Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
11/15/19 -- Vol. 38, No. 20, Whole Number 2093
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Keep My Bright Side Up (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
MOBY DICK (1998) (letter of comment by Kevin R)
This Week's Reading (TEXTOS RECOBRADOS (1931-1955):
KING KONG, THE SIGN OF THE CROSS, CONGO, and "Laws of
the Detective Story") (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Keep My Bright Side Up (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
[Some information below is outdated. I look better than I admitted
in the article.]
I am occasionally surprised at what I have to explain to Evelyn.
Well, to start out I should explain to something about my
appearance, since it probably would become clear from this article
anyway and I might as well get it out of the way. As you might be
able to tell by looking at my Web page I have what is generally
called "rugged good looks." I have a beard but parts of it are
prematurely gray, giving me a rather distinguished look. On top,
my hair has given up the battle to hold back all the good things
that are going on underneath and has made way for my head to push
its way up and through. Now, I rarely actually see the effects of
this movement since first of all, in most things I do in the day I
do not see the top of my head. Occasionally I look in a mirror,
of course. And while I am impressed by what I see, I am not
getting the whole picture. You see there is still some thatching
up there and when I look on straight in a mirror it looks like I
still have all the hair I ever did. One has to actually look down
on my head from above to recognize that, in fact, there are parts
of my scalp exposed to the sunshine. And, not surprisingly,
looking down on my head from above is something that I rarely do.
It requires either two mirrors or an out-of-body experience.
Anyway, it has occurred to Evelyn to wonder why it is that there is
gray hair in my beard, but none on the top of my head. I mean,
there still is hair up there and none of it is gray. Now, after
she has been in this business environment for all these years, she
still does not understand what is going on and how things work.
Obviously conditions on the top of my head do not support the
expenditures of protein that are required to keep an entire head of
hair. Conditions were a lot better in the Boom of the 60s and 70s,
but since that time they have changed and a certain amount of
right-sizing has become necessary. My scalp can no longer maintain
the staff of hairs it once did and although I had on my head some
of the best hairs available anywhere, in order for my head to stay
competitive I have had to lay off a certain number of hairs and
make do with a smaller staff. Because of quality initiatives and
because, as I have said, I have some of the best hairs in the
business, a smaller staff has been able to make do where a much
larger one has before. Now if I am going to be laying off hairs
from the top of my head, which ones should I choose? I could say
that the older and grayer hairs have seniority, but such a policy
on my head would be shooting myself in the foot, so to speak.
Of course the idea is to lay off the older grayer hairs that are
approaching pension age and hold on to the younger and more vibrant
hairs that have newer and fresher ideas. They obviously are making
more of a contribution. I have told my gray hairs that I have
really valued their contribution but that, conditions being as they
were, their services were no longer required in their present
position. I gave them what was a decidedly generous sixty days to
find someplace else on my body where I needed hair and to where I
would be willing to go to the expense of transplanting them, but
those gray hairs that could not find employment elsewhere on my
body were terminated. Actually, I have to admit some surprise that
more gray hairs did not take me up on my magnanimous gesture, but
then I suppose they felt that they were more or less rooted in
their present position. Well, I guess it serves him right for
being so narrow. The future belongs to the versatile.
And how well has all this right-sizing of my head worked out?
Well, under normal conditions the hairs that I had left were doing
quite nicely, thank you. Of course last year, on my trip to the
Southwest, the top of my head sunburned rather badly. Luckily my
scalp recognized what was the proper thing to do in the situation.
Obviously another right-sizing became necessary and now I am
getting by with even less hair on the top of my head. This means
this summer more head has to be protected by fewer hairs, but as I
say, these are the best hairs available anyplace and it is time for
them to start proving it. If they fall out, let them be trod into
the carpet; they let me down. And I am well on my way from having
a shiny, vibrant head of hair, to a shiny vibrant head without
hair. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: MOBY DICK (1998) (letter of comment by Kevin R)
In response to Evelyn's comments on MOBY DICK (1998) in the
11/08/19 issue of the MT VOID, Kevin R writes:
[Evelyn writes,] "And I understand that most of the gams had to be
omitted, ..." [-ecl]
They *had* to leave out one of Ahab's. [-kr]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
TEXTOS RECOBRADOS (1931-1955) by Jorge Luis Borges (ISBN 978-950-
04-2326-X) is an example of a book I will comment on that no one,
and I mean *no one* reading this is going to rush out and buy. It
is in Spanish and contains entirely obscure articles, essays,
notes, etc., and the cheapest copy available is $53. (Warning: if
by chance you do decide to buy it, the seller in Canada mistakenly
lists this book as being in English!)
And it is not even quite what it purports to be: a collection of
previously un-collected works by Borges. While it may be true that
the original (Spanish-language) works have not been collected in
any books before this (published in 2001), several of them appear
in SELECTED NON-FICTIONS edited by Eliot Weinberger (ISBN 978-0-
670-84947-5), which was published in 1999. I realized this when I
read Borges's review of KING KONG and was sure I had seen it
before--I had. (Borges did not like the film. He thought Kong's
movements were clumsy, and that the way he was photographed--from
above rather than from below--did not properly emphasize his
height, and settings such as the cave of "false cathedral splendor"
just made this worse.)
I had not seen Borges's review of THE SIGN OF THE CROSS, which he
describes as "tiresome." The only justifiable moment, he says, is
when the black cat laps up the (apparent) milk of "Claudette Popea
Colbert"'s bath: he feels that de Mille seems to suspect the
audience will not believe it is milk, and "resolves this with some
elegance."
He seems to like CONGO more for what it lacks--no safaris, no
African tribes, no lions, no botanical or zoological catalogues, no
mischievous monkeys--than what it has, though he does say, "It is a
human tragedy, abjectly and hellishly human," and cites Walter
Huston's performance.
Another repeat was "Leyes de narracion policial" ["Laws of the
Detective Story"], appearing as "The Labyrinths of the Detective
Story and Chesterton". (The English title makes me suspicious of
the translator (Weinberger) as the essay makes no mention of
labyrinths and that seems thrown in just because labyrinths are a
recurring motif of Borges.
These laws are:
- A discretional limit of its characters. (Weinberger says "six
characters", apparently misreading "sus" as "seis".)
- A statement of the terms of the problem.
- A miserly economy of means. (Weinberger's adjective of
"avaricious" is, to my mind, just wrong, given that Borges says
"Avara economia".)
- The primacy of "how" over "who".
- A reticence concerning death.
- Both the inevitability *and* the surprise of the solution.
These laws, by the way, seem similar to those of Ronald Knox ("10
Commandments of Detective Fiction") or S. S. Van Dine ("Twenty
Rules for Writing Detective Stories"). And it's also worth noting
that some of the most popular detective stories break some of these
rules. I won't say which, but next time you read an Agatha
Christie, go back and re-read the rules.
In "Yo, Judio" (1934) Borges is responding to a critic who
insinuated that Borges was "hiding" his Jewish ancestry. Borges,
says, "Many times it has not displeased me to think of myself as
Jewish," but that hope is fading that he can ever see himself as
descended from Jews, with any connection "with Heine, Gleizer, and
the Ten Sefiroth, with Ecclesiastes and Chaplin. This is ironic,
as Chaplin was not Jewish either, but was often considered as such!
Borges also notes that "our inquisitors" are fascinated with
finding a Jewish ancestors for someone but never "Phoenician,
Garamantes, Scythians, Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians, Huns,
Vandals, Ostrogoths, Ethiopians, Illyrians, Paphlagonians,
Sarmatians, Medes, Ottomans, Berbers, Britons, Libyans, Cyclops, or
Lapiths. The nights of Alexandria, Of Babylon, of Carthage, of
Memphis, could never engender a single grandfather; it was only to
the bituminous Dead Sea that this gift was provided." [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.
--Howard Nemerov