Category Archives: B - READING - Page 8

READING — SEPTEMBER 2019

Posted by on September 30, 2019 No comments

24224. (James H. Bar­rett, R. A. Nichol­son & R. Cerón-Car­ras­co) Archaeo-ichthyological
. . . . . Evi­dence for Long-term Socioe­co­nom­ic Trends in North­ern Scot­land: 3500 BC to
. . . . . AD 1500 [arti­cle]
24225. (Michael Patrick Lynch) Know-It-All Society
24226. (Arthur Deconynck) La félic­ité ambiguë de l’ara­bie heureuse [arti­cle]
24227. (Drew Hay­den Tay­lor) Sir John A: Acts of a Gen­tri­fied Ojib­way Rebel­lion [play]
24228. (Cari­na Bar­bosa Gou­vêa) “Pelos poderes de Mon­tesquieu, eu ten­ho força!” [arti­cle]
24229. (Iain Banks, Eeri­ka Kosk­i­nen-Koivis­to & Oula Seit­so­nen) Pub­lic Engage­ments with
. . . . . Lap­land’s Dark Her­itage: Com­mu­ni­ty Archae­ol­o­gy in Finnish Lap­land [arti­cle]
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READING — AUGUST 2019

Posted by on August 31, 2019 No comments

24208. (Arthur Machen) The Angels of Mons: The Bow­men and Oth­er Leg­ends of the War 
. . . . . [arti­cle]
24209. (Athur Machen) The Bow­men [sto­ry]
24210. (V. Watrous, et al) Econ­o­my and Soci­ety in the Gour­nia Region of Crete [arti­cle]
24211. (Amy Reed) The Boy and Girl who Broke the World
24212. (Ármann Jakob­s­son) Felce, William Mor­ris and the Ice­landic Sagas [review of William 
. . . . . Mor­ris and the Ice­landic Sagas by Ian Felce] [review]
24213. (Tom Mason, et al) Spi­ders of Toronto
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READING — JULY 2019

Posted by on July 31, 2019 No comments

24195. (Fred C. Woud­huizen) Ori­gin of the Luwian Hiero­glyph­ic Script [arti­cle]
24196. (John Hen­ry Cut­ler) Tom Stet­son On the Trail of the Lost Tribe
24197. (Serge Cassen, et al) La détec­tion des gravures sur deux mono­lithes du haut-cours du
. . . . . Rhône : Le Chemin des Collines à Sion et Le Genevray à Thonon-les-Bains [arti­cle]
24198. (Stephen Greenspan) Annals of Gullibility
24199. (Arup Majumder) Effect of Land Acqui­si­tion on Social Struc­ture: An Ethnographic
. . . . . Study of a Vil­lage in Paschim Medinipur Dis­trict, West Ben­gal [arti­cle]
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READING — JUNE 2019

Posted by on June 30, 2019 No comments

27711. (Robert S. Mueller) Report On The Inves­ti­ga­tion Into Russ­ian Inter­fer­ence In The 2016 
. . . . . Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion [Wash­ing­ton Post edition]
27712. (Made­line Ash­by) Com­pa­ny Town
27713. (Vale­rio Alfon­so Bruno) The Pro­duc­tion of Fear. Euro­pean Democ­ra­cies in the Age of 
. . . . . Pop­ulisms and Tech­noc­ra­cies [arti­cle]
27714. (Esther J. Lee et al) Col­lec­tive Buri­als among Agro-pas­toral Soci­eties in lat­er Neolithic 
. . . . . Ger­many: Per­spec­tives from Ancient DNA [arti­cle]
27715. (Tomas Chamor­ro-Pre­muz­ic) Why Do So Many Incom­pe­tent Men Become Leaders?
(Oliv­er Sacks) The Riv­er of Consciousness:
. . . . 27716. (Oliv­er Sacks) Dar­win and the Mean­ing of Flow­ers [arti­cle]
. . . . 27717. (Oliv­er Sacks) Speed [arti­cle]
. . . . 27718. (Oliv­er Sacks) Sen­tience: The Men­tal Lives of Plants and Worms [arti­cle]
. . . . 27719. (Oliv­er Sacks) The Oth­er Road: Freud as Neu­rol­o­gist [arti­cle]
. . . . 27720. (Oliv­er Sacks) The Facil­i­ty of Mem­o­ry [arti­cle]
. . . . 27721. (Oliv­er Sacks) Mis­hear­ings [arti­cle]
. . . . 27722. (Oliv­er Sacks) The Cre­ative Self [arti­cle]
. . . . 27723. (Oliv­er Sacks) A Gen­er­al Feel­ing of Dis­or­der [arti­cle]
. . . . 27724. (Oliv­er Sacks) The Riv­er of Con­scious­ness [arti­cle]
. . . . 27725. (Oliv­er Sacks) Sco­toma: For­get­ting and Neglect in Sci­ence [arti­cle]
27726. (Rober­tus J. van der Spek) Eth­nic Seg­re­ga­tion in Hel­lenis­tic Baby­lon [arti­cle]
27727. (James Ran­di) The Truth About Uri Geller
27728. (Fiona Bowie) Witch­craft and Heal­ing among the Bang­wa of Cameroon [arti­cle]

READING – MAY 2019

Posted by on May 31, 2019 No comments

24146. (Rut­ger Berman) Utopia for Realists
24147. (Richard Car­ri­er) The Sci­en­tist in the Ear­ly Roman Empire
(Else Har­toch ‑ed.) Moudre au Pays des Tungri:
. . . . 24148. (Else Har­toch) Intro­duc­tion [pref­ace]
. . . . 24149. (Else Har­toch) Les habi­tudes ali­men­taires et agri­coles du chef-lieu de la cité des 
. . . . . . . . . Ton­gres et ses régions envoisi­nantes [arti­cle]
. . . . 24150. (Else Har­toch & Lies­beth Van Camp) Les meules dans les con­textes rituels 
. . . . . . . . . [arti­cle]
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READING — APRIL 2019

Posted by on April 30, 2019 No comments

24126. (Oliv­er Diet­rich, et al) Göbek­li Tepe ― Pre­lim­i­nary Report on the 2012 and 2013
. . . . . Exca­va­tion Sea­sons [arti­cle]
24127. (Jean Man­co) Ances­tral Jour­neys ― The Peo­pling of Europe from the First
. . . . . Ven­tur­ers to the Vikings
24128. (Bar­bara Per­ry, David C. Hof­mann & Ryan Scrivens) TSAS Cana­di­an Net­work for
. . . . . Research on Ter­ror­ism, Secu­ri­ty and Soci­ety: Broad­en­ing our Understanding
. . . . . of Anti-Author­i­ty Move­ments in Cana­da [report]
24129. (John F. Hel­li­well, Richard Layard & Jef­frey Sachs) World Hap­pi­ness Report 2019
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READING — MARCH 2019

Posted by on March 31, 2019 No comments

24112. (Michael Breen) The New Koreans
24113. (Kon­stan­ti­nos Kopa­nias & Sher­ry C. Fox) Head­shap­ing and Iden­ti­ty at Tell Nader
. . . . . [arti­cle]
24114. (M. Ginolfi, et al) Where Does Galac­tic Dust Come From? [arti­cle]
24115. (Hergé) Tintin au Congo
24116. (John T. Koch) Hα C1α ≠ PC [The Ear­li­est Hall­statt Iron Age Can­not Equal Proto-
. . . . . Celtic] [arti­cle]
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(Richardson 1965) The Loved One

Posted by on March 30, 2019 No comments

This is the kind of film that should be seen by hap­pen­stance. A delib­er­ate view­ing can’t match the deli­cious plea­sure of stum­bling upon it by chance. I real­ly should­n’t even be telling you about it.

In 1947, the British nov­el­ist Eve­lyn Waugh was approached by Hol­ly­wood for a pos­si­ble film­ing of his nov­el Brideshead Revis­it­ed. The book’s two essen­tial com­po­nents were a heavy dose of the mys­ti­cal upper-class Catholi­sism which exists only in Eng­land and bears no resem­blance to Catholi­cism any­where else, and a steamy homo­sex­u­al yearn­ing that man­ages to nev­er men­tion homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. The idea that this would have been made into a film even vague­ly resem­bling the orig­i­nal was ludi­crous, but Waugh was hap­py to let Hol­ly­wood give him an all-expense-paid trip to Los Ange­les to hag­gle. Waugh had no inten­tion of going through with the deal. Waugh was a snob — he was revolt­ed that “low­er-class” ser­vice peo­ple spoke to him as an equal, detest­ed Amer­i­can infor­mal­i­ty, and com­plained about every­thing. But snobs often write the best satire (think Thack­er­ay), as they have no com­punc­tions about hurt­ing peo­ple’s feel­ings. Hol­ly­wood is a bizarre, arti­fi­cial, and goofy place even for Amer­i­cans, and Waugh found plen­ty of mate­r­i­al for his next satir­i­cal nov­el, The Loved One, which appeared in 1948. He was par­tic­u­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by Amer­i­cans’ pecu­liar atti­tudes towards death and (to a Brit) weird funer­al cus­toms. The plot is sim­ple: A young Eng­lish­man with a posh edu­ca­tion but no par­tic­u­lar ambi­tion wins a trip to Hol­ly­wood, and stays with an Uncle who is a stal­wart in the expat British com­mu­ni­ty in the film stu­dios. His host com­mits sui­cide, leav­ing him to fend for him­self on this alien plan­et. Attend­ing to his uncle’s funer­al, he becomes involved with Aimée Thanatogenos, an embalmer work­ing at Whis­per­ing Glades Ceme­tery, a spec­tac­u­lar­ly vul­gar Dis­ney­land of Death cre­at­ed by the mega­lo­ma­ni­ac Blessed Rev­erend Glen­wor­thy. He encoun­ters an assort­ment of lunatics, all of them dis­play­ing extreme ver­sions of Amer­i­can cul­ture that Waugh found offen­sive and laugh­able. As in many of Waugh­’s books, and many of the same ilk, the “hero” dis­plays no notice­able virtues oth­er than not being one of the loonies. 

Tony Richard­son, a British direc­tor who had scored big with crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed and finan­cial­ly suc­cess­ful films (Look Back in Anger; The Enter­tain­er; A Taste of Hon­ey; The Lone­li­ness of the Long Dis­tance Run­ner; Tom Jones) filmed the book in 1965. The script was writ­ten by the wild­ly unlike­ly com­bi­na­tion of Ter­ry South­ern and Christo­pher Ish­er­wood. South­ern is not much read now, but in 1965 he was in lit­er­ary vogue, and usu­al­ly paired with Kurt Von­negut as a satirist. Ish­er­wood was a gay play­wright and nov­el­ist who had chron­i­cled the sex­u­al under­ground of Weimar Ger­many, and would lat­er reach a wide audi­ence with Cabaret. Waugh had vicious­ly car­i­ca­tured Ish­er­wood in one of his nov­els, but in that cat­ty lit­er­ary crowd such things appar­ent­ly did not mat­ter much. The film script sticks fair­ly close to the book, but adds a some scenes that make it fit in bet­ter with 1965. These addi­tions would, I sus­pect, have been fine with Waugh. Visu­al­ly, the film is a feast. Every shot fills the eye with details just as fun­ny as the sit­u­a­tions and the dia­log. Every cut serves a satir­ic pur­pose. But the real bonan­za is the cast­ing. Aimée Thanatogenos is played to per­fec­tion by Anjanette Cormer, whose remark­able tal­ent was nev­er well-used by Hol­ly­wood. The Eng­lish hero is played by Robert Morse, one of the few Amer­i­can actors at the time who could con­vinc­ing­ly play an Eng­lish­man — while the vul­gar Amer­i­can film mogul is played by Rod­dy Mac­Dowall, then still best known as a for­mer Eng­lish child star. Lib­er­ace turns in a hilar­i­ous per­for­mance as a funer­al direc­tor — he real­ly missed a chance to be a great com­ic film actor. Jonathan Win­ters plays both the Rev­erend Glen­wor­thy and his incom­pe­tent twin broth­er, mak­ing each char­ac­ter a gem. Rod Steiger chews the scenery with the moth­er-obsessed and near­ly psy­chot­ic Mr. Joy­boy. Paul Williams is a child rock­et sci­en­tist. The actu­al Hol­ly­wood Eng­lish Con­tin­gent (reg­u­lar­ly cast as “Lords and but­lers”) essen­tial­ly play them­selves: John Giel­gud, Robert Mor­ley, Alan Napi­er. Mil­ton Berle, James Coburn, Mar­garet Leighton, Bar­bara Nichols, Lionel Stander, and Bernie Kopell do well-craft­ed bits. There are numer­ous Hol­ly­wood in-jokes that the audi­ence could hard­ly have been expect­ed to catch. For exam­ple, the cow­boy film star who is being absurd­ly voice-coached by the stu­dio to play an Eng­lish Lord is played by Robert Eas­t­on. Eas­t­on was him­self a voice coach, and one of the worlds great­est author­i­ties on Eng­lish dialects. Many in the cast were clos­et­ed gays. Tab Hunter plays a tour guide! 

It’s extra­or­di­nary that this satir­i­cal film, made 54 years ago, based on a book writ­ten 71 years ago, remains rel­e­vant and bit­ing­ly funny.

READING — FEBRUARY 2019

Posted by on February 28, 2019 No comments

24088. (Alber­to Ren­zul­li et al) Pan­tel­le­ria Island as a Cen­tre of Pro­duc­tion for the Archaic ]
. . . . . Phoeni­cian Trade in Basaltic Mill­stones [arti­cle]
24089. (Kenan Işik & Rifat Kuvanç) A New Part of Horse Trap­ping Belong­ing to Urart­ian King 
. . . . . Min­ua from Adana Archae­ol­o­gy Museim and on Urišḫi-Urišḫusi-Urur­da Words in 
. . . . . Urart­ian [arti­cle]
24090. (Fri­da Beck­man) Gilles Deleuze
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READING – JANUARY 2019

Posted by on January 31, 2019 No comments

24073. (Bruno Ernst) The Mag­ic Mir­ror of M. C. Escher
24074. (Ľubomír Novák) Yagh­no­bi: An Exam­ple of a Lan­guage in Con­tact [arti­cle]
24075. (Bas­ti­aan Star et al) Ancient DNA Reveals the Arc­tic Ori­gin of Vikin Age Cod from
. . . . . Haithabu, Ger­many [arti­cle]
24076. (Bob Wood­ward) Fear ― Trump in the White House
24077. (Olivi­er Pute­lat et al) Une chas­se aris­to­cra­tique dans le ried cen­tre-Alsace au premie
. . . . . moyen âge [arti­cle]
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