The Cue Card: Books, Movies, Music and More

I read “The Marriage Plot” for my book club this month, and I found it a great read. It’s the first book I’ve read by Jeffrey Eugenides and now I'm eager to go out and get his two other novels. I’m not sure why I never read his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Middlesex,” maybe I wasn’t sure of the subject matter, but I do want to get to it in the near future. Eugenides seems to really inhabit his characters, making you feel you know them, and “The Marriage Plot” was so easy sink into, so readable, the story and pages just flew by.

It’s about the lives of three senior college students at Brown University in the early 1980s. Madeleine is an English major who’s honors thesis is on the traditional “marriage plot” -- the suitors, proposals, and misunderstandings in such novels as those by Jane Austen, George Eliot and Henry James. Leonard is a smart, biology student from Oregon who comes to suffer manic depression. And Mitchell is a religious studies major who like Eugenides is from Detroit.

The book is a take on a modern marriage plot with Leonard and Mitchell both vying for the affections of Madeleine, who soon enough falls hard for Leonard. After graduation, Madeleine goes to live with him while he’s working an internship at a genetics lab, but all is not well. Madeleine spends most of her time helping Leonard cope with his mental illness. Meanwhile Mitchell is traveling around Europe and India, becoming more interested in religion and volunteering with Mother Theresa’s organization in Calcutta, all the while still dreaming of marrying Madeleine.

Later, all three lives intersect again in New York, where events transpire that lead to more uncertainty of whom Madeleine will end up with. Will she stay with Leonard, the manic depressive, or Mitchell, who’s trying to find himself through religion? Or will either one be the one for Madeleine as she pursues her graduate studies in the Victorian novel?

It’s a love triangle that’s up in the air till the very end. I found the lives of these idealistic young graduates to be quite engaging as they pursued their studies, passions, hardships and loves. It’s a book that delves deep and comes out on top.

I tried to prepare myself for scenes of torture before going to see “Zero Dark Thirty,” the film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, since that’s mostly what I heard about ever since it came out. Most of the controversy has been over the film’s insinuation that torture played a part in finding bin Laden’s location. Senators Feinstein, McCain and Levin sent a letter to Sony Pictures attacking the film for being “grossly inaccurate and misleading” over the torture. Jane Mayer, of the New Yorker, and others, also strongly took issue with the film. Interestingly, Mark Bowden of “Black Hawk Down” fame says the film isn’t far off the mark of what happened.

So I was forewarned before I saw it. The torture scenes come near the beginning of “Zero Dark Thirty” as CIA agents are trying to get information out of al Qaeda detainees after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Luckily the scenes aren’t as gruesome as I feared though they are disturbing and not easy to watch.

A lot of the film is based around Maya, the CIA agent played by Jessica Chastain, who gleans information from a couple of the detainee interrogations and begins to try and track a possible bin Laden courier. Along the way, there’s various setbacks and other terrorist bombings that preoccupy the CIA, though Maya sticks to her guns about the courier, which leads to disputes with her boss who believes she’s on the wrong track. But very slowly Maya begins to make inroads into finding the courier, eventually tracking him to a large compound in Islamabad. Whether that is where Osama bin Laden is no one then could say for certain. The film’s last forty minutes shows a gripping real-time depiction of the Navy Seal raid on the fortress, where we know now bin Laden had been living for quite some time.

Director Kathryn Bigelow’s film is definitely worth seeing and is in my top ten picks for 2012, somewhere behind “Lincoln," “Life of Pi” and maybe "Argo." It’s gritty and maybe a bit overly Maya-concentrated but a riveting puzzle of our times uncovered. Whether torture led to any tips in the hunt for Osama bin Laden remains in dispute, but what’s not in dispute is that harsh interrogations were pursued after Sept. 11, with a few detainees reportedly being waterboarded well over a hundred times. Yet still bin Laden wasn’t found for a decade. I don’t think the film glorifies or justifies torture or is in favor of it, but makes note that it was used in the early years. I agree with the gist of Kathryn Bigelow’s defense of the film, which she wrote about in the Los Angeles Times.

What did you think of the film? Or do you not want to see it?

I started out my reading year in 2013 by rereading the old classic Jack Kerouac novel “On the Road.” I had first read it in my 20s but now in my 40s I was curious to read it again because the film of it just came out with Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart among others. I guess I’m still a bit curious to see the film although some reviewers say it is “oddly lifeless” compared to the energy and craziness of the book.

As for the novel, I think I liked it better when I first read it in my 20s. It’s not an easy book for sure. Published in 1957, “On the Road” details the cross-country road adventures of the narrator Sal Paradise and his friends, notably Dean Moriarty, who’s one energetic “mad” dude. The novel is largely autobiographical and is based on Jack Kerouac’s road trips with Neal Cassady and others from 1947 to 1950.

I guess the first time I read it I was caught up in the spontaneous, personal writing style of it, which breathes life into the adventures but also takes a while to get used to. Kerouac claims he wrote it, typing continuously on one long 120-foot roll of paper. Back in my 20s, I also liked the buddy road trip and counter-culture aspect of it: the drinking, drugs, sex, jazz bars and driving like mad for endless thousands of miles.

But this time I didn’t seem to have as much patience with “On the Road.” The partying and irresponsibility sort of grew old (back and forth across the country three or four times), and Dean and the rest weren’t as cool or magnetic as perhaps I once remembered. The women get pregnant and left for the most part. And some of the book reads a bit like gibberish.

Still I was interested to see how Kerouac perceived the wide-open country in 1947 to 1950 and the cities of Denver, San Fran and NYC, which he writes mostly about. What it was like then, what it felt like. Some of his sentences still hold the magic of the time and of a group of friends hell-bent on seeking the marrow out of life. That’s what kept me reading despite the relentless road, the colorful details and language, and what would become of Sal, a writer, who was enamored by Dean but grew apart from him as well. It's a telling book about a friendship that peaks and ebbs at various times over the years. Sal appears ready to settle down by the end, but Dean is still seemingly in transit after an indelible time on the road.

Have you read this Beat classic and what did you think?

This month sees a slew of strong novels coming out, seven of which are debut novels; see the list at the right. It's a bit hard to choose which ones beckon me most.

I've heard good things about George Saunders' new short-story collection "Tenth of December," which I likely will pick up.

I'm also a bit drawn to Lara Santoro's provocative new novel "The Boy," which has gained high praise according to Amazon from authors such as Anne Lamott, Emma Donoghue and Alice Sebold.

I might also be in the mood for a story set in Africa, in that case "White Dog Fell From the Sky" by Eleanor Morse

could be the one, as I've heard good things about it.

In movies, I'm still hoping to see a couple of strong December releases that got by me, notably "The Impossible" and "Zero Dark Thirty." So far my favorite films of 2012 have been "Lincoln" and "Life of Pi" but I'm still holding out that those two listed above could alter my best of list, but we shall see.

Also in January look for "Broken City," which could be an enticing film about a political scandal that stars Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe.

As for new music, it's sort of slim pickings in January (see list at bottom right), so instead I will spotlight the new episodes of "Downton Abbey" ( hooray Season 3 starts tonight!) as well as "The Good Wife," which is my only other TV show, along with "The Walking Dead," of course, which is on hiatus till February.

The British show's latest season seems to hinge on what is going to happen at Downton after the estate goes bust, which should throw an interesting wrench into everything. I'm not exactly sure who my favorite character is on the show, but I sort of like Lady Mary because she is sly and crafty and usually gets the guy she wants. (And thankfully he is no longer impotent from his war injury.) Though my yellow Lab pup likes Isis, Lord Grantham's dog, who she thinks looks just like her. Go figure.

These are just some of my picks. Which January releases are you most looking forward to?

I finished my year in reading with Cristina Alger’s financial thriller “The Darlings,” which is a quick, entertaining novel about the reverberations surrounding what turns out to be a Ponzi scheme at a large hedge fund in New York.

It begins as the manager of the fund has apparently jumped off the Tappan Zee Bridge right as the SEC has started to close in on him, leaving his business associates reeling as the far-reaching sham is ultimately revealed. The fund’s founder, billionaire investor, Carter Darling pleads ignorance of the scheme and tries to keep his wife, two daughters and sons-in-law together in its wake. But chaos and questions abound, notably, will his son-in-law, Paul, the firm’s general counsel, stand by the family patriarch or cut a deal to save his own skin, and who in the end who will be left standing.

“The Darlings” is a story of a rich New York family’s undoing, where bonds and loyalties are put through the ringer. It definitely reminded me of the Bernie Madoff scandal and family, and vividly sets the scene of a New York in crisis, around the time of the financial crash in 2008 when Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns went kaput and thousands lost their jobs. The characters are all seemingly both good and bad and the lines get blurred between who’s guilty, responsible or a victim, which makes for a good thriller-type book. I found “The Darlings” slick and well-done but ultimately I was glad to leave behind the unsettling, Madoff-like moneyed atmosphere it conjures.

Meanwhile, I was able to see the musical film “Les Miserables” this week with eight of my relatives, which was a bit fun. Most of them had seen it before as the Broadway musical or as the 1998 film starring Liam Neeson, but this was my first time seeing it. While I liked some of the songs, music and performances in it, I found that as a musical it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea; I’m not a true fan or follower of musicals generally. Yet I appreciated “Les Miz’”: its history, the book, its period of revolutionary France and its story of redemption. It was epic in scale no doubt and I was curious to see it. But I didn’t feel it was exactly for me, and some parts seemed to drag, while others were more interesting. Perhaps I just need to dive into the soundtrack. What did you think of it?

Just a short post today as Christmas is near and we are enjoying the holidays with my family in Southern California. It is so nice to be here! I plowed through my Christmas shopping all in one day yesterday, which must be some kind of record for me.

Although quite busy, I did manage to see "Silver Linings Playbook" this past week, which is about a guy named Pat (played by Bradley Cooper) who goes home to live with his parents after getting out of a mental institution as he attempts to get his life back together. He's bipolar and coping with treatment but is driven to get his old teaching job back and reunite with his separated wife though both seem sort of far-gone and out of reach. Then he meets Tiffany (played by Jennifer Lawrence) who has mental issues of her own but seems to see through to Pat. They embark on a rocky friendship as they come to grips with their own difficulties and the road ahead.

Though there's seemingly a lot of yelling in "Silver Linings Playbook," it's quite a feel-good movie by the end. Tiffany gets Pat to enter a dance competition, and the father, a bookmaker, has the whole family into the Philadelphia Eagles. So there's football, dance, family and mental issues along the way.

I enjoyed the movie enough and think Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence did a good job in it. I guess I didn't LOVE the movie, but thought it was worth seeing. It's a bit over-the-top or unreal in places, like the football or dance competition etc. I guess it's not exactly a harrowing view of the mental aspects or impoverished situations that many mentally ill people or their families face but it doesn't totally duck the hardships or illness either. It seemed a bit careful in that regard. I liked "Silver Linings" but wasn't overly caught up in it.

So for big end-of-year movies: I've now seen "Lincoln," "Life of Pi," "Argo" and "Silver Linings Playbook." But yet there's still "Les Miz," "The Impossible," "The Hobbit," "Zero Dark Thirty" and perhaps "On the Road" to see. "Les Miz" has got to be the most talked about film of the year so I'm most curious to see that, as well as the gritty "Zero Dark Thirty." I find it a bit hard to choose my favorite so far between "Lincoln," "Life of Pi" and "Argo." What is your favorite film so far this year?

Happy Holidays.