Melmotte: would you give this man your money?

So how should we feel about Augustus Melmotte?

When Paul Montague and Hamilton Fisker first come to Melmotte with the plan to build a railroad in America and sell shares in London, he gets it. He recognizes the “game”. He’s played it before.

“ …the appetite for such stocks as theirs, which might certainly be produced in the speculating world by a proper manipulation of the affairs.”

He appoints young men with titles and no business sense to the board. He let’s them buy shares but not sell them while the price is going up.

He takes the money from the sale of shares to rebuild a country home, entertain the Emperor of China and buy a seat in the House of Parliament.

Unfortunately he is too greedy and does too much too soon.

So why do we admire the guys who can get away with it?

Even Trollope admires the man who can pull it off:

“…but he for a few moments looking up at the bright stars. If he could be there, in one of those unknown distant worlds, with all his present intellect and none of his present burdens, he would, he thought, do better than he had done on earth. If he could even now put himself down nameless, fameless, and without possessions in some distant corner of the world, he could, he thought, do better.”

More than a human being, a life force.

Laddy Carbury, just a 19th century blogger?

After spending just a little time "researching" blogging in order to bring the Brookside Blog up to "industry standards" I've come to believe Lady Carbury was way ahead of her time. She was a blogger.

Her book "Criminal Queens" is lightly researched. It is written for mass, uncritical readers. When she asks for professional "editorial criticism" it is from her favorite collection of London's writers/editors. There's lots of professional payback going on. If you review my book and say nice things, I'll review your book and say nice things.

She would have loved Facebook.

Lady Carbury also likes to combine/confuse her social life with her professional literary contacts.

The introduction to my copy of The Way We Live Now explains that the main plot for the book was going to be exposing and satirizing the London literay scene. Perhaps Mr Trollope wasn't good at smoozing with other writer/editors. He just wasn't getting the good reviews he thought he deserved.

I'm certainly glad he decided to add the Mexican train swindle plot to the story otherwise it would have been The Way Some of Us Who Write Novels Live Now. Lacks punch...

Not sure if this blog will ever be up to "standard". It's more of a rant than a blog.

Next: Melmotte, the big wonderful, tragic "hero"??

Search engine tags: Blogging history: 19th Century Bloggers: Anthony Trollope: Lady Carbury, pioneer blogger

the game's the thing

Choosing to read The Way We Live Now while fresh from The Big Short was a fortunate decision.

Trollope's Mexico railroad scandel is a lot less complicated than our recent financial meltdown but the fundamentals are the same. Greed.

"Men reconcile themselves to swindling. Though they themselves mean to be honest, dishonesty of itself is no longer odious to them. Then there comes the jealousy that others should be growing rich with the approval of all the world - and the natural aptitude to do what all the world approves."

There was not much romance in the Big Short. TWWLN is like one very long Jane Austen marriage marketplace but with "teeth". The ladies are only out for a husband who will provide the house in London and financial security. For some love is not a priority, more a luxury.

I want a mood organ...

Phili K. Dick comes up with some great creations in this book.

I love the mood organ. In the morning it wakes you and gives you the attitude you need to get that day going.

"If you set the surge up high enough, you'll be glad you're awake."

Don't we all need one of these?

Then there's kipple.

"Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders...When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself."

The empathy box and Wilbur Mercer.

The surviving humans on earth need a way to commune with each other so they use an empathy box. By holding the handles and watching the video of Wilbur Mercer climbing his hill in the wilderness Isidore merges with the old man and others watching him on his climb. The experience includes bleeding when stones are thrown and cut Mercer's arm. Not sure how this is achieved.

"He had crossed in the usual perplexing fashion; physical merging-accompanied by mental and spitual identification - with Wilbur Mercer had reocurred. As it did for everyone who at this moment clutched the handles, either here on earth or on one of the colony planets. He experienced them, the others, incorporated the babble of their thoughts, heard in his own brain the noise of many individual existences. They- and he -cared about one thing; this fusion of their mentalities oriented their attention on the hill, the climb, the need to ascend".

Climbing the hill to the Stanford Dish will never be the same for me again. I'll be looking for Wilbur Mercer.

Phili K. Dick, just a local writer

Our September title is Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" The movie Blade Runner was adapted from this novel.

It was a surprise to me that this story is set in San Francisco and that Philip K. Dick is considered to be a local writer. He went to high school and college in Berkeley in the 1940's.

This novel takes place after the humans have done a good destroying their world so most people have moved to Mars. Dick was in high school when the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan so I can understand where the the image of a world filled with empty apartment buildings and kipple might come from. Post apocalyptic stories are a favorite theme for science fiction writers. They get to create their new world from the rubble or fly off to another planet.

After reading this book I have a new, wonderful appreciation for spiders. The scene where the android, Pris, cuts off the legs of a spider one, by one is right up there with any other torture scene. Because the earth is such a mess real animals have died off. Caring for the few animals left has become a religion. It's miracle Isidore has found a living spider in his decaying apartment building only to have it cruelly disasembled by an android.

More to come...

You call this a blog?

After months of blogging I have finally read a description of a good blog. They are "frequency, brevity and personality". I fail the first two but I think "personality" shows through. I'll work on the other two, oh lucky reader.

I have fallen behind. In the last installment I was sorting through our light, summer read, Michael Lewis's "The Big Short". At our July meeting Jeannie L. used a quote from the book to sum up the financial mess :

"The upper class of this country raped this country. You fucked people. You built a castle to rip people off. Not once in all these years have I come across a person inside a big Wall Street firm who was having a crisis of conscience. Nobody ever said, 'This is wrong.' " Page 232

I think that says it all.

Our August Title was George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London." Another "light " read.

I find this book really uneven. The first half when he is working in Paris as a "plongeur" is lively and interesting. The people and situations are vivid. He's really working and making an effort.

In the London half of the book he borrows old clothes so he can be a tramp to see how the out of work survive in England. I guess it's more of an expose of the life of the British unemplyed and how the system doesn't work.

My copy of the book lists it as fiction. It reads more like "gonzo journalism". Perhaps Orwell was just ahead of his time. Thank you Hunter S. Thompson.

The subprime meltdown, so how did we get into the mess?

Ah-h-h once again we have picked a light, frothy summer title. "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis. I have started the book for a second time because my brain wasn't working very well the first time I picked it up. I do like the fact that on page 77 our author congratulates any reader who has gotten so far and offers them a gold star.

He does a very good job of explaining a complicated topic by telling the story through a few colorful characters.

Steve Eisman is in New York investigating the growing subprime mortgage industry.

"...subprime financiers had been sunk by the small fraction of the loans they had kept on their books" but now the market had learned a complicated lesson, "you can keep on making these loans, just don't keep them on your books. Make the loans, then sell them off to the fixed income department of big Wall Street investment banks, which will in turn package them into bonds and sell them to investors." This is the "originate and sell" model.

Mike Burry is in California figuring out how to make money from this time bomb ready to blow up.

" 'What you want to watch are the lenders, not the borrowers.' (Burry) said. 'The borrowers will always be willing to take a great deal for themselves. It's up to the lenders to show restraint, and when they lose it, watch out.' By 2003 he knew the borrowers had already lost it, By early 2005 he saw that the lenders had, too"

At this point I am reminded of a story Michael Lewis tells in his book, "Liar's Poker", about his career as a Salomon Brothers bond trader. He discovered that the traders who knew nothing talked on and on, but the traders who really knew what was going on said very little.

I'll just take this advice and keep this short.

More to come!

The "ultimate" book about Impressionist Art

"The Ultimate Trophy" tells the fascinating story how the Impressionist art movement started what we know as the modern art "industry". Locked out from the French Academy Impressionist artists organized their own exhibitions. Their art was affordable so "normal" people could buy and collect it.

Impressionist art was actually "marketed" to the buying public. This produced a "new phenomenom, the powerful dealer, who interpreted and marketed the new art to the public, and simultaneously employed the artists he was promoting by guaranteeing to buy their work."

The American artist, Mary Cassatt, was living and painting in Paris so she introduced her family and other wealthy Americans to the new Impressionist Art. Hook credits her with convincing many American collectors to buy art from her fellow painters. Quickly America became a huge market for the art French collectors were not interested in buying.

I enjoyed the chapters describing how different countries including America, England and Germany either embraced or rejected Impressionist art based on their historic relationship with France.

Hook actually credits the Impressionists with "softening up" the public for future modern trends that were to come. Athough Monet continued to paint water lilies through it all.

I like his short description of what defined Impressionism and what the public thought was wrong with it, "the colours used were strident and garish; there was a lack of finish: and the subject matter was banal."

Philip Hook is a wonderful writer. His language is clear and very readable. He mixes his own personal experiences as an art dealer with history to make for an interesting story.

more to come...

"Big, funny, flamboyantly imaginative...as warmhearted as it is unpredicatable"

I think Middlesex is the best novel I have read in years. I loved the characters. I cared about them. The story was interesting and unpredictable.

Here's the English major speaking out. Eugenides beautifully combines three huge themes, Greek Mythology, modern American immigration and sexual identity. That's a big order.

The fact that two of our "main characters" flee from Greece to America to escape war in their country their lives are similar to a classic myth storyline. It takes on a grandness. It's this huge sad tale but it's also happening to a bother and sistern named Lefty and Desdemona. How many Greek gods are named Lefty? There's always a humorous twist.

Eugenides tells a story which could have been a huge Greek tradegy but instead the story curves and bends so it is more comedy. Again and again he creates situations which should have been devestating to his characters but they pull through in their own "wacky" way.

He describes the Detroit race riots where neighborhoods became war zones. Milton lives for days in his Zebra Room restaurant to protect his property, gun in hand and ready to use it. After several days of not knowing what is happening to her father his daughther, Calliope, hops on her bike to save him. Inspired by all the Hercules action hero movies she was encouraged to watch, this action made the most sense.

Father and daughter are reunited. The restaurant is burned down in the riot. But...

"Shameful as it is to say, the riots were the best thing that ever happened to us. Overnight we went from being a family desperately trying to stay in the middle class to one with hopes of sneaking into the upper, or at least the upper-middle."

The family had bought 4 fire insurance policies on the restaurant. Two paid out. Now they had the money to move into a better neighborhood, Grosse Point. And buy their dream home "Middlesex". You see this book really isn't about sexual identity, it's just the name of this strange house in Grosse Point. Just kidding!

I'm finding it really hard to write about this book because every time I go back to read another page I find another little gem or plot twist I forgot.

I still really hate the cover design!


More later...

It's the blue convertible, stupid!

Months later... I think most readers loved Nancy Drew and her books because she owned a blue convertible and could drive herself any where she wanted. I also liked the fact that in the original stories she is always described as a "skillful driver".

She was autonomous. Did she ever go to school? She kept her own schedule, aside from her burden of "running the house" which amounted to telling Hannah Gruen what to do and cook. She could drive anywhere. Her father, Carson Drew, never said "where have you been, you're late, you're grounded". He doesn't seem at all disturbed that she's running around the county chasing armed burglars and getting locked in closets, as long as she's home for dinner. What planet is he from?

Everyone would like to be Nancy Drew. In addition to owning the best car she seems to be able to do everything. Drive a motor boat, knows first aid, is an excellent badminton player and is always the most popular girl in the crowd !

"Girls, it's Nancy Drew!" she exclaimed enthusiastically. "Now the fun will start!".

As we move ahead to read books about tycoons and hermaphrodites I'll just wrap it up by commenting on Harriet Stratemeyer's questionable behavior. Nancy Drew is a character with many virtues, I find it disturbing that Stratemeyer "lied" about who actually wrote the first books. Here she helps create and profit from this noble character, Nancy Drew, but I do not believe she acted nobly toward the oringinal writer, Mildred Wirt Benson. By not sharing the credit I think she belittled her own reputation. Nancy Drew would not have approved!