the fore the topic of the death penalty, which is too often ignored.

In the United States, only about 1/4 of the states have abolished capital punishment.  On the other hand, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and all of Europe (with, as I understand it, the exception of Belarus) have no death penalty.  Nor do many other countries.

Some Latin American countries still provide for capital punishment, as do some African countries, and all Islamic countries, I believe, with the exception of Turkey.

There are many reasons to oppose the death penalty, including moral, ethical, religious and philosophical reasons.  But there are two reasons to oppose the death penalty (at least in the United States) that should trump all of the others.  First, its implementation is discriminatory, with minorities and socially deprived persons more likely to be killed by the state.  Second, there are many cases, as we are seeing more and more, where the guilty verdict is simply wrong.

One of those cases is that of Kirk Bloodsworth, convicted of killing a young girl in a forest in Baltimore County in the 1980s.  In fact, Bloodsworth was convicted twice (although in his second conviction, his death sentence was changed to life imprisonment).  He was eventually exonorated, however, by his own research, and the hard work of some Baltimore lawyers, by dint of DNA evidence found on the body (ten years after the murder, because evidence had been preserved, and technology vastly improved).  Bloodsworth, no angel before his convictions, is apparently now a spokesperson for various criminal reform matters.

Bloodsworth is the name of a book written by lawyer/journalist Tim Junkin that tells his story.  I read it yesterday in one sitting.  It is that kind of a book, and the lesson that it has to tell should be learned by all of us.

“Honey Brown Eyes” by Stefanie Zadravec at Theater J

It makes no sense.  It is Bosnia in 1992.  There is a war going on.  The Serbs have invaded.  Christians are on one side; Muslims on the other.  Looking at the Bosnians, you can’t tell who is Christian or who is Muslim.  They look the same.  The talk the same.  They used to be friends.

The Serbs are kicking the Muslims out of Vishnegrad.  They are clearing apartment blocks and torching them.   It is unstated, but it appears that the men are directed one way (most likely to their death) and the women (including young girls) another way, where they are to sexually abused and tortured.  Alma’s apartment is entered by Dragon.  His job is to get her and her daughter out and into a van.  Alma says she has no daughter; Dragon does not believe her.  And that is when the fun starts.

But it turns out that, although not recognizing each other at first, Dragon and Alma are not strangers.  Dragon is a musician; so is Alma’s brother Denis, and they used to be in the same band.  Alma came often to hear them play; Dragon had a crush on her.  Alma is Moslem; Dragon is Christian.

Their relationship this one day in Vishengrad is uncomfortable, and complicated, and very tragic.

At the same time, Denis has deserted from the Moslem resistance; his infant son has been killed and his wife has hanged herself.  He takes refuge in an apartment in Sarajevo in the middle of a war zone.  The apartment belongs to an older woman, Jovanka, a Christian whose daughter and grandson have left her to die as they walk to Croatia, hopefully to catch a boat to Italy.  Denis has no idea what his sister is going through at this very instance, nor that his sister’s tormentor is his old band mate, Dragon.

You don’t learn much about the politics behind this war.  You just know that it shouldn’t be this way, but it is.

The play is very well written.  Its message comes across strongly.  But the stars of the evening are the actors – Alexander Strain as Dragon, Maia DeSanti as Alma, Joel Ruben Ganz as Denis and Barbara Rappaport as Jovanka.

This is a premiere performance of this new play.  My guess is that it has a good future in front of it.

Marco Polo, Alan Paton and Daniel Silva

These three authors have little in common, as you know, except for one important thing – they have written the last three books I have read.

I read Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country and Daniel Silva’s The Secret Servant on our trip to Turkey, and, inspired by the trip, read The Travels of Marco Polo upon our return.

Let me work backwards:

I had read Cry the Beloved Country, written in 1944, when I was in high school or college.  I thought it extraordinary.  As you may be aware, Cry the Beloved Country deals with South Africa, white and black.  Its hero (and hero is the right word) is an aging black minister living in a rural valley hard hit by drought and poverty.  His brother, his sister and his son have disappeared in Johannesburg, where more and more blacks are going to try to earn a living.  They have very different experiences.  His sister becomes a prostitute, his son (who in another life would also be a hero) gets involved with the wrong crowd and murders (out of fear) a white civil rights worker (whose wealthy father lives not to far from our hero, the minister), and his brother becomes a leading black politician.  It is a beautiful book, a moral book, and paints a picture of a sad, sad society.  And this was South Africa in 1944, before the formal adoption of apartheid, when segregation was economic more than anything else, and when elements of the black population still harbored some hope.  The book, written in a simple but evocative style, was as good in 2008, as it was 40+ years ago.

Then, The Secret Servant.  I was so high on Daniel Silva’s The Unlikely Spy that I was really looking forward to The Secret Servant on the 10 hour flight from Istanbul.  Well, I was over optimistic.  This book, dealing with Israeli spies and Islamist cells, and flitting across Europe and the Middle East, was so-so, and oh-so forgettable.  If you asked me to relate the plot to you today, I would have a hard time.  I remember there was an Israeli agent who wanted to retire, but who wound up looking for the kidnapped daughter of the American ambassador to Britain, etc., etc., etc.

Then, there’s Marco Polo.  What a strange book.  You probably know the basic story.  Polo, son and nephew of Venetian traders wound up spending almost thirty years in lands controlled by Kublai Khan, lands where few Europeans (and in some cases no Europeans) had previously traveled.  Winding up in prison in Genoa (we don’t know why) years later, he penned his travels (with the help of a romance writer-friend).  The resulting book became a big hit (over 700 years ago!!!) and has been in print ever since.  Like other manuscripts of this age, it has gone through multiple translations and editions, and it is difficult to determine what part of it is original to Polo, what was added by his writer-friend, and what was added later.

Putting this aside, two things are striking.  First, the book is enormously accurate with regard to the geography and politics of his travels, which start in Constantinople, and wend through today’s Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China, Japan and Russia.  Secondly, the book is less accurate with regard to some of the phantasmagoric descriptions of the people, the societies, and in some cases the animal and plant life.  In addition, there is much hyperbole, when Polo speaks of ports with tens of thousands of ships, one after another.

In some ways, things don’t change.  The relationship between Moslems and Christians, for instance.  Or from the description of carpet making and silk weaving in Turkey.  Or that Turkey is filled with Turks, Greeks and Armenians, each with their own talents and characteristics.

Do I recommend Cry the Beloved Country?  Absolutely.

Do I recommend The Travels of Marco Polo?  Absolutely.

Do I recommend The Secret Servant?  Nope.

Francisco Goya (2 cents)

On most Monday nights, you can see a European (normally German) movie, not normally shown in this country, at the Goethe Institute in Washington.  The cost is $4.  It’s a great bargain.

This fall, the emphasis seems to be on biopics.  Last night, the movie was Goya, a 1971 film from East Germany, directed by Konrad Wolf, and starring Lithuanian actor Donatas Banionis.  The films was based on a novel by Lion Feuchtwangler, German-Jewish author, published in 1951.  It told the story of Goya from his rise to the favorite court painter of the Spanish royal family, to his conversion from royal portrait artist to the radical portrayer of the victims of the Napoleanic War and the Catholic Inquisition.  While some of the events may not be totally factual (such as the relationship between the Duchess of Alba and Goya’s “Naked Maja” and “Clothed Maja”), and while any East German movie can be seen as containing a degree of propoganda (anti-royalty; anti-church), the movie keeps your attention throughout its 2+ hours.

I assume that that the film was made in Spain (although the ability of a Communist German film company to work in fascist Franco Spain is questionable, I guess), and the scenery (rural, small town, Escorial) is magnificent.  One of the most interesting aspects of the film, however, is in the casting.  If you look at a self-portrait by Goya and then look at Banionis, you see extraordinary resemblence.  Similarly, one of the most famouns of Goya’s royal oil paintings is the painting of the King Carlos IV of Spain and his family, including his wife Maria Louisa, daughter of the Duke of Parma and referred to by the proud Duchess of Alba as “the Italian”.  It is a distinctive portrait in that it did not “airbrush” the subjects, and brought a form of artistic realism to royal portraitry.  There are twelve family members in the painting, and the actors looked like each of them.  Particularly fascinating was the resemblence of the woman who portrayed Queen Maria Louisa to the woman painted by Goya.  And, of course, the Duchess of Alba did not have to look like the Naked Maja, as Goya presumably hid the identity of whomever his model was.

This is a well reputed movie, not shown in this country until recently.