Canadians do it better: Revisiting the ‘Newsroom’ Series

The Newsroom

This year, a new series airs on HBO: The Newsroom, an American political drama produced and created by Aaron Sorkin. Yet another, lesser known series by the same name was made in Canada by writer, producer, actor and author of Noah’s Turn (2010) Ken Finkleman in the mid-90s, a comedy that focused on the fictional production of the unnamed station’s nightly news program, City Hour.

Being, after all, a media student, I find this show is a much more relevant piece of work than many of the examples shown in classes on the distrustful and often downright absurdity of the media world. Pseudo stories, narrative news, the Fourth Estate and other such media-related issues are all in some way addressed in this show, brought into a comedic light by the employees’ blatant and utter disregard for authenticity and humanity.

Finkleman’s character, George Findlay, an enjoyably narcissistic, misanthropic yet highly intelligent and humorous TV exec, brings to the Newsroom a refreshing albeit immoral character to marvel and laugh at. In the first episode, Walking Shoe Incident (1996) which was awarded a Silver Spire at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1997, the opening scene shows Findlay and his cronies discussing a train crash into the Congo river. The discussion centres around the specific words and phrases used for the story; ‘Piranha ridden Congo’ or ‘Piranha infested Congo?’ In a bid to ‘localise’ the story, we see the newsmen hoping a Canadian was one of the 200 dead, hopefully eaten by what Findlay now specifies as a Piranha-like fish. Are there even Piranhas in the Congo?, his colleague asks. This is the stuff journalism, in the same dark vein as Australia’s Frontline, is made of. Only, of course, the Canadians did it better. While dodging phone calls from his mother and battling for an assistant to run errands for him, Findlay struggles to return a pair of shoes that continue to stigmatise him.

The Newsroom Season 2

Executed without canned laughter or fancy lighting, the show’s key is its simplicity, aiding its approach to the reality of newsrooms. Introduced to me a while back by a friend after I mentioned my foray into Media, I feel that this show is an exemplary case of the contemporary state of the news at its most basic (and hilarious) level. If not for the genuine and understated comedy of the show itself, virgin viewers should get a kick out of watching something relatively unknown to wider audiences, despite being a popular show in Canada, though largely ignored in the US. This show should be screened in more Media classes at universities.

The series ran for three seasons and, if you don’t have a friend who owns the collection, Amazon has them quite cheaply. You won’t find them in any commercial store, and this is testament to its underappreciated status despite being a fine comedy show.

Criminally Neglected Authors: Clive Sinclair and his ‘Bedbugs’ (1982)

One of my previous posts mentioned in passing Jewish-American author (not scientist), Clive Sinclair. His work, as described by a fellow reader and friend of mine, resembles the prose of Philip Roth meshed with Vladimir Nabokov, the latter of which is one of my favourite authors. Having finally got around to his Bedbugs (1982), this tie to Nabokov in this collection is no exception. The stories carry the familiar scent of Nabokov’s meticulous detailing of subtle sexual obsession, colourful and surreal scenes that are to the point of being comical in their playful absurdity:

Humbert: Naked, except for one sock and her charm bracelet, spread-eagled on the bed where my philtre had felled her, so I foreglimpsed her; a velvet hair ribbon was still clutched in her hand; her honey-brown body, with the white negative image of a rudimentary swimsuit patterned against her tan, presented to me its pale breastbuds; in the rosy lamplight, a little pubic floss glistened on its plump hillock. (Nabokov, 1959: 125).

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1959)

Taken from his Lolita (1959), this excerpt mirrors Sinclair’s rich, languid, poetically sexual prose. Pornography for the mind, and I mean this in a good, not critical way. Though Sinclair’s approach to the sexual is a tad less enigmatic:

She tumbles, hits the floor with a thump, and remains utterly inert. Spreadeagled, supine. There is no blood, but I do not know if this is a good sign or a bad sign. Her hand is limp. I feel for the pulse, but it is either stopped or I have my thumb in the wrong spot. Her heart. Situated, of all places, beneath her left breast. I place my hand upon the breast. It is warm certainly. But I can feel no heartbeat, though the nipple tantalizingly hardens. (1982: 15)

But it would be premature to assume that the stories are just purely fixated on sex (in terms of gender or otherwise), and instead what is being communicated in Sinclair’s obscure yet biting prose is the ultimate powerlessness of both man and woman. Power struggles between the sexes is evident, but ultimately each character is at the mercy of love and jealousy. Marriage, then, is a prominent theme throughout many of the stories- Tzimtzum, Somewhere over the Rainbow, Bedbugs, Ashkenazia, while others, such as The Incredible Case of the Stack o’ Wheats Murders deal explicitly with the familiar debate between sexism and freedom of expression. The theme of marriage as a nail in the coffin is revisited in Sinclair’s great work Cosmetic Effects (1989).

Short stories share the similar format as television shows like The Twilight Zone- long enough to draw you in each time but short enough to disappoint you when each story comes to an end. It makes me vaguely distrustful of the subsequent story, but with Sinclair’s seemingly effortless flow through each story, the break in between is not quite so stark. The last collection of short stories I read that followed a similar pattern in each tale was Graham Greene’s sense of love and loss and the tolerance of banality in his May we borrow your husband? (1967). Sinclair’s stories operate in a similar manner, though with a more surrealistic prose that, again, mirrors Nabokov, but which focuses more on the grim realities of love more so than the bittersweet loss of it that Greene masters. In a story like Rainbow, the obscureness can have a tendency to run away with itself. Though Sinclair seems not to take himself too seriously as the bizarre descriptions of sex and childbirth in Rainbow function more as comic relief, too arcane to be taken seriously.

Being both a writer and academic, Sinclair, like Nabokov and Roth, includes these professions throughout the stories, tapping into the sexual frustration of student/teacher relations in a few of the works, like Lolita most evidently, but also similar to Roth’s The Dying Animal. Politically as much as sexually charged, the gender themes interwoven with each segment appear to be fighting against a common enemy bigger than their own differences- whether it be politically or racially motivated. My favourite remains the first of the stories, Bedbugs, a tale that focuses on a conflicted Jewish teacher’s short-lived affair with a German student. The end scene of this one is perhaps the surrealist, though it is the sex scene that I found to be the best aspect- both magical and dark, a pseudo-romantic scene similar to his later Cosmetic Effects. The scene follows:

Possessed now, I turn out the lights so that Inge’s naked body is illuminated only by the smouldering charcoal, a serpentine shape, splashed with red, and undulant stream of lava into which I fling myself.

‘Take me,’ hisses Inge, ‘here, as I am, on the floor.’

While the madness lasts I pump my body into her, aware only of our sweat and the uncontrollable pleasure, dimly conscious of the mocking parody the dying embers cast upon the wall. Spent, prone upon Inge’s salty body, I gasp for breath in the sulphurous air.

‘Please,’ whispers Inge, ‘I am not finished.’ She directs my hand down her belly to a damper place. Slowly my senses settle as I watch Inge’s spectre writhe, and listen to her ecstatic groans…  (15-16)

Cosmetic Effects, meanwhile, contains a slightly less surreal but all the more amusing account of sexual delights between characters Jonah and Stella:

                I look at her in amazement. Fucking Grace Kelly is not the sort of experience a man is supposed to forget…

                ‘Jonah,’ she says, looking up at me with an exasperated smile, ‘you’ll never find an easier fuck than me.’ Her continuing efforts to verify this claim cause the quilt to slide slowly off my back and, in so doing, fully expose the machinery of her love-making; the thighs, the belly, the breasts. Above each of the last are crescent-shaped scars that resemble closed eyelids. Sleep on, my lovelies, I shall not disturb your slumber tonight.

Cosmetic Effects (1989)

Sydney writer and academic Matthew Asprey conducted an interview with the author in 2009, eagerly awaiting publication. He writes in his Global Prowl travel blog:

There was one thing I wanted to accomplish before the unrelenting expense of staying in London forced us somewhere else. One grey wintry morning I went to Chelsea to interview the writer Clive Sinclair. I’d requested an interview by email a few years ago after reading his brilliant story cycle The Lady With The Laptop (1996). Clive welcomed me into his study. He tended the fireplace as we discussed each of his books from the near-disowned Bibliosexuality (1973) to Clive Sinclair’s True Tales of the Wild West (2008). We talked about Israeli politics, his love of Westerns, his wide-ranging travels. When I have time to transcribe the tapes I’ll edit together a Paris Review-style interview. More people should read Clive Sinclair’s books.  See more here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/column/137902-escape-to-lisbon

More people should, indeed, read his books. These include: Bibliosexuality (1973) , Hearts of Gold (1979), The Brothers Singer (a biography of Isaac Bashevis Singer (1983), Blood Libels (1986), Augustus Rex: A Novel (1992), The Lady with the Laptop and Other Stories (1996), For Good or Evil (1998), Meet the Wife (2002) and True Tales of the Wild West (2008). His works are mostly found on the sites Abebooks.com and Amazon.

The Death of Carlos Fuentes

In light of the now late author’s demise on May 15, I thought it necessary to look at some of his better works.

A Mexican author, Fuentes imbued Mexican identity into his works, though I find his work more about time and love and the disturbed relationship between the two. My favourites of his are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962) and Aura (1965).

Artemio Cruz parallels nicely with Roberto Bolano’s By Night in Chile (2000), mirroring the death bed confessional nicely and the state of delirium and distorted memory, though it is Aura that I loved that charts the sexual obsession with the youthful and beautiful that shares, again, the kind of surrealism of Bolano’s work. Burnt Water (1986) is also a collection of stories that is truly a great read.

Kafka’s novella sells for $30,000

Kafka’s Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis)

Stealing this post from another site I often frequent- Abebooks released a list of the top ten most expensive books ordered on their site last month. Top of the list was a first edition of Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung, or The Metamorphosis, published in 1915, sold for $30,000. Looks like K. actually wins this time, or Gregor…

Here is the rest of the list ‘borrowed’ from: http://www.abebooks.com/books/RareBooks/franz-kafka-americans-frank/most-expensive-apr12.shtml

2. The Americans by Robert Frank – $11,745
First American edition, 1959, signed by Frank to a fellow photographer on the half-title page.

3. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote – $7,500
First edition, price clipped but in near fine condition and signed by Capote.

4. The Works of Shakespeare by William Shakespeare – $6,215
Sir Thomas Hanmer (1677 – 1746), Speaker of the House of Commons, produced this edition of Shakespeare in his retirement in 1744.  This edition contains six volumes in total, with 36 full-page engraved plates (one for each play) plus an engraved portrait of Shakespeare as frontispiece.

5. De West-Indische Gids by H.D. Benjamins – $5,265
33 volumes of the West Indian Guide series (lacks volumes 35, 36, 38 and 39) written by Surinamese mathematician and physicist Herman Daniël Benjamins.

6. The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament by Thomas Clarkson – $5,068
First edition, in two volumes, published in 1808 complete with plates, two folding, including the famous illustration of the layout of human cargo on a slave ship.

7. The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard – $4,950
The story of the 1910-1913 Antarctic expedition – a first edition in two volumes, including 73 panoramas, maps and illustrations, including the 10 original folding plates issued only in the first edition, by Dr. Edward A. Wilson and other members of the expedition.

Nineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell

8. Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Esq. R.A. composed chiefly of his letters by C.R. Leslie, et al – $4,887
First edition of the first book printed on the English romantic painter, one of 186 copies. The work set a new standard for an artist biography written in English, demonstrating Constable’s neglected genius to a previously uninterested public through his own words.

9. View of the Hebrews by Ethan Smith – $4,200
This first edition, published in 1823, argues that native Americans were descended from the Hebrews. Numerous commentators on Mormon doctrine, from LDS Church general authority B. H. Roberts to biographer Fawn M. Brodie, have discussed the possibility that View of the Hebrews may have provided source material for the Book of Mormon, although it should be noted that Ethan is of no relation to Joseph Smith.

10. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell – $3,975
A signed first edition, first printing of this dystopian classic, with a maroon dust wrapper, published by Secker and Warburgh in 1949, and twice signed by Sir John Hurt (the actor who starred in the film adaptation with Richard Burton) on the title page as himself, as well as his character ‘Winston Smith’. 

For those bibliophiles who frequent Melbourne, Kay Craddock Books specilises in selling rare and antiquated books. Located at the Paris end of Collins Sreet, Assembly Hall Building, 156 Collins St, it’s a great place to dig through for some golden oldies, or simply for forgotten authors. Melbourne is, after all, the second literary city after  Norwich.

Kay Craddock Books on the Paris end of Collins Steet

Lights of Luang Prabang

Last year I spent some time in the riverside city of Luang Prabang in northern Laos. French colonised, it is sometimes known as the Pearl of the Orient, and it is easy to see the remnants of French rule, with French-style villas along the lantern filled streets. After the hustle and bustle of chaotic Thailand, it was refreshing to be in the laidback city where I could wander the markets without being hassled.

I didn’t stay long there, however, as atmospherically-speaking there was not a lot to see or do, and this somewhat sleepy town is perhaps best kept to only a few days of travelling, or a tourist is at risk of becoming too sedate. I did get to the two main bookshops there of course- L’etranger Books and Tea on Th Kingkitsarat and Monument Books in Ban Wat Nong. The former was quite pleasant- a nice teak house with lanterns hanging from the ceiling and red cushions to sit on. However, it was the colourful night life I found intriguing, and I managed to capture some images of the many lights and colours that come out after the sun goes down.

 

Luang Prabang, February, 2011

 

Luang Prabang, February, 2011

Luang Prabang, February, 2011

Luang Prabang, February, 2011

Luang Prabang, February, 2011

Luang Prabang, February, 2011

Luang Prabang, February, 2011

Luang Prabang, February, 2011

Bibliophilia: UNSW Book Fair

Last year, or perhaps it was this year, Sydney University held their annual Book Fair in which I, foolishly and naïvely, went along to without extra bags and instead carried the 20+ books back home in one of the supplied cardboard boxes. Today was UNSW’s turn to sell off their books and this time, I was prepared.It was a bigger selection than the one at Sydney Uni, with an upstairs collection dedicated to old and rare books, complete with the musty smell of aging paper, an acquired smell, with a section labelled Ephemera, which, incidentally, would make a great name for a zine. I start my journey in the Literature section, box in arms, bounding into people who are also carrying their own boxes. While the section is more extensive than other university book fairs the selection is not quite fantastic. But I do manage to grab some books I know of: Grand Days by Frank Moorhouse; John Updike’s Rabbit at Rest; Pat Barker’s Regeneration, having read his Life Class; and D.H. Lawrence’s Women In Love, to ad to my thick as a brick Lawrence compendium. I was hoping to chance upon some Hemingway or reacquaint myself with some Fitzgerald, but it was not to be.

The Biography section was quite extensive, and I managed to capture Woody Allen on Woody Allen: In Conversation with Stig Bjӧrkman, to ad to my love of the eccentric director, whose Purple Rose of Cairo and Shadows and Fog remain a couple of my favourites, much more so than the more commercial works only recent fans would be aware of. Because most of the books are no more than $3, I get carried away and just put in my box whatever seems interesting at the time. This includes Kingsley Amis’s Memoirs, and The Life of Graham Greene, Volume 1: 1904-1939 to top off the biographies. I was disappointed not to find Frank Zappa in the crowd. I also throw in D’Arcy Niland’s The Big Smoke, a Sydney based novel from 1959 that delves into the lives of ‘priests and prostitutes.’ I’m genuinely intrigued.

At this point, one of the women with the microphone announces that the Crime section has grown to three separate sections. I dutifully peruse what’s on offer and grab only James Ellroy’s Clandestine and Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, whose protagonist Wormold was based on the Lisbon-based, Spanish double-agent Garbo. As a side note, a great Spanish documentary, Garbo: The Spy, came out in 2009 and premiered in Australia last year at the 2011 Spanish Film Festival. It closely followed the life of Joan Pujol Garcia, aka ‘Garbo’. An interesting parallel to Greene’s Havana.

Also at this point in time, a guy donning a cap, a flimsy white shirt and pseudo jeans walks up to me.

‘Ah, Graham Greene is fantastic,’ he says, as though I’m some literary virgin.

‘Yeah, I know. Good stuff.’ I offer, not really intent on having a conversation and instantly reminded of why I sometimes dislike these popular fairs- they tend to attract the young and annoying, and sometimes the desperate. For some reason creeps swarm these places. Or maybe I’m being harsh.

‘Do you read a lot?’

‘I suppose.’ I can’t begin to get into a conversation about my reading habits. The guy’s holding a Nicolas Sparks book after all. I smile and leave Crime for Travel.

The Travel section is taken up mostly by old Lonely Planet Guides. A rather plump woman with a tighter-than-skin white singlet and a nose ring is loading them up into her box, mainly Italy and England. I pick up the Granta Book of Travel, an issue with Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Salmon Rushdie, but what really interests me are the titles of the chapters: Paul Theroux’s Subterranean Gothic, Fat Girls in Des Moins, Márquez’s Watching the Rain in Galicia, Into the Heart of Borneo- that sort of thing. Some sound like titles from a Tom Waits album.

Language is right nearby, and I walk past two teenagers arguing over the credibility of a George Negus book, and another pair condemning the Da Vinci Code’s place in Crime. I smile in relief and convince myself it’s a mistake. The French Language section, meanwhile, reads exactly like the Literature section, only in French, quel surprise. There’s some Sartre but I am not in an existential mood, so I pick up Eric Ambler’s Epitaphe pour un Espion (Epitaph for a Spy)- did I mention I could read and speak French like a pretentious git? I also take a copy of Djuna Barnes’s Le Bois de la Nuit (Nightwood), a cult book by the American expatriate who like so many other American writers fell in with the French crowd. The copy is complete with T.S. Eliot’s introduction, also in French…

Soon I find myself heading upstairs and, with the books I already have plus one other (a Cynthia Ozick hardback from the Hardback section- The Bear Boy), my arms are starting to ache from the heavy box. Reading generally exercises the mind only, after all. But I walk upstairs into the musty Rare and Old section. And by old, they mean old- those brown papered hardbacks with solid claret covers emblazoned with faux gold writing, fiction that resembles encyclopaedia books. But I find some things that seem worth holding onto: an old 1957 copy of Scandals of Sydney Town by Frank Clune, complete with vibrant Gone-with-the-Wind-style dust jacket and ye-olde illustrations (by Virgil Reilly). A crime lover would love this one, as it delves into the Mount Rennie Case, the Dean Case and The Last Scandals of Sydney. The opening page has a great 1950s map of Sydney to complete the $12 buy.

My eye is then caught by one word: Octopussy, and I slide out a 1966 copy of Ian Fleming’s Octopussy and The Living Daylights. It’s a thin, hardcover book published by Jonathan Cape for $12, and it fits neatly into my box. And lastly, as my hands get dirtier and dirtier- the mark of a book lover- I spot an ancient (1953) copy of Ambler’s The Schirmer Inheritance published by William Heinemann. Of all the other books I collect this smells the mustiest, kind of like my grandmother’s old bike shed. Again, compared to the books downstairs the price for this one has quadrupled to $12, but I obviously don’t mind- Ambler usually costs more anyway. A group of teens meanwhile gather around the old books and remark on their supposed Harry Potter-like resemblance. Another girl shows her friends a Francis Bacon book, bewilderingly excited, while the others argue about the pronunciation of Dr. Seuss. I am in no position to care. Though at least they are reading something.

The musty smell eventually gets to me and I am weary of the time, having to meet up with a friend back at my own university, so I head back downstairs. On my way I scoop up two more books in the Short Story collection, Will Self’s Grey Area and Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Séance and Other Stories. Singer’s work has been the subject of a biography (The Brother’s Singer) by another great yet lamentably lesser-known author, Clive Sinclair (not the scientist but the Somerset Maugham award winning author of Hearts of Gold). I pick it up out of curiosity and trust in Sinclair’s taste.

My left wrist is twitching both from carrying the box and the writing I was doing in the morning before heading over to the university. I collect my books (20 all up if you count Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy- recommended by one of my supervisors as the only decent thing the author has written), and head over to the counter where I’m charged around $70 for the whole lot. I manage to avoid the guy in the cap on my way out. I resist the urge to come back in, despite the woman with the mike announcing that this is the last UNSW book fair. Whether she meant for the year or forever, I’m not sure, but I got the feeling it was the done-and-dusted type affair.

The fair is open til 2pm Sunday, where you are welcome to come and fill a box with whatever’s remaining for $10, or a smaller box for $5. It is tempting, given that there were still some books I was undecided on. It would be nice to get another round of 20 books for $10, but at this point my room is developing small towers of books all over the place to the point of becoming a safety hazard. Perhaps I should have bought another bookcase instead of my piano…

Postcards from L.A. and other Los Angeles stories

Stories and films in Los Angeles

Next month the Gallery of NSW’s latest film series line up ends on the 13^th with the last three L.A. based thrillers. Postcards from L.A., the theme of the series which started on March 22 has been screening various popular, cult and classic films, much of which are crimes or neo-noirs, including Targets (1967), Point Blank (1967), Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), LA Confidential (1997), Jackie Brown (1997), [Safe] (1995) and Bowfinger (1999). To finish out the month, Sharon Lockhart’s Pine Flat (2005) will be shown on April 28, i.e. tomorrow.

The films that will be featured at the beginning of May are Mulholland Drive (2001) on the 2^nd/6^th, Gerry (2002) on the 5^th, and The Limey (1999) on the 9^th/13^th, showcasing the work of three predominant, contemporary directors, David Lynch, Gus Van Sant and Steven Soderbergh. A weird connection between Lynch and Sant, incidentally, is the filming of a musical version of Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) performed by a New York theatre group in Sant’s documentary Tarnation (2003) (though Sant produces while Jonathan Coauette is actually the writer/director). While Sant’s Gerry is slightly overrated and uncomfortably commercial in my opinion, Soderbergh’s Limey contains great performances by Peter Fonda and Terence Stamp. Though my favourites, which I have seen before but could not resist a free ticket to, were Jackie Brown, based on Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch (1992), and Point Blank with Lee Marvin, based on Richard Stark’s (aka Donald E. Westlake’s) The Hunter (1962). Incidentally again, Stark’s Hunter is the basis of two other films; Ringo Lam’s Full Contact (1993) and the dismal Mel Gibson film Payback (1999).

'Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.'

I would not say these films in particular capture the true essence of L.A. noir or crime. There’s Chinatown (1974) for one, with Jack Nicolson’s Jake Gittes, which will always be a timeless classic to me; The Big Sleep (the original 1946 version) for obvious reasons, not least of which is the casting of Bogart and Bacall; Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) based on Mickey Spillane’s book of the same name; Dashiell Hammett’s classic The Maltese Falcon (1941); Murder, my Sweet (1944) which, like Maltese Falcon, was previously adapted, called, funnily enough, The Falcon Takes Over (1942) directed by Irving Reis.

Having just finished Roger Jacob’s play Last Summer at the Marmont (2012) and about halfway through jazz musician Ry Cooder’s Los Angeles Stories (2011), both set obviously in the famed city of angels, I’ve an increasing desire to eventually travel to the strange and infamous place.