Author Archives: michaelulinedwards

SANDERS – DON TRUMP

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Don Trump wants America to know when his supporters receive government money, it is politics and lobbying that provide for a bailout. When poor, struggling Americans receive government money, it is socialism. Yet Americans hear alarms about Bernie Sanders. Why? He is a socialist. No one is more a socialist than Don Trump.

Where to start? Crony-capitalism? Shifting private risks to the public sector? Do business as usual? Experience rour bankruptcies and two divorces (a form of bankruptcy)? Hiring foreigners, instead of putting Americans into his real estate operations overseas? Those tens of thousands of jobs for Americans he brags about should be cut by tens of thousands, less you’re going to Don Trump Uruguay, legal marijuana up the wazoo. Like a tote, Don?

Don Trump claims to have billions of dollars because he is a socialist. For example on the campaign trail in Iowa Don Trump wants to take the socialist way: Ethanol subsidies should be preserved. (Corn can be used for better purposes: Feeding a growing world population.)

Has Don Trump ever used ethanol in his machines – cars, jets or boats? Likely, never. Why? Is it available where he lives? Ethanol is destructive to use in machines. Very special precautions must be made, but ethanol is as good for machines as corn sugar(fructose) is for the human body. (And looking at Don Trump, it’s easy to see he’s a huge consumer of fructose.)

Without solving or considering these problems, Don Trump wants to perpetuate a government program that did not work well when oil was at $120 a barrel. Ethanol was used to extend gasoline supplies. It is not feasible when oil is $30 a barrel. Oil likely won’t get much past $55 a barrel makingethanol is very expensive and destructive. A reasonable candidate would shut it down.

Don Trump wants to promote government waste so businessmen will become dependent on the government, not upon the market. They will prosper by ripping off the government and ultimately, the American people. Replicate Don Trump’s means to wealth.

Bernie Sanders seems the type of candidate who will attempt to shift government expenses from gifts to the wealthy to needs of the American population. Every vote for Don Trump hastens the increase of the United States national debt to 30 Trillion.

TRUMPET PRIDE

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I’m in the Political Elite so I talk this way. I try not to be politically correct, preferring the locker room of New York City where guys joke about bleeding chicks and gunned down crooks. I live in New York City, the broadcast center of political correctness, along with satellite offices in Frisco, Berkeley, Venice, Cambridge and Santa Fe.

I’m always politically correct to the mugs richer than myself, like Mike Bloomberg. Maybe I can cut a deal with one or more of them and try to steal a billion or two. Most politically correct places are cesspools – too many people, too much trash, too many government services, too many feces, too many minorities, too many, too many, not enough drugs. I’m tired of too many and not enough. It’s not American. Few people in those towns want me to develop and build anything. I can’t list all the people I hate. Names on the list would stretch between New York City and China. Los Angeles approved a giant skyscraper now built with China-money, but I lost a bundle when I offered to build a 125 story jobbie away from downtown, where it wasn’t commercially feasible. I sold the property at a loss.

All big time real estate developers stick among the politically Elite. I can’t count how many brats of politicians I’ve put through school by giving them overpaid summer jobs. Black, brown, LGBT – I can’t tell which color. I don’t know if I always wear the same colored socks. I really want people to work in fast food restaurants in my buildings for peanuts. That’s why they have to get college money from drug deals – a terrific way to learn business: If you flub it, you die. So buy adulterated product, cut it, debase it, sell it as prime. Rich, using suckers are lucky to get off. I’m happy so long as my employees make the minimum wage and sell drugs.

New York City is full of drugs. I’m obviously above street deals, but my college courses never taught anyone anything. It is best to learn everything on the street in trial and error fashion. Real estate is the same way – the Art of the Steal. Consulting is best, a position unavailable in the drug business. I make more money consulting than I do in business. It’s my rosy reputation. I can answer with a cliche or perhaps dance a gig. I want all my employees to be like children, dependent, diligent, quiet and orderly. It is the primary means to make money – 99 cents for me, a penny for them.

That’s the way to be Elite, and that is bigger than the real ratio. The economy is running into the sewer, and Americans are suffering. When I become President, I’ll increase the National Debt, so people like me can make as much money as Bill and Hilary. They left the White House broke (so they said), and now have hundreds of millions. I’ll start with billions and end up with hundreds of billions. Meanwhile the United States will have 30 Trillion dollar debt.

I like being in the Elite not people with a prize 1959 Edsel. My father, Fred, knew that car was a flop. Among the rich and isolated I talk political incorrectness because it is easy. I don’t pretend that I care about anybody but me. I learn cliches and everyone knows what I’m talking about. They hear and talk about nothing but cliches and a few homilies. I consume day-old Twinkies and Caviar that Old Bald Vlad sends me. Little people have no right to demand respect from me. I can be rude and offensive because I don’t like any of them – strangers. I may deport them all if they don’t vote for me. I’ve fooled supporters who think I’m on their side. They are morons and retards. I’m standing on their shoulders.

My enemies have said because I think this way, they don’t need a degree in psychology; they don’t need to be a psychiatrist. Every American can know I can be diagnosed by watching the shows, like Doctor Phil. Because I think this way, I may have Borderline Personality Disorder, at the least.

I don’t want to bother the little people with my medical and mental conditions. They have their own childish concerns and petty problems. I tell them: Make money; Take my courses, Art of the Steal; Get a life; Work for peanuts; Eat garbage; Lick my caviar containers; Relish my pollution and hate.

ADJECTIVES

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Campaign 2016

Republican comments about the President’s State of the Union speech demonstrated the weakness of one candidate running for his party’s nomination.

Ted Cruz described the speech as not the “State of the Union,” but a “State of Denial.” Agree or disagree, it expresses criticism in a complete thought. Marco Rubio made a multi-sentence criticism which was understandable. Agree or disagree.

Another candidate shunned nouns and verbs; he avoided sentences completely. He spouted adjectives, the list of which never seems to end: “boring, slow, lethargic, rambling, very hard to watch…”

The impressions derived from using adjectives are the same in writing as in speech: (1) This candidate complained about the speech as he, alone, reacted to it. (2) Using adjectives means he has no nouns and verbs to formulate policy. (3) He said nothing about the substance of the President’s speech, no matter how boring it was. (4) This candidate has no position, except adjectives to modify, about the speech or any issue until it seeps into his brain, stirs neurons and wheels finally turn – a week, a month or a year later.

Politics requires an immediate reaction to speeches and circumstances offered. In the House of Commons 150 years ago Gladstone pontificated about something, and he directed a dig at Disraeli opposite: “…only Jews and imbeciles go there.” Disraeli stood and offered his arm to Gladstone so they could leave the Commons to go to the destination.

This candidate mired in adjectives is too retarded and old to have the facility to make circumstances his own.

 

 

 

 

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UNREPENTANT

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THE BLOOD COVENANT – Rena Chynoweth

I’ve been asked why a child growing up in America would connect to a hard-nosed religion, follow a strict tenet-driven cult, or adopt a hatred for the country. Reasons and behaviors are failure to be educated, reliance on a limited faith, seeking simple answers and reveling in ignorance while eschewing learning and wisdom.

Some children are born into such philosophies, faiths and hatreds like the author of this book. She provides no answer to the question. Her book and story become ridiculous and ends farcically.

Note the book is primarily available in public libraries, but it is otherwise very expensive. By obtaining a huge judgment, the family of the man whom the author murdered put an end to the author’s aspiring literary career. She is reduced to making meager diary entries.

The author reported her cult let her do many things the average American kid and teenager did. Sometimes there were no utilities in Mexico where she grew up. Her parents had their life savings swindled from them by cult/church members. Her mother would blithely comment about such situations being God’s way or will. Her father married another women, thus fully adopting the cult’s polygamist teachings. There was a lot of social pressure on girls to marry church elders, leaders or whoever else came by, at 14, 15 and 16 years, when the author says she married the church leader, 30 years her senior. She was wife number 13. She describes that he was a complete loser in bed. He finally got her pregnant; a child was born.

It was a tough life. No money, she and other wives have to scrounge for clothes, food and sometimes shelter, when they came to the US. They slept ten or more to a room. Meanwhile the old man was writing theological pieces disagreeing with other cult leaders and defining his doctrine. He spent very little time among the distaff, domestic bliss. Life carried on this way, women’s work also included bringing home the bacon.

Her husband-leader ordered author and another woman to kill a polygamist leader living near Salt Lake City. They make arrangements with two men, go to Salt Lake and murder the man. She pulls the trigger. A few years later she is put on trial and found not guilty.

The author has learned nothing. Her actions are tantamount to being a fervent Nazi, bring tried a Nuremberg, being found not guilty and returning to the Nazi fold. The author returns to the doctrine and further indoctrination from the church leader, who is hiding out in Mexico to avoid prosecution. He controls his cult from a distance.

On page 248 during her trial the author complains being in jail with “a big Indian woman who had slit her husband’s throat, and another woman who had shot her boyfriend…” They had “committed much more violent crimes…” NOTE: The author shot her victim seven (7) times at close range. The author, a twenty year old during trial, thought she “had to work out my problems on my own.” (p. 252) The author is the sort of woman who deceives herself. She prays (again and again) and the outcome “was in God’s hands.”(268) At trial so and so witness “wasn’t so bright.” (272)

Another woman from the cult commits murder in San Diego about the same time the author killed the competing polygamist in Salt Lake. The author fails to understand the legal processes or how lucky she was: “She had been convicted of …murder, even though she did the same thing a jury saw fit to acquit us for. She was merely following what she believed to be God’s will…I’m convinced that she has more than paid for her crime.” (296-297)

Next comes, “Ed may have killed a few people and stalked others targeted for murder…” but Ed’s an all right guy. (308)

The church leader is captured, taken to Utah, put on trial, found guilty and given a life sentence. He refuses to divorce the author, who has no paperwork saying she is married to cult leader. The author removes herself from the right way, so she can marry. The man who married them comes to town and says, he’s sorry for marrying her and that she is divorced. There are four centers for the cult: Mexico, Denver, Salt Lake and Dallas/Houston, where the author resides.

The cult leader dies. The body is flown to Houston where the author buries him.(334) The cult has no leader. The mother of the author comes to her senses and says, “I wouldn’t follow [proposed leader] around the corner.”(339) Next, most of the one-time cult members, many of the author’s siblings, are murdered, likely by rival cult members.

The author may or may still be following cult tenets, but her dead brother’s children are not. Her brother went to another church and joined. The author writes, “…members of the church…offered to help…The six kids are now in a stable Christian home… We feel this was the best thing for them, to be away from us and out of the “line of fire.” (366)

ADVERTISING 2016

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It’s a big day, an opportunity to change jobs, except everything that was said since summer 2015 belies every advocacy made today. He’s a politician, through and through, a member of the Eastern political establishment – relationships, bribes, corruption – he knows how to make those deals. He even wrote a book about the DEAL. Other candidates for the nomination have pointed to shifts in position, what is said now, and what was said two months ago – six months ago – a year ago – three years ago – five years ago – eight years ago when he was a Democrat. What job is he seeking? He is lying and a liar.

He supported and voted for the Democratic nominee for president. If anyone is consistent, it is she. On the other hand, he is fickle, jumpy, nervous and uncertain, like he has Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. I don’t mind calling him a weakling and being critical of his disability. There is no political correctness. There is either a physical cause or it’s mental: Weak memory, poor principles, inadequate learning, jumbled logic and muddled and addled thinking. In Britain they would say he was potty.

Nobody dare ask him where he is and where he’s doing. It’s painfully obvious when questions of policy come up. He is at a loss, answering in assorted and random cliches. Get out the Atlas and show him where Vietnam is. That’s a country he wanted to avoid militarily and in foreign policy.

The big game plan, because politics is so much like sports, is to go to TV commercials now. He has to distance himself from the people, make his divine soundings widespread across the boob tube. To tell the truth he has tired of meeting cows in Iowa – he’s never met a cow he hasn’t eaten. He’s tired of meeting maple trees in New Hampshire. For all that the American people know of TV (the idiot box), they knew screen time is fake, except for Americans running out and buying cars on impulse after watching one minute commercials where the automobile performs devised road feats. These are the same Americans who wonder why food in restaurant commercials does not look the same as when it is presented to them in restaurants.

The advertisements try to link together cliches by using images (pictures). Show Africans in Morocco running in one direction. Claim willingness to solve immigration problems into the USA by showing sprinting Moroccans. [They may be going to Walmart for discount TVs.] The candidate is telling Americans – “Good out and buy that car. Eat in that restaurant.” The justification for the pictorial deceit: America is becoming a Third World Country, the subliminal message: “Too many minorities.” The candidate’s real message is unintended and one he, himself, cannot stomach – the Moroccans are physically fit, unlike himself and many Americans.

2016 CAMPAIGN: SOURCES

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2016 politics has revealed a candidate using methods of oratory to make himself a hero in the public’s eye. This storyline is easily plotted from two sources: Joseph Campbell’s How-to books and Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Mein Kampf is one of the worst written books by anyone. Heinrich Boell, the German novelist, tells of exercises a school teacher mandated: Rewrite Mein Kampf. In class students reduced the book to one-third its length while preserving its hate and abortional shrills. Historians, politicians and literary persons have spotted one bit of brilliance in Mein. The Mad Mustacher knew how to sway the common people with oratory. A favorite line was, “Making Germany great again.” Mein is an excellent how-to book about persuasive, swaying oratory.

Chose issues or people and say outrageous, impolite, anti-social cliches about each one. Rich guys, bad people, and bad situations, mention them all. Talk like Kim Jong Un, North Korean Leader. When he speaks, he has to threaten war, this year a Sacred War. Claim the words spoken represent reality. Repeat, repeat, repeat, like a broken record; utter childish impulses and label anyone. Accuse anyone who disagrees is opposed to the truth. Hide behind the American flag. Anyone running for President wants the USA to be great in the future, not great once again. Personally attack anyone who mentions inconsistencies, dishonesties and depredations, always the fault and and shame of the orator but now the problem of all Americans. Monopolize the news media, always hot for dispute but lacking independent criticism and fairness, an acceptable result: Push the Orator’s name and recently used cliches. Everyone must follow the new trail.

Americans have never fallen for so simple a tactic as oratory and cliches. They want substance, beyond what they have learned from talk shows: They crave understanding in candidates beyond the use of cliches. The Constitution itself has a Preamble of cliches, but the remainder is meat and potatoes, which must be known, consumed and digested. Will the American people again chose someone in experience who is so uncomfortable and sensitive that he is frozen in office? Will the American people choose someone with a mind oriented to cliches? Or do Americans want someone appreciating the balance of faces affecting political power and who is capable of working within that system and producing results?

The Germans believed the oratory, and that it was communicated by a savior, the Mad Mustacher. He never got more than a third of the vote. Coming to power he dismantled structures of democratic government and quickly made Germany a totalitarian society. That would never happen in the United States. Americans own too many guns.

But some Americans and one group of broadcasters believe the Savior has arrived in the 2016 campaign. Late in 2015 newbie-broadcaster objected to the Savior being labelled a clown. Again and again the show guest repeated “clown,” and the newbie-broadcaster said, “He is not a clown.” On another show a guest said the appeal of the Savior was understandable but the messages were hogwash and shams. The program host decried none of it was hogwash or a sham. Preferably Americans would understand if the show hosts asked the reasons or facts behind the clown, hogwash/sham conclusions. Those broadcasters did not. Americans learned nothing.

What is the source to the incompetent existence allowing journalists and politicians to survive? Joseph Campbell. Let’s the the record straight. Campbell’s learned from Mein Kampf, the Nazis, German philosophy and the Germans. All his books were published after World War Two. Campbell knew Nazis and fascism were not marketable. He said his books had everything to do with myths. Anyone historically knowledgable know the Nazis were big myth resurrectors, and looking for myth, Old Joe C. copied Nazi ideology.

All right, I concede Americans live in an age of myths – Harry Potter, Star Wars, Vampires and the Undead. It’s a scary world, but don’t be deceived.

Old Joe C. was an academic who believed he had discovered a how-to-write-a-compelling story. Hero, make the protagonist a hero. The reader and movie audiences will fawn over him. Old Joe listed the ingredients [elements]. [steps], [manifestations], [parts], [units] and discussed many of them. Other writers have picked up these lists which comprise their interpretation of Old Joe’s work. It is therefore easy to conclude that Old Joe’s books are not well-written (because a lot of other authors make much more money explaining Old Joe myths things).

From the standpoint of literature Old Joe’s work is pure crap. However less refined and less rigorous media like movies and TV, have accept Joe’s methods. The quality and the quantity of each has declined. More frequently the audience is presented with characters in impossibly human situations, parakeets running wild, and deep sea adventures which end in outer space. The players are supposed to work through each scenario: A myth! How does a favorite actors handle it? It does not matter. It’s a myth! Don’t make it real, the myths of reality TV shows.

The American audience has lost the idea and the appreciation that forms of art in TV and movies can reflect human existence on Earth. What is offered to Americans? Rote and routine from Old Joe’s myth’s, hero, savior, everyone will be all right if one follows blindly because no one can ever see a Savior let alone understand speech of an orator, now a mad tyrant.

Indeed, the 2016 campaign one candidate presents his myth fitting Old Joe’s compendium: There have been no claims of his being born in a manger or found floating among the bulrushes. But suppressing underlings and deriding the poor is his stamp, and his greed, extravagance and profligacy are trump cards he loves to play.

Some hero elements used in 2016 are off Old Joe’s list, but indoctrinated, ignorant audiences are ready to overlook oversights and incongruent addenda: Producing far more harm and hardship to thousands of people than the orator has ever had himself. Making misjudgments that cost thousands of people employment. Having a sense of entitlement and privilege feeding the most extreme forms of narcissism and opportunism. A physical inability to portray himself as a human being, but as a piece of plaster of paris statuary on display at a Carnival. An unwillingness to expose himself to danger, hoping surrogates will carry that lead. An imprudent mouth not controlled by temper, judgment or reason. Lies, deceptions and tergiversations are primary communications.

The public relations make for an incoherent, uncogent campaign. Pick an issue out of the blue, and sky is the only common connection it has to Americans. Many of the comments are ill advised, infantile, ignorant or poorly put – make up the words, which ever words meet whim. Sentences don’t have to make sense, just bombastic, revealing emotion, irrationality and the intuition matching that of an ape, pounding the chest, hitting the ground and truly wondering what to do next.

This is 2016, time for Americans to get beyond the oratory, and search for a human being who understands issues beyond cliches.

LOCKE BIOGRAPHY OF EASTWARD

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THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE VERY UGLY
Sondra Locke

Any autobiography suffers from the writer’s inability to tell the truth, fully, moderately or partially. This flaw has been noted among writers. [William L. Shirer, Twentieth Century Journey, vol. 1, Chapter 1] However, Sondra Locke in The Good, the Bad & the Very Ugly (no index) remarkably tells the truth in a well-written autobiography while coming to incomplete and imprecise conclusions.

General impressions. I like Sondra Locke; this book does not endear me to her. But I am happy she has managed to act in and direct additional films. The more films made the better. This autobiography lacks any setting: What was Los Angeles like for an up-and-coming actress in entertainment(1968-1973)? Locke gives the impression that every role she got except the first and those until she met Eastwood, magically came to her. Indeed, it seems her first and only mentor in entertainment was Eastwood.

Locke presents her life as a fairy tale; the writing is consistent. In a deposition the first questions were about the fairy tale life. She is admirably loyal to persons in her life and hometown who have helped her, especially her best friend Gordon. They marry. Gordon declares he is gay; he finds other lovers. They live separately in Los Angeles but talk daily and see each other often.

Sondra Locke had a good start to a film career in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Thereafter her roles diminished, three films that tried to develop the alternative reality of the Sixties: Reflections of Fear was the most establishment.The Seducers, supposedly a true story about teenage girls, gone wild. The Second Coming of Suzanne, hipsters supposedly making a movie. None of these movies added anything to Locke’s career. She mets Eastwood in an audition for Breezy which Locke pejoratively and quickly dismisses: “about a man in his late fifties who choses a young teenage chick with lots of T and A.” (131) Eastwood hires Locke to perform in The Outlaw Josey Wales. It is “love at first sight,” but it was also roles in better movies at first sight.

It might also be better described as physical relations at first sight. Eastwood learns about Gordon. They meet, socialize, chat and laugh. Eastwood produces movies, some of which Locke acts in. For those movies and others Locke says she worked on them when Eastwood viewed them in post production at the ranch.

After discussions with Locke Eastwood divorces his wife in the early 1980s; Locke remains married to Gordon. Eastwood buys a house, and Gordon lives in it. He buys a second house in Los Angeles (Stradella) for himself and Locke, apparently selling a Studio City house about the same time.

What was life with Eastwood like? There is some of that but more about Gordon. The whole book must be consumed before making an impression. Locke and Eastwood spend time in Carmel, Sun Valley Idaho, Lake Shasta and other places. But get to the nitty-gritty – before, during and after dinner talk, the sweet words soothing life to get to sleep.

In the mid-1980s Locke spent a couple of years decorating houses.(175) Gordon is frequently with her during that shopping. If Eastwood is in town, Locke and Eastwood would be together during the evening: What did you do today, darling? Chapter 12 late in the book gives a run down of a Locke and Gordon day. Gordon has spiritual qualities and abilities. Locke enthusiastically writes about days of spirituality but lacks specifics. In talks with Eastwood Locke likely was very verbal about those spiritual events. There was no communication. Eastwood seems like a feet-on-the Earth fellow.

Screaming at the reader is one word: INCOMPATIBLE. It is completely unfathomable why Locke would call Eastwood, a man 14 years her senior: “Daddy.”(152) And when Eastwood left she would “cry like a school girl.”(148)

For Every Which Way But Loose Eastwood wanted Locke to sing songs she had written and composed. She didn’t want to and never wanted to sing again.(157) Eastwood liked Locke, a beautiful woman, to wear no make up.(148) NO: put on the ughs and toss on the paint. Locke wanted to direct. Through Eastwood’s production company the script of Ratboy is bought(mid 1980s).

First-time director Locke and Gordon want to rewrite the Ratboy script. Gordon has no writing credits (that are mentioned)l Locke has none. Eastwood says no. There are schools of practice about producers/directors rewriting scripts. Eastwood may favor, Buy a script, shoot it. Undisciplined, enthusiasts among producers and directors don’t believe writers do anything, but they, themselves, can take years rewriting screenplays. This autobiography does not go into business customs and practices. Eastwood’s point of view is clear. Locke is deeply offended. It should be observed for her next film, Impulse (1989) Locke does not admit doing a director’s rewrite of the script.

While Locke is engaged in the film as a director, someone she likes back home dies. Gordon returns. Over Eastwood’s objections Director Locke returns home (203). The autobiography casts adjectives, one of which is mean which is completely meaningless. Locke’s adjectives are belied later in The Good, The Bad (249): “In a near-hypnotic manner I went back to work. Directing a film requires awesome stamina and with claiming of so much emotional drain on the my life I could hardly stay afloat.” There is no discussion of Locke’s emotional state after her return to directing of Ratboy.

Locke is incredulous about her palimony suit (remember she is married to Gordon throughout), that participants can be petty in a domestic relations litigation. Locke’s description of what happened is run of the mill. It is equally surprising that entertainment closes in trying to keep people out, but think of the earlier incident: Academy Award Winner Cliff Robertson and the $10,000 check. None of those schemes are very sophisticated. It is probable that Sondra Locke has now learned Samuel Goldwyn’s aphorism: “An oral contract is not worth the paper it is printed on.”

There are items every writer ought to know: A baby deer is a fawn.(165) There are no “preliminary hearings” in civil cases.(7) There are Pre-trial conferences, Settlement Conferences and Law and Motion. One “saves” money. One does not go about “saving up” money.(46) And it is inconsistent to call Eastwood a “spoiled child”(236) all the while the author is describing her life as the fairy tale she has lived in since the 1950s.

A PAST IN HIDING

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Mark Rosenman is the author. He labels this a memoir which is usually written by the person[Marianne Strauss] involved in the memories.

In the Introduction the author writes,

“It became clear that Marianne had subtly changed some incidences, forgotten others, or “appropriated” memories that…belonged to other people.

Sometimes, the discrepancies were not factual errors at all…[From the underground diary] the picture that emerged…of what illegal life was like, and above all of what the young woman was like who had lived that life, was very different from the picture she had painted for me. Marianne had evidently lost sight of the person she had once been.”(page 11)

This is always true. As human beings age, they disregard and diminish traits and behaviors which once controlled their actions and thoughts.

The book supposedly is about Marianne Strauss, daughter of a Jewish family from Essen, Germany. Unlike other members of her family murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust, this 20 year-old Jewish woman survived by going underground for two years. Of the 420 pages of text only 90 concern life underground or people she met there. (page 250-340)

The author interviewed Marianne when she was 66 years old and after her death seven years later  he learned her story was not complete. Hence the quote above. The mistake the author makes is presenting an oral history. He relies on Marianne’s version, and next quotes from other interviewees. The feel of the book is a debating society, quibbling over irrelevant facts: what the middle school was like.

The problem with additional sources is they come from other elderly persons. The author interviewed Marianne because she was 66 and frail, but it seems that most of the research for the book was done after that interview. He later learned things and needed clarifications and had additional questions.

Throughout the book are sentences, so obvious, they are concessionary and cliched. They don’t belong: “For Marianne’s parents, life in 1942 must have been one long miserable wait under steadily worsening conditions.” (page 219) Miserable! Jews living in Nazi Germany had more than misery. In his diary Victor Klemperer tells of the petty steps the Nazis officialdom took to torment him: Taking the pet cat; during searches stealing food, money and clothes from their living space. These actions go far beyond misery, especially for the educated victims who know most Nazis never got past the sixth grade and had all the compassion and understanding of baboons.

One way this oral history reveals itself and weaknesses is it is written by subject. Years bounce around, sometimes in the same paragraph; persons come and go; imprudently the author puts the reader in 1942 and in the next paragraph he injects himself: “In the summer of 1997 I gained an unexpected insight into Marianne’s effect on this group…” (222). Sources go from diaries to fax transmissions.

About halfway through the book the author tells about the Gestapo evacuation of the Strauss family and Marianne’s escape. The author returns to the debating sources and foolishly, irrelevantly concludes, “…it seems the Gestato story was true – and on this point Marianne’s account was inaccurate.” (p. 258)

The author’s attempted explanation at the end of the book about Marianne’s not remembering things just as they happened is folly. Individuals living normal lives don’t remember what they ate for lunch on any day, or on which day two weeks ago they went to the dentist. Anyone who investigates anything – politics, government, journalists, spies, attorneys – knows that human memory and eye witness accounts are fallible, sometimes completely unreliable, although the event occurred a half hour before. It is nonsense to expect a 66 year old woman to remember everything that happened to her 45 years before without her referring to her own papers or walking the arena.

However, this text tells of the German underground (incompletely) which is an important subject. Most Germans lost their heads, manically worshipping human idols and following the simplest, cliched ideas to lead them to Valhalla. There was a sliver of people in Germany who defied that mindset, disparaged that ignorance and obscurantism and kept their humanity. They helped persons like Marianne.

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BERLIN DIARIES 1940-1945

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A diary to read.

MARIE VASSILTCHIKOV was a White Russian emigre whose family or royalty came west during the Russian Revolution (1919). She was in Germany throughout World War Two, and kept a diary half of which was lost.

She knew many Germans involved in the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler, but she really does not say how much she knew. e.g. she knew how the extra bombs were disposed of.

Throughout the War she worked in a German public relations office, mostly collecting photographs; she visited friends, foreigners like herself, well-healed Germans like the Bismarcks, and Twenty-something persons like herself.

There is no telling how much better this book could be if she had all her diaries from those years. The author has managed to tell about society and culture in a closing circle. As the Germans were losing the War, they restricted all activities more and more: bathing, use of cosmetics, food rationing in effect immediately except for oysters which were not rationed. Marie tells about traveling across Berlin to rescue 200 oysters in a friend’s bombed out building.

This is not the first diary I’ve read about Germany during that War. But this story conveys (and provides an outline) how human beings live through disabilities, whether it is war or those suffered by human beings.

GONE GIRL Review

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Supposedly the story is about two writers, Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike. She goes missing.

The story is not about writing. It is about complimenting writers: “I loved it”and “Brilliant” are not subjects, adjectives and admirations writers use. They are more critically subtle suggesting an intimate sublime understanding of the writing. There is none of that in the movie.

The cops learn that Rosamund has gone missing. They are the most inept cops on the planet. There is no victimization; there’s no in-depth investigation into Rosamund or Ben. There is no body, not much blood, no search dogs and no way to transport the body anywhere. The cops don’t talk to the neighbor whose entire life appears to be sitting on his front porch looking at Ben and Rosamund’s house. They don’t talk to Rosamund’s “best friend” until … Ben is a suspect but the cops don’t ask many questions; they let him wander and contaminate house, the supposed crime scene. Ben’s attitude to the cops: he is offended questions are being asked and has a unsettling annoyance his life is disturbed.

So this is not a police story; the cops and their lines are annoyances to tell other parts of the script. The cops don’t learn until late that Ben wants to divorce Rosamund. They don’t learn until late that Ben has been rogering one of his students.

Ben reminds me of Donald Trump, legitimately attacked by women who call him out for his bad judgment and egregious decisions.

At minute 67-69 the audience learns that Rosamund is on the fly and has set Ben up for murder. The big problem is her creating a new identity. Identity is problematic when the subject is known: Amazing Amy is Rosamund’s character. It is coupled with Rosamund’s trademark smile.

Rosemund stays at a resort with a miniature golf course where she monitors the missing person’s investigation over the Internet. With another woman she talks about her experiences with Ben. Dumb.

If Rosamund were decidedly against Ben and wanted him to be charged with murder, it seems a good time to do a WILD venture and hike the Pacific Rim trail, thereby disappearing for a long while. NOPE, Rosamund is not that smart. Her motivation throughout the movie waivers; she goes with the flow.

Rosamund is robbed at the resort by her girlfriend and her boyfriend. Rosamund calls old boyfriend who has held a candle for her for 20 years (believe it or not, life can be that short). He’s rich and promises to hide her at his Lake side, high-tech mansion masquerading as a cabin.

Note it is about this time in the movie that the cops get around to arresting Ben.

Cabin life in the woods is not what Rosamund wants. She more or less does a Basic Instinct  murder on the old boyfriend, and reports that he was obsessed with her, kidnapped and raped her. She drives home to Ben.

The situation becomes a public relations campaign. The movie is about writers becoming more famous without going to jail.

If all the ingredients of the story had been hard and accurate, I would not now write, Don’t see this movie.

 

 

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