The 1926 novel THE SUN ALSO RISES

There are cabals, ugly groups, on message board sites and even scattered through AOL Journals (The real conspiracies are no doubt hidden in closed journals, groups for example who'd really like, no kidding, to assassinate personnas non-grata, such for example the brave and desirable MS Coulter) that give themselves away, for example, by being made up mostly of only one gender, and en masse, for example, will sneer at Hemingway's innocent novel of 1926 (heck, ages and ages ago!@!) The Sun Also Rises, made into, in 1956, an atrocious full color expensive junk movie starring non-actress Ava Gardner (a walking man trap most dangerous, and doubtless most disappointing when horizontal.)

Having reread The Sun Also Rises I'm ready to go to war with those who declare the negatives they find in the book, things such as the villain is Jewish, and the narrator confesses his prayer in which he expresses sorrow that he's a "rotten Catholic." The novel's glory is that it's private!  In America, no kidding, real notions of privacy are dead, dead long ago in the arts.  (Exception, the recent movie CRASH.)  Notice, on message boards and in Journals there's almost zip that's private. You don't, as a result, find many Nobel Laureates in those environs, or even speakers of personal truths that aren't cliches, and even those are unfelt. Symptom: plethoras of someone else's graphics! Emotions borrowed and unfelt. 

Barry

warming up, getting in shape.

Dad

A year ago, or so it seems, I posted an entry about the last time I saw my father. I truthfully described getting away from him by stranding him on a ferry by getting on just as it was about to pull out, walking to the other end and disembarking, by jumping to the wharf. That was in Circular Que(sp?), Sydney, Aust.

That was written in just one mood. One has many moods. In the father department I was extraordinarily lucky. (1) He truly loved my mother and was faithful to her. (2) He was non-violent. (3) If I do say so myself, one look at my children shows he passed on fabulous genes: beauty, brains, strong bodies, height and vivid imaginations. None of his progeny are fat, not one! Ha ha ha ha. 

He was a drunk with amazing recuperative powers. He died at age 76, sober. A Catholic nun was so grateful and inspired by him she came to my home in NYC to convey a message. The Nun had a choice between going home to Ireland on vacation, or coming to New York. Apparently my father helped construct a Catholic school house in the country by offering his services, free, as an architect. Because he was quite tall, she arranged to have adjusted the drawing board at which he worked. To my over-heated, torrid imagination it seemed they loved each other: no harm, his wife, my mother, was long dead, and who says anything improper took place? Not me!

My younger brothers never seemed to get over their hatred for our father. I think they damaged themselves with their judgmental dismissal. Yes, he was a drunk. True he abandoned us when our mother died. He did to us what his English parents had done to him. Our father fled from England by 'Transporting' himself  (Ha ha) to Australia when in his 20s. The English never seemed to get the hang of family cohesion. Take a gander at the Royal family! What a cold-hearted, passionless mess! Yuch!  Whatever the case, my English father, always somewhat removed, always, lifelong, intimidated by social rank, money and position, had biology on his side even if his parents let him down, he had no religion, and punished himself for his failures by simply disappearing. The only thing he seemed to love about England was Charlie Chaplin and would reduce himself to helpless laughter by describing and acting out Charlie in the pawn shop.

I loved, and love you Dad. You had all the qualities I most prize: brains, imagination, daring, and consistency, and tenderness.

 

Barry, son of

             John Carrick Rennie Bartle

 

A Death In The Family

<   "I just read your blog; yesterday's entry, at least.  How old were you when your mother died?  Why won't your brother talk to you -- family is all we have in the end." >

Jen M.

From: Jen hahaha

I was 15. Not knowing exactly "why" is part of the pain. Remember, my whole point was that deaths in the family, especially completely unexpected deaths, can have an enormous negative impact not just on direct family members, but spreading out to include and impact even distant relatives. In talking about family values you are not talking about writing. My subject here is reading and writing.

Remembrance Of Things Past (a phrase taken from Shakespeare) a long novel by Frenchman Marcel Proust, is a novel closely based on life with many of the facts completely changed. Most obvious is the character of Albertine whom the narrator describes as a "sealed envelope of a person"  In real life that character was Proust's homosexual married chaufeur. (From analysis published in The New Yorker.) Proust knew that the past is most efficiently remembered through recalling the concrete specific sensory memories from that past. In the novel, memories are triggered through remembering the smell of cake dipped in tea at his mother's table. (Outdoors as I remember.) By coincidence I know this to be a truth about memory from Sense Memory exercizes done in acting classes. In fact, later I taught relaxation and sense memory in acting classes.  

A corollary of this thesis (after all it can't be 'proved') is that the prospects of a novel constructed entirely from invention is virtually an impossibility. Proof, for me, are the novels of Danielle Steel. In my opinion each novel is written by teams of young women writers following outlines supplied by Steel herself.  The result is not believable, and therefore of no interest to any serious reader or serious writer. The scheme is somewhat like a painter's atelier of old, workplaces where there are staffs of painters. Leonardo Da Vinci was such an apprentice painter in  the atelier of another.

Barry

".... I cannot relate or even insult people, who have lost partners in such horrific times; neither can I understand the inevitable critisisms of those who haven't lost someone to terrorism.  I must admit the world always sounds shocked when these things happen."       - Zoe

When I first read this I had to wholeheartedly agree. I still agree, but with a codicil. Sometimes sudden death from disease, an often deadly disease such as polio for example, can have a somewhat similar impact. When my mother died in an iron lung only months after the first onslaught of the virus, my entire family went nuts. What had seemed either stolidly Catholic, or Protestant, well-off, stable, and content, simply came apart. I still plan to make fiction out of what happened. I say fiction because that's what I want to do, and also because I can't, and have no wish to prove the truth of what happened.
My youngest brother, who was only five (ONLY FIVE !) when his mother 'vanished' won't even speak to me today because I leaked to him some of what I believe happened. For him the mere thought is too horrific to contemplate.

America contracted a deadly disease that slaughtered over three thousand people on a clear, sunny day, out of the blue. Of course people are still in a temper about it, of course!!!!

Barry

Ann Coulter & 9/11 Widows

Media writer and frequent political panel show

guest, Ann Coulter, has published a book mocking

the women who lost their husbands in the Twin

Towers on  9/11. Boycotts of the book are being

organized. The widows are striking back, verbally,

and as  far as I know might sue her as well. What

Coulter says is that the women are enjoying their

husband's deaths: the women were compensated

for the loss of their husbands with millions of

dollars.

 

There is no case to be proved here. All that's

left to do is characterize both sides, and to

characterize Ann Coulter.  Indirectly, and

contrary to intention, the brouhaha inadvertently

flatters and even praises the Arabs who gave

their lives to further their religion and their say

in world affairs.  No matter what note of righteous

indignation is struck the incontrovertible fact is

that levelling the Twin Towers was a brilliant

military maneouver.  Most people conveniently

forget that there had been a rehearsal some years

(seven or eight) before, when a cellar explosion

in the towers failed to get the job done.  The cleric

who organized and inspired that terrorist attempt

was recently found guilty and sentenced, I think, to

death. 

 

The pain of the relatives of the dead is incalculable.

Given that the government might have been

negligent in protecting the buildings, giving

compensation to the widows does make sense.

There were children to be provided for in the

absence of their father. I don't know what Coulter

says about women, mothers who lost their lives:

odd that she picks on the widows, or that

commentators haven't brought that up yet.

 

What's next? What massacre? What useless

bombing else? A terrorist dies, and another pops

up only days later. We seem on some days to

live in the Age of Horrors. Two enormous, neon

ignited signs festooned the freeway today: "Child

abducted..." followed by the year and make and

license plate number of a suspect kidnapper's

vehicle. Ann Coulter might have us believe the car

was driven by the child's mother frantic to leave 

her abusive husband. But could ALL the husbands

in the Twin Towers who died have been abusers?

 

Barry  

 

 

Bombing London 1940

The Only way to fit

my entry into AOL's

space is to squeeze

tight making the column

long.

 

I HATE AOL

 

 

PBS is showing tonight a documentary

about the bombing of London by

Germany in 1940. My father's family

was bombed out five times during WW2.

When I met my Uncle Eric in London,

decades ago, I must have been too shy

to bring up that subject. My father,

being reticent, told me little to

nothing, in Australia,  about his

family in London. So meeting Eric

was almost literally meeting a total

stranger. He told me he processed

his own film, but he took no photos.

It was dark. I   took  some photos

without flash and the pictures were

bad, color-distorted. He seemed a

bit miffed I had a good camera. To

Americans the English, sorry    Brits, 

seem inordinately preoccupied with

social and money status.  For example,

Erick may very well have been

scandalized that a total stranger

would enter his house and start

taking pictures, even if it was only

after an elaborate request, and

putting the camera on self-timer.

Erick's wife was spectacularly

beautiful. So lacking any kind of

information I secretly made up

that my father lost his girl friend

to his younger brother,  so fled in

shame to Australia, self-transported

so to speak.

The 1940 bombing of London by Hitler

was avenged pretty soon after by the 

RAF incinerating of the East German

city of Dresden, where more people

died than died at Hiroshima.

Vengeance is bad, and the seeking

of vengeance a sin, to be regretted,

but it is oh so human, and it might

not vanish in the immediate future.

The best footage of the 1940 bombing

of London was assembled by the

director of the first Beattle movie.

I met him, and worked for him, on

a British TV commercial in Jamaica. 

I mentioned his documentary, but in

doing so I must have made a faux pas.

He froze.  The commercial we shot

was for After Eight, a dinner mint. 

By happenstance we shot in Jamaica

while the Queen was visiting.  I noticed

she had an enormous Yacht at the time, a

vessel later given up. Austerity?

Barry