The King Must Die, by Mary Renault

I've tried to read this book before. It was on the recommendation of my art history teacher, Mrs. McKellan. She was about four-foot-ten, wore her car keys around her neck on a lanyard, and when an especially titillating slide of some Corinthian pottery shard clicked onto the projector screen (I have never seen a teacher use a slide projector before or since, but it befitted her sense of old-fashioned propriety in the subject, I think), she'd grab her keys and whirl them through the air like a propeller.

She didn't believe in prudishness of any kind, which might explain why she was recommending a book like The King Must Die to a bunch of sixteen-year-olds. She refused to click past such slides as the Venus de Milo or Michaelangelo's David until she was absolutely sure she'd lectured us sufficiently on the sculptors' extraordinary technique and expertise on the human figure, when all we were doing was writing crude notes to each other and giggling behind our hands. She put just a little too much stock in our maturity, but we appreciated the pretense. I loved the class and hero-worshiped Mrs. McKellan, so when she froze the projector on a statue of the Laoccoon being dragged to Hades by serpents and began pontificating on Mary Renault's writing prowess, I ran straight to the library and began reading The King Must Die that very night.

This is what I got from that first (failed) attempt: Theseus is six years old; he witnesses a gross sacrifice; he gets older; he finds out that his father isn't really Poseidon; lots of people have sex; he goes on a journey and ends up in a city ruled by women; he becomes the queen's beeyotch. Around here I stopped reading, wondering what I was missing.

What I was missing then was an appreciation for the fact that the Greece from whence we got Aristotle, Homer, and an overabundance of nude statues was once, time out of mind, a real place. The King Must Die takes the mythical hero of Theseus and recasts him as a historical figure, which he may or may not have been. The myths surrounding him are largely distasteful, as Greek myths generally are; filled with much abandoning of various women and cursing of various family members and various semi-incestuous shenanigans of various gods, and so on. Renault pays close attention to these stories, but takes Theseus by the ankles and shakes him until most of this foolishness falls out of his pockets; then sets him back down in a carefully researched and beautifully rendered Greece, circa 2000 BC. The gods are very much a part of the lives of these people, but they are not really characters. Theseus himself is convinced throughout his childhood that Poseidon is his father; even when he is told otherwise he continues to pray to Poseidon, receiving answers in the form of crashing waves, earthquakes, rushing currents, and the like. In fact, all the supernatural phenomena which any of the books' characters ascribe to this god or that god are presented subjectively, with the reader free to think otherwise. Likewise, Renault retools myth-Theseus's miraculous feats of strength and derring-do into the plausible adventures of a headstrong and precocious teenager. He attributes his successes to Poseidon or Apollo or even the super-creepy Earth Mother Dia, but the reader is free to think that maybe he's just a clever kid.

The point is that the source of all these myths was always reality, no matter how removed or buried by weirdness. Renault's talent lies in peeling back her mythical source material until she uncovers the real place and time and culture at the bottom. This does not make for a quick read. The very nature of the book demands continual exposition; the first third of the novel, taken up with Theseus's young childhood and teenage years, is for this reason something of a chore. Not until his encounter with the matriarchal society of Eleusis does the plot--such as it is--begin to pick up. The Eleusians practice an arcane form of sacrifice to the Earth Mother; each year, the town welcomes a male stranger and coerces him into fighting their king to the death, whereupon the stranger is made their new king--until the next year, when he is bumped off in a similar fashion. Theseus, despite his attraction to the bodacious Queen and the easy life he has as her consort, does not believe his moira ends in Eleusis, and must apply all his wits to find a way out of his situation. Moira, a concept similar to fate, is a recurring theme throughout. His moira is what allows him to give Eleusis the honorable slip and establish himself as the heir to the king of Athens; his moira likewise takes him from there to Crete.

And here is where the book really takes off. Myth and reality meet in the labyrinthine Cretan palace, where King Minos is rarely seen but his heir, the boorish and twisted Minotaurus (sound familiar?) makes himself far too well known; where the ancient human sacrifice made to Poseidon and Mother Dia has devolved into a bloodthirsty spectator sport. The mighty Cretan empire exacts its taxes from the lands under its dominion in the form of slightly built boys and girls, whom they train in the art of the Bull Dance. Once trained, teams of these children are sent into the ring, where they tease the bull until one of them is gored or until time runs out, whichever comes first. Into this arena comes Theseus; he does not leave until it is unalterably changed. It is his moira, after all.

As a historical study, and, to a certain extent, as a story, The King Must Die is excellent. As far as evoking a specific atmosphere and immersing the reader in the setting itself, the only thing I can think of to rival it is Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede. But The King Must Die isn't meaningful. We are meant to root for Theseus, but there is no heart. Why should we root for him? What's his motive--his pride? His moira? The gods? And why should we care? It's never quite made clear, and in the midst of all Renault's assuredly fine writing is a certain sense of emptiness. Still, I can finally see where Mrs. McKellan was coming from, twirling her car keys enthusiastically at the glowing projector screen. She just wanted us to recognize the wild and beautiful Greece that was the cradle of Western civilization. So does Renault.

Sherlock Holmes

There seem to be two irreconcilable opinions about Guy Ritchie's frenetic adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous stories: a) he's shamelessly exploiting the genius sleuth by making him into an action star, sacrificing the intentions of the author on the indiscriminate altar of pop culture; or b) he's renewed interest in a set of rather brilliant stories, too long regarded as a relic of stodgy old Victorian England, and should be praised for it.

My opinion, however, is that people who go to see Sherlock Holmes because it is a fantastic action move, or because it is a fantastic period piece, will not be disappointed. In fact, they will probably love it. But if it induces them to delve into the stories, they will be very disappointed. In Doyle's works, Holmes disappears for long stretches of time, leaving his faithful chronicler Dr. Watson back at 221B Baker Street to speculate as the what his genius friend could be up to. Most of the action scenes consist in Holmes sniffing out mundane pieces of evidence while Watson looks on; every once in a blue moon they feel compelled to bring along their revovlers and occasionally even find the need to discharge them. But the stories' strength lie in their clever mental shenanigans, not in any particular excitement of story-telling.

If, on the other hand, you go to the movie expecting your standard austere-genius-smokes-pipe-and-solves-crimes Holmes movie of the Basil Rathbone variety, you will also be disappointed. It's not hard to see why die-hard Conan Doyle fans feel betrayed, really; Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of the great detective is far from the impeccable, self-possessed, utterly respectable version of him that one may have come to expect from the stories; nor is Watson the semi-idiotic sidekick there mostly because Holmes needs adulation from the peanut gallery. Holmes is frenetic, socially awkward, wild-eyed, and scruffy. Watson (played by Jude Law) is a trim, sharp, ex-military man with a flair for biting sarcasm. They're friends and equals, and when they get together they can really kick some ass. Literally.

But people who fall into group A (and I've been a Conan Doyle fan since the sixth grade, so I almost counted myself among them) forget that in one story, Watson found Holmes in an opium den, filthy beyond recognition and pretending to be stoned. They forget all the asides both men make regarding Holmes's not inconsiderable mastery of disguises and his myriad talents, including boxing, shooting, and "malingering" (pretending to be sick.) He's arrogant and almost certainly mildly autistic, and just because Doyle is offhand about all this doesn't mean we can't imagine the consequences. What Ritchie has done, essentially, is read between the lines--wildly, yes, but not insupportably. In a few especially brilliant scenes, time slows as Holmes sizes up an opponent, mentally preparing a physical attack with mathematical precision. Suddenly we are catapulted back into real time as he carries out his plan of action. This is one-hundred-percent Conan Doyle Holmes, and while Ritchie certainly takes his fair share of liberties with the canon (most notably the subplot with Irene Adler, presented here as an unattainable romantic interest for Holmes) the spirit of the stories and its characters is always there.

The plot here is basically unimportant. It involves some high-up muckety-mucks and a lot of bona fide weirdness. Not to give it away or anything, but Holmes solves everything in the end. The crux of the movie lies instead in the relationship between Holmes and Watson, who is about to move out the their shared falt and into matrimony with a beautiful governess named Mary (who, incidentally, appears in some of the stories, though to a different extent). Displeased that he's losing his extraordinarily tolerant roommate/partner/friend, Holmes doesn't try to disguise his attempts to keep him around. What he misjudges in the end, however, is Mary herself, who (as in the stories) has no intention of keeping her husband away from the adventures he loves. It's wide open for a sequel. I hope the next one has a score just as good.

Across the Universe

If you’re the type of person who gets high and talks to the magic shadow people, then this movie won’t be anything special. If you’re not well-acquainted with special brownies and hypodermic needles, this will be the closest you ever come to an acid trip. An elaborate paean to the music of the Beatles, "Across the Universe" is a string of stunning music videos cobbled together by a paper-thin (read: nonexistant) plot. For anyone who cares, the basic story follows Jude (a scruffy Jim Sturgess), who comes to America from Liverpool in search of his absentee father. Once in the states, he meets and befriends Max and his sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood, in a role made to define the one-note character). What else is there to do, naturally, then move in together with four or five friends and live out a counter-cultural paradise in New York City? Everything goes just swimmingly, smoking weed and attending anti-war protests, until Max gets drafted for Vietnam. Suddenly, they’re not just smoking weed, they’re smoking weed with purpose. Will Jude and Lucy manage to stay together in an ever-changing world? Will Sexy Sadie manage to keep singing without her spark o’soul bassist JoJo? Will Dear Prudence ever come out of the closet? (Answer: yes.) Does anybody care? (Answer: no.)

The truth is, director Julie Taymor cared WAAAAAAYYYYYYY more about creating a visual and musical feast than believable or empathetic characters. Taymor, who made a name for herself on Broadway as the designer behind "The Lion King" and "Aida," pulls out all the stops for the frequent musical interludes, which are not only visually spectacular but also quite clever, even witty. The viewer is swirled through a psychedelic cross-country trip to the strains of "I Am the Walrus" and dragged across Harvard while Max and his frat-boy buds regale Jude with "I Get By With a Little Help From my Friends;" then booted through the draft board with Max as Uncle Sam rears out of his recruitment poster and declares "I Want You So Bad."

The star of the show isn’t Sturgess but the Beatles’ music itself. The movie makes very free with their songs, slowing them down, speeding them up, giving the lead vocals to women, changing the instrumentation, arranging songs originally performed solo to be sung in a group and vice versa. The result is a fascinating and original take on all these old standards—everyone knows them in the original; these arrangements shake them up a bit. Add the meticulous matching of just the right character to just the right song and you have a knockout soundtrack: Sturgess and Wood, as the leads, get several selections and prove they have the vocal chops to do them justice, most notably in Jude’s wistful rendering of the title song and Lucy’s rollicking "It Won’t Be Long Now." Add genius cameos from such notables as Bono ("I Am the Walrus"), Eddie Izzard (ad-libbing a hilarious "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite"), and Joe Cocker (as a homeless subway bum gritting out "Come Together"), plus stellar performances by torch-singer Diane Fuchs ("Helter-Skelter" "Oh! Darling"), and a gospel-choir arrangement of "Let it Be," and you have something really incredible.

But as incredible as the music and spectacle may be, the fact remains that the whole thing has a heart of fluff, and offensive fluff at that. The gratuitous sexuality completely spoils a perfectly lovely rendition of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," sung by a girl…to a girl. The whole movie romaticizes recreational drug use with cloying naivete (go ahead! it’s fun! you get to talk to the shadow people! and have lots of sex! it’s great!). So if you can stomach the countercultural garbage, it’s worth a see simply for its magnificent music sequences (and rent something with Tom Hanks in it if you want a plot.) If you can’t, then content yourself with the soundtrack. Even non-Beatles fans won’t be able to help being exhilarated.

Dear Enemy, by Jean Webster

Sallie McBride is perfectly content to devote her considerable energies to parties, soirees, theaters, evening gowns, and wooing her perfectly eligible suitor, thank you very much. Her friend Judy’s invitation to become the new superintendent of a sad, overcrowded, badly managed orphan asylum is met with astonishment and a laughing refusal. What could be more absurd? Her—frivolous, city-girl Sallie McBride—stuck away in a bucolic orphanage, saddled with the task of making it over completely?

But Sallie is not the pushover socialite she tries to make herself seen. The eligible suitor laughs, her family pitches a fit—and the contrary Sallie sets her jaw and accepts the job. From the moment she steps foot over the threshold of the John Grier Home, the reader knows she’s hooked for good, even if Sallie herself doesn’t. Daunted and aghast at the state of life for the hundred young orphans thrust upon her care, she takes the place firmly in hand and starts instituting what seems to her the most common of common-sense reforms, beginning with the stenciling of bright yellow rabbits across the top of the gloomy, joyless dining room.

Told in a series of breezy, witty letters from Sallie to Judy, the wife of the asylum’s new president, Gordon, her politician suitor, and to the resident doctor, a morose Scotchman (the “enemy” to whom the title refers), Dear Enemy is a bright-voiced, fast-paced, deeply interesting and entertaining read. Written in the early 1900s, it seems remarkably modern and matter-of-fact on such topics as heredity (several orphans have alcoholic or retarded parents, with sad results), divorce, and women’s rights. Webster clearly did her research—the description of a girl with alcoholic parents matches exactly the modern diagnosis of fetal alcohol syndrome.

Through her letters, the reader sees Sallie’s character develop and progress. Judy and her president husband know exactly how to manage her—when she threatens to leave, they tell her they’ve found an “inefficient but kindly middle-aged person with no chin” to take her place. Sallie pitches a fit, digs in her heels, and stays—with nothing but beneficial results for the orphans. We learn of her difficulties with the stick-in-the-mud trustees of the Home, especially fractious orphans, her increasingly annoyed—and annoying—suitor, and that exasperatingly complex doctor, whom Sallie nicknames Sandy. Catastrophe strikes, of course—followed by the most unexpected plot twist of a resolution, which only a second read can fully satisfy. This, the reader finds, is no chore.

In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden

It’s a book about a monastery of nuns, all of whom have chosen to spend their days shut away from the world, spending hours in prayer in silence, work and study, steeping themselves in the holy and the pious.

Nice for them, but sounds like a real pill to read. After all, what does the word “monastery” conjure up? A church? A group of people all dressed alike? Incense and candles and Latin? Who wants to read about a group of women who look exactly the same, who do nothing that anyone would call exciting, who order their days like a prayer wheel, repetitious and meditative?

But here’s the thing. In This House of Brede is not boring. It’s not slow. It’s not even preachy, surprisingly enough given the subject matter. The nuns, so superficially alike in their encompassing veils and habits, aren’t. People tend to forget that nuns are women, real women who have their joys and fears and petty dramas. These are not saints or angels but people, strongly drawn characters to whom the reader can relate. Godden introduces and develops them like she’s building a wall out of pearls, not one word wasted, the story and its people slowly forming one glistening whole.

The story—although really the book unfolds more like the days of a life than a novel—revolves mainly around Philippa Talbot, a forty-two-year-old career woman in postwar England. The first time we meet her, she is giving her valuable gold clock to a junior secretary in her office. The sophisticated, successful Philippa is giving up not only her possessions but her job, a high-ranking position in a government office (rare for a woman in those days), to become a contemplative Benedictine nun at Brede Abbey.

Unthinkable! Who does that?

The rest of the book answers that question, but in such a way that the reader doesn’t even know it’s being answered. Godden doesn’t believe in pounding the lesson in with a two-by-four. The reader will turn the last page regretfully and with a sense that she understands the unthinkable action that Philippa—and the hundred other women in the monastery—has done.
To achieve that end, Godden weaves her reader into the book and fools us into thinking that we ourselves know what Philippa knows, we have met and made friends with her fellow nuns, we have made their problems our own. Godden’s style is deep and rich and mesmerizing. The book is long—400 pages—but how profound the disappointment upon realizing, at the finish, that kind Dame Perpetua, wise and quiet Dame Catherine, flighty Dame Veronica, shy, vulnerable Sister Cicely, and all the rest are not strolling in the garden outside, or coming down the hallway to rap upon your door.

Wouldn’t it be great if there really was a place like this?

Oh, wait….