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More research reading, this time with a broader historical perspective. A World Lit Only By Fire was recommended to me by a friend of my husband’s, and I am grateful he pointed it out to me. The earliest chapters of the book describe life in the Middle Ages in detail, most of which underscores either the illogical or the cruel, both of which were prevalent at the time. Next it shows the unfolding Renaissance, the people and ideas that led to an entirely new way of living and thinking. The crowning story is that of Ferdinand Magellan, the man who went against king, country, his fellow captains, and his own crew, and managed to find his way around the southern tip of South America and across the Pacific ocean to the Philippines, proving that the world was round. Manchester makes a compelling case that if anything brought about the end of life as it was lived in the Middle Ages, it was this single fact and that we owe Magellan much for this world-changing discovery.
History has never been my strong point, but I am finding myself more and more willing to read about it thanks to books like this one. Who knew that reading history could be fun? The more I learned about the people who shaped the times – bishops, priests, popes, kings, knights, scientists, philosophers, artists, and reformists – the more I wanted to know. I learned about people with names I recognized (the Borgias, Martin Luther, Magellan, for starters) and names I didn’t (like Erasmus), learned things that were wonderful, amazing, shocking, and occasionally funny.
I was fascinated to learn that Robin Hood existed (there’s a grave stone in Yorkshire), as did the Pied Piper of Hamelin, although Robin kept the money and the Piper was a mass murderer of children. Girls were legal to wed at 12, boys at 14, and an engaged couple could have sex as long as the banns had been read (i.e., the intention of the two to marry had been announced to the public at church). Life expectancy for men was 30, for women, 24, which explains at least in part the need to marry so young. Some religious pilgrims were actually criminals who were sent on their long and difficult journey in lieu of serving a term in prison. The book is full of compelling and intriguing details such as these, but it also steps back to give a picture of an era. It makes the famous figures it discusses live and breathe. Indeed, that we are all just human is evident in every story told, from that of the most corrupt and decadent popes, who had wives, mistresses, children, held orgies, and even had sex with their siblings, to the relatively righteous, like Martin Luther, who protested against the excesses of the clergy but in the end was just as ruthless and violent in pursuing change as the popes were in maintaining the status quo.
The last section is devoted to Magellan, and the book is worth reading for this alone. How he arranged for the voyage, managed his mutinous peers, refused to turn back despite continual disappointments and hardships, and lost all sense of proportion when he finally succeeded is a remarkable tale. Magellan died in the Philippines (a bizarre story in itself) but one of his captains made it home again, following the known trade routes past the Cape of Good Hope, with the 18 men who survived from the original 265 that set out with Magellan three years earlier. At the time, due to politics, the captain (whom we no longer remember) got all the credit for the successful circumnavigation of the world. Eventually, however, credit was given to Magellan, once documents pertaining to the voyage began to come to light. Manchester is determined to make sure Magellan does get the credit he deserves, and that he can entertain us and achieve his goal simultaneously is noteworthy.
A World Lit Only By Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance, Portrait of an Age by William Manchester, Little Brown and Co., 1992.
As a Jane Austen fan, I’m always interested in the film versions of her books. I’ve loved some (the TV-series of Pride and Prejudice; the movie version of Sense and Sensibility written by Emma Thompson; and the TV-version of Persuasion; all three from 1995) and disliked others (the 2005 movie version of Pride and Prejudice; the 1999 movie version of Mansfield Park). What I like best are the scripts that are as true to the book as they can be despite the fact that they have had to condense characters and trim the plot. Of all of Austen’s books, Mansfield Park is probably the hardest for a modern audience to relate to because so much of the plot hinges on a moral system we cannot understand. The 2007 TV-version of the book finds a good middle ground, staying true to the book while making the characters and situations appealing to the modern viewer.
As a young girl, Fanny Price, poor cousin to the Bertrams, is taken into their home out of charity to Lady Bertram’s sister, who is saddled with a large family and little income. As an adult, Fanny (Billie Piper) is both proper and sensitive. She feels the harsh words her unthinking uncle and aunts speak and tries hard to be as inoffensive as possible. She has to watch as her beloved cousin Edmund (Blake Ritson) pursues Mary Crenshaw (Hayley Atwell), a woman determined to marry the eldest son for his money, but who finds herself attracted to Edmund instead. Mary’s brother Henry (Joseph Beattie) is cut of the same cloth and woos both Maria and Julia Bertram, even though Maria is already engaged.
When her uncle is away, Fanny’s cousins, with the help of the Crenshaws, plan to put on a play about lovers, and Fanny knows that Sir Thomas will disapprove. The assumption that play-acting is immoral is the biggest pitfall in portraying Mansfield Park to a modern audience. The impropriety of performing the play is central to the plot, as it gives several characters a chance to be intimate with one another in a way their society would not normally allow. But, two hundred years later, acting has lost the social stigma it had in the 1800s, and Sir Thomas comes across as a tyrant to a modern audience. By emphasizing the use both Mary and Henry make of the situation, Iain B. MacDonald’s version gives us at least a hint of why the society of the time disapproved.
What I love about this version is the portrayal of Fanny. In the book, she is incredibly reserved and proper as a result of her low status in the family, but the movie allows her to be young and lively life as well. She is shown running through the house at moments of great joy, and at one point, she enthusiastically plays hide-and-seek with a young girl. She is also wise, seeing through the pretenses of Mary’s brother, Henry, and refusing to marry him, despite the favors he does her and her uncle’s anger at “her selfishness”. The relationship between Edmund and Fanny is key to the story, and both Piper and Ritson make us well aware of the characters’ feelings for one another even when the characters themselves do not speak.
The movie was shot entirely at Newby Hall in Yorkshire and has a lovely look as a result. I found the production like Fanny – charming and straightforward – and I was impressed by the decision not to try to modernize Fanny or the story (as was done in the 1999 Mansfield Park). To keep the film at 90 minutes, many scenes from the book were removed or reduced, but not with severe cost. I would love to see what this crew would have done with the movie if they had been allowed more time and a broader scope of locations.
I’m currently doing research which means I bring stacks of books home from the library and then try to figure out which ones I actually need to read. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective was probably not one of them, but unlike some of the more modern crime books sitting on my desk at the moment, it was one I knew I could read without having nightmares afterwards.
Kate Summerscale tells the story of a murder in 1860 that might easily have inspired one of Agatha Christie’s country manor murder mysteries. In fact, Summerscale’s presentation is designed to invoke just such a comparison, and the author herself points out the many connections between this real-life mystery and contemporary literature written by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Edgar Allan Poe, and others.
Mr. Whicher, the detective of the title, was one of the first detectives ever, part of the eight-man department opened at Scotland Yard in 1842. By the time of the murder in 1860, Whicher has a well-earned reputation for getting his man.
The first section of the book, which is written like a classic English whodunit, covers the day leading up to and including the murder itself. A three-year-old boy disappears in the middle of the night and his body is found with his throat cut. A murder apparently without motive leads to suspicions about everyone in the household from the lowly nursemaid to the tyrannical father. Two weeks of stumbling around bring the local police no closer to the answer and in desperation they call in Scotland yard.
The book begins to stray from the classical fictional mystery format when we are introduced to Detective Jonathan Whicher. We follow him as he looks far and wide for information regarding the case. He is certain before long that he knows who killed the boy and when the arrest is made, the villagers go wild. The only thing more shocking to the Victorians than the violent death of a child is the thought that an adolescent might be responsible.
Due to bad handling of both the witnesses and the leads during the inquest, the case is not brought to trial and Whicher returns to London in defeat. He goes on with his life, and the investigations around the Road Hill murder go on without him. Public views sway with the wind, and solutions to the mystery are sent to Scotland Yard by citizens from all over the country. As in any good mystery where there is insufficient evidence to nail the culprit, the murderer is caught only because she confesses.
While Whicher is vindicated, the evidence still doesn’t quite add up. Summerscale points out the oddities, which were glossed over at the time, and, using documents that were discovered in the last century, proposes her own solution with credibility.
I was less enthusiastic about this book by the time I reached the end. The familiar structure of the beginning had me thinking in terms of fiction instead of reality. Real life is full of dead and loose ends, and even with the author’s theories to wrap up what she can, the book ends with questions unanswered, questions that will never be answered. And the title is overly dramatic. The story is far from shocking to a modern reader; our media inundate us with far too many horrors for this one to be of any surprise.
All in all, it’s a good book. It gives a taste of English life in the mid-1800s that includes the tension between the classes and vivid details of daily life. The exploration of public opinion and its effects on the case show that in many ways people haven’t changed. In 1860, everyone had a theory who killed Saville Kent and facts didn’t enter into it. The majority of the solutions were designed to make the unpopular responsible for the death. For anyone familiar with the works referred to, there is the added interest of seeing how the first mystery novels were shaped by the times in general and this case and this detective in particular.
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale, Walker & Company, 2008.
A documentary about Quad Rugby, Murderball follows the paraplegic members of Team USA as they train and compete in international tournaments. The title reeks of violence, but the most violent parts of the film are the stories of how the handicapped players wound up in their wheelchairs. Played on indoor basketball courts, Quad Rugby (called Murderball when it was first invented) does have its share of violence. Players ram their reinforced wheelchairs into each other as they work their way to the goal line. Chairs get knocked over and players fall to the floor; a disconcerting sight, but core to the message of the film.
We learn early on that a paraplegic has some sort of dysfunction in every limb, and is not necessarily a limbless body, although one of the players has no legs and is missing his arms from the elbow down. We see hands that won’t grip struggle to take off tennis shoes and knobby elbows pour juice into a glass. Simple actions, like putting on a pair of pants, require patience and effort. Things we take for granted turn out to be a challenge for these handicapped men, who are independent despite their disabilities.
Directors Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro treat their subject with respect and humor and avoid any form of sentimentality. They wisely leave it to the audience to recognize the tragedies that are part of every story and instead emphasize the lives these men lead. We see the men joke together, making fun of themselves without being bitter. We listen to them talk about women and sex. We see them interact with their families. Not all of them are likable; some are people we’d rather not know. The thing that brings these men together is not their handicaps, but their determination to push themselves and to do whatever they can despite their physical limitations.
The film is blunt and straightforward, and answers many questions about what life is like for people in wheel chairs. And the key word is people. The depiction of the team members as human beings is so strong that it is not long before you no longer see the chair, no longer notice the bent fingers or missing hands. All you see is the eyes, all you hear is the voice, and you learn that everyone is handicapped in some way. The challenge to us is to live life as fully as possible, despite our limitations, and the men in this film show us how much can be done with much less than most of us have.
When it comes to movies, I am behind. Decades ago, I spent two years abroad, and while I blame my absence for being out-of-sync with Hollywood, it isn’t true. I’ve never been able to keep up with cinema. I try to get to the theater to see the movies I’m interested in when they come out, but I often don’t manage that. As I result, I rely on reviews to guide me to what is worth seeing and Netflix to supply me with them, no matter how out of date. Which is why, although it is two-and-a-half years old, Stranger Than Fiction is my Movie of the Week.
I had heard this was a good movie, but I wish I hadn’t waited so long to see it. Brilliantly written, with a stellar cast right down to the smallest of roles, Stranger Than Fiction deserved more attention than it got. It didn’t receive a single nomination from the Academy, which is a shame. The indie film that got the attention that year was Little Miss Sunshine, another movie I love, but I don’t think it’s as good as STF. At a minimum, STF deserved Best Original Script (Zach Helm). The directing (Marc Forster), cinematography (Roberto Schaefer), and design work (Craig Jackson) which all fit together perfectly to give visual and emotional dimensions to this wonderful story, also deserved recognition.
Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), an IRS employee who lives life by the numbers, from how many steps it is to the bus stop, to how many strokes he makes with his tooth brush, goes through his strict routines with a female narrator telling us all about him. Things get strange when Harold starts reacting to the narrator, trying to figure out where the voice is coming from, and wondering if he is going crazy. His concern goes from frustrated to frantic when he hears the voice say that he will die soon. As he tells everyone, the voice is always right, and, crazy or not, he doesn’t want to die.
Harold begins to break out of his routine intentionally and seeks professional help. The man who helps him most turns out to be a literature professor, Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman). Together Harold and the professor try to figure out what sort of story Harold is caught up in and who is writing it. The audience already knows who the author is: Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson), a delightfully neurotic chain-smoker with writer’s block. Her great dilemma is how to kill Harold off.
The story follows lovely and unexpected twists as both author and character struggle with Harold’s story. I don’t want to blow any more of the surprises this delightful movie has in store. All I can do is urge you to see it.
I will admit that, as a writer myself, I may be a little biased. The interactions between the character and his story, and the character and the author are both honest and bittersweet. I had hoped for an intriguing relationship between Jodie Foster’s author Alexandra Rover and her books’ hero Alex Rover (Gerard Butler) in Nim’s Island, and was gravely disappointed. It may have been unfair of me to have high expectations of a movie clearly geared towards kids, but I don’t see why we can’t give children truth in their literature and movies and still entertain. Stranger Than Fiction was what I was wishing for, and delivered much more than I thought possible.
A beautiful story told with a clarity that is not simple, Stranger Than Fiction is not just a movie, it’s a masterpiece. And it’s not just for writers. Harold’s dilemmas and choices are about what it means to be human. I intend to buy it for our collection and I can’t wait to see it again.
