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Sunday, February 6, 2011
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Here’s looking at him Book about Bogart affirms his star power By Jerry Harkavy Associated Press Writer
The so-called “Greatest Generation,” whose lives were shaped by the Depression and World War II, made up the core audience for Humphrey Bogart’s movies. But Bogart’s star power would span generations. His death in 1957 set the stage for his embrace by baby boomers, foreign audiences and other moviegoers who were captivated by his portrayals of authentic, hardbitten characters in performances that continue to withstand the test of time. The aura surrounding his work has yet to fade. A dozen years ago, the American Film Institute ranked Bogart as Hollywood’s greatest male star of all time, one Jordan Leroy Hanson, of many posthumous honors journalism major, bestowed upon him. Lawrence In “Tough Without a Gun: “’Deadspace Martyr’ by B. K. The Life and Extraordinary Evenson. It’s a prequel to the Afterlife of Humphrey Bogaoriginal game franchise. A rt,” former Time magazine guy finds a stone that turns movie critic Stefan Kanfer people into monsters.” says Bogart’s enduring success is unlikely to be eclipsed. Kanfer says teens and 20somethings have become the dominant market, whereas people of all ages went to the movies in Bogart’s pretelevision heyday. Also, Bogart achieved leading man status at 42 as Sam Spade in 1941’s “The Maltese Falcon,” followed by other adult roles such as Rick Blaine in Sarah Gelvin, “Casablanca,” Fred C. Dobbs mechanical engineering and in “The Treasure of the Sierbusiness administration ra Madre” and his Oscarmajor, winning performance as Overland Park Charlie Allnut in “The “I’m here to buy the ‘Discover African Queen.” Your Strengths’ book by Kanfer contrasts Bogart’s Marcus Buckingham and masculine appeal to that of Donald O. Clifton. I’ve read Hollywood’s crop of youthpart of it and I’m about to ful and more callow stars buy it to take the quiz to find like Johnny Depp, Tom out what my strengths are.” Cruise and Tobey Maguire. Carrie Friend, business administration major, Lawrence “The ‘Sookie Stackhouse’ collection by Charlaine Harris. They’re different, they’re funny, they’re more adult.”
AP Photo
IN “TOUGH WITHOUT A GUN: THE LIFE AND EXTRAORDINARY AFTERLIFE OF HUMPHREY BOGART,” formerTime magazine movie critic Stefan Kanfer says there’s not likely to be a “new Bogart.” “From time to time columnists dub some young actor the new Clark Gable, the new Jimmy Stewart, the new Marlon Brando,” Kanfer writes. “No one claims to have discovered the new Humphrey Bogart. With good reason. There was nothing like him before his entrance; there has been nothing like him since his exit.” The only son of a well-todo doctor and a renowned illustrator in New York, Bogart stumbled into acting after he had failed at other jobs and other prospects seemed dim. His formal education ended with expulsion from Phillips Andover;
he enlisted in the Navy during World War I. In one of his first roles on the New York stage in 1922, he was cast as a worthless “young sprig of the aristocracy” in a play that was widely panned. “It was here,” writes Kanfer, “that the distinctive Bogart delivery was born — the sudden rictus, the lips pulled back after a statement, the unique sibilance that sometimes made him sound tentative and boyish, and at other times gave him a vaguely malevolent air.” His big break came in 1934 when he was given the role of escaped convict Duke Mantee in Robert Sher-
wood’s Broadway hit “The Petrified Forest,” a role he would reprise two years later on the screen. Kanfer, who has written biographies of Marlon Brando, Lucille Ball and Groucho Marx, brings his knowledge of Hollywood and its ways to this entertaining book. His portrait of Bogart is replete with anecdotes drawn from scores of biographies and memoirs published after the actor’s death. The reader follows the ascent of Bogart’s career as he progresses from playing the heavy in grade-B gangster movies to his memorable performances of the 1940s and ’50s. Among them was “Casablanca,” which made him a superstar and remains the lodestar for many film buffs. Kanfer traces Bogart’s personal life, including three brief and tempestuous marriages that set the stage for his whirlwind courtship of Lauren Bacall that began during the filming of “To Have and Have Not.” Another thread in the story is how his liberal politics made him an occasional target of congressional investigators intent on exposing members of the Communist Party in Hollywood. But perhaps most unique about Bogart is the career trajectory after he died of cancer. The Brattle Theater near Harvard began running “Casablanca,” sparking a Bogart cult that extended to other college campuses. After Jean-Paul Belmondo mimicked Bogart’s mannerisms in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” other New Wave directors began to channel the Bogart style. Years later, the Bogart mystique surfaced anew in Woody Allen’s “Play It Again, Sam.” Kanfer’s book should appeal to older Bogart enthusiasts and younger movie fans discovering him for the first time. It’s a readable and entertaining biography that reflects the author’s delight in his subject and the world in which Bogart thrived.
’Swamplandia!’ the 1st ‘must-read’ of 2011 By Mike Fischer Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Dan Kirchhefer, college professor, Topeka “’The Brothers K’ by David James Duncan, which chronicles the adventures of a family living in the northwest with an underlying theme of baseball. It’s set in the late ‘50s through the ‘70s, I think, and is roughly based on ‘The Brothers Karamazov.’”
Writer Karen Russell is on record stating that, much as she loves reading realist fiction, she couldn’t “write a moving tale about a family of struggling car salesmen in Detroit,” even if “somebody held a gun to my head.” “But a family of alligator wrestlers in a mythic swamp? That,” she continued, “I can do.” Now she has, in “Swamplandia!,” a weird and wonderfully inventive first novel that also happens to be a moving, very real tale about a struggling family. The Bigtrees aren’t car salesmen from Detroit, but
they’re facing foreclosure on their isolated island home in Florida’s Everglades once 36year-old Hilola Bigtree succumbs to ovarian cancer. She leaves behind a dazed husband and three teenagers: a boy named Kiwi and two girls, Osceola and 13-year-old Ava. Back when customers demanded less because their imaginations did more, Hilola had been the star of the Bigtrees’ alligator wrestling show held in Swamplandia!, their 100-acre throwback to carnivals from a distant past. Hilola’s death coincides
with the rise of a more conventional mainland tourist attraction: the World of Darkness, featuring a water ride through a whale’s belly where “watching people board the ride and get released down the chute was like watching an eerie factory assembly line.” The Bigtree children cope with Hilola’s death in different ways — none of them good. Hoping to raise money and save their park, the restless Kiwi gets a job in the World of Darkness, and once he arrives, half of the remaining chapters trace his
struggles to make ends meet as an underpaid refugee. The magic ingredient inducing belief is Russell’s incredibly evocative language, as thickly textured and dizzying as the mangrove swamp in which the daughters soon lose their way. Her images are often completely alien but also utterly true to the changing world of an adolescent girl, in which a once-familiar landscape continually reveals new shapes and shadows that can be alluring, haunting or both. Russell’s re-creation of that world will make it easy to forget tamer fare like the “Twilight” series. It’s “Swamplandia!” that’s the real deal — and the first must-read of 2011.
Poet’s Showcase ‘Gift of the Magi’ As I hold my last classes and finals, then read, mark, deliberate, endlessly through short days and long evenings, while neighbors’ lights come on, and Christmas trees glow in windows, I remember the season’s blessings, and my own, dreamily imagining a new story: myself a Magus of old, journey-tired, bearing the gift of light to those who carry it into the world. — Priscilla S. McKinney, Lawrence
Write poetry? Our Poet’s Showcase features work by area poets. Submit your poetry via e-mail with a subject line of Poet’s Showcase to danderson@ljworld.com. Include your hometown and contact information.
BEST-SELLERS Here are the best-sellers for the week ending Jan. 29, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide.
Fiction 1. “Tick Tock.” James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge. Little, Brown, $27.99. 2. “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.” Stieg Larsson. Knopf, $27.95. 3. “Strategic Moves.” Stuart Woods. Putnam, $25.95. 4. “The Inner Circle.” Brad Meltzer. Grand Central, $26.99. 5. “Shadowfever.” Karen Marie Moning. Delacorte, $26. 6. “The Help.” Kathryn Stockett. Putnam/AmyEinhorn, $24.95. 7. “The Sentry.” Robert Crais. Putnam, $26.95. 8. “Dead or Alive.” Tom Clancy with Grant Blackwood. Putnam, $28.95. 9. “Call Me Irresistible.” Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Morrow, $25.99. 10. “The Confession.” John Grisham. Doubleday, $28.95.
Nonfiction 1. “Unbroken.” Laura Hillenbrand. Random House, $27. 2. “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.” Amy Chua. Penguin Press, $25.95. 3. “The Hidden Reality.” Brian Greene. Knopf, $29.95. 4. “The Next Decade.” George Friedman. Doubleday, $27.95. 5. “The 4-Hour Body.” Timothy Ferriss. Crown, $27. 6. “Decision Points.” George W. Bush. Crown, $35. 7. “The Investment Answer.” Daniel C. Goldie & Gordon S. Murray. Business Plus, $18. 8. “Cleopatra.” Stacy Schiff. Little, Brown, $29.99. 9. “Sexy Forever.” Suzanne Somers. Crown, $25.99. 10. “Autobiography of Mark Twain.” Ed. by Harriet Elinor Smith. Univ. of Calif. Press, $34.95.
Previously unreleased Vonnegut stories recall Golden Age By Noah Homola McClatchy Newspapers
Cindy Mehojah, retired, Albuquerque, N.M. “Right now I’m reading ‘Death Comes for the Archbishop’ by Willa Cather because it’s about the Southwest and the Albuquerque area, and that’s where we’re from.”
In 1950, Kurt Vonnegut sold his first short story, “Report on the Barhouse Effect,” for $750 — the equivalent of six weeks’ pay at his public relations job at General Electric. When his second story sold for $950, he quit so he could write full time. In the second collection of Vonnegut stories put out since his death in 2007, “While Mortals Sleep,” we are given 16 previously unreleased short stories from this early period when he was making his living by publishing short f iction in magazines like Esquire and Cosmopolitan. As with “Look at the Birdie,” the previous posthumous collection, this is Vonnegut fresh out of the corporate world, hungry to establish himself as a writer.
Today’s readers play the part of an archaeologist, sifting through the pages and unearthing relics of a post-war United States that reveled in the short story. Sure, these stories feel like classic, wry and imaginative Vonnegut, but the atmosphere of a bygone era, when story took precedent over character, is what dominates. Characters walk down the story’s path, destined to its ending regardless of their action. Every event is calculated, leading up to a revelation or pronouncement that doesn’t hide behind metaphors or symbolism — something seen as banal or amateurish by today’s standards. But this device works, even in the story “Money Talks,” where, in unsur-
prising Vonnegut fashion, the titular money does indeed talk . Perhaps it’s easy to look at a 50-year-old story and just be charmed by its apparent hokeyness. A certain nostalgia might take place. But reading these Vonnegut pieces is deeper, because he provides enough substance to reassure us that we are not in the hands of a hack. Even with a direct moral that is routinely spelled out, we never feel ensnared in Vonnegut’s self-indulgences or get the sense that we are in the midst of a preachy anecdote or object lesson. Pieces like “Jenny,” in which a man uses his toes to control a robotic refrigerator shaped like a woman,
read like typical Vonnegut canon. But in other stories — “Out, Brief Candle” and “Ruth,” for example — we see a more traditional and melancholy Vonnegut, similar to a short story by Alice Munro or J.D. Salinger, respectively. Beyond the nice mixture of stories, 13 drawings by Vonnegut are placed throughout the book. Don’t be discouraged by the fluff, though. These stories celebrate the short story in its golden age. By the book’s end, you’ll want to dig up old copies of Collier’s Magazine and The Saturday Evening Post to revisit the stories of not just Vonnegut, but of Steinbeck, Bradbury and Fitzgerald. “While Mortals Sleep” is ultimately an artifact to celebrate and remind us that, with literature at least, we can do ourselves a favor by not staying current.