Mr Wilder and Me

by Jonathan Coe

Lent to me by my friend Pat, who told me that it was an easy read (it was) so I picked it up when I wanted something undemanding to read.

I confess that I am not very familiar with Wilder’s work as a Hollywood film director.  I have seen Some Like it Hot – a wonderful film, dated yet timeless in its way, and very funny.  I think there is a sequel, which wasn’t as good (as is often the case with sequels).

The story is told retrospectively by Calista, a woman who now (in the early 21st century) is about to see her daughters begin their adult lives as students, reflecting on her own youth and in particular, the summer of 1976 when she unexpectedly had dinner with Billy Wilder and his co-writer, Itzek (Iz) Diamond whilst backpacking through the USA.  This chance encounter leads to Cal being invited to act as interpreter while the team’s newest film, Fedora, is on location in Greece.

Most of the story revolves around the 1977 experience as seen through Cal’s eyes, with a (sizeable) interlude which takes the form of Mr Wilder recounting his emigration from Germany in 1933.  The story ends with Cal, her daughter and her husband making a decision that will impact on all their lives.  So this is an onion of a tale, with at least three distinct layers.

I found the present-day narrative somewhat unnecessary.  I think the author wishes his readers to understand how reflecting on her own past has made Cal more decisive in the present.  This could have worked – especially given the context of the ‘outer’ layer, a will she/won’t she moment in Cal’s daughter’s decision on having an abortion.  But to me this doesn’t relate sufficiently to Cal’s own life decisions.

The middle layer – the 1976/7 story of the inception and filming of Fedora – is interesting and believable.  Several vignettes in Wilder’s life are told convincingly, building on real anecdotes that he himself or others have told about him.  Coe has a great imagination for the rest of the story, including Cal’s own experience, very believable as a 20-year-old experiencing travel, life, love and the film industry for the first time.  Most touching are Cal’s confessions about what did or did not form part of her learned experience at that time in her life.  She is ignorant about film, but makes a great effort to read up on the history of cinema by purchasing an encyclopedia on the subject.  She is inexperienced in most aspects of adult life, but shows herself to be confident, courageous and likeable.

And the core of the onion – Wilder’s emigration story told as a film script – is innovative and on the whole effective.  Wilder has too many voiceovers, and we are told that as a director/writer he is often accused of this in his films.  The context of emigration for a young, aspiring artist who focusses on his career to the exclusion of his love life or pursuing the fate of his family, though unfeeling, still rings true.

I feel as though I have read a biography of Billy Wilder told in the context of an enjoyable story. Full marks Jonathan Coe!

 

The Last Mile

by David Baldacci

This is embarrassing, and rather worrying.  I checked today so see what the next book is on our book group’s reading list.  The meeting is in two weeks’ time, and the book is this one.  I had got it out of the library months ago, when we first selected  it, but took it back thinking I would forget it if I read it too soon!  But now I had a niggling feeling that I had downloaded it on Kindle.

I go to my Kindle library.  It’s not there, but when I search on the author, the book downloads.  So yes, I had purchased it at least.  And if it’s no longer in my Kindle downloads, maybe I had already read it?  Sure enough, the bookmark is at the end of the book.  No memories are stirred.

I go back to the beginning of the book.  Ah yes, the name Melvin Mars rings a bell.  Evidently I have read this book.  I am both relieved  that I don’t have to read it again – though I believe I quite enjoyed it – and worried that this book has been apparently erased from my memory.  True, this is the reason I started a reading log and, later, this blog, as long ago as 2003.  But still it is quite alarming.  And I suppose I must have read this book within the last month.

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So, the story:  Melvin Mars, a promising young football star is convicted of murdering his parents, and spends 20 years on death row.  Amos Decker, an ex-policeman now working with the FBI, takes up his case.  Working with a team of three other agents and specialists, he pursues the case doggedly even when officially stood down.  Decker is convinced that Mars is not the murderer, and was framed.  It transpires that his parents were not the people he thought they were – they seem to have no past, or rather, they have wiped their past identities, successfully, until Decker gets on the trail.

It’s fairly classic stiff of thrillers, and a tight, interesting story with some great surprises along the way.  There’s a lot of American football terminology which goes completely over my head, but that didn’t spoil my enjoyment of this book.  Though I can’t say I’ve learned anything about football through reading it.

I would like to have a bit more background on Amos Decker, who evidently appears in an earlier book – Memory Man – and four subsequent ones.  Not sure that I’ll be reading any more of these.  I enjoy the thriller genre – which I rarely touched in my younger years – but there are so many good authors out there, I would rather ‘shop around’ than stick to one author and, especially, one detective.

Parallel Lives

by Phyllis Rose

This book is the first of the selection that I brought home from my Reading Spa at Mr B’s Emporium in Bath.  This was an inspired birthday gift from my son David, long delayed after the Covid pandemic got in the way of my first two scheduled appointments.  I finally had my ‘spa’ session in July 2021.  Parallel Lives was the only non-fiction book that I chose from the list put forward by Laura during our 1.5 hour session.  She recommended it because I had told her that I sometimes enjoy biography, and like to read around the lives of authors.

I was a little dismayed when I saw that this book, newly republished by Daunt Books, was actually originally published in 1983.  Well, I could have got this from the library!  But there is still a thrill in holding a brand-new, crisp paper volume in one’s hands.

Rose’s text is divided into chapters dealing with each of of the ‘five Victorian marriages’ of its subtitle.  In fact, one – arguably the most successful – relationship is not a marriage at all, but the long-lasting pseudo-marriage of Marian Evans aka George Eliot and George Henry Lewes.  The other four are true marriages, at least in the legal sense.  Thomas Carlyle’s marriage with Jane Welsh was unconsummated but long-lasting.  Effie Gray managed to escape her (also unconsummated) marriage with John Ruskin.  John Stuart Mill’s relationship with his wife Harriet Taylor was deferential and subservient, though not necessarily unhappy.  Charles Dickens was famously uncaring towards his wife Catherine Hogarth, whom he eventually left.

Phyllis Rose has the happy knack of writing about these people and their relationships in a way that is direct and engaging, while at the same time passing judgment on their ways of living and relating to their partners in the light of our present-day values.  She ends the book, in one of two ‘postludes’, with a reflection on modern marriage which, even though written 40 years ago, seems strangely relevant today.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough.  The other titles from my Reading Spa sit invitingly on my shelf.  Time to start on the next one!