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- Jan 19. THE IRISH GAME by Matthew Hart. The struggle in Ireland between resourceful criminals and the Garda, or police
force. The book describes the three heists of valuable paintings from the Beit collection in Russborough. Rose Dugdale, an
English would-be revolutionary, did the first burglary. The second was the work of Martin Cahill, a Dublin gangster, who tried
unsuccessfully for many years to sell the world-renowned pictures, including Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter, valued at 200
million dollars. After the fourth robbery the paintings were sent to the National Gallery in Dublin, where they should have
resided for ages.
- Jan 28. Viewed the entirety of TINKER, TAILOR..., the spy thriller starring Alec Guiness, on 3 DVD's from the
P Library. One of the great TV productions of all time. The characters, taken from the John Le Carre novel, are fully
realized; the dialog is spare and convincing. Just as good the second time around!
- Feb 26. THE BLACK TOWER, by PD James. An atmospheric thriller by the mystery master, PDJ. Adam Dagleish, her Scotland
Yard commander, is convalescing in a retirement community on the Dorset coast, responding to an invitation from Father Baddley,
an old friend. Retirement to hell! One by one, the community oldsters die off (naturally?), while Dagleish remains powerless.
The ultimate outcome revolves around a hard drug smuggling ring masterminded by the principal land owner in the community.
This revelation comes as a total surprise in the final chapter, and appears to be a desperation move by the author to
give closure to the case. I do not believe that Dagleish has enough evidence to make the inferences needed to unmask the killer.
The novel is beautifully written, with extensive character exposition.
- Mar 8. THE BOOK AND THE BROTHERHOOD, by Iris Murdoch. Gerard Cambus is the nominal well-heeled leader of a group of former
students of Oxford, who hang out in London. They have financed a political and philosophical book by David Crimond, a maniacal
Marxist genius. He spends almost all of his time writing, but ocasionally, he comes out of his lair to hunt for women, who
fall readily in love with him, causing exciting ripples to roll through the group. Murdoch shows great skill in describing
the psychology and thinking of at least a dozen members of the group. Hard to put aside.
- Mar 17. THE SEA, THE SEA by Iris Murdoch. Charles Arrowby retires from the London stage to a seaside town. At first he
bustles about in his rundown house near a tower by the sea, preparing simple meals like anchovies on toast, but his rural
simplicities are soon invaded by one menacing woman of his past after another. He rejects these former lovers in a spiteful,
arrogant manner while he dreams of his pure love for Hartley, a school mate who ran away from him when she reached the
age of 18 (I wonder why!). By an authorical miracle, she turns up in his town with an apparently abusive husband. Thereafter
he turns his obsessive attention to her, while he schemes to pull her away from her mate. As in most Murdoch books, his schemes
go awry, leaving him lonely and disillusioned.
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- Mar 23. UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch. Her first book in 1954, which established Iris,
a philosopher, as an upcoming novelist.Jake Donahue, a so-so writer and translator, rambles around London and Paris,
meeting old girl friends and exasperating his friends, like the Irishman Finn.Underneath the novel is a complicated
structure of Greek legends and philosophic musings. Iris, among other things, sets up a hierarchy of art: silence first, then
speech, then writing, painting, and least of all, the movies. How we have moved away from this ranking in the past 50 years.
- June 10. The BLACK PRINCE by Iris Murdoch. Bradley Pearson, an unsuccessful writer, is a long-term
friend of Arnold Baffin, a prolific and successful writer. He receives a call from Arnold saying that he has just killed his
wife Rachel. Actually, he has only injured her with a poker. This sets off a long melodramatic series of episodes in which
Bradley falls in love with Rachael, then her daughter. At the end Rachael kills her husband and pins his death on Bradley,
who is sent to prison. Emotional and psychological depth given to the characters. Good analysis of the novel in the Literary
Encyclopedia.
- June 16. A SEVERED HEAD by Iris Murdoch. Continuing to re-read the Murdoch novels I discovered in the adult
classes in Abingdon, England. Men and women exchange partners in a wild "comedy" of musical chairs. Martin is so satisfied
with his life in London. At home he has a stylish, adoring wife Antonia; he also enjoys the weekly attention of a young mistress,
Georgie. His life starts to fall apart when he discovers his wife in bed with his best friend, a psychoanalyst. Various permutations
of couplings ensue, leaving everybody, including his brother, in love with his wife and essentially no one caring for him.
The outcome of a fiercely self-centered life?
- July 3. CHINA INC by Ted Fishman. Only an idiot could not notice that almost
all objects sold in this country come from China--clothing, computers, batteries, you name it. Many of these items are made
in factories set up by American and other western firms. They figure that if they don't tap the huge China market, then their
competitors will. The same argument is used by China when they allow foreign companies entry. If you don't import your technical
expertise into China and train our people, then we'll give the business to another competitor. So, as a result, we have lost
millions of jobs in this country. In the future entire industries will be wiped out by cheaper Chinese manufacture. Just go
to one of the Dollar Stores and see for yourself. Where else can you get 16 batteries for one dollar? A frightening view of
the economic future of this country.
- July 26. The BELL, by Iris Murdoch. This story concerns a religious community sited
in the remains of an old Benedictine monastery on a lake near a cloistered monastery of nuns. It's typical Murdoch fare: secrets
galore in a fully-realized community set off from the outside world. Published in 1958, it is one of the first efforts to
analyze homosexual attachments between priests and young boys. This connection, probably well known at the time but hidden
by the religious authorities, broke out into the front pages about three or four decades later.
- Sept 5. A WORD CHILD by
Iris Murdoch. Hilary, a brilliant student of language at Oxford becomes involved in an adulturous love affair with Anne, the
wife of Gunnar, one of the teaching staff. She is killed in a car accident as he tries to abduct her. He leaves the U, disgraced
and takes a boring administrative desk job in the government. We meet him twenty years later, still obscessed with his role
in the death of Anne. Gunnar, in the meantime, has become a highly successful politician and businessman. The original scenarios,
love, manipulation, trajedy, recur when Gunnar becomes the director of Hilary's department.
- Oct 22. LIARS POKER by Michael
Lewis. Discovered ML by reading his hilarious long story about New Orleans in "Wading Home" in the NY Times Mag. In this funny
novel of the 90s he makes fun of bond traders at Salomom Brothers. Anyone who can make bond trading hilarious must have great
talents as a writer.
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