Long Cool Woman In a Black Dress

This tune fascinated me when it hit the charts in 1972, largely because I couldn't fully understand the lyrics. That was partly due to the echo applied to Allan Clarke's vocals, but also because the lyrics seemed to mention working for the FBI, the DA man and a tall walking big black cat. Was that really what he was singing? Why would The Hollies, an English pop group, would want to sing about something so American? 

Eventually I tracked down the lyrics (see below) and found this video of The Hollies' performing it live. This swept away all doubt. Unlike most YouTube videos, this is clearly a live performance. We clearly hear Clarke's vocal without the echo. And the two-guitar break halfway through (long a favorite of mine) is nicely done.

Saturday night I was downtown
Working for the F.B.I.
Sitting in a nest of bad men
Whiskey bottles piling high

Bootlegging boozer on the west side
Full of people who are doing wrong
Just about to call up the D.A. man
When I heard this woman singing a song.

(Chorus)
A pair of 45s made me open my eyes
My temperature started to rise
She was a long cool woman in a black dress
Just a 5-9 beautiful tall
With just one look I was a bad mess
Cause that long cool woman had it all.

I saw her heading to the table
Well, a tall walking big black cat
Charlie said, I hope that you're able, boy
'Cause I'm telling you she knows where it's at
Well, suddenly we hear the sirens
And everybody started to run
Jumping under doors and tables
I heard somebody shooting a gun.

The D.A. was pumping my left hand
She was holding my right
Well, I told her, don't get scared
'Cause you're gonna be spared
I've gotta be forgiven if I wanna spend my living
With a long cool woman in a black dress
Just a 5'9" beautiful 'n' tall
With just one look I was a bad mess
'Cause that long cool woman had it all

Seventeen by Booth Tarkington

I read Tarkington's Penrod novels when I was a young lad, but I never got around to reading Seventeen. Perhaps that was because I was less than 17 at the time. Now I have taken the plunge, and I loved it. 

Contemporary readers will find that Seventeen is written in an old-fashioned style, which is not surprising since it was published in 1916. It revolves around a 17-year-old boy who is infatuated with Lola Pratt (great name!), a stranger who visits his small Midwest town for the summer. 

The book has a major flaw in that it depicts black people in ways that are unacceptable by today's standards. But so did Huckleberry Finn. For my part, I was willing to endure what some will find offensive because Tarkington, like Twain, is simply a superb writer.  Tarkington does a fine job of depicting teenage angst in a way that one has to live through to understand. His descriptions of William's feelings for the young lady who has stolen his heart are spot on. I could cite any number of examples, but one will suffice. Describing William's heartache: 

"Alas! he considered his sufferings a new invention in the world... he passed through phases of emotion which would have kept an older man busy for weeks and left him wrecked at the end of them." (p. 186)

One of my favorite scenes is set at a party at which William struggles to get one single dance with Lola. Here the book is completely detached from today's world. Teenagers dance to live music supplied by "Italians with harp, violin and flute, promising great things for dancing on a fresh-clipped lawn" (p. 195). William's rival is indisposed (vomiting, as it would be called today), giving our hero the opportunity he has been waiting for all night:

"Then gaily tinkled harp, gaily sang flute and violin! Over the greensward William lightly bore his lady, while radiant was the clear sky above the happy dancers. William's fingers touched those delicate fingers; the exquisite face smiled rosily up to him; the undreamable sweetness beat rhythmically upon his glowing ears; his feet moved in a rhapsody of companionship with hers....So passed the long, ineffable afternoon away - ah, Seventeen!" (p. 201)

It takes a special breed of reader to plow through 324 pages of this sort of writing. But I am that reader. Call me old-fashioned if you will. 

N.B. Seventeen was originally a series of "sketches" appearing in Metropolitan Magazine, later collected and published in novel form in 1916. It was the best-selling novel of the year in 1916,  the second consecutive year in which Tarkington headed the best-seller list, preceded in 1915 by his novel The Turmoil. 

Donald J. Trump vs. United States, Supreme Court, No. 23-939

I don't dare to put this on my other social media platforms, but I must speak out, if only to vent my concern. Having read the opinion of the court, I am appalled. The court seems to have gone out of its way to define a new paradigm of presidential immunity.  

I'm not a constitutional lawyer, or any sort of lawyer. But this is discouraging to say the least. I tend to support Justice Sotomayor's dissent: the majority decision "invents an atextual, ahistorical and unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law... This holding is unnecessary on the facts of the indictment, and the majority's attempt to apply it to the facts expands the concept of core powers beyond any recognizable bounds.... Argument by argument, the majority invents immunity through brute force." 

I also concur with David French's opinion piece in The New York Times, which says: "The Supreme Court isn’t a policy-making body; it’s an interpretive body... I disagree with the Supreme Court’s rulings for the most basic reason of all — they do not square with the text of the document the justices are supposed to interpret, and that means they’re granting the presidency a degree of autonomy and impunity that’s contrary to the structure and spirit of American government." 

The Ferryman by Justin Cronin

In terms of reader enjoyment and elegant prose, I'd give The Ferryman my highest rating. I congratulate the author on producing another fine novel that's somewhere between science fiction, fantasy and psychological thriller. 

So why is my Goodreads rating only three out of five stars? My one reservation is that Cronin's story contains a couple of wrenching plot twists. They're intriguing, but I'm still trying to reconcile some of the details. This is partly my fault, as I had to set the book aside for a couple of weeks while I attended to other priorities. To atone, I spent considerable time re-reading certain critical sections. Thank God for Kindle, which makes it easy to search for words like "Oranios" and "The Designer." Now I need a book discussion group to help me finish the task.

The theme of a "Designer"is key to this book. Readers with gnostic tendencies (a worthy lot) will recognize the concept of an artisan god separate from and subordinate to the original creator. But this book is not about theology. The Ferryman poses the question: what is real, and what is illusion? This brings to mind a favorite Moody Blues lyric, but let's not get bogged down in "Nights in White Satin." Instead, here are some of my favorite passages from The Ferryman: 

• "...it was and always would be impossible to know what was dream and what was not... all creation was boxes within boxes within boxes, each the dream of a different god."  
• "There is the thing... and then there is the echo of the thing, the shadow of the thing." Echoes and dreams play a large part in this book. Dreaming is almost deviant behavior in the world Cronin creates, but some people do it anyway. They can't help it.
• "So none of this is real, is what you're saying." "Oh, I wouldn't say that. More like a reality of a certain kind. A shadow kind, if you will." Cronin provides a nice synopsis of Plato's cave parable here.

This is heady stuff. Cronin also has a point of view on current events, including climate change and the increasing disparity between the rich and everyone else. Those who seek further analysis and commentary may want to follow the links below. 

External Links

• New York Times Book Review.  An Island Utopia Where Nobody Dies and the Living Is Easy." May 1, 2023.
• Kirkus Reviews. Twisty, Thrilling and Beautifully Written. April 11, 2023.
• Esquire. "How Justin Cronin Wrote the Ultimate Holy Sh*t Moment in The Ferryman." May 2, 2023.
• Washington Post.  Justin Cronin Returns with "The Ferryman", an Apocalyptic Thriller. April 25, 2023.

World War II Fiction: A Partial List

My father, born in 1930, was an avid reader of fiction about World War II. Too young to participate in the war himself, I suppose this was his way of experiencing it vicariously. 

Many of the titles listed below were stored in boxes in our attic during my childhood. The rest are books I picked up here and there as an adult.  They provided me with many hours of exciting reading. 

• The Caine Mutiny (Wouk) - one of my all-time favorites of any genre
• Once An Eagle (Myrer)
• Battle Cry (Uris) - I've lost track of how many times I've read it
  
• The Winds of War (Wouk; a trilogy)
• Catch-22 (Heller)
• The Young Lions (Shaw) 
  
• From Here to Eternity (Jones)
• The Naked and the Dead (Mailer)
• Von Ryan's Express (Westheimer)
• King Rat (Clavell)
• The Cruel Sea (Monserrat)
• Landfall (Shute)
• The Chequer Board (Shute)
• The Good Shepherd (Forrester)
• Tales of the South Pacific (Michener)
• The Big War (Myrer) - I may re-read this one; I scarcely recall anything about it.
• Don't Go Near the Water (Brinkley) - a humorous treatment
• Where Eagles Dare (Maclean) 
• Eye of the Needle (Follett)
• Jackdaws (Follett)

In several cases (Wouk, Uris, Shaw, Follett) the books listed above set me on a longer-term effort to read the author's other work that has been quite rewarding. Many of these novels became films. But don't judge these books by the movies.

Weaponizing the Federal Government

I don't dare post this on Facebook, because it will infuriate a certain percentage of people and lead to a series of messy, exhausting online arguments. 

Divided House Approves G.O.P. Inquiry Into ‘Weaponization’ of Government

New York Times, January 11, 2023

But this is MY blog. Mine, mine, mine. So brace yourself. I'm going to open my big fat mouth and unleash hell. 

I understand the need for openness and transparency in government. But at some point, the sheer number of investigations puts our country at risk. With everybody investigating each other, our elected representatives are becoming so tangled up in their underwear that they'll have no time to govern the country. 

Belief in God?

I asked Nancy that question recently. Her response: "If God doesn't exist, then how did we get here?" That's a useful way to phrase the question, because it helped me to articulate my own belief: God as depicted in The Bible is not necessarily the same thing as the creator of the universe, if there was one. I'm not sure about a creator, as I'll explain. 

Begin with the question: was the universe created, or has it always existed? Some (including Plato's Timaeus) would say that it must have been created, because it exists, and nothing can exist unless it is first created. I can accept the possibility of a creator. 

But a true creator -- a force that set creation in motion but was not itself created by anything --- would be an entity totally beyond our understanding. Maybe not even an entity at all. A force that acted, but was not acted upon? It's hard to even think about it. As Timaeus said, the father of all this (if there is one) is beyond our knowledge.

But assuming there was a creator, I have difficulty reconciling that entity with the God presented in The Hebrew Bible and The New Testament. 

I refer now to the God that spoke directly to early Biblical figures and intervened in human affairs; expects us worship him ("Praise ye the Lord", as the Anglican service puts it); who expects us to obey his commandments, and punishes us if we don't; who loves us and has a plan for us all; who sent his son Jesus to us and then took him away to atone for man's sins.

I struggle with the idea that the sort of creator I'm talking about would do such things. Such a creator would be so different from us that it might not even be aware of mankind, let alone bother to watch over and judge us.

I am aware that I'm applying human concepts to something that, if it exists, is beyond our understanding. As theologians tell us, it's a mistake to try to apply logic and reasoning to what is essentially a matter of faith. 

Still, I have to believe that the God of The Bible and other monotheistic religions is a man-made concept. It must have emerged as an attempt to answer the deepest questions. Why does the world appear as it does? Intelligent design, or evolution? How did all this come to be? Was it created? I never will know the answers, nor will any human being. The questions are too vast. They are beyond our capabilities.

There is much value and wisdom to be found in The Bible and the sayings of Jesus, and The Torah, and no doubt other religions as well. As well as some very eloquent writing. But I am left with little faith, just a series of questions. As I've said before, I do pray in times of crisis. But I'm not sure anyone is listening.