Author: Eugene Fischer

Carline had this theory that we all get stuck at certain points of our lives, that they come to define us and exert a kind of gravity. Most of Daniel's stories orbited around his momma, a woman who never was, if you asked Carline. In his head Daniel was still ten years old. Though now he was adding tales from the Farm to his repertoire. Just like Daniel, to turn a pathetic stint in County for one too many DUIs into something romantic and glamorous. Like he was Cool Hand Luke. Please. She envied Danny's power to change mistake into myths. –From Beasts and Children by Amy Parker

Asimov’s Readers’ Awards Finalist

I thrilled to be able to announce today that “The New Mother” is a finalist in the 30th annual Asimov’s Readers’ Awards, a list that includes many wonderful writers, and not a few friends. I notice that the April/May issue was a particularly strong one; in addition to my novella, two other stories from that issue made the list, one more than any other installment. I also get a superficial thrill out of seeing my name next to Greg Egan’s. It’s just a quirk of alphabetization, but it makes me happy.

Asimov’s has also put up .pdf files of most of the finalist, so you can read a lovely, magazine format version of “The New Mother” if that strikes your fancy, and load it on any .pdf friendly device. As ever, continual thanks to Sheila Williams for championing this story, and thanks to all of the Asimov’s readers who voted for it.

After I saw him kill the dog I was more afraid of being alone with my father than I'd ever been of anything. But over the course of months every fear, however strong, ebbs or changes. My father treated me with the same flustered abstraction with which he always had. –from This Census-Taker by China Miéville

Reading 2016: January

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Another year, another book tracking tag. Whereas last year I made a point of focusing on gender diversity in my reading list, this year I’m focusing on something much more personal: working down the huge collection of books I own but haven’t read yet. These will be interspersed with more newly-released books than usual, as I have many friends with books coming out this year.

  1. The Causal Angel by Hannu Rajaniemi – I loved the first book in this trilogy, The Quantum Thief, and found the second book, The Fractal Prince, interesting. I really wanted to like the conclusion of the story, but I closed the book disappointed. It wasn’t bad, but where the previous books of the series seemed to constantly deepen the grand conceptual premises on offer, The Causal Angel feels much more shallow. The plot feels heavy-handed where previous installments seemed organic, and leads up to a deus ex machina conclusion that would actually be pretty satisfying except Rajaniemi gives the reader no tools to understand the consequences of the climactic change. That said, the writing remains as gripping as ever, and I look forward to seeing what he comes up with next.
  2. What Belongs To You by Garth Greenwell – The first of a bunch of books coming out this year from folks who were at Iowa with me. I didn’t actually know Garth, he showed up towards the end of my time there, but we have many friends in common, and heard rumblings about this book long before it hit shelves. It’s a short novel about an American teaching in Bulgaria and the intermittent relationship he has with a young male prostitute named Mitko. The novel in is in three sections, the first detailing the narrator and Mitko’s sexual relationship. The prose is pristine throughout, but for me the book really becomes impressive in the second section, a near stream-of-consciousness rumination on the main character’s childhood after he learns of the terminal illness of his father. The third section looks at the main character and Mitko’s relationship again, in light of our new understanding, as the relationship turns medically and socially fraught. A memorable book that’s been receiving absolutely glowing reviews. I’m not sure I feel as strongly about it as some of the people writing for major publications do, but it’s easy to recommend.
  3. Our Expanding Universe by Alex Robinson – Robinsons first book, Box Office Poison, was really important to me during my teens, and I’ve followed his career since waiting for another of his books to hit me that hard. None has, and maybe none will, but I’ve not regretted the journey. This book is about people in their late twenties and early thirties, negotiating their feelings about settling down, having children, giving up (or not) their childish ways. The scale isn’t ambitious, but the naturalistic dialog is fairly absorbing, and what grace notes there are all work.
  4. Kill My Mother by Jules Feiffer – In his mid-80s, having already done every other damn thing under the sun, Jules Feiffer decided to pen a graphic novel. That should really be all you need to know, but I’ll add that it’s an intricately plotted, gritty story of family enmity and mistaken identity in the 1930s and 40s. Guns and dames, twists and turns. Great fun.

Locus Recommendation, Award Eligibility

Today’s happy news is that “The New Mother” has made the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2015! I’m thrilled to be included with so many other wonderful writers.

It also occurs to me that I never officially said it on this site, but “The New Mother” is also eligible to be nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards, in the novella category. If you’re a person who does those things, do please consider it.

David Bowie, 1947-2016

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It’s the 1980s, mid to late, exact date decayed in the loam of memory, and I am in elementary school. Music class. We’re listening to an album, probably on cassette tape, of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. The single-instrument trills are indelible, but only slightly less so the steady voice of the narrator, teaching by implication how music and story can coincide. I was so young. It could have been him.

It’s the very late 80s, or maybe the very early 90s, and I’m with my mother in Blockbuster Video. There are chunky CRT televisions bolted to the ceiling all around the store, playing a movie in which a man–I think it’s a man?–unlike any I’ve seen is friendly and terrifying and calls himself the Goblin King. I insist that my mother ask the employees what movie that is so we can rent it. I watch the illegal duplicate we make dozens of times.

It’s the late 90s, and I’m very impressed with the Beatles. “What’s amazing about them,” I explain to a contemporary, “is there are all these songs you just know. Tunes from all over that you’ve picked up through acculturation. And then you realize those were all the same band. All those different sounds, but just these four people.” It will only be a few years before I discover that, sometimes, all those songs you somehow know came from just one man.

It’s 2006, and I’m in my last year of college. I’ve just started dating a biologist who lives across the city. I discover that if I put my Ziggy Stardust CD in my car stereo when I leave my apartment, the final pleas of “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” will be fading out when I reach her door. A bauble of secret knowledge I roll around my mind: my girlfriend lives exactly one Ziggy away.

It’s 2016, after midnight, and people on the internet are desperately trying to convince one another that the reports are a hoax. But only minutes pass before his son confirms it. Sitting in another window, his last album, just released, still waiting for a first listen. I hit play, and eloquent as ever, he says goodbye.

Goodbye.

Latest Love for “The New Mother”

A few more people have been publicly kind about “The New Mother” recently.

As ever, my thanks for spreading the word.

Science Fiction Movie Rankings, 2010-2015

It’s been a fairly excellent decade for science fiction cinema so far. Here’s how I think these past few years stack up. I’ve divided the notable SF films of this period into five tiers of quality. While the tiers are hierarchical, the entries within them are not specifically ordered. I’m also not counting Marvel or DC comic book movies here, which are being asked to pursue different goals than standalone films.

Tier 1: Instant Classics

Not only among the best of their time, but of any time.

ExMachinaEx Machina – Alex Garland shooting his own script in his directorial debut. This story about the ethics of artificial intelligence and gendered expectation is that rare beast, a science fiction movie that 100% respects the intelligence of the audience. Every obvious question of premise gets immediately addressed by the characters. The performances are compelling, and the SFnal ambition staggering for a film with only four real characters. The intersections of masculinity, technology, and capitalism are picked at until they bleed, and Garland manages a more sensitive exploration of female objectification in just a few scenes than, say, Under The Skin manages in its entire runtime. The suspense mounts and mounts until an inevitable ending that’s simultaneously harrowing and triumphant, insisting that we accept Ava’s definition of freedom over one that we might be tempted to see as more just. I’ll be thinking about the nuanced interplay between narrative expectation and models of consent in this film for years.

SnowpiercerSnowpiercer – Bong Joon-Ho crafted a film here that’s as conceptually and visually ambitions as anything on the list, making good story choices every step along the way. We’re prepared for it be a standard movie of class warfare; what we get is something more like a mortal rebellion against an unfair god–a war that can only ever end in pyrrhic victory–waged via one shockingly original set piece after another. The result is like nothing else I’ve seen, an action movie where the triumphant conclusion is the death of all humanity. One of those movies where going back to look at a clip of a single scene all too easily turns into re-watching the entire thing. (Though I will cop to a personal bias here:  I am a sucker for stories that take place in a linear restricted space. Trains, standing in lines, mine shafts, infinitely deep stairwells, whatever. I always love it.)

Tier 2: Great Movies

Movies that stood out from the pack, and that should be part of the conversation about science fiction cinema for years to come.

HerHer – This movie comes so close to being in Tier 1 for me, but doesn’t quite make it. It’s wonderful all the same. I’ve never seen a Spike Jonze movie I didn’t like (though Where The Wild Things Are I did not love), and this one is easily my favorite. It’s science fiction as metaphorical exploration of human romantic relationships, especially relationships that challenge notions of self and social propriety, and is whip-smart in pursuit of that end. But what keeps it out of Tier 1 is that it downplays exploring its own premise–that of an artificial intelligence so advanced that it forms a real romantic relationship with a human. The one (excellent) scene that invested more in science fiction than metaphor, wherein Samantha recruits a surrogate, embodied woman to join her relationship with Theodore, almost feels like part of a different movie. By not investing in the SFnal premise, the movie neatly insulates itself from questions of consent (Samantha begins her life as a purchased consumer product) or the nature of human versus nonhuman desire (touched on toward the end of the film only as a metaphorical growing apart of the main characters). Off the edges of the screen there’s a eucatastrophic AI singularity, with no apparent influence on society. Its only purpose is to make inevitable the end of Samantha and Theodore’s time together. This all works just fine narratively; the movie is elegant as can be. But I strongly believe that somewhere out in the universe of possible stories is a version of this tale that takes the science fiction as seriously as it does the emotion.

Gravity_PosterGravity – Alfonso Cuaron communicated the visceral inhospitality of space like no other director ever has, and made it beautiful it the same time. That accomplishment alone is enough to make this movie great. What keeps it out of Tier 1 is the unfortunate dialog and score–which sounds like it should be a huge deal, but in this movie makes up a relatively small part of the whole. The rebirth metaphor powering the narrative struck others as more effective than it did me, but I wasn’t put off by it. This movie earns its place in the SF movie conversation via awe-inspiring technical accomplishment, on a historical line with The Matrix and Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

FuryRoadMad Max: Fury Road – This is the first movie in years that I paid to see more than once in the theater. The plot is stick-figure simple, but within that formula George Miller executed so perfectly and with such verve that it felt like a reinvention of the action tentpole. The visual vocabulary of Mad Max: Fury Road is pristine, effortlessly tossing off details that feel fully realized through just the perfection of their iconography. (The Doof Warrior, for example, the blind guy with the flamethrower guitar whose name isn’t even in the movie.) Add in the amazing diegetic score, and you already have enough to make this movie a hit. But what makes it great is that, on top of all those elements, it’s a startlingly progressive story about violence against women, and how those women stand up to and overcome it. Titular Mad Max is, frequently literally, just along for the ride. It’s not forced or didactic or self-satisfied, every move is earned. That Miller was able to fit all this into a package sufficiently uncontroversial that it reached screens intact is miraculous, and we might end up looking back on it as a kind of turning point in big-budget cinema history.

Dredd-3D-new-posterDredd – A movie that’s way better than it should be, Dredd sneaks its way into Tier 2 by a deep, resolute commitment to its philosophical premise. Early on the movie tells you that the world is a hopeless place, and then, unlike every other apocalypse on the list or in recent memory, it never wavers. Dredd isn’t interested in redemption, it’s interested in nihilism. Good intentions count for nothing, principled stances go unrewarded. Its main character arc, that of Judge Anderson, is the story of an idealist embracing brutal pragmatism. And I do mean brutal; the action sequences in this film are gorgeously decadent. Karl Urban has never been better, and proves that a talented actor doesn’t need to ever show more than about 30% of his face to get the job done. Basically, this is a movie that bullseyes every one of it’s goals, while being consistently smarter than it needed to. Which makes sense when you learn, as I did only recently, that the script was written by Alex Garland, who I think just beats out Christopher Nolan for the most important SF screenwriter of this period.

Tier 3: Good Movies

Well-made movies that are easy to recommend.

AttackTheBlockAttack the Block – Before he was on the poster for the new Star Wars movies, John Boyega was patrolling council flats and protecting the Earth from alien invasion. What start out looking like class stereotypes become explorations of insecurity, and eventually camaraderie. A delightful movie of an unlikely ensemble coming together to face a common enemy. Suspenseful and funny.

InceptionInception – Nolan has an instant classic and a great movie on his resume (Memento and The Prestige, respectively), but his most recent SF offerings don’t match that standard. Inception was a cultural event when it came out, but it’s been long enough since we all saw it and liked it that we can admit that the basic idea is dumb as hell, right? The plot intricacies are delicious in their complexity and ambition, and filmmaking talent on display is top-notch. But the whole dream spies concept is really, really silly. Also, this was the movie where it became impossible to ignore that Nolan writes exclusively meager roles for women.

interstellarInterstellar – I honestly loved this movie. It did a ton of things I adore and rarely get to see. It’s a deterministic narrative, which always makes me giddy. It has a legitimate sense of galactic scale. It’s intriguingly structured; if most movies are novels, then this one is a collection of linked short stories. Almost all of the really important story choices in this film are done right. But even though I loved it, I can’t ignore that this film is oppressively self-important. It’s exhausting, being reminded over and over that it’s a film about serious events and high stakes that should be deeply meaningful. I’m fairly forgiving of pretentiousness, but it does keep this film from being higher on the list.

Source CodeSource Code – Duncan Jones followed up his wonderful debut Moon with this script plucked from The Black List of well-regarded but unproduced movies. It’s a film that uses many worlds QM to tell a Groundhog Day-esque story about trying to thwart a terrorist attack on Chicago. It’s well made and effective, but suffers from not thoroughly exploring its own premise. For example, at the end of the movie we have what is supposed to be a happy ending in which our hero Coulter Stevens has his mind transferred into a healthy body he gets to keep and use to seduce a pretty woman. But that body was previously in use by someone else, who has functionally been murdered to facilitate Coulter’s ride into the sunset. The major ethical implications of the plot are simply never addressed.

edge-of-tomorrow-posterEdge of Tomorrow –An even more Groundhog Day-esque story. I was legitimately surprised by this one. Emily Blunt is great, Tom Cruise is tolerable (!), and the plot mostly makes sense, even if the premise that gets us there feels lazily off-the-shelf. The middle 60% of this movie is as much fun as you could ask for, and while it’s bookended by weaker material–like a stab at ensemble camaraderie for the secondary characters that never really coheres–the whole remains quite satisfying.

TheMartianThe Martian – I can’t better Randall Munroe’s description of this, a feature-length version of the scene in Apollo 13 where the engineers dump a bag of garbage on the conference room table and say, “We have to figure out how to build a CO2 scrubber out of that or the astronauts die.” One part scientific literacy, one part nerdy playfulness, and two parts triumphalism, mixed thoroughly, then desiccated in the near vacuum of an alien atmosphere. It’s nice that Ridley Scott managed a good SF film in this stretch, as it makes the post-Prometheus universe that much less bewildering. Aberrations are easier to explain than full reversals.

Pacific_Rim_FilmPosterPacific Rim – “You know what would be awesome?” I might believably have thought to myself over the years, “A sort of live-action Evangelion movie with all of the giant robots fighting interesting monsters for the fate of humanity, and none of the angst.” Pacific Rim is exactly that. This movie knows that we bought our tickets to see mecha versus monsters, and devotes all of its resources to that cause. A big dumb action movie that knows its a big dumb action movie and glories in it. Fun SF fact: the baddies in this movie are so good because the head creature designer was Wayne Barlowe, of Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials, which was my most checked out book from my middle school library.

MelancholiaMelancholia – Probably the most controversial movie on this list. I know people who absolutely loved it, and people who hate it so strongly that its mention raises hackles even years later. I went in with very low expectations, having not been a fan of previous Lars Von Trier movies, and came away wowed. An astronomical calamity as objective correlative to explore depression? Sign me up. Bonus points for gorgeous cinematography. Certain scenes, like when the guy holds up his son’s wire contraption and discovers that Melancholia is indeed getting larger in the sky, have remained indelible. The worst thing about this movie is that it gave me enough good will toward Von Trier that I then went and saw both parts of Nymphomaniac in the theater. All of that good will is now gone.

Tier 4: Okay Movies

Movies that I don’t regret seeing, but are flawed or otherwise difficult to recommend.

predestinationPredestination – A film adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s “All You Zombies…,” which sounds like a great idea. While there’s some quite good acting in this (especially Sarah Snook), the pacing drags, and the screenwriter made the inadvisable choice to add big picture stakes by inexpertly welding on a terrorism plot. But it’s still a rare deterministic time travel movie, which earns some points.

Europa ReportEuropa Report – The best things about this movie are the use of NASA assets to create visuals that would have once been unimaginable in a small indie film, and one truly great scene about a fatal accident in space. The rest is interesting, but slow, and story-wise the movie ends right at what, in a stronger film, would be the start of act two.

Upstream Color – I actually find this movie fascinating in a lot of ways. It starts out with the most disturbing scenes of mind control I’ve ever seen on film, and then turns into an oneiric watercolor of a film unlike anything else I’ve encountered. But with all the gorgeous acting and swirling acoustics, I ultimately just can’t get over this movie asking me to invest in the trauma of being infested with a parasite that makes one psychically connected to the emotional lives of some pigs. This may be a personal failing. Maybe, as a carnivore, I’ve developed a self-protective but pathological inability to take pigs seriously enough for this narrative device to work? This movie is one I think difficult to recommend, but might well do anyway given the right mood.

UnderTheSkinUnder the Skin – Memorable as a gnomic experience, this movie is an ultimately empty vessel built to hold a message about the commodification of women’s bodies that never actually gets communicated. The visuals are striking, and strange enough to not read as gratuitous even when fixating on Scarlett Johansson’s frequently naked body (which I’m cynical enough to think does still have much to do with the film’s largely positive critical reception). But it’s all just an object for contemplation; any interesting ideas here were brought in by the audience.

starwarsposter.0Star Wars: The Force Awakens – By far the best thing about this movie–it’s really not even close–is that it’s soon going to be the most successful film ever, and it stars a woman and a black man. That’s important for the same reasons I said above that Mad Max Max: Fury Road might someday be seen as a turning point. Beyond that, though, this movie is merely serviceable. J. J. Abrams makes the same franchise movie every time, but in this instance all he had to do was deliver a palatably fun film to a global fanbase desperate to feel uncomplicated love for Star Wars again. He did that. The Force Awakens is fast and pretty and avoids stepping on toes by being 100% unoriginal. Aside from the legitimately important casting decisions, it’s a remix album made by inferior talent, but with much much better recording equipment. For this one, “difficult to recommend” is the same thing as “unnecessary to recommend.” You’ve either already seen it, or you’re someone to whom I wouldn’t bother recommending it.

jurassic-world-poster-chris-prattJurassic World – Basically the same deal as Star Wars: The Force Awakens, except without any progressive casting and some mildly unfortunate gender stereotypes. I think I’m more forgiving of Rey in The Force Awakens suddenly knowing the Jedi mind trick than I am of Chris Pratt hypnotizing velociraptors with the power of his extended palm because Star Wars always had some conceptual silliness in it’s heart, whereas Jurassic Park didn’t. But fun enough to earn a billion dollars and lock in Pratt as a major movie star, which is nice.

Tier 5: Bad Movies

Movies not worth the time they take to watch.

Looper  There’s a scene early in Looper where a guy is running frantically to get to his back-in-time self, which is being held hostage. The threat is that if present-guy doesn’t get there in time, then the baddies will start mutilating past-guy. Which they do! He is running towards a fence and suddenly his feet are gone because they were cut off IN HIS PAST! Except… then how was he just running? Or doing any of the things we’ve seen him do, as apparently he hasn’t had feet–or hands or arms or legs– all those years. If you think about it for even a fraction of a second, it doesn’t make a lick of sense. Which is true of this entire movie. Then, as a bonus, Bruce Willis’s character motivation hinges on some really offensive Asian exoticism. I wanted so much better from Rian Johnson.

Prometheus – This movie isn’t just atrocious, it instilled in me a real existential angst. Alien is one of the my favorite movies ever, and this film undermined everything that was good about it. Everything! From the broad iconography to the most nuanced sexual politics, Prometheus revisits and then sullies its predecessor. But the two movies were directed by the same man. It is legitimately upsetting to realize that an artist can, over the mere course of decades, become so blind to things they were once sensitive to. I still marvel at how this movie happened.

Star Trek: Into Darkness –What’s that? You want to follow up a movie that used the iconography of Star Trek to tell a fun but superficial space action story with a sequel that’s a turgid, nonsensical rehash of Wrath of Kahn? And then you want to swear in the press that that’s not what you’re doing (even though it is) so that, when the movie comes out, all the most dedicated fans will feel lied to? That sounds like a pretty bad idea, really, but whatever. Here’s all the money. Go do. (I wonder whether the backlash J. J. Abrams got from whitewashing Kahn had something to do with his progressive casting choices in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.)

Jupiter Ascending  It’s actually kind of endearing, what a total exuberant mess this movie is. But endearing isn’t redeeming, and Jupiter Ascending is a junk drawer of glittering nonsense from start to finish.

The Congress –On paper this movie seems like such a fascinating idea, a half live-action, half animated adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s psychedelic novel The Futurological Congress. Unfortunately watching it feels like going on a school day trip to Toon Town, whereupon a minor character from a Tom Robbins novel chastises you for an hour. The good stuff from the book is just used as a platform for adolescent philosophizing.

John Carter – There was actually a great deal of cleverness and talent in the script and direction of this movie, but it was doomed from the start. Everything compelling about the source material had already been appropriated by dozens of other movies over decades SF cinema, with the result that this movie ends up coming off as terribly derivative and formulaic. There’s nothing good here you haven’t seen before, and nothing you haven’t seen before that’s good.

Elysium – This movie is like a cautionary tale for what the failure mode of Snowpiercer would have been: a class warfare story that oversimplifies to the point of meaninglessness. Moral implications, character choices, plot dynamics; every move this film makes is a dodge away from subtlety. It ends up reading as creative cowardice. Elysium is afraid to either take itself seriously, or to embrace being a visually extravagant cartoon. As a result it ends up being nothing worthwhile at all.

Zero Theorem – This is a perfunctory revisiting of the tone of Brazil without any of it’s satire or substance. An unnecessary ramble that even Terry Gilliam’s visuals can’t save.

Chappie – A Combat-Robot-As-Freshly-Self-Aware-Pinocchio story that compares unfavorably with Short Circuit, with inexplicable casting of Ninja and Yolandi from Die Antwoord playing versions of themselves. Farcically terrible.

Reading 2015: Final Roundup

MyRealChildren_Jo-WaltonI never did a Reading2015 post for December, but I only read one book during the month, My Real Children by Jo Walton, which I consumed on Christmas day. I adored it. It’s the story of a woman who, in her old age, can remember living two distinctly different lives, stemming from a single choice in her youth. It’s an alternate history of alternate histories, with chapters alternating between two very different life courses that, in the end, ask you to make an impossible ethical and aesthetic judgement, what Ursula Le Guin on the back cover calls “a sort of super Sophie’s Choice.” I’m always a sucker for branching narrative, the way the space between the threads opens room for new resonances and emotions, just as a paper towel doubled over can absorb more than the same sheet applied flat. This book might just be my new go-to example of the form.

So here’s where that leaves my stats for 2015:

  • 67 total books
  • 35 prose books
  • 32 graphic novels
  • 26 women authors (writer or artist)
  • 44 books authored or co-authored by women
  • 33 male authors (writer or artist)
  • 28 books authored or co-authored by men.
  • Best month: September (12 books – all GNs)
  • Worst month: December (1 book – prose)

As with last year, here the the books (not counting re-reads) that stand out in most my memory (which isn’t exactly the same thing exactly as how much I liked them):

  1. The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine
  2. My Real Children by Jo Walton
  3. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
  4. On Wings of Song by Thomas Disch
  5. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
  6. The Sculptor by Scott McCloud
  7. Tenth of December by George Saunders
  8. Get In Trouble by Kelly Link
  9. Two Girls, Fat and Thin by Mary Gaitskill
  10. Angel of Losses by Stephanie Feldman
  11. Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson
  12. The Wilds by Julia Elliott
  13. Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce

Some interesting things include the presence of only one graphic novel, despite the form making up nearly half of my reading. That’s largely due to my having re-read all of Dykes to Watch Out For, all of which were ineligible for this list.  Another is which Mary Gaitskill book made the list. I think that in many ways the collection Because They Wanted To is the stronger of the two Gaitskill volumes I read this past year, but it’s her first novel my mind alights on more easily. And I can’t do anything about the wiring of memory, and what it may have to do with two books I read in just the last two month making my top 5.

It was my resolution for 2015 to read 100 books, and I fell short not just of that mark, but of my 2014 mark of 73 books read. I attribute this primarily to having started doing some work for television, which prompted me to massively increase my television watching. I would say the TV I’ve consumed, added to the hundreds of hours of Fallout 4 I played in November, is easily equal to 33 books. But since I don’t have any better ideas, I’m going to go ahead an roll over my 2015 resolution to 2016, and aim for 100 books read in the year to come.

Grandma’s Grand Tour Part 11: Orleans and Biarritz

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Days 40 through 43 of my grandmother’s 1936 trip through Europe. (Previously: Introduction, Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7Part 8Part 9, Part 10.)

Saturday, Aug. 1st [1936], Orleans

Left Tours this morning for Orleans where we arrived about noon. After getting settled in our rooms and having lunch we started out to see the city. This is the city that Joan d’Arc saved from the British and so it has many statues and church built in her honor. First we saw the statue in the market place which is supposed to be the finest one built to her memory. From here we went to the Joan d’Arc museum which houses many thousands of pictures of her and the war implements and flags used in her time. This museum is housed in what used to be the home of Agnes Sorel the most beautiful woman of France. From here we just wandered about the city and visited a church and then went back to the hotel. Walked after dinner & wrote letters.

Orléans_Jeanne_d'Arc_place_du_MartroiDoris mentioned Agnes Sorel in the previous entry too, she seems to have liked her. The statue she looked at in the market is probably this one, by Denis Foyatier. Also on this day, the opening ceremony of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, sometimes called the Nazi Olympics due to Hitler’s successful employment of the Games as a grand piece of pro-Germany propaganda. From the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Most newspaper accounts echoed the New York Times report that the Games put Germans ‘back in the fold of nations,’ and even made them ‘more human again.'” Three years later, of course, Hitler invaded Poland. (It occurs to me we’ve seen a pale imitation of this same strategy quite recently, with Vladimir Putin invading Crimea right after accruing international goodwill for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.)

Sunday, Aug. 2 [1936], Biarrritz

Left Orleans after breakfast and after a short ride to Les Aubrais changed trains and started on our long journey to Biarritz. As there were no seats in the second class compartments we had a 1st class on all to ourselves. We walked thru the third class cars which are simply terrible. I would certainly hate to have to ride any distance in them. The seats are just straight wood benches. The car was just loaded with people standing in the aisles and sitting and lying all around, eating, smoking, and hollering. Just like steerage on a boat. We spent the day, knitting, eating (as we had brought our lunch along this time just economizing for a change. Not that we don’t know how to. Our money certainly is low.) talking and sleeping. We arrived in Biarritz about 7 and were certainly glad to find a man, who spoke English, meeting us. We’re staying at a very lovely hotel run by people who can understand us. That is the grandest part. We were quite thrilled to find that our mail had been sent from Paris. It just made the day and night. After a very late supper we wrote awhile and ten went to bed very tired after the long train ride.

Les Aubrais is the train station in Orleans. While Grandma was congratulating herself on knowing how to economize, in Berlin, Hitler was personally congratulating Olympic medalists until Cornelius Johnson, an African American, won gold in the high jump. The consensus response from the Olympic committee was that Hitler–who had almost inspired a boycott of the Olympics by initially forbidding participation by Jewish athletes–should congratulate all medallists, or none of them. He chose the latter option.

Monday, Aug. 3 [1936], Biarritz

Got up this morning about 9:30 after the most terrible night I’ve ever spent. We got in bed last night all set for a good night’s rest but were soon convinced that this was just not to be. The flies and mosquitos were simply terrible. After about 2 hrs. Bert & I finally switched on the light to find ourselves just one mass of bites. Our faces and arms were so swollen we hardly recognized one another. For 2 hours after that we did nothing but kill the damn things and tried to sleep the rest of the morning (4-6) with light on swatting anything that came near us. It was terrible. This morning after breakfast we walked around the city, which is very lovely and very clean. The cleanest place we’ve hit in France probably because of so many tourists. We did a little shopping and after lunch Marie and I walked about and looked at the beaches and beautiful coastal life. About 4 we all went down to the beach for a swim in spite of the unsettled weather & showers. It was a frothy beach nestled in among the rocks with a lovely view of the reefs just a short distance out in the sea. After dinner we went to a movie. The original English version of “The Ghost Goes West” with French subtitles. It surely was a treat to be able to relax and understand the picture. We acted like regular nuts clapping when the American flag was shown in the news reels. Real true Americans, that’s us. Went back to the hotel and talked but not before we made sure the room was sprayed with fly tox and the windows shut tight.

The_Ghost_Goes_West_FilmPosterThe Ghost Goes West was a British supernatural comedy in which some rich Americans buy a Scottish castle and move it to Florida, only to discover they’ve brought along its resident ghost as well. In the Olympics, Jesse Owens won his first of four gold medals on this day, tying the world record for the 100-meter dash.

Tuesday, Aug. 4 [1936], Biarritz

Slept late this morning as our pals the mosquitos didn’t disturb us. After a busy morning washing & mending Jo & I went walking to see the aquarium which wasn’t open as it was almost one o’clock. All places in France, department stores included, close their doors between 12-2 for lunch. Business or no business those Frenchmen must eat. After the lunch the sun came out so we went down to the beach again where we spent a few hours lying in the sand and swimming. We have had so little sun since we’ve been traveling that it’s a real treat. Had an early dinner and then did our packing and to bed early as we have to leave at 7:30 in the morning.

Not a hugely eventful day in my grandmother’s life, but the day Jesse Owens won gold in the long jump, an event in which he’d already set a world record the year before that would stand for 25 years.

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