Mid-week Movie ~ The Pumpkin Eater

Returning to the weekend's topic of TV/movie drama: a few nights ago we watched (via Amazon Prime) a British 1964 film, The Pumpkin Eater. I'd heard of it, but hadn't ever seen it, nor had my husband. I was persuaded to watch by the cast list : Ann Bancroft, Peter Finch, James Mason, Maggie Smith....what could possibly go wrong?

I'm still not sure exactly what went wrong, for me . It could've been Harold Pinter's screenplay (though this was much lauded by others). I'm not good at appreciating the arty-farty in film, so that could have been my basic problem.

I kept remarking to husband along the lines of, "People do not, and did not in the 1960s, as I recall, converse like this! " Apparently, in Pinter's world, they did. I simply was unable to believe any character in this movie, in spite of the A-list actors involved. They, of course, could use only the story and material presented to them.

Leading female character was played by Ann Bancroft. This woman, from what we could perceive from the script, was neurotic and self-absorbed to the nth degree. Why then did she continue having children, yet seemingly taking little notice of them as their numbers grew: 3, 4, 5, 6, and I think more, but lost count. She eventually passed on responsibility to a nanny and/or to her 3rd husband (played by Peter Finch) in a then-failing marriage. She gave little thought to the lives she was forcing onto those kids in an at times ugly, emotionally-charged, if fairly wealthy background. I felt little sympathy. Her 3rd husband was unfaithful on the one hand, but seemed to love the kids who were not his, equally to any who were (I was never sure which were which). I had no sympathy for him either, except a grudging admiration for his continued devotion to the kids, in spite of having warned his wife of potential difficulties in that area, before they married. I think they were, then, 3 in number. The two eldest were shuffled off to boarding school quick sharp, before getting to know their parents at all.

I'm sorry, but I could not dredge up sympathy for a woman who had hardly ever worked a day in her life, but insisted on procreating when it became obvious she did not have the required stability in relationships to be responsibly doing so. My sympathy was reserved for the kids.

The best thing about the movie, for me, was the lush black and white format. "Lush" seems an odd adjective, but, on our screen the black and white (or rather 1000 shades of grey) of this movie did come over much better than black and white format in other movies of the same age. I enjoyed just looking at the pictures!

I realise that my view of this film is not once shared by many. I haven't read the book by Penelope Mortimer upon which the film was based. I've read several reviews of book and film; the movie and its actors received plaudits and awards for their performances. Perhaps I'm just not up to appreciating certain nuances - or perhaps, if the screenplay and dialogue had been written by a woman it would have felt more true to life. I wonder if, and how, any re-make in 2019 would be different. Perhaps things have changed so much in intervening decades that this movie belongs among historical dramas, almost as much as do Poldark and Lorna Doone! (See last weekend's post). Or, alternatively, as a reviewer at Time Out wrote: " ..... the world of the Hampstead soap opera now seems so far away as to almost rate as science fiction. "

Saturday and Sundry Drama Series

During the past few evenings we've been time travelling - in mind only - as we watched two drama series, set in 17th and 18th century England.

Amazon Prime enticed us to watch, first, three seasons of the 2015 version of Poldark currently on offer, which I supplemented with a DVD of season 4. Season 5 (said to be the last) is still in production.

Poldark is set in the late 1700s, after the end of the American War of Independence, from which our hero, Ross Poldark returns as the tale begins. Ross Poldark is played by Aidan Turner with just the right blend of swashbuckling sweetness and a touch of the enigmatic. The setting is beautiful Cornwall, near Truro, in the far south-west of England. The series' female lead, playing Demelza, in true "My Fair Lady" tradition, is Eleanor Tomlinson.

I've been so taken with the story that I've now started on Winston Graham's set of Poldark novels, upon which this TV series, as well as an earlier one in the mid-1970s, were based.

The series has romance, politics, everyday life in 18th century Cornwall and London, human foibles and enigmas, with intervals of action and adventure. There's a satisfyingly evil villain of the tale, wonderfully played by Jack Farthing as George Warleggan. Coincidentally, we'd just watched Jack Farthing in a really whacky comedy series, Blandings, in a role which could hardly have been more different from that of George Warleggan. For an excellent example of a truly versatile actor, just take a look at Jack's performances in an episode of both Blandings and Poldark!

 Jack Farthing as George Warleggan

 Jack Farthing as upper-class twit Freddie

I suppose Poldark could be seen as a very well-done, well-acted and well-presented historical soap opera but really, it's much more than that.

The older 1975 series sounds, from what I've read of it, to be a little different in tone and detail from this more recent version. Perhaps in some ways it was nearer to the novel, but perhaps in some other ways not as true to the novel's basic intent and flavour. I won't know this until I find a way to watch the older version, and have read several of the novels. I intend to do both.

After we finished Poldark, I spied a dramatised version, aired in 2000/2001, of Lorna Doone at Amazon Prime. There had been an earlier version of this story too, in the mid-1970s.

I'd had a vague, and mistaken, idea that the story is set in Scotland ("Ye banks and braes o' bonny Doon...."). It isn't, it's set in the Devonshire/Somerset area of south-west England, a little to the north and east of Poldark's Cornwall. It is an adaptation of a novel by Richard D. Blackmore, published in 1869. There is a link to Scotland but one that isn't explored in this short (3 episode) TV series. Any link to Scotland relates to a time before the Lorna Doone plot begins, when the once aristocratic Doone family, were stripped of their ancient Scottish lands and heritage. Reasons are left untold, but I'd like to know! The Doones moved to an area of Devonshire near Exmoor which became known as Doone Valley. The clan turned into outlaws, frightening, pillaging, burning and killing local farmers and villagers. Our hero and narrator, in Lorna Doone is John Ridd, a yeoman farmer, whose father was killed by the dreaded Doone gang. When both were children, John met Lorna without knowing her family background....Romeo, Juliet an' all that! But there's more, with a bit of 17th century British history thrown in!

Lorna Doone is a much shorter series, and therefore the tale is more rushed than Poldark's, more detailed and leisurely telling, but it's still a worthwhile watch. It could well serve as an introduction to a classic British novel. Lorna Doone was originally shown as a 3 hour TV film, now arranged into 3 episodes for Amazon Prime. Here's the starry cast list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorna_Doone_(2001_film)

I'd recommend both series as good ways to leave behind the cares of 2019, Trump, Brexit et al and do a bit of mental time travelling. It serves to remind us that though we do have problems in 2019, they are not nearly as severe as those many of our ancestors had to face.

Carson McCullers: “And now, as a summer flower shatters in September, it was finished.”

Carson McCullers, who died this day, 29 September in 1967, aged 50, wrote a slew of novels in her short and difficult life. She was born on 19 February 1917. Her death came after years of ill-health: strokes, breast cancer, partial blindness, partial paralysis and depression.

Ms McCullers' novels are set in locations well-known to her: small towns in south-eastern USA. Her characters are drawn from society's outcasts and misfits. She lived part of her life in New York and Paris, well away from the suffocating atmosphere of The South, and and could count among her friends such literary luminaries as Truman Capote, W.H. Auden, Tennessee Williams. She and her husband, Reeves, were both bi-sexual, which unsurprisingly led to difficulties and divorce but a later re-marriage. Complexity upon complexity!

I have yet to read any of her novels, I bought the one pictured (left), written when the author was 23. It sat on my "to read" pile for some weeks. Having sampled it and declared it "very odd" I passed it on to my husband, a far more patient reader than I. My husband dutifully read it, pronounced it "rather strange" and passed it on to his eldest daughter. She read it. Her opinion was much the same.

A random quote from the book had initially attracted me (here):

But say a man does know. He sees the world as it is and he looks back thousands of years to see how it all come about. He watches the slow agglutination of capital and power and he sees its pinnacle today. He sees America as a crazy house... He sees a whole damn army of unemployed and billions of dollars and thousands of miles of land wasted... He sees how when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly and something dies in them. But the main thing he sees is that the whole system of the world is built on a lie. And although it's as plain as the shining sun—the don't-knows have lived with that lie so long they just can't see it.

One quote doesn't make a great novel though! Husband's son-in-law recalled that another of Carson McCullers' books had been on his high school reading list: Ballad of the Sad Café. That has to speak to the respect held for her work. We had nothing as modern in our school reading lists in the UK. Dickens and Shakespeare were our "meat and potatoes", with perhaps a Bronte or Jane Austen for dessert.

Carson McCullers had to have been a strong character, given the obstacles she encountered during a relatively short life. A look at her natal chart, then, to discover if it highlights that. It is set for 12 noon in the absence of a birth time.

Born 19 February 1917 in Columbus, Georgia.



A cluster of planets in Aquarius, including the sign's modern ruler Uranus, connect to social awareness and a hankering after reform. Aquarius and Uranus - the two together - can often bring forth a misfit, rebel or an eccentric - or a prodigy/genius in some sphere.

McCullers' natal Sun is at 00 Pisces conjunct energetic and oft belligerent Mars; the conjunction sharpens some of Pisces dreamy mystical softness, adding a will of steel, something she surely needed to deal with her various physical afflictions.

Jupiter, planet of publication in helpful sextile aspect to Sun is a good alignment for a writer.

Moon, were she born before 9am, would have been in Capricorn, later than that, in early Aquarius. I'd wager it was in Aquarius, adding further to an oddball or misfit persona - her own (and perhaps that of characters in her novels.)


The early degrees are a feature in this chart: Neptune, Pluto, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Mercury and possibly Moon all within the first 5 degrees of their signs. Early degrees belong to the first decan (a one-third slice) of a sign. First decan is always governed by the ruler of the sign itself, so these early degrees equate to a "pure", unmodified version of whichever sign is involved. The chain of early degree planets also leads to multiple aspects, both helpful and challenging, leading back to where we started: complexity upon complexity.

This post is a version of one posted in 2010, at which time a then regular commenter, Gian Paul who lived in Brazil, commented as follows:

"The whole system of the world is based on a lie"
Comes to mind: Plato's Parable of the Cave (of course). Maya of the Hindus.
All promises politicians and salesmen in general make, many religious leaders as well, mostly these are not deliberate lies. Who hands them out usually even believes them him/herself, or almost so. And that's why it's so treacherous for the "innocent believers".

Carson's natal horoscope indicates an extreme sensitivity held "in chains", i.e. 4 planets (Moon, Mercury, opposite Neptune and squaring Jupiter - in a perfect T-square. And all set in 3 fixed signs! Also, as if to increase her probably permanent state of tension, a big "void of planets" over 6 entire signs, and these exactly opposite Jupiter. Very complex indeed.

No wonder the Lady felt how she did and - if she had read Plato - must have felt "at home" herself in his legendary cave. If she had not heard of Plato, she for certain confirmed some 2500 years later the same, really tragic but probably true perception.

Mumbles & Grumbles - Seventh Son

On our local movie theatre's schedule this week is Seventh Son, said to be based (almost imperceptibly as far as I can tell) on English author Joseph Delaney's 2004 Young Adult novel The Spook’s Apprentice ( U.K. style), titled in the USA The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch. The novel was first in The Wardstone Chronicles series; whether the film adaptation will also be first of a series remains to be seen. The movie Seventh Son itself will, as far as I'm concerned, remain to be seen!

"In a time long past, an evil is about to be unleashed that will reignite the war between supernatural forces and humankind. Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges), the last of the Falcon Knights, had imprisoned the malevolently powerful witch, Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore), many years ago, but now she has escaped and is seeking vengeance. Summoning her followers of every incarnation, Mother Malkin is preparing to unleash her terrible wrath on an unsuspecting world. Only one thing stands in her way: Master Gregory. In a deadly reunion, Gregory comes face to face with the evil he always feared would someday return. He has only until the next full moon to do what usually takes years: train his new apprentice, Tom Ward (Ben Barnes) to fight a dark magic unlike any other. Man's only hope lies in the seventh son of a seventh son".
(See here)

Having read a little about the source material, the author and his English Lancashire background, I don't relish sitting through a film with mangled indiscriminate accents and nothing at all to anchor the tale to its origins.

The original story is grounded in historical fact. The area of mid-Lancasire in which the tale was set by Mr Delaney is famous for its medieval witches. Fully documented witch trials in Lancaster in 1612 lend authenticity. Joseph Delaney used real, though slightly adapted, local place names in his books, and culled the bare bones of his themes from local legends and ghost stories.

Half a century before Joseph Delaney's book was written, Robert Neill wrote his locally famous novel, Mist Over Pendle, first published in 1951, reprinted several times since. Now, there's a novel which ought to be made into a movie! It'd have to be done by the BBC for TV though, not by Hollywood! This a serious novel, dark and brooding in atmosphere - yet entertaining too. I read it long ago, when I lived, for almost a year, in the very area of Lancashire where witches once did what witches do. My parents, at the time, had a small cafe/snack bar in a town where Pendle Hill was nearby, clearly visible. Around 1959/60, between my stints working in hotel offices, I went to live there with my parents for a while, found a job as secretary/telephonist in a Rolls Royce Gas Turbine engineering factory in town, and was made familiar with the area's colourful local history. That part of Lancashire, around a town called Clitheroe, has the warmest, nicest set of inhabitants I've ever found, some gorgeous, rich Lancashire accents too. If locals do retain bits of witchy DNA, it has worked out well!

Back to Seventh Son. Knowing the land in which the film's source material was originally set, and the accent that goes with it, I could not stomach hearing Americans Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore using mangled hybrid accents, nor any of the younger, London born actors doing the same.

Films hardly ever portray their source novels closely, some even change the entire setting of a tale - but there are certain lines that ought not to be crossed, for me anyway. Among Rotten Tomatoes' reviews Variety's film critic Peter Debruge describes Seventh Son as: "An over-designed, under-conceived fantasy epic in which even topnotch contributors can't get the chemistry right, leaving Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore looking silly". I suspect even that critcism is way too mild.

"....With Our Own Feathers..."

A few weeks ago I glanced through a list of what a writer considered the ten best American TV mini-series ever. It contained some of my own longtime favourites, such as Centennial, Lonesome Dove, Rich Man Poor Man. Commenters had added some lesser-known (to me) titles, including one from 1976, Once an Eagle starring Sam Elliott. OOooo--h! Sam Elliott! Gotta get me one of those DVDs! I did, and we've now watched the 7-episode, 9 hour set. It's a younger Sam Elliott than I've been used to, less grizzled, but that voice is still the same. Sam is one star who has truly aged like a good wine - there aren't many like him. (Stop drooling blogger!)

Once an Eagle is also title of the novel by Anton Myrer from which the mini-series was adpated. After the first couple of episodes, while pondering the series' title, I suspected it might have come from a poem, or perhaps from a bible quotation. The title is, indeed, a quote from poetry by Æschylus (525 BC – 456 BC), a playwright of ancient Greece:

So in the Libyan fable it is told
That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,
Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
"With our own feathers, not by others' hands,
Are we now smitten."

Frag. 135 (trans. by Plumptre), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

I think, if I'm understanding those words correctly, that Walt Kelly's character Pogo said much the same thing, centuries later:

"We have met the enemy and he is us".

In war, as in peace those words have echoed through the centuries. We truly are our own worst enemies. There are different ways of interpreting this thought though. In a review of the novel (HERE) the reviewer states:

".....I offer the quote from the flyleaf where Myrer found his title. This is a powerful warning to those who would do right by America and her armed forces. There are numerous enemies operating from within. This book gives us a wonderful hero but, it also warns us to look over our shoulders as well. The resurgence of this book should also serve as a reminder to the "perfumed princes" in the officer corps that their oath is to the Constitution, that their duty is to the country and that honor demands that they put the nation above personal consideration. The men and women of the armed forces, who are sworn to obey the orders of the officers appointed over them, deserve no less. The nation deserves no less and Anton Myrer's novel from 1968 reminds us of that even today."

From Once an Eagle, watched in 2014, a somewhat wider message came over for me, in Elliott's sensitively acted facial expressions as enemies closely face one another, as his longtime friends are killed in action, or as suggestion of more insightful plans and methods are trampled upon by those who put self-interest above everything else. What's it all about - war? Sam Damon admitted he didn't know, but did know that "there'll be another" and we should be ready, and he felt the need to be a part of the "being ready".

From our perspective now, post Korea, Vietnam, several minor conflicts, 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, murdering drone attacks...that ancient poetry means, to me, that we are "smiting" ourselves by creating, then inflaming, what we perceive as enemies. Our own metaphorical feathers could come back in a different form one day to harm, or even destroy us, just as the eagle's feathers helped to propel the arrow that eventually killed it.

Although the style of filming in Once an Eagle is more than a tad dated now, it's still an engaging and informing tale of US army life in the early to mid-20th century. This isn't a story of the two World Wars though, it's a story of army people - and a people story in general, how they coped, or didn't, during and between the wars. It's the story of Sam Damon, a Nebraska farm boy who enlisted in the regular army. His story begins in 1916. Two years later, in France, he became an infantry squad leader, excelled in that position and and won a battlefield commission to, eventually, the rank of Major.

Sam Elliott, in some ways, was playing another version of the cowboy in the white hat, while actor Cliff Potts played the cowboy in the black hat, Courtney (Court) Massengale, an ambitious self-absorbed climber through the ranks, of limited skills, climbing in any way he could devise, including judicious choice of well-connected wife. The story takes us through World War I, then the dreary (for some) between-wars period, Sam's and Court's marriages, and their wives' gradual disillusionment, then on to World War II.

There are lots of soapy elements running through the series, of course: wives, families, loyalties, disloyalties, and an interval when Damon, on extended leave, helps out in a relative's factory. There he strikes out against racism, still rampant even in the northern part of the US, and finds he'd be as effective a leader in civilian life as in the military; but he admits to his wife that he loves the army too much to give it up. His wife remains unimpressed, especially when their son enlists in the airforce at the start of World War II, serves in a bomber squadron based in England.....and....you guessed didn't you?

I understand the novel takes the story on past 1945 to the Vietnam conflict, the TV series ends during the second half of World War II, in a very abrupt and unsatisfying fashion. Many loose ends were left dangling. I had to wonder whether, back in 1976, the producers had hoped to make a sequel, but that didn't happen.

A reviewer some years ago (HERE) proposed that Sam Damon is "a metaphor for the U.S. Army itself in the first seven decades of the 20th century. It came of age in World War I, achieved greatness in World War II and withered in Vietnam".

Past and Future Echoes

During the week we rented a DVD of the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting. The title I recognised, but neither of us could recall ever having seen the film. It was written by, and starred, the then very youthful-looking Ben Affleck and Matt Damon; also with a leading role, Robin Williams.

It's an enjoyable movie. One piece of dialogue, spoken by Matt Damon as Will Hunting, stood out for me as foreshadowing events and atmospheres we, in 2014, recognise even more clearly than cinema-goers of 1997 would have done. First, a wee bit of background: Will Hunting, though not formally trained or highly educated is a natural genius in mathematics, has a photographic memory and extremely sharp powers of perception in all spheres - except in recognising the incongruity of his own situation. He had settled for a janitor's working class existence and mildly wild-boy lifestyle, until his talent was discovered by an MIT professor. In the scene from which this dialogue is taken, Hunting has attended an interview with officials of the NSA (we know them well - or at least, they know us!) arranged for him by the professor. His speech during the interview:

Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot. Say I'm workin' at the N.S.A. and somebody puts a code on my desk, somethin' no one else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it, maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. And once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels are hidin'. Fifteen hundred people that I never met, I never had no problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', 'Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area,' 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called 'cause they were out pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie over there takin' shrapnel in the ass. He comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks.

Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so that we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the little skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain't helpin' my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. They're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course, maybe they even took the liberty of hirin' an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs. It ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work. He can't afford to drive, so he's walkin' to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks because the schrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorroids. And meanwhile he's starvin' 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State.

So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure, fuck it, while I'm at it, why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.

That dialogue was written around 17 years ago, by a couple of actor friends who, we now know, both have well-defined political views. Echoes of these were likely to be felt in this film. 17 years isn't a long time in the great scheme of things, so I shouldn't have been surprised to hear Will Hunting's speech, which seems, if anything, even more relevant today than in 1997. This isn't one of the better examples of fiction writers' involuntary prescience, a topic I've blogged about in the past, and one which continues to intrigue me.

A couple of sci-fi novels with very scary prescience are J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World and The Burning World, written in 1962 and 1964 respectively. I haven't read them yet, but the saying "read 'em and weep" will follow any thought I might have of acquiring the books.

Here are some other examples, featured as part of of an archived 2006 post of mine, Accidental Prophets, re-aired in 2008:

James Michener seems to have had amazing foresight. Several of his novels featuring a particular country, in depth, were each followed some years later by the same countries coming into prominence on the world stage. In a long interview here: he said

"I think that some of us have a deep seated sensitive antennae about what is going to happen. And somebody the other day, a fine professor, made an introduction of me, which I had not thought about, but which I had thought about a great deal since. At that time, in the world, there were about a half dozen trouble spots: the Near East, the Jewish-Arab relationships, South Africa, revolution in Poland, the emergence of Japan, the absorption in the United States of two outlying territories like Hawaii and Alaska and four or five other things. And he pointed out that I had written full-length books about all these areas before they came into prominence. And I did! There they are. Look at the dates. Now this cannot be because I was exceptionally brilliant. I am not brilliant. I'm something else. I don't know what the word would be, but it isn't brilliant."

Nevil Shute, author of one of my favourites, A Town Like Alice, wrote a couple of novels which later seemed to have been prophetic. No Highway published in 1948 dealt with what might happen due to metal fatigue in aircraft. His ideas came close to fact with the Comet disasters of the 1950s. Another novel, What Happened to the Corbetts also published as Ordeal was written just before the start of WorldWar2. It tells how badly aerial bombing affected a town similar to Southampton, in the south of England, and how the bombing of civilians became a major part of the war. British people of a certain age will have no trouble recognising this as fact! On the Beach, a story of the world ending as a result of the explosion of atomic bombs, thankfully has not yet proved prophetic. It could still be "pending" however, should people forget the warning bells it rang! Shute also touched on a slightly supernatural theme in a novel called Round the Bend in which an aircraft mechanic becomes the mystical leader of a religious movement.

Seeing some correspondence between Michener and Shute, I searched around for other instances of novels which, without purporting to be science fiction, portray events which later came to pass in real life.

American author Morgan Robertson produced an early example in his story Futility. He told of a ship called Titan which sank in a way eerily similar to The Titanic, 14 years later. When this book was written there were no ships of such enormous size being built. Robertson also appeared to be crystal-gazing when he later(1914) wrote a book called Beyond the Spectrum. In this book, he described a war in the future, fought using aircraft which dropped "sun bombs" on their targets. These were powerful enough for a single bomb to destroy a city. When this book was written, aeroplanes were small, flimsy, and unreliable machines capable of carrying one person. Nuclear weapons were still unimagined. Robertson's war began in the month of December, as did the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which brought the USA into WW2.

Michener was born 1907, Shute 1899 and Robertson 1861.

There are common sense explanations for the authors' apparent ability to see into the future, these men were not deliberately trying to predict events, as far as we know.

Michener didn't foresee actual events, but was drawn or inspired to write about countries which later came to prominence for one reason or another. He was widely travelled, highly intelligent, politically minded and had lived in all the countries he wrote about. Common sense would say that he was "putting two and two together", or using intuition.

Shute was a skilled aeronautical engineer as well as novelist. He had technical knowledge more than sufficient to foresee possible outcomes where the area of his expertise was involved. "An accident waiting to happen", in the case of metal fatigue, and some extrapolation of known facts in the case of aerial warfare ?

Robertson was the son of a ship's captain and spent some time as a cabin boy himself, so the sea was "in his blood", he had no doubt heard some tall tales from the old salts he must have encountered. These, with a little embroidery, might have helped him to invent his ship Titan. His "Beyond the Spectrum" published in 1914 is harder to explain.

Those are explanations for skeptics. Someone more open-minded, and sensitive to peculiar coincidences like these, might see a different explanation. Novelists and short story writers continually tap into vast resources of imagination. For hours at a time, their minds are "elsewhere", concentrating outside of the mundane. Isn't this akin to meditation? Could it be that as they concentrate so intently in realms of the imaginary, coloured with knowledge stored in their memory banks, they somehow inadvertently seep through a time barrier or into another dimension?

With oblique reference to the above, I read this week that plans are afoot to make a movie version of Harlan Ellison's 1965 award-winning short science fiction story, 'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman. This should be interesting!

Harlan Ellison's story is set in a dystopian future where strict adherence to time regulation rules everything, including life and death. It's basically a satirical diatribe on social regimentation. In the story one Everett C. Marm, disguised as Harlequin rebels, albeit a whimsical rebellion, against the time regulations and the Master Timekeeper known as Ticktockman.

“Why let them order you about? Why let them tell you to hurry and scurry like ants or maggots? Take your time! Saunter a while! Enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the breeze, let life carry you at your own pace! Don't be slaves of time, it's a helluva way to die, slowly, by degrees...down with the Ticktockman!”

“And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes goes goes goes goes tick tock tick tock tick tock and one day we no longer let time serve us, we serve time and we are slaves of the schedule, worshipers of the sun's passing, bound into a life predicated on restrictions because the system will not function if we don't keep the schedule tight.”

Let us hope that author Harlan Ellison had not tapped in to any future truth!

Astrology in Movies and Novels

I enjoy collecting examples of astrology appearing in movie dialogue. I've posted on the topic twice in the past :

Movie Dialogue with Astrology (2009)

and

More Astrology in Movie Dialogue - an updated and expanded version of the 2009 post (2012).


I discovered another instance this week, watching a film, Broken City on HBO. On checking I discovered the movie was released only in April this year - can't have been very well received, then. It usually takes at least a year after release before movies appear on HBO. Husband didn't receive it well anyway - he went to sleep a lot, then declared it to be disjointed......hmmm!

The astrology in Broken City's dialogue was fleeting, and one of the silliest instances so far, but worth saving for its incongruity. A former New York police detective, thrown off the force after shooting a rapist in the head, now a private eye, talks with the Police Commissioner in a dark New York bar. Neither fully trusts the other. Private eye (Mark Wahlberg) says to Police Commissioner: "I think you're two-faced". Police Commissioner (Jeffrey Wright) responds with "What...Gemini? No, I'm Taurus. What about you?" Private eye (Wahlberg): Cancer.

Now... in what dimension would a tough New York ex-cop and a shrewd Police Commissioner have enough interest in astrology to know even their Sun signs? Or even if they did, be making mention of them in a bar? Still, it elicited a laugh from me, woke up the sleeping husband, and provided an additional item for my growing list.

As for astrology in novels - I've collected a few examples of that too, as mentioned in these posts from previous years:

Novels Featuring Astrology

Astrological Twins in Fiction

Novels (and Columbus Day)




I discovered a new example this week, at The Oxford Astrologer blog, in a post titled
Astrologer Wins Top Literary Prize. The novel's title: The Luminaries, author: Eleanor Catton, winner of this year's Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Oxford Astrologer writes: Her massive historical novel boggled the judges minds. How did she structure it? Using proper, grown up astrology. More information on the novel HERE.

Any more suggestions - movies or novels?

Unwittingly Prophetic Authors

An article by novelist Tom Lonergan at Huffington Post this week, My Novel Predicted Boston Marathon Attack reminded me of an old post of my own. Synopsis from cover of Lonergan's Heartbreak Hill (2002):

"The trouble with most terrorists is they think too small. This is the message Boston police receive days before fifteen thousand runners and two and a half million spectators descend on the city for the marathon........."

An edited version of my 2006 post follows:


ACCIDENTAL PROPHETS

James Michener seemed to have amazing foresight. Several of his novels featuring a particular country, in depth, were each followed some years later by the same countries coming into prominence on the world stage. In a long interview here: , he said

"I think that some of us have a deep seated sensitive antennae about what is going to happen. And somebody the other day, a fine professor, made an introduction of me, which I had not thought about, but which I had thought about a great deal since. At that time, in the world, there were about a half dozen trouble spots: the Near East, the Jewish-Arab relationships, South Africa, revolution in Poland, the emergence of Japan, the absorption in the United States of two outlying territories like Hawaii and Alaska and four or five other things. And he pointed out that I had written full-length books about all these areas before they came into prominence. And I did! There they are. Look at the dates. Now this cannot be because I was exceptionally brilliant. I am not brilliant. I'm something else. I don't know what the word would be, but it isn't brilliant."

Nevil Shute, author of one of my favourite books A Town Like Alice, wrote a couple of novels which later seemed to have been prophetic. No Highway, published in 1948 dealt with what might happen due to metal fatigue in aircraft. His ideas came close to fact with the Comet disasters of the 1950s. Another novel, What Happened to the Corbetts also published as Ordeal was written just before the start of WorldWar 2. It tells how badly aerial bombing affected a town similar to Southampton, in the south of England, and how the bombing of civilians became a major part of the war. British people of a certain age will have no trouble recognising this as fact! His novel On the Beach, a story of the world ending as a result of the explosion of atomic bombs, thankfully has not yet proved prophetic. It could still be "pending", should people forget the warning bells it rang! Shute also touched on a slightly supernatural theme in a novel called Round the Bend in which an aircraft mechanic becomes the mystical leader of a religious movement.

Seeing some correspondence between Michener and Shute, I searched around for other instances of novels which, without purporting to be science fiction, portray events which later came to pass in real life.

American author Morgan Robertson produced an early example in his story Futility. He told of a ship called Titan which sank in a way eerily similar to The Titanic sinking, 14 years later. When this book was written there were no ships of such enormous size being built. Robertson also appeared to be crystal-gazing when he later(1914) wrote Beyond the Spectrum in which he described a war in the future, fought using aircraft which dropped "sun bombs" on their targets. These were powerful enough for a single bomb to destroy a city. When this book was written, aircraft were small, flimsy, and unreliable machines capable of carrying one person. Nuclear weapons were still unimagined. Robertson's war began in the month of December, as did the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which brought the USA into World War 2.

Michener was born 1907, Shute 1899 and Robertson 1861.

There are, of course, common sense explanations for the authors' seeming futuristic vision. These writers were not deliberately trying to predict events, as far as we know.

Michener didn't foresee actual events, but was drawn or inspired to write about countries which later came to prominence for one reason or another. He was widely travelled, highly intelligent, politically minded and had lived in all the countries he wrote about. Common sense would say that he was intuitively "putting two and two together"

Shute was a skilled aeronautical engineer as well as novelist. He had technical knowledge more than sufficient to foresee possible outcomes where the area of his expertise was involved. "An accident waiting to happen", in the case of metal fatigue, and some extrapolation of known facts in the case of aerial warfare ?

Robertson was the son of a ship's captain and spent some time as a cabin boy himself, so the sea was "in his blood", he had no doubt heard some tall tales from the old salts he must have encountered. These, with a little embroidery, might have helped him to invent his ship Titan. His Beyond the Spectrum published in 1914 is harder to explain.

Open-minded readers, sensitive to peculiar coincidences like these, might see different explanations. Novelists and short story writers continually tap into vast resources of imagination. For hours at a time, on a regular basis, their minds are "elsewhere", concentrating outside of the mundane. Isn't this akin to meditation? Could it be that as they concentrate so intently in realms of the imaginary, coloured by factual knowledge stored in their memory banks, they somehow inadvertently seep through a time barrier or into another dimension?

Astrological Twins in Fiction

A mention of Jeffrey Archer's novel Kane and Abel set me off on a train of thought. I read the book years ago, and later saw the TV adaptation. Recalling the main thread of the plot - how the lives of two men, born on the same day, on different continents become entwined, I began to think along lines which had, more or less, eluded me years ago.

The two leading characters were astrological twins, or nearly so. We are not told whether they were born at the very same minute of 18 April 1906 - allowing for different time zones - one in Massachusetts, USA, the other in Poland. It's an engrossing tale. I don't intend to spoil it for anyone who hasn't yet read the book or seen the TV adaptation, but anybody curious about the story can read more detail HERE.



I wonder whether Jeffrey Archer had advice from an astrologer when deciding on the birth date of his lead characters? Here's the chart, set for Boston MA. Planet-in-sign positions (apart perhaps from Moon) would have been the same for USA and Poland whatever the birth time.

Bare bones of the plot include a rags-to-riches tale, a born-with-silver-spoon (in appropriate orifice) tale, a common thirst for power and wealth, a common passionate love of respective offspring, and a whole lot of misunderstanding.

Giving the guys Sun in Aries was a good move - especially for the Polish character who had to really pull out all the stops of his Sun's Mars rulership to escape a dreadful scenario in the country of his birth. Giving them Mars and Venus in Fixed Earth Taurus was appropriate too. They are both very fixed in mindset, extremely stubborn, and enthralled by possessions and property.

Of course, it's fiction, but still interesting to think on these points. Those thoughts led me to ponder on another work of fiction, Ben Hur. I haven't read the book, but the 1959 movie is my favourite film of all time. This might be thought an odd choice for an atheist (agnostic on a good day) like myself, but I love its epic quality, its adventure and scope, but most of all its messages, clean and unsullied by the powerful organised religion which came after. Anyway.... I may be wrong, but I feel certain that right at the start of the movie there's some indication that Judah Ben Hur and Jesus were born at or around the same time. I can't find any evidence of this having been stated in the book, so my memory might be faulty and/or astrology-ridden these days. It's unlikely that author Lew Wallace, in the late 19th century, would have entertained thoughts about astrology, so this is probably just my memory playing tricks. It is mentioned (I think) that both Jesus and Judah Ben Hur were around Judea at the same time though, and were about the same age. Their lives did touch at two or three points in the storyline. This isn't a good example of astrological twins in a novel, but it's one which sprang immediately to mind.

Mark Twain wrote The Prince and the Pauper, a novel about astrological twins, identical in appearance but from very different backgrounds. They change places in the England of 1547. I haven't read this book, but the Prince of the title is Prince Edward who at the tender age of 9 became King, on the death of his father Henry VIII. Edward's date of birth, was 12 October 1537 - Sun in Libra. Pauper Tom Canty's would have been the same. Libra the sign of balance seems rather appropriate for these two boys who each found out what life was like on the other side of the scale.

If a passing reader knows of any other novel or movie with a theme involving astrological twins (born the same day, different parents, different place, maybe at the same time of day), do please drop a comment below.

Sunday Supplement (no astrology): TITLES

Books, blogs, articles and short stories all benefit from titles with the power to attract and draw in readers. Choosing a title is not easy. Authors over many decades, and bloggers for a lesser time, have pitted their wits against the ordinary and predictable to come up with something sparklingly original, yet pertinent to content.

Some authors lean on the work of their predecessors from which to extract a nugget of wisdom applicable to their own piece of work. Somerset Maugham favored this method when he chose titles for "The Painted Veil" and "Of Human Bondage". Both are lifted from old texts - the former from a sonnet by Percy Byshe Shelley, written in 1818:

Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread, --- behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear. ......

The latter is borrowed from one of the books of the 'Ethica' by 17th century Dutch philosopher, Baruch Spinoza. Translated = "Of Human Bondage, or The Strength of the Emotions".

Those are both apt titles, once one is familiar with the storylines, but they presuppose a certain amount of literary knowledge on the part of the reader....unless like me, in the 21st century, they are able to "do the Google".

Similarly puzzling for anyone unfamiliar with it's source, is Harper Lee's famous title "To Kill a Mocking Bird". The author took that from an old proverb telling that "it's a sin to kill a mocking bird", and used it as a metaphor for the storyline of his novel. It's clever, but without prior knowledge of the old proverb, or subject matter of the book, a potential reader might feel puzzled when confronted with the title on a library shelf. Still, it's intriguing enough to be a draw.

The above titles fall into the category of "deep & meaningful". There's another category worth sampling: "the jaw-droppingly bizarre" - a few of which are discussed by James Bradshaw at the Globe And Mail Arts section. These are mainly non-fiction....I assume!

Nuclear War: What's In It for You?
Old Tractors and the Men Who Love Them
How to Avoid Huge Ships or I Never Met a Ship I Liked
Knitting With Dog Hair
Bombproof Your Horse
How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment and Nation in the Third Reich.

And how's this for a page-turner:



Some more at Cracked.com HERE

BLOGS: I don't remember how I chose the name of this blog. I was wet behind the ears, blog-wise, it was quite likely the first thing I thought of. In retrospect I wish it could've been shorter and simpler. I can think of some much better ones now, but hesitate to make a change - horses, mid-streams and all that!

Blog names at their creative best can be brilliant reflections of their master blogger. A good name always draws me in, even if only for a single visit.

The most successful blogs such as:Gawker, Boing Boing, Crooks & Liars, Freakonomics, have easy names to remember. I enjoy finding catchy blog names among the more "cottage industry" type blogs. From my own sidebar links for instance: Out the Comet's Ass is a favourite from the astrology list. I like the simplicity of my husband's blog name: Thinks Happen. Google doesn't get it though; when I input Thinks Happen, it politely asks me "do you mean things happen?"

A few more nice blog names: The Typing Makes Me Sound Busy; I Probably Don't Like You; Ungirdled Passion; Converstations; nanopolitan; The Invisible Edge; Where Am I Going and Why Am I In This Handbasket? And, simple but effective, Bloggity Blog.

SOLSTICE

We've reached one of the year's four cardinal points, a seasonal shift. Nights will not grow longer now. It's downhill from here! More cold and damp weather to come though, at least in the northern hemisphere. Our friends down south experience the opposite and are getting out their summer gear, while we bundle up for a few more months, but always in the knowledge that we're heading for the next shift - into spring. The lights of Hanukkah and Christmas brighten the nights and our spirits. Those lucky enough to live near an ancient site of solstice celebration will have seen the season turn, in slow motion, before their eyes.


Winter Solstice - it's a romantic, magical time, its echo travels back thousands of years, beyond Christianity, beyond the Roman and Greek Empires, beyond anything we have recorded - and therein lies magic. The theme has inspired at least two novels in recent years - both titled simply "Winter Solstice", one by Irish author Lucy Costigan, the other by novelist Rosamunde Pilcher. The opening chapter of Lucy Costigan's "Winter Solstice" can be read at a pdf HERE


Lucy Costigan's book begins as the heroine leaves home on a short journey to see the Sun rise on 21 December at Newgrange in County Meath, Ireland. A 5,000 year old site where, in a passage under a large burial mound, the Sun, as it rises at Winter Solstice shines through an opening in the roof to illuminate the pathway. Entrance to the site is strictly controlled, only a few observers are allowed to actually witness Solstice there nowadays. The tomb is said to be more than 600 years older than the Giza Pyramids in Egypt, and 1,000 years more ancient than Stonehenge.



The Winter Solstice inspires poets too - here's an example from Poets.org:

Toward the Winter Solstice
by Timothy Steele

Although the roof is just a story high,
It dizzies me a little to look down.
I lariat-twirl the cord of Christmas lights
And cast it to the weeping birch’s crown;
A dowel into which I’ve screwed a hook
Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine
The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs
Will accent the tree’s elegant design.

Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause
And call up commendations or critiques.
I make adjustments. Though a potpourri
Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,
We all are conscious of the time of year;
We all enjoy its colorful displays
And keep some festival that mitigates
The dwindling warmth and compass of the days.

Some say that L.A. doesn’t suit the Yule,
But UPS vans now like magi make
Their present-laden rounds, while fallen leaves
Are gaily resurrected in their wake;
The desert lifts a full moon from the east
And issues a dry Santa Ana breeze,
And valets at chic restaurants will soon
Be tending flocks of cars and SUVs.

And as the neighborhoods sink into dusk
The fan palms scattered all across town stand
More calmly prominent, and this place seems
A vast oasis in the Holy Land.
This house might be a caravansary,
The tree a kind of cordial fountainhead
Of welcome, looped and decked with necklaces
And ceintures of green, yellow, blue, and red.

Some wonder if the star of Bethlehem
Occurred when Jupiter and Saturn crossed;
It’s comforting to look up from this roof
And feel that, while all changes, nothing’s lost,
To recollect that in antiquity
The winter solstice fell in Capricorn
And that, in the Orion Nebula,
From swirling gas, new stars are being born.

SOLSTICE GREETINGS TO ALL !