When Private Detectives, Shamuses, Gumshoes, Key-Hole Peepers Stepped Up In Class-“The New P.I.” Circa 1950s-Ross MacDonald’s “The Ivory Grin” (1952)-A Book Review

When Private Detectives, Shamuses, Gumshoes, Key-Hole Peepers Stepped Up In Class-“The New P.I.” Circa 1950s-Ross MacDonald’s “The Ivory Grin” (1952)-A Book Review

Book Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

The Ivory Grin, by Ross MacDonald, 1952

Well the battle lines are finally drawn, the dirty underbelly of this cutthroat business can see the light of day. Sam Lowell, who used to be the official senior film critic in the days when Allan Jackson, recently returned as a contributing editor or some such make-shift title pressed upon Greg Green by the Editorial Board conveniently headed by on Sam Lowell, ran the show, was the site manager which meant that he doled out the assignments to friend and foe alike, has laid down the gauntlet or whatever you call it when you are challenged to a no holds barred unto death duel. It seems Sam, as my good friend and mentor Seth Garth, warned me would happen, has finally blown his gasket, has in his words “had enough.” Had enough of being challenged on his “cred,” his term, on the issue of his expertise in the film noir world. Has taken umbrage, my term, on my continual reference to his so-called definitive tome on the genre The Life And Times Of Film Noir:1940-1960 as so much eyewash, so “retro” and out of date and geared to the hoary Dashiell Hammett- Raymond Chandler-Phillip Larkin trio who allegedly took the, Sam’s expression, “parlor pink amateur detective” and made him, and it was solely hims in that world of blood and guts hard-nosed avenging angels with angles seeking rough-edged justice in this wicked old world.

Yawn. Yawn to threadbare theory and yawn, double yawn to a nine hundred, maybe I had better write the number in numerical form so you too can have your eyes boggled 900, paged volume which by my estimation could have been done in say three hundred pages. The use of the word estimation no accident since try as I might I lost interest about the time I got to 1953 when he dribbled on and on about one Mike Hammer and how despite his ardent anti-communism and bull in a china shop manner was a hard-boiled lady’s man of a detective in the mold of  Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, Hammett’s Sam Spade (notably absent was his Nick and Nora Charles except by indirection), and Larkin’s Jack Logan.

A reviewer, a conscientious reviewer, can only be expected to take so much, take a volume loaded with plenty of book and film reviews allegedly written by Mr. Lowell in his salad days which formed the bulk of the work so he essentially double-dipped getting paid, I hear, by the word from Jackson and getting whatever royalties from the pricey in those days twenty-five dollars from the book publisher Wainwright Press. (I would be remiss, would be taken to task, and continually chuckle and continue to write every chance I get as well if I didn’t mention Seth Garth’s reaction when I asked him if he had read all 900 plus pages of Sam’s volume. Seth, who has known Sam since Hector was a pup, Seth’s expression, gave me his patented Seth smirk and said are you kidding nobody, not even Sam could read that thing, a real snorer was the way he put. Seth also insinuated what is now common knowledge around here on the question of authorship of his reviews that Sam surely had not written the whole thing himself given his skirt-chasing drunken revels in those days and that Seth had written half or at least gave lots of input into the project.]

I have made it clear for a while now, at least since I got my own by-line, thanks Seth, after surviving about six different onslaughts from Sam on noir and young Will Bradley on Marvel Comic so-called heroes, that I intend to be the diva for the 21^st film noir world. Sam balked at that idea when I first presented it in print-and Seth said go for it. What has Sam really in a lather is that after he finished his tome he never updated the damn thing so that all the neo-noir, all the films that came after those based on his work are sealed with seven seals to him. Like any good reviewer I saw my spot, my place in the vacant landscape and I am going to make my mark. I have decided to deal with an expose of Sam’s omissions and neglect (like as I mentioned given short shrift to Nick and Nora Charles despite almost two hundred pages on Hammett’s Spade and fifty alone on his early nameless Continental Op in Red Harvest) by starting with a classic writer, film adapter, who Sam gave short shrift to since his career spanned well past the 1960s benchmark, Ross MacDonald (Ken Millar real name). Sam barely mentions him, barely mentions his central private detective Lew Archer although Lew had all of the balls of Marlowe and Spade and about twenty times more psychological insight in what drove up against the wall “perps” over the edge.       

Properly speaking Lew Archer, at least in this first book, The Ivory Grin, that I picked at random out of the twenty-plus books in the Archer series, despite the his short height, or at least that is what is known about his physical stature moves away from the really bull by the horns, knock heads and let God separate out the guilty from the innocent at his leisure, skirt-chasing of Spade-Marlowe-Logan trio much touted by Sam as the epitome of the post-parlor pink detective world. Those guys except when they actually wrap up a case, beating the public coppers with a gong while they are still scratching their heads, to take down some cruddy criminals best gotten off the streets leave me cold, could have better gone back to key-hole peeping before say Chandler, for example, let them handle cold cases, got them out of the threadbare offices waiting around sucking up low-rent whiskey from the bottom desk drawer. Archer used his wits and deductive powers to bring a little rough justice to the world, what Seth, citing a guy from his youth named the Scribe, called this wicked old world.

I am sure, well maybe not sure but I hope, when Sam, or whoever he has read other’s reviews and write his reviews these days finally realizes that his balloon has been burst he will drag up some escapade of Marlowe’s saving an old dowager with wild daughters some grief or Spade busting up a stuff of dreams con or Logan outwitting the dragon king by stealth to counter my contentions about Mr. Archer. Let him do his best. Meanwhile Lew, short or tall, chain-smoker or dope head, drunk or sober will by guile and indirection solves his mysteries without bang-bang and sucker punches every two pages. Here is how he figured out what happened to Charles Singleton when he went slumming among the plebes and got nothing but that ivory grin in the end for his troubles.

Yes, that is the Charles Singleton of the very, very Singleton family that came over with John and Priscilla on the merry Mayflower who made a name for himself in World War II as a pilot, a lady’s man in full uniform and a guy who after the war knew how to turn a dollar-if he had to. But see Charles, and maybe it was that too much inter-breeding among too close cousins which destroyed many old-line families, had a kinky side, liked to go down in the mud with whores, or as the term was used then maybe now too loose women of no known address. As long as they were Helen of Troy beautiful and willing to succumb to his kinky side, to the wild side. That is what tripped him up in the end, what caused Lew to lose some sleep because Charles picked up some tramp, some round-heeled beauty with no vocabulary but who gave good head (unspoken but assumed in 1950s dime store detective literature) in some gin mill out in California when he was stationed in the Air Force and winning fistfuls of medals.

This woman, let’s give her a name beyond her “profession,” Alicia was nothing but a mantrap, was nowhere but from hunger grabbing onto whatever safe harbor she could grab onto. Problem, very big problem, whatever her feelings for Charles and all was that she had been a second level gangster’s moll back in the Midwest, a nice nest but dangerous especially if somebody else takes something from a gangster-then bang-bang and no questions asked. Oh, another little problem she was married out West, out in the California valley to a Walter Mitty-type doctor who was running a low-rent medical practice which was not giving dear Alicia the kind of life she had expected. The long and short of it was Alicia had three guys on her string.

That would be the undoing of one Charles Singleton, he of mansions and Mayflowers, once her gangster man who was getting a bit screwy came West and found out she was shacking up with a Mayfair swell. Bang-bang poor Charles. That was where Lew came in first as a replacement for a corrupt private detective looking for the main chance by Charles’ blue-haired mother and subsequently by one of those too closely related female cousins who was in love with her flyer boy. Mission: find out where the hell Charles had disappeared to. To pose the question was to give the answer. Along the way a young black woman who was trying to help Alicia got murdered as did that self-serving private eye. In all three murders and a few twists and turns.

Here is where human nature as it has evolved thus far gets a big workout.  Everybody and their sister were trying to cover up the fact that our gangster with a screw loose had shot and killed Charles. The helpful black woman, the gangster’s ill-disposed sister, Alicia who in desperation brought the seemingly mortally wounded Charles to hubby doctor’s clinic to see if he could survive.  He didn’t but not due to that gangster fusillade. Old Walter Mitty doc loved his Alicia, wanted to protect her in his own way. Yeah, Doc blew his Hippocratic Oath and did bleeding from all pores Charles in. Moreover, to cover his tracks he dissected the guy and left him a skeleton in a closet where nobody but Lew could figure out what happened. Nice work Lew and the public coppers are still scratching their heads having been out-classed by a new breed of private eye.                               

How Little We Know- With The Film Adaptation Of Ernest Hemingway’s “To Have And Have Not” In Mind

How Little We Know- With The Film Adaptation Of Ernest Hemingway’s “To Have And Have Not” In Mind

By Henri “Frenchie” Gerard As Told To Jasper Jackson

[Henri “Frenchie” Gerard had owned the well-known pre-World War II Gerard’s Café in Fort-de-France, Martinique, the French colony in the Caribbean, first under the Third Republic and then when France felt to the Germans in 1940 to collaborationist Vichy-control. Frenchie ran the place all through the Occupation at some cost to himself as a local Resistance leader and after the war until 1960 when he retired to his native Nantes in France. That same year he had found out through some old Resistance contacts that his old American friend Captain Harry Morgan, a fishing boat owner whom he had given work to, had had more than his fair share of drinks with in the old times, had passed away in New York City after a long bout with cancer. According to his obituary Harry left a wife, Marie, nee Browning, and three children, all teenagers.          

I had heard through a different source that Captain Morgan had although an American been active in the French Resistance in Martinique and eventually other places in the Caribbean. I had also heard that Monsieur Gerard was the last link to knowledge about Captain Morgan’s exploits and more importantly about how Harry and Marie Browning known affectionately as “Slim” in those days met and got out of Fort-de-France by the skin of their teeth. I contacted Gerard in Nantes about twenty years ago and he agreed to tell me what he knew about the affair, about the “skin of their teeth” and about anything else he might know around that initial meeting since “Slim” had gone on to be an editor of a high-end fashion magazine after she married Harry. Harry had become an agent-ambassador for Cunard out of New York. Below is in his own words the way Frenchie described the meeting and match-up between Harry and Slim. He did stipulate that I was only to use most of the information he provided after Slim passed on. Although I did produce a short sketch at the time using the authorized information I left most of the material as it was in note form and stuffed in a back file cabinet drawer. Slim died a few months ago and so here for the first time after a couple of months of unscrambling those long ago yellow note pad notes is Frenchie’s long ago take on that torrid war-time romance which seemed the stuff of legends. This piece is dedicated to Frenchie who passed away in 2007. Jasper Jackson]

“I had seen Marie first, had seen her as she came off the plane from I think that day Cuba, don’t quote me on stuff before the match-up between Harry and Slim because it is all vague and doesn’t add or subtract from the story except that she was an American girl working her way across the waters by herself, by herself mostly except when she wanted company from her dagger-eyed look. Lovely, got my juices flowing, tall and thin making me think at first she was French, maybe from my hometown of Nantes where they are built like that almost exclusively since she fit that bill. Had big flashing eyes, if she was a man I would say bedroom eyes, yes, bedroom eyes no question and those soft lustrous lips, ruby red. Wore her long hair over one eye like was the fashioned then, not like Veronica Lake, no, more like Lauren Bacall maybe in one of her early movies.     

“She had been up against it lately though, had had some kind of difficulties because with her almost too good looks it was strange that she came off the plane with a sort of threadbare tailored suit a little out of fashion that year and a small bag which told me she was on, how you Americans say her ‘uppers.’  [The irony later would be that she was a much sought after fashion editor for a number of high style New York publications and became known for her great sense of where the new look would come from. I’ll bet any photographs from those Martinique days have gone since seen the incinerator-JJ]

“By the way that “Slim” moniker for Marie and she called him “Steve” although everybody knew it was Harry thing was some intimate bed-time talk thing that I don’t know how it started since I wasn’t there when they messed up the silky sheets that first time. She was sure slim, no question about that, model slim so she might have been working that racket at some point, maybe private showings if you know what I mean. So maybe that is where Harry got his pet name for her from. I was also an agent for Air Martinique then so I grabbed her bag and offered to put her up at my hotel where most of the tourists off the flight stayed and I gave the airline a kickback for the business in the days before they started having package tours. She accepted without a murmur but not without an unspoken gratitude. My idea was that after she had settled in and I had bought her few drinks I could coax her into helping me out as an exotic flower bar girl for the American tourists who were flooding Fort-de-France looking for women, kicks, dope, gambling, and some fine deep sea fishing. I had her all lined up on that job so I had not been wrong that she had been on her uppers or that she had been familiar with the trade. Along the way I had my own ideas about jumping under the satin sheets with her although I was married at the time. Or maybe because I was married. Yeah, she was that kind of looker, that kind of dame who guys would take great risks for, would go to the mat for if things went like that.       

    

“Then Harry entered the scene and my day dreams were over. He had been out on a fishing expedient with a client named Johnson, one of those Americans looking for dope and some deep sea fishing, and some kind of deep sea fishing of another kind if you get my drift. This Johnson guy had had a shot at grabbing a big swordfish according to Harry but all he did was lose Harry’s fishing tackle in the bargain. So Harry wasn’t in a good mood when I asked him to go to his room in order for me to inquire about using his boat for some Resistance work that was coming up-bringing in some agents to get the great freedom-fighter Renoir off of Devil’s Island where he was being held by the Vichy bastards. He turned me down cold. Wouldn’t touch the thing then, didn’t give a damn who was fighting for or against who but wanted to keep clear of any controversy, keep his boat, his livelihood for one thing. So whatever he did for us later which was a lot didn’t get a leg up until Marie came in view.

“I had known Harry ever since he had come to Martinique to get away from some nasty business in Key West where he was from, or said he was from, and I let that ride. Harry had definitely been around the block, knew the score but I was always mystified about why the dames went for him, especially the French girls that hung around my bar. Harry must have been about forty, maybe forty-five then and his face and slumped shoulders showed the wear and tear. The best you say for him was that he was a man, a straight up with rugged looks and always would be a twice a day shave guy. Didn’t dress particularly well then [he would later under Marie’s influence and insistence -JJ] but he lacked for female company before Marie. Maybe it was like one of your American writers mentioned to me one time when I met him in Nantes after I came back to France that some women, some young women who have been buffeted about, maybe had no father-figure around the house go for older guys for that reason. But ask Freud or one of his kind about that.

“Here is how they met. While we, Harry and I, were talking about doing that Resistance job a rap came on the door and when Harry opened up the door there was Marie all dolled up and showered asking if anybody had a match. Harry flipped her his box of matches. Then she asked if anybody had a cigarette and said it in such a come hither way in Harry’s direction that I knew I was sunk. Harry threw her his pack of Luckies (unfiltered in those days) which I got for him on the black market since American cigarettes were hard to come by after the Vichy thugs took over the black market trade. She left and after Harry asked me who the hell she was and where did she come from. I left the room knowing that I was out of luck making a play for Slim. The only benefit I got from that “introduction” was that she did do some very good work for a few days as a bar girl and I got many dollars as my cut of her action. I swear I could have been a millionaire if she had stayed on the island.

“As a cover against the snooping Vichy cops who only looked for dough every chance they got and did not like bar girls since even they had to pay the freight for the pleasure of the company I also had her singing at night with Cricket my junkie piano player whose habit was getting him off-track, getting so he could hardly remember the songs. I found out in passing through the lounge area one afternoon while she and Cricket were singing that she could sing and look good doing it so I gave her that job and a cut of the proceeds. Funny about memories. That Cricket was a story in himself since he was on the run from some dope-dealers in the States and laying low in cheap dope Martinique for a while. He had written that song that would be a hit after the war when all the G.I.s headed back to America, How Little We Know. By then I think Cricket was probably six feet under the ground but I always laughed when I thought about that song title and those gullible G.I.s believing their sweeties had been true blue when they were fighting the Nazi scum. Yeah, how little they knew. 

“But enough of Cricket. Slim went to work after that meeting with Harry. Like I said she was good, grabbed eight hundred bucks off of that stupid fisherman Johnson, and gave me my four hundred without a murmur. Harry sitting at the bar later saw her in action that first night as she worked the room and was sore from what he told me the next day. Was very sore when that night Marie had after Johnson grabbed some Vichy naval officer for half the liquor on the island. Called her a tramp, a young pretty smart tramp but a tramp nevertheless. Here’s how you can never figure dames though see she was, having seen him for about two minutes asking for that match and cigarette foreplay, trying to make him jealous. Had spotted him looking her way just as she had expected. And he was only trying to pretend to be sore. That interchange if you can understand this psychology solidified their relationship. That night without as much as a by your leave they snuck under Harry’s sheets (or was it Slim’s, yes, it must have been Slim’s because I had left her a set of silk sheets for her bed when I had my own ideas about what I would do with her.)               

     

“Of course that budding affair with Marie business played directly into Harry coming over to work with us. That Vichy naval officer Marie took for a ride bitched to Renard, a bastard who was an official in the Third Republic colonial administration on the island and the day Vichy took over without missing a beat went to work for them as their hatchet man. He had me, Harry and Slim down at police headquarters for a few hours. Took my money, my four hundred from the Johnson con, Slim’s cut and for good measure Harry’s who had nothing to do with it dough too. That pissed Harry off. Also helped me to rope in Harry to the deal for his boat since he had no other dough.     

“That job should have been a piece of cake. Meet the agents who were going to get Renoir off of Devil’s Island in a quiet spot about twenty miles from Fort-de-France, bring them to town and then transfer them to other agents who would work out the details of the tough Devil’s Island caper. Of course in those days you took whoever was not a secret Vichy agent, anybody who had the guts to stick their necks out for the glory of France but it turned out the guys, or rather the guy and his fucking wife, the Dubois, what was he thinking, that they recruited for the job had feet of clay, had too much trouble worrying about his fretful wife. So Harry had run into a Vichy patrol out in the harbor. That patrol shot up Harry’s boat, shot up this Dubois guy and made things tough for all of us. Harry, no doctor, had to patch up the guy while holding off his wife from jumping on his bones. And holding Slim back from scratching Madame’s eyes out.  

“Made Harry something like persona non grata with Vichy, with Renard too once he figured the previously “don’t give a damn” had part in the caper. Renard , the bastard, figured out a way to prove that Harry was involved in the Dubois caper. Harry had this old rummy, Eddie, whom must have been his father or something the way he protected him. Renard had picked Eddie up and was holding him in the drunk tank until he crumbled and told what Harry’s role in the caper had been. Harry flipped out at this once Renard told him about where the missing Eddie was. With Slim’s aid he took on Renard and a couple of his henchmen, shot one dead as a doornail and made Renard after pistol-whipping him order Eddie back to my hotel. That is when Harry handed over Renard to me and decided that since Martinique was too hot for him and Slim, and Eddie that he would take Dubois and his wife to Devil’s’ Island to get Renoir out. I’ll never forget, have never forgotten how Slim shimmied her way out the door with Harry and Eddie carrying their bags behind them after Slim said good-bye to Cricket (and got little stash of opium for the road).     

“You know that Harry did get Dubois to Devil’s Island and that he eventually got Renoir to Europe to work with Victor Lazlo coordinating the Resistance when it counted. Did lots of other jobs too with the resourceful Slim in tow before heading to New York after the war. 

“Here’s something Harry told me before he and Slim left town. That first night they hit the sheets Slim, with a few drinks in her, was being very sexually provocative, had mentioned that all Harry had to do to keep her in line was whistle. Then she said in an unmistakably salacious way that “he knew how to whistle, didn’t he. Just put lips together and blow.” Harry assumed that she was using a sexual double entendre. He found out that night just what she meant as she took him around the world. Damn, that lucky son of a bitch Harry.      

He’s Been A Bad Boy, He’s Been A Bad Boy-Again-The Very Loosely Film Adaptation Of Homer’s “The Iliad” Bad Boy Brad Pitt “Troy”(2004)-A Review

He’s Been A Bad Boy, He’s Been A Bad Boy-Again-The Very Loosely Film Adaptation Of Homer’s “The Iliad” Bad Boy Brad Pitt “Troy”(2004)-A Review

DVD Review

By Alden Riley

Troy, Brad Pitts

That dude, that max daddy poet who wrote in weird meter indeed, some hex hexameter thing only poets and English Lit majors would understand Homer (no known last name or place of residence although assuredly not homeless in the modern sense) knew how to tell a story, kept the crowds humming, kept the boys and girls fixated to see what they could learn about allure and love trampling power, glory and a side order of hubris which is after all a Greek word. Yes, that daddy, oops, max daddy poet whose works were only slightly shorter than the late Professor Alan Ginsberg, he of Howl angel hipsters and homoerotic fantasies got the whole thing about the ten major themes in Western literature right-especially the boy meets girl idea, the hubris of the gods (God in latter day mono speak) defining some ill-thought out fate for mere mortals, the mortals taking their own bad ass  fates with grains of salt, the hubris and rage, fury maybe a better word and the seemingly never-ending wars for power, glory, etc. maybe love in the mix too if Helen was as beautiful as the man said, the tormented life of the hero-heroine and the like. Good job brother, good job indeed. How old Homer’s idea translate to the big 21^st century screen is another question as the Bad Boy Brad Pitt-led cast of the film adaptation of Homer’s epic Troy bring to a crude point what our max daddy was trying to say on his way to numero uno in the Western literary canon, the now doomed old white men canon which has been given short shrift of late. (For no known academic reason except style and politics because after all you could in my humble opinion may world literature a “big tent” including all the unjustly forgottens-but later on that since we are into the roots today).

Here’s the play as old time film reviewer Sam Lowell a man locked in his own literary battles with Sarah Lemoyne, a young up and coming reviewer, was fond of saying in his salad days. Needless to say, love drove things batty back then, back three thousand years ago just like today if you can believe the news, fake, alternative, truthful or otherwise and take a look at what is going on around you. Paris, excuse me if I don’t run the litany of other aliases he went under especially after he went down to infamous and unmanly defeat at the hands of his girlfriend’s husband, Menelaus, king hell king, another Sam Lowell expression, of virtuous and manly Sparta who was full of that rage, maybe fury is a better word, and swore to kill the bastard who took his woman away without so much as a by your leave had eyes for one Helen. Helen, hellion, formerly of Sparta and now address unknown but suspected to be in a place called Illium and hence the Illiad but who in those days when men, women, gods (God in that damn mono-speak) worked like seven dervishes to keep the place safe from infidels, greedy kings and warlords, con men and priests under the name Troy, not Troy, New York which was only a Dutch sailor’s wonder dream back then if anybody was living in Dutch land.

The presiding dignity of the fortress unbreachable King Priam, played in the film, remember to follow the bouncing ball because we are reviewing a film along the way, by the oldest brother of Peter O’Toole or maybe father because he had lost a step or seven since he played Lawrence of Arabia in another war is hell film and Henry some number in The Lion In Winter going mano a mano with Eleanor of Aquitaine speaking of salad days. Priam father to ninety-eight pound weakling Paris who was totally outmatched by old man Menelaus and his mega-death brother and heir apparent Hector who as older brothers often have to do finished off Menelaus just in a nick of time.  So Hector he-man and Paris light on his feet match up in the sibling contest to bring some excitement to Illium town.  

Funny this older brother had it right when he heard Paris had bewitched Helen, that beauty so they say who would go on to launch a thousand ships-and not in a good and jovial way like at a ship’s christening. War ships and plenty manned by rough-hewn sailors who took their love anyway they could get it under the whip just like Carl Solomon of hipster dreams and madness. This kidnapping, some say the whole thing was an early high-end wife-swapping but those harpies have malicious tongues, of Helen was bad news, was predicted by Mr. Hector, also no known last name or abode, except that silly Illium, of bringing down everlasting hell and damnation on the town, would make guys, gods, like Apollo go crazy with ire, maybe fury is a better word. Proved right but at what cost when senile and nerve-deadened Priam indulged his freaking younger son and who knows maybe had twilight designs on her himself if she really was that beautiful. (The gal who played her Diane Kruger no question an ice queen beauty was built for sweaty nights and silky sheets but who would soon wear on a man’s nerves with her damn harping about that bloody lost to her ex-husband now mercifully dead by the hand of Hector mentioned already).

War, war to the death, like half of the Western literary canon that would follow this path-breaking epic was all that could resolve this deadly dispute. Not surprising the leader of the war party in Greek was Menelaus’ older brother Agamemnon, king of flea-bitten Mycenae and a guy who lived to breath everlasting hell and damnation on anything that breathed over in Illium town-wanted power glory and a few good wenches, slaves to keep his bed warm. Naturally this is only the barest outline of what got the conflict going and be assured that no way could Hollywood dole out enough dough to do the whole Trojan War, Trojan remember the other name for residents of wacky Illium. The cost for the billion extras alone would break Universal or Paramount. The war lasted years as one might expect of guys who fought with axes, spears, and arrows so this film will only detail the last gripping episodes where Troy is burned to the ground by the greedy Greek governors led by brother-less child Agamemnon and that cast of thousands who roiled the Aegean finding love wherever they could-savage rapine if the occasion called for it and wenches and shipboard romances if they hit an lively port.   

While the boy meets girl story drives the film, has to since after all Helen’s face launched that one thousand ships and the guys who played the Greek kings except the pretty boy kind of Ithaca who seemed to have some sway over him, the real focus is on the warrior class, on guys like one Achilles, later in history as predicted by myopic mother to be known as painful Achilles heel but then a stone-cold killer, a warrior to put every Marvel Comic cinematic character in the shade, even Captain America if you can believe that. This Achilles is ranked number one in the world, the known world which was basically the Greek city-states, Troy, Dutch lands if inhabited by static dreamers and maybe bloody England since many of the actors had distinctive British accents and had that sun never sets on the Empire demeanor. The problem with being Achilles, warrior for hire to the highest bidder or if he like the taked, remember played by modern day bad boy, and bad boy again Brad Pitt, is some ass is always looking to knock you down, take you down a peg. Or have some hireling do the dirty work. No question Achilles, another guy with no known last name or address except the battlefields of whoever has the best deal, had a long run at number one stone cold killer maybe the legendary Greek psycho but he also had his sensitive side, that brooding philosophy king in waiting Plato was always dogging us mere mortals with. Worried maybe about his strange obsession with bedding vestal virgins especially those who served one Apollo, a god among gods (God in mono-speak), also with no known last name or place of residence. Emphatically not worried about his fate, knowing what dear mother had spun her crystal ball around, knowing too a soldier’s destiny but ready to throw the dice that glory would come with living fast, dying young and making a good ashen-strewn corpse. And we still speak his name, speak of the warrior king if not of his vestal virgin with the unpronounceable first name, also with no last name although her former residence was One Temple Of Apollo Place. Yeah, that max daddy Homer sure knew how to tell a story-even in weird meter.              

Speak To Me Of Mendocino-With The McGarrigle Sisters Song On The Same Theme In Mind

Speak To Me Of Mendocino-With The McGarrigle Sisters Song On The Same Theme In Mind

By Zack James

Sid Lester had often wondered whether Lena, Lena of the Caffe Lena, the small coffeehouse that weaned many folksingers in the days when such activity was on deck, in the time of the now fabled early 1960s folk minute, now too but she the grey eminence had long gone to the shades and so that is not her bother had ever gotten to the Mendocino of her dreams and the song that the McGarrigle Sisters had reportedly written for her when she dreamed the dream of West Coast dreams. This was no mere academic question since Sid was asking it not only to himself but to his lovely companion, Mona Lord, who was accompanying him just that moment on the Pacific Coast Highway about fifty miles from that very spot, from the Mendocino of his dreams if not hers (fifty miles but probably about three hours given the hairpin turns that he increasingly hated to take along some very treacherous stretches of that beautiful view highway having almost gone down an un-guard-railed embankment to the ocean around Big Sur a few years back).

It was not like Sid had not been to the dreamland before, having made the trip up from the fetid seas of Frisco town (fetid in comparison to the Mendocino white washed breakers eroding the sheer rock at a greater rate than he would have expected) a number of times mostly with his old time now long gone to “find herself” Laura, Laura Perkins whom he had talked into going up those several times based on nothing more than that he liked the McGarrigle-etched song. Liked too that she, Laura liked it as well and would cover the song anytime she could find somebody to do a duo with her at folkie “open mics” and coffeehouse features depending on how she was feeling. Mona having heard the song exactly once (she didn’t like the fact that Laura liked the song and had been to Mendocino before she had and so would not listen when Sid tried to play it on his car CD player as they got closer to the place). Moreover she was reserving judgment on the relationship between the song and the place.

And that last point, the point for Sid anyway, was exactly how the song and the place connected. Was the real source of his wonder about old Lena back in the tired old East. Had she longed like he had to be done with Eastern pressures and pitfalls. To stop worrying about where the money would come from for rent, to pay the utilities, hell to pay the performers and stop them from having to play for the foolish “basket” like when they  had just started out on some forlorn street in Cambridge , Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Old Town or the Village. Stop all of that and head west, head to flat earth land South Bend for a minute, head over the majestic no hyperbole Rockies and suck in the breezes of the new land, of the new dispensation. Yeah, he bet though that she never got to the West, never could leave her cats, never could get that café out of her system, would probably fret even if she only went out for a week or so.

As they, Sid and his new Mona, approached the outskirts of Mendocino he wondered, seriously wondered whether Mona would ask him someday to speak of Mendocino, to let the place get under her skin. Yeah, speak of Mendocino.                  

LEON TROTSKY-THE MAKING OF A REVOLUTIONARY

LEON TROTSKY-THE MAKING OF A REVOLUTIONARY

Google to link to the important chapter 42, "The Last Period Of Struggle Within The Party," giving Trotsky's take on the inner-party fights in the late1920s, from the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's version of his "My Life" of 1930.

BOOK REVIEW

MY LIFE, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1970

THIS YEAR MARKS THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF LEON TROTSKY-ONE OF HISTORY’S GREAT REVOLUTIONARIES. IT IS THEREFORE FITTING TO REVIEW HIS BOOK MY LIFE WHICH TELLS HIS STORY IN HIS OWN WORDS.

Today we expect political memoir writers to take part in a game of show and tell about the most intimate details of their private personal lives on their road to celebrity. Refreshingly, you will find no such tantalizing details in Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky's memoir written in 1930 just after Stalin had exiled him to Turkey. Instead you will find a thoughtful political self-examination by a man trying to draw the lessons of his fall from power in order to set his future political agenda. This task is in accord with his explicitly stated, and many times repeated, conception of his role as that of an individual agent at service of the historical struggle toward a socialist future. Thus, underlying Trotsky’s selection of events highlighted in the memoir such as the rise of the revolutionary waves in Russia in 1905 and 1917, the devastation to the traditional socialist program caused by the capitulation of European social democracy to their individual national capitalist classes at the start of World War I and the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, especially in the aftermath of the failure of the German Revolution of 1923 and Lenin’s untimely death is a sense of urgency about the need for continued struggle for a socialist future. The book also provides Trotsky, as always, a platform for polemics against those foes and former supporters who had either abandoned or betrayed that struggle.

At the beginning of the 21st century when the validity of socialist political programs as tools for change is in apparent decline or disregarded as utopian it may be hard to imagine the spirit that drove Trotsky to dedicate his whole life to the fight for a socialist society. However, at the beginning of the 20th century he represented only the most consistent and audacious of a revolutionary generation of mainly Eastern Europeans and Russians who set out to change the history of the 20th century. It was as if the best and brightest of that generation were afraid, for better or worse, not to take part in the political struggles that would shape the modern world. As Trotsky noted elsewhere this element was missing, with the exceptions of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and precious few others, in the Western labor movement. Trotsky, using his own experiences, tells the story of the creation of this revolutionary cadre with care and generally proper proportions. Here are some highlights militant leftists should think about.

On the face of it Trotsky’s personal profile does not stand out as that of a born revolutionary. Born of a hard working, eventually prosperous, Jewish farming family in the Ukraine (of all places) there is something anomalous about his eventual political occupation. Always a vociferous reader, good writer and top student under other circumstances he would have found easy success, as others did, in the bourgeois academy, if not in Russia then in Western Europe. But there is the rub; it was the intolerable and personally repellent political and cultural conditions of Czarist Russia in the late 19th century that eventually drove Trotsky to the revolutionary movement- first as a ‘ragtag’ populist and then to his life long dedication to orthodox Marxism. As noted above, a glance at the biographies of Eastern European revolutionary leaders such as Lenin, Martov, Christian Rakovsky, Bukharin and others shows that Trotsky was hardly alone in his anger at the status quo. And the determination to something about it.

For those who argue, as many did in the New Left in the 1960’s, that the most oppressed are the most revolutionary the lives of the Russian and Eastern European revolutionaries provide a cautionary note. The most oppressed, those most in need of the benefits of socialist revolution, are mainly wrapped up in the sheer struggle for survival and do not enter the political arena until late, if at all. Even a quick glance at the biographies of the secondary leadership of various revolutionary movements, actual revolutionary workers who formed the links to the working class , generally show skilled or semi-skilled workers striving to better themselves rather than the most downtrodden lumpenproletarian elements. The sailors of Kronstadt and the Putilov workers in Saint Petersburg come to mind. The point is that ‘the wild boys and girls’ of the street do not lead revolutions; they simply do not have the staying power. On this point, militants can also take Trotsky’s biography as a case study of what it takes to stay the course in the difficult struggle to create a new social order. While the Russian revolutionary movement, like the later New Left mentioned above, had more than its share of dropouts, especially after the failure of the 1905 revolution, it is notably how many stayed with the movement under much more difficult circumstances than we ever faced. For better or worst, and I think for the better, that is how revolutions are made.

Once Trotsky made the transition to Marxism he became embroiled in the struggles to create a unity Russian Social Democratic Party, a party of the whole class, or at least a party representing the historic interests of that class. This led him to participate in the famous Bolshevik/Menshevik struggle in 1903 which defined what the party would be, its program, its methods of work and who would qualify for membership. The shorthand for this fight can be stated as the battle between the ‘hards’ (Bolsheviks, who stood for a party of professional revolutionaries) and the ‘softs’ (Mensheviks, who stood for a looser conception of party membership) although those terms do not do full justice to these fights. Strangely, given his later attitudes, Trotsky stood with the ‘softs’, the Mensheviks, in the initial fight in 1903. Although Trotsky almost immediately afterward broke from that faction I do not believe that his position in the 1903 fight contradicted the impulses he exhibited throughout his career- personally ‘libertarian’, for lack of a better word , and politically hard in the clutch.

Even a cursory glance at most of Trotsky’s career indicates that it was not spent in organizational in-fighting, or at least not successfully. Trotsky stands out as the consummate free-lancer. More than one biographer has noted this condition, including his definitive biographer Isaac Deutscher. Let me make a couple of points to take the edge of this characterization, though. In that 1903 fight mentioned above Trotsky did fight against Economism (the tendency to only fight over trade union issues and not fight overtly political struggles against the Czarist regime) and he did fight against Bundism (the tendency for one group, in this case the Jewish workers, to set the political agenda for that particular group). Moreover, he most certainly favored a centralized organization. These were the key issues at that time. Furthermore, the controversial organizational question did not preclude the very strong notion that a ‘big tent’ unitary party was necessary. The ‘big tent’ German Social Democratic model held very strong sway among the Russian revolutionaries for a long time, including Lenin’s Bolsheviks. The long and short of it was that Trotsky was not an organization man, per se. He knew how to organize revolutions, armies, Internationals, economies and so on when he needed to but on a day to day basis, no. Thus, to compare or contrast him to Lenin and his very different successes is unfair. Both have an honorable place in the revolutionary movement; it is just a different place.

That said, Trotsky really comes into his own as a revolutionary leader in the Revolution of 1905 not only as a publicist but as the central leader of the Soviets (workers councils) which made their first appearance at that time. In a sense it is because he was a free-lancer that he was able to lead the Petrograd Soviet during its short existence and etch upon the working class of Russia (and in a more limited way, internationally) the need for its own organizations to seize state power. All revolutionaries honor this experience, as we do the Paris Commune, as the harbinger of October, 1917. As Lenin and Trotsky both confirm, it was truly a ‘dress rehearsal’ for that event. It is in 1905 that Trotsky first wins his stars by directing the struggle against the Czar at close quarters, in the streets and working class meeting halls. And later in his eloquent and ‘hard’ defense of the experiment after it was crushed by the Czarism reaction. I believe that it was here in the heat of the struggle in 1905 where the contradiction between Trotsky’s ‘soft’ position in 1903 and his future ‘hard’ Bolshevik position of 1917 and thereafter is resolved. Here was a professional revolutionary who one could depend on when the deal went down. (A future blog will review the 1905 revolution in more detail).

No discussion of this period of Trotsky’s life is complete without mentioning his very real contribution to Marxist theory- that is, the theory of Permanent Revolution. Although the theory is over one hundred years old it still retains its validity today in those countries that still have not had their bourgeois revolutions. This rather simple straightforward theory about the direction of the Russian revolution (and which Trotsky later in the 1920’s, after the debacle of the Chinese Revolution, made applicable to what today are called “third world" countries)has been covered with so many falsehoods, epithets, and misconceptions that it deserves further explanation. Why? Militants today must address the ramifications of the question what of kind of revolution is necessary as a matter of international revolutionary strategy.

Trotsky, taking the specific historical development and the peculiarities of Russian economic development as part of the international capitalist order as a starting point argued that there was no ‘Chinese wall’ between the bourgeois revolution Russian was desperately in need of and the tasks of the socialist revolution. In short, in the 20th century ( and by extension, now) the traditional leadership role of the bourgeois in the bourgeois revolution in a economically backward country, due to its subservience to international capitalist powers and fear of its own working class and plebeian masses, falls to the proletariat. The Russian Revolution of 1905 sharply demonstrated the outline of that tendency especially on the perfidious role of the Russian bourgeoisie. The unfolding of revolutionary events in 1917 graphically confirmed this. The history of revolutionary struggles since then, and not only in ‘third world’ countries, gives added, if negative, confirmation of that analysis. (A future blog will review this theory of permanent revolution in more detail).

World War I was a watershed for modern history in many ways. For the purposes of this review two points are important. First, the failure of the bulk of the European social democracy- representing the masses of their respective working classes- to not only not oppose their own ruling classes’ plunges into war, which would be a minimal practical expectation, but to go over and directly support their own respective ruling classes in that war. This position was most famously demonstrated when the entire parliamentary fraction of the German Social Democratic party voted for the war credits for the Kaiser on August 4, 1914. This initially left the anti-war elements of international social democracy, including Lenin and Trotsky, almost totally isolated. As the carnage of that war mounted in endless and senseless slaughter on both sides it became clear that a new political alignment in the labor movement was necessary. The old, basically useless Second International, which in its time held some promise of bringing in the new socialist order, needed to give way to a new revolutionary International. That eventually occurred in 1919 with the foundation of the Communist International (also known as the Third International). (A future blog will review the first years of the Communist International). Horror of horrors, particularly for reformists of all stripes, this meant that the international labor movement, one way or another, had to split into its reformist and revolutionary components. It is during the war that Trotsky and Lenin, not without some lingering differences, draw closer and begin the process of several years, only ended by Lenin’s death, of close political collaboration.

Secondly, World War I marks the definite (at least for Europe) end of the progressive role of international capitalist development. The outlines of imperialist aggression previously noted had definitely taken center stage. This theory of imperialism was most closely associated with Lenin in his master work Imperialism-The Highest Stage of Capitalism but one should note that Trotsky in all his later work up until his death fully subscribed to the theory. Although Lenin’s work is in need of some updating to account for various technological changes and the extensions of globalization it holds up for political purposes. This analysis meant that a fundamental shift in the relationship of the working class to the ruling class was necessary. A reformist perspective for social change, although not specific reforms, was no longer tenable. Politically, as a general proposition, socialist revolution was on the immediate agenda. This is when Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution meets the Leninist conception of revolutionary organization. It proved to be a successful formula in Russia in October, 1917. Unfortunately, those lessons were not learned (or, at least, learned in time) by those who followed and the events of October, 1917 stand today as the only ‘pure’ working class revolution in history.

An argument can, and has, been made that the October Revolution could only have occurred under the specific condition of decimated, devastated war-weary Russia of 1917. This argument is generally made by those who were not well-wishers of revolution in Russia (or anywhere else, for that matter). It is rather a truism, indulged in by Marxists as well as by others, that war is the mother of revolution. That said, the October revolution was made then and there but only because of the convergence of enough revolutionary forces led by the Bolsheviks and additionally the forces closest to the Bolsheviks (including Trotsky’s Inter-District Organization) that had been prepared for these events by its entire pre-history. This is the subjective factor in history. No, not substitutionalism, that was the program of the Social Revolutionary terrorists and the like, but if you like, revolutionary opportunism. I would be much more impressed by an argument that stated that the revolution would not have occurred without the presence of Lenin and Trotsky. That would be a subjective argument, par excellent. But, they were there.
Again Trotsky in 1917, like in 1905, is in his element speaking seemingly everywhere, writing, organizing (when it counts, by the way). If not the brains of the revolution (that role is honorably conceded to Lenin) certainly the face of the Revolution. Here is a revolutionary moment shown in every great revolution when the fate of the revolution turned on a dime (the subjective factor). The dime turned. (See blog dated April 18, 2006 for a review of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution).

One of the great lessons that militants can learn from all previous modern revolutions is that once the revolutionary forces seize power from the old regime an inevitable counterrevolutionary onslaught by elements of the old order (aided by some banished moderate but previously revolutionary elements, as a rule). The Russian revolution proved no exception. If anything the old regime, aided and abetted by numerous foreign powers and armies, was even more bloodthirsty. It fell to Trotsky to organize the defense of the revolution. Now, you might ask- What is a nice Jewish boy like Trotsky doing playing with guns? Fair enough. Well,Jewish or Gentile if you play the revolution game you better the hell be prepared to defend the revolution (and yourself). Here, again Trotsky organized, essentially from scratch, a Red Army from a defeated, demoralized former peasant army under the Czar. The ensuing civil war was to leave the country devastated but the Red Army defeated the Whites. Why? In the final analysis it was not only the heroism of the working class defending its own but the peasant wanting to hold on to the newly acquired land that he just got and was in jeopardy of losing if the Whites won. But these masses needed to be organized. Trotsky was the man for the task.

Both Lenin’s and Trotsky’s calculation for the success of socialist revolution in Russia (and ultimately its fate) was its, more or less, immediate extension to the capitalist heartland of Europe, particularly Germany. While in 1917 that was probably not the controlling single factor for going forward in Russia it did have to come into play at some point. The founding of the Communist International makes no sense otherwise. Unfortunately, for many historical, national and leadership-related reasons no Bolshevik-styled socialist revolutions followed then, or ever. If the premise for socialism is for plenty, and ultimately as a result of plenty to take the struggle for existence off the agenda and put other more creative pursues on the agenda, then Russia in the early 1920’s was not the land of plenty. Neither Lenin, Trotsky nor Stalin, for that matter could wish that fact away.

The ideological underpinnings of that fight center on the Stalinist concept of ‘socialism in one country’, that is Russian socialist development alone versus the Trostskyist position of the absolutely necessary extension of the international revolution. In short, this is the fights that historically happens in great revolutions- the fight against Thermidor (from the overthrow of Robespierre in 1794 by more moderate Jacobins). What counts, in the final analysis, are their respective responses to the crisis of the isolation of the revolution. The word isolation is the key. Do you turn the revolution inward or push forward? We all know the result, and it wasn’t pretty, then or now. That is the substance of the fight that Trotsky, if initially belatedly and hesitantly, led from about 1923 on under various conditions until the end of his life by assassination of a Stalinist agent in 1940.

Although there were earlier signs that the Russia revolution was going off course the long illness and death of Lenin in 1924, at the time the only truly authoritative leader the Bolshevik party, set off a power struggle in the leadership of the party. This fight had Trotsky and the ‘pretty boy’ intellectuals of the party on one side and Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev (the so-called triumvirate)backed by the ‘gray boys’ of the emerging bureaucracy on the other. This struggle occurred against the backdrop of the failed revolution in Germany in 1923 and which thereafter heralded the continued isolation, imperialist blockade and economic backwardness of the Soviet Union for the foreseeable future.

While the disputes in the Russian party eventually had international ramifications in the Communist International, they were at this time fought out almost solely with the Russian Party. Trotsky was slow, very slow to take up the battle for power that had become obvious to many elements in the party. He made many mistakes and granted too many concessions to the triumvirate. But he did fight. Although later (in 1935) Trotsky recognized that the 1923 fight represented a fight against the Russian Thermidor and thus a decisive turning point for the revolution that was not clear to him (or anyone else on either side) then. Whatever the appropriate analogy might have been Leon Trotsky was in fact fighting a last ditch effort to retard the further degeneration of the revolution. After that defeat, the way the Soviet Union was ruled, who ruled it and for what purposes all changed. And not for the better.

In a sense if the fight in 1923-24 is the decisive fight to save the Russian revolution (and ultimately a perspective of international revolution) then the 1926-27 fight which was a bloc between Trotsky’s forces and the just defeated forces of Zinoviev and Kamenev, Stalin’s previous allies was the last rearguard action to save that perspective. That it failed nevertheless does not deny the importance of the fight. Yes, it was a political bloc with some serious differences especially over China and the Anglo-Russian Committee. But two things are important here One- did a perspective of a new party make sense at the time of the clear waning of the revolutionary tide the country. No. Besides the place to look was at the most politically conscious elements, granted against heavy odds, in the party where whatever was left of the class-conscious elements of the working class were.

As I have noted elsewhere in discussing the 1923 fight- that “Lenin levy” of raw recruits, careerists and just plain thugs was the key element in any defeat. Still the fight was necessary. Hey, that is why we still talk about it now. That was a fight to the finish. After that the left opposition or elements of it were forever more outside the party- either in exile, prison or dead. As we know Trotsky went from expulsion from the party in 1927 to internal exile in Alma Ata in 1928 to external exile to Turkey in 1929. From there he underwent further exiles in France, Norway, and Mexico when he was finally felled by a Stalinist assassin. But no matter when he went he continued to struggle for his perspective. Not bad for a Jewish farmer’s son from the Ukraine, of all places.

The last period of Trotsky’s life spent in harrowing exiles and under constant threat from Stalinist and White Guard threats- in short, on the planet without a visa -was dedicated to the continued fight for the Leninist heritage. It was an unequal fight, to be sure but he waged it and was able to cohere a core of revolutionaries to form a new international. That that effort was essentially militarily defeat by fascist or Stalinist forces during World War II does not take away from the grandeur of the attempt. He himself stated that he felt this was the most important work of his life- and who would challenge that assertion. But one could understand the frustrations, first analysis of the German debacle then in France and Spain. Hell a lesser man would have given up. In fact, more than one biographer has argued that he should have retired from the political arena to, I assume, a comfortable country cottage to write I do not know what. But, please dear reader, have you been paying attention? Does this seem even remotely like the Trotsky career I have attempted to highlight here? Hell, no.

Many of the events such as the disputes within the Russian revolutionary movement, the attempts by the Western Powers to overthrow the Bolsheviks in the Civil War after their seizure of power and the struggle of the various tendencies inside the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International discussed in the book may not be familiar to today's audience. Nevertheless one can still learn something from the strength of Trotsky's commitment to his cause and the fight to preserve his personal and political integrity against overwhelming odds. As the organizer of the October Revolution, creator of the Red Army in the Civil War, orator, writer and fighter Trotsky he was one of the most feared men of the early 20th century to friend and foe alike. Nevertheless, I do not believe that he took his personal fall from power as a world historic tragedy. Moreover, he does not gloss over his political mistakes. Nor does Trotsky generally do personal injustice to his various political opponents although I would not want to have been subject to his rapier wit and pen. Politicians, revolutionary or otherwise, in our times should take note.

REVISED JULY 25, 2006


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