'Nine Tailors' & 'Murder Must Advertise'

Are we doing this again? 

Are we back in the saddle? 

Truth is, it never really stopped. 

'Me and My Girl'

One of the few films on the 1,001 list that unintentionally flopped at the box office. By the mid-30s, Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett were well into their acting careers, but neither had tipped the scales.

There’s no real gargantuan impact on the film industry here. Raoul Walsh directed and other than being prolific as a director, his greatest hits include portraying John Wilkes Booth in Birth of a Nation and discovering John Wayne.

The film is nice and easy, though. Just 79, it flies through witty dialogue and a pretty entertaining, but simple plot. If for no other reason, revel in the glory that is Spencer Tracy in a comedic role.

'Finnegan's Wake'

I’ve done what most haven’t. It took me forever to find a copy of Finnegan’s Wake and I learned that’s probably due to the fact that it’s simply one of the hardest pieces of fiction every written.

I’m not saying I “got it.” No one “gets it.” You read it and then find CliffsNotes to basically translate it.

I will say, some of the syntactical contortions James Joyce undertakes is really, really remarkable.

'Miss Lonelyhearts'

Odd that I looked for this really short novel for ages and could never find it. Got it at a random used bookstore in Austin. Then proceeded to see no less than 100 copies around town.

Being an advice columnist is probably a well-paid – maybe overpaid – gig; however, I would think it’s a very monotonous and high-pressure job. You probably get 1,000 letters (maybe?) and you pick two a day to write about. So you can pick what you want to talk about.

But after day No. 100, doesn’t it all start to run together and you wonder how people don’t figure out that rule No. 1 is to always tell the truth and be open with your feelings.

See, I could be an advice columnist.

'The Glass Key'

Allegedly Dashiell Hammett’s favorite novel, it is the final of his for the 1,001 list. I’ve enjoyed all of his novels and have taken a liking to the crime genre.

It’s served as the source to a number of adaptations in addition to an inspiration for the Coen brothers’ Miller’s Crossing. It’s also the namesake of the Glass Key Award, an honor bestowed on the author of the top crime novel in Scandinavia. 

So long, Dashiell. 

'Tender is the Night'

F. Scott Fitzgerald moved to the Baltimore area in 1932 in order to put his wife, Zelda, into psychiatrict care. There he began work on the novel that would become Tender is the Night.

The book itself is a amalgamation of a bunch of different ideas in addition to being semi-autobiographical. Fitzgerald himself entered into a relationship with a young starlet when he went to Hollywood to write screenplays.

He had also hospitalized Zelda in Switzerland due to mental illness. In 1932, she had published the semi-autobiographical Save Me the Waltz. Two years later, Fitzgerald hit back with Tender is the Night.

Fitzgerald died in 1940 after not seeing Zelda for about 18 months. Tender is the Night is the last novel that he'd complete.

'Gone with the Wind'

I was reticent to take on this book because of the length. I like reading but books of incredible length (700+) cause me to lose focus most of the time. I decided to take Gone with the Wind slow and steady: 100 pages per week. Done in 10 weeks.

I was done in seven only because it's the most compelling piece of shit of all time. It's 100 times more interesting than than the film or at least from what I remember. I don't quite know what I liked the best. Scarlett O'Hara is one of the most horrible cretins in the history of fiction. She's a woman of complete and utter contradiction in every sense of the word. She's strong and yet the most vulnerable. She's forgiving yet can hold a grudge like no one else.

There's Rhett Butler: Provincial antebellum's overly-sexual anti-hero. The strong and intelligent Mammy. The loving and faithful Melanie. The stupid and resourceless Ashley. It's a cast of characters as flawed as much as they're endearing.

Margaret Mitchell published it 75 years after the start of the American Civil War and three years before it was made into the most celebrated film of the medium.

What was most interesting was the peek into certain attitudes pertaining to the change (the culture "gone with the wind") brought on by the Civil War. I celebrate novels like The Remains of the Day, which is fiction about the end of England's colonial reign over the world and the veritable destruction of the country's upper class and big houses. Gone with the Wind is no different. The Civil War wasn't just a cleansing by blood of a young country: It was the outright tearing down of Southern culture. Not just slavery. Not just the young men dead in the ground. Not just the ruined cotton crops. The South was devastated not unlike Germany after World War I. The idea of the "south rising again" is not so ridiculous as a direction reaction to the Civil War.

Although the north was more than hated, the ideas of the hapless Ashley and Rhett, both who realized how tepid he Southern cause was and how wasteful the death and destruction of the Civil War was. They were the voices of reason amid a crowd of extremely emotional humans that thought pure grit would gain them victory even if arms and manufacturing were uneven.

Although correct, it would not have made any difference (tensions had been brewing in this country for 50 years) and I am of the camp that believes the Civil War, for all its evil, was completely necessary. It set things at zero.

'Shanghai Express' & 'The Bitter Tea of General Yen'

These two films -- eerily similar in a lot of ways -- were released within a year of each other. Watching them and understanding how Asian characters, not unlike black or Hispanic characters, were portrayed in popular American culture, I started to think of our grandparents paying a nickel to see the latest film set in the mysterious and godless Orient and imagining their eyes when they consider the current China.

According to these films, the Chinese were an abhorrent, sneaky, manipulative and violent people, who were light years from the sensible culture of the west.

The Bitter Tea of General Yen is particularly disturbing or perhaps equally as groundbreaking in a lot of ways.

General Yen is portrayed by the Dane Nils Asther replete with drawn-on angled eyebrows and spike like a cartoon evil scientist. In a way, I don't know if it's about the barbaric nature of the power-hungry Yen as much about his wiles with the white missionary Barbara Stanwyck. Although she rejects Yen's advances, her subconscious betrays her as she has a series of dreams in which she is intimate with Yen.

Ironically, the film was controversial because it portrayed miscegenation as it shows the "Chinese" Asther kissing Stanwyck in addition to the insinuation of sex. Ironic because, obviously, it wasn't actual miscegenation because the Chinese man was portrayed by a white guy.

Stanwyck claims that the portrayed miscegenation was the reason it was a box-office failure.

Now, we see the kissing and sex as not very controversial at all considering ... it's pretty retarded to consider such a thing as controversial. And because Shakespeare wrote Othello 300 years beforehand.

Yes, I do think our grandparents probably never considered China as it is today, especially the pre-Communist China.

'Sons Of The Desert'

I write about this film realizing that I probably like the movie posters more than I might like the actual movie. 

However, that’s just the nature of the film poster of the 1930s and that should not take away from the fact that I enjoyed this very much. 

Despite the physical, sophomoric nature of the comedy, I found myself laughing throughout and I really think that Stan Laurel (who is actually an Englishman) is one of the funniest men to walk this Earth. His scene eating the fake fruit is quite funny. 

 Both guys started in show business in their teens, Laurel in Scotland and Hardy in Georgia. Hardy particularly was successful in the early years of film making more than 300 shorts. Only about 150 still survive. 

They first acted together in The Lucky Dog in 1921 and they both signed with Hal Roach later on. Six years later, Roach had teamed them and made them into the duo that they would become for 20 years. 

Their final film was Atoll K, released in 1951. It was hampered with language barriers and the declining health of Laurel (61 at the time) and Hardy (59 … a hard 59). 

At his death, Hardy weighed 138 pounds and had several strokes. He died in 1957 and Laurel lasted until 1965. 

They filmed hundreds of films together (short- and long-form) and about three are considered lost, meaning they’ve haven’t been seen in 80 years. 

The International Laurel & Hardy Appreciation Society is named "Sons of the Desert." 

'The Thin Man'

Dashiell Hammett published five novels. I've read three. The Thin Man was his final one and the last one I've read.

Hammett wouldn't write again. Twenty-seven years from the time The Thin Man was published and his death in 1961.

The Thin Man was made into a very famous and well-regarded film starring Myrna Loy and William Powell. Maybe one of the few times the film is as good as the book, or vice versa. There were many sequels to the films in addition to a TV series.

The Thin Man has a very different tone from a lot of Hammett's other works. The protagonist is actually a couple, Nick and Nora Charles, the former being a retired detective sucked into a case involving some acquaintances seemingly invading his home. Nora is a precocious, liberated and smart woman. Really, if you want an early flag bearer for the feminist movement in literature, how can you not include Nora Charles. If there's anyone that doesn't answer to anyone in the whole story, it's her.

This is an easy-going narrative. The Charleses are wise-cracking know-it-alls seemingly viewing this thread of murder, deceit and manipulation like spectators at a Civil War battle. They tend to rise above it and do not get caught up in the fray (except for getting grazed by a bullet) unlike some of Hammett's other detectives.

'Brighton Rock'

A good book confuses the shit out of you for the first 50 pages only to go over what happened in detail those first 50 pages for it not to really matter.

I think. Maybe that's why I haven't published any of my novels. Gathering dust there on the shelves. I kid. I kid.

I think what confused me the most is Fred Hale leaving business cards around town for people to find and if they turn them into the newspaper, they can win 10 pounds. I guess this is a thing from the 1930s because it sounds like one of the most ridiculously awesome things ever. Imagining having a pretty bad day or even a so-so day and you're doing your usual thing and you turn around and find a card that gives you $50 (which I assume would be the equivalent for 10 pounds in the 1930s). That probably felt pretty good.

Brighton Rock's been turned into a play, a musical, a film (twice) and a radio program. Certainly, Pinkie is one of the best characters -- certainly in the sociopath genre -- in modern literature. Not unlike Alex in Clockwork Orange, a young man of his times and his environment. However, the pair are separated by Alex's need for sex and Pinkie's unanswered repulsion of human contact and sex. Not everything was carnal for Pinkie. It made the violence a bit more disturbing.

'The House In Paris'

I read this a kajillion years ago and I haven't written about it because I have absolutely nothing to say about it.

Certainly, I've researched several times attempting to knock it out once and for all and I can't find anything. I thought it was boring and trite. Too wrapped up in these family histories that are supposed to be important as these self-important people disappoint their loved ones over and over again.

Big deal.

There, I did it.

'Good Morning, Midnight'

Good Morning, Midnight was published in 1939 about a woman who returns to Paris between the two great wars and finds nothing but insecurity and instability.

No money or nobody to depend on or to county upon the next morning or night. Hunger and desperation a perpetual companion as she plans her next step. At least many of the feelings and circumstances surrounding our protagonist were probably those of Rhys herself, who had a series of failed relationships, marriages, a near-fatal abortion and a son who died at a young age. Nothing was permanent in Rhys' life.

Right after it was published, author Jean Rhys fell completely out of the limelight making many think she had died. Rhys turned back up in 1949 when someone decided to turn Good Morning, Midnight into a play and they were forced to hunt Rhys down and get her permission. Alas, she was living very quietly in the English countryside.

She did not publish another piece until 1960, 21 years later.

'The Maltese Falcon'

The fact that this was adapted 11 years after publication with Peter Lorre, Humphrey Bogart into one of cinema's finest films sort of does the book an injustice.

It's really good and I think better than some of Dashiell Hammett's works. It also marks the introduction of Sam Spade, one of the foremost literary detectives of all time and the model for Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe.

Spade is interesting only because his train of thought, his motivations and his drive is completely and utterly unknown to everyone. Even the dumb characters in the book.

Spade works to "solve" a number of issues. He dislikes the cops as much as he dislikes the criminals that are working the other side. His partner is murdered and his motivation for finding the murderer lies with the adage that a guy has to stand up for his partner, even after they are murdered. He also says a partner getting murdered is bad for business. Meanwhile, Spade is screwing his partner's wife and, thusly, becomes suspect No. 1 for the police.

All the while, we get brief glimpses into what drives Spade. We think he is a character with morals. He's also a guy that suggests he'd let his girlfriend get away with murder if there were a greater financial reward.

Certainly, Spade is not a black-and-white character, not unlike the anti-heroes in popular cable TV series like Jimmy McNulty in The Wire, Tony Soprano in The Sopranos or even the serial-killer serial killer, Dexter. These are complex figures, who are probably inherently bad people, yet we can't help but think they are good and a lot of things they do is good.

Spade calculates the risk versus the reward in every scenario and skates the thin patch of slippery ice between being lawful and good and immoral.

Meanwhile, the Maltese Falcon is still out there somewhere.