History – Page 2 – Ash Clifton, Writer

What I’m Reading: “Tinseltown”

Ever since I was a kid I’ve had a deep love for classic murder mysteries like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep. Combine this with my obsession with history and biography—especially Hollywood biography—and you get something like William J. Mann’s Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood, the true story of one of the most notorious crimes in American history.

Centered on the still-unsolved killing of director William Desmond Taylor in 1922, Mann’s book comes as close to a “nonfiction novel” as I’ve seen since Truman Capote first coined the term. Being lit geek, I know that 1922 happens to be the year in which The Maltese Falcon is set, and Mann’s story might well have been lifted from one of Hammet’s books, filled as it with hoods, con-men, cops, junkies, sugar daddies and blackmailers.

And beautiful women, of course. Beautiful, deadly women.

The Los Angeles police implicated three women in Taylor’s murder, all actresses of some renown: Mabel Norman, a one-time star whose addiction to cocaine and booze nearly ended her career; Mary Mile Minters, a vapid teenage starlet whose romantic delusions were exceeded only by her considerable box office appeal; and Margaret “Gibby” Gibson, a former Vitagraph player (and occasional prostitute) determined to make herself into a producer.

What I’m Reading: “A Guest of the Reich”

Ever since Donald Trump was first elected in 2016, people have been talking about the “two Americas.” Namely, the working class, poorly educated, white, xenophobic America that voted for Trump and the middle- and upper-class, highly educated, “elitist,” multi-cultural America that voted for Hillary Clinton (and, later, Kamala Harris).

This perception of two Americas—and, indeed, of a “cold” Civil War that is currently being waged between them—is warranted and realistic. America is more polarized than it has been since the 1860s, and there is a very real possibility of the country tearing itself apart (not militarily, I think, but politically, in the same way the USSR erased itself in 1990).

However, I’m not sure we are in a battle between two Americas, per se, as in one between two worldviews. In one worldview, America is under threat of racial dilution, socialist revolution, and religious transgression, all of which will create an evil, perverse America, which its adherents would rather be dead than live in. In the other world view, America is under threat of nascent Fascism, corporatism, kleptocracy, and the climate apocalypse that will inevitably result from all these things.

As usual, the Germans have a much better word for this: Weltanschauung, a term that encapsulates the philosophical and cognitive underpinnings that define a social group or generation (or both). As an English major in the 1980s, I was obliged to read Eustace M. Tillyard’s classic The Elizabethan World Picture, which explores the conscious and subconscious belief system of Britons in the time of Shakespeare. More recently, I read Robert O’Niell’s memoir The Operator, which recounts his years as a Navy Seal fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this book, he describes the weltanschauung of the Afghani locals whom he encountered, some of whom—quite literally—believed in dragons.

Middlemarch Video (Part 2 of 2)!!!

Well, it took us a while, but my great friend Margaret Luongo and I finally finished George Eliot’s Middlemarch! (Hey, give us a break–it’s almost 900 freakin pages long!)

Here is our discussion of the second half and heart-stopping conclusion of the book for our Read a Classic Novel…Together channel. And, guess what! We both agree that it’s a truly great book (and probably should have been LONGER!).

Enjoy!

What I’m Reading: Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?

I learned many things from reading the excellent nonfiction book Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? For instance, I learned that the Vatican has its own astronomical observatory, which is run, in part, by the authors, Guy Consolmagno and Paul Mueller. Both men are also Jesuits. (The current Pope, Francis, is also a Jesuit—that’s another thing I learned).

Now, I was raised Catholic, and I thought a knew a thing or two about the religion. But not only did I learn from this book that the Vatican has its own observatory, but that it has had one for hundreds of years. In fact, I was so taken by this discovery that I Googled “Vatican observatory” and, to my amazement, found that the Vatican also runs an observatory in Tucson, Arizona.

Talk about synchronicity! When I was twenty-two years old, I went off to attend grad school at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, and I distinctly remember the first night I spent there. I impressed by the size of the city—much larger than my little hometown of Gainesville, Florida—but also by how beautiful the desert sky was. Even in the downtown area, the stars were clearly visible. This was no accident; the city, I was told, purposely kept the streets relatively dark, in deference to the many astronomical observatories that surround the valley, which could not function if too much light pollution bled from the metro area.

Apparently, the Vatican’s observatory is one of them.

What I’m Reading: “Codename Nemo”

( *** Spoilers Below ***)

When most people think of the archetypal techno-thriller writer, they probably think of Tom Clancy. He didn’t invent the genre, but with the publication of his 1984 mega-hit The Hunt for Red October, he took it to a whole new level of mainstream popularity. Henceforth, the pop lit shelves in bookstores and airport gift shops across the countries would be filled with works by Clancy and an army of his imitators.

And why not? The techno-thriller novel combines aspects of several other genres, including “caper” fiction (a group of determined men taking on a seeming impossible mission), science fiction (the “techno” part is often so cutting-edge that it is more like sci-fi), mysteries (there is always a hidden bad guy in the mix), and, of course, thrillers (duh).

I kept thinking of The Hunt for Red October as I read an excellent history book recently, Codename Nemo: The Hunt for a Nazi U-Boat and the Elusive Enigma Machine by Charles Lachman. It recounts the fantastical story of a visionary naval captain, Daniel Gallery, who comes up with a hare-brained plan to capture a German U-boat. He developed the idea while stationed at a naval base in Iceland, seeing the damage that U-boats could wreak. He also learned how to sink them.

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Turn to Stone”

If you were to ask a music lover to name the most iconic pop band of the 1970s, their answer would probably be The Bee Gees. And they’d be right–mostly. For about three years, The Bee Gees bestrode the world like a collosus, leading the musical and cultural era that was disco.

But, for my money, it was the Electric Light Orchestra that most defined 70s pop. The creation of musical genius Jeff Lynne, E.L.O. was hit machine that cranked out gold records with regularity. Their songs were all over the radio here Gainesville, and their records were coveted.

And expensive. I remember looking at Out of Blue in the record store and was shocked to see that it was priced at $14.99. (This was back when ten bucks would get you a decent dinner in a real restaurant.)

My favorite E.L.O. song is, of course, “Turn to Stone”, which is the perfect fusion of pop and rock. Cinemaphiles will note that it was this song that P.T. Anderson ended his great film Boogie Nights with.

Rock-on…

Brief Encounters with Infinity

Jackson Pollock, *Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)*

Back in the dot.com boom of the 1990s, I was lucky enough to work for an IT company based in New York City. I was a remote worker, writing software eight hours a day in my spare bedroom in Gainesville, Florida. It was a win-win situation. I got to work from home, and my bosses got a good developer for country-boy wages (and I was still in the same time zone).

Occasionally they would fly me to the city for a meeting and I would spend my evenings wandering the streets of Manhattan, which is surely the most beautiful and bewitching cities of the earth. My favorite spot is the Met. Like a lot of introverts, I love museums, and the Met is the greatest of them all. I mean, how many museums have their own Egyptian Temple? Indoors?

Once I spent an entire weekend roaming its halls, barely scratching the surface of its vast collections. I tend to gravitate toward the Modern period from the early- and mid-twentieth century. From guys like Matisse and Picasso all the way to Hopper and O’Keefe.

From a historical perspective, my interest stopped after that. I never much got the whole Post-Modern thing—Abstract Expressionism and all that. It seemed too theoretical. A joke that high-brow art critics had played on the rest of us, as Tom Wolfe wrote so wittily in The Painted Word.

Today I Learned a Word: “Googie”

I was born in the 1960s, which means I am among the first generation to grow up with color TV. This also means I am also among the first Americans who are able to see their past in color. Or, at least, the urban landscape of our past. Maybe that’s why I love old TV shows like The Rockford Files—shows with a lot of exterior shots of working class cities and suburbs from back then. Once in a while, Rockford will race through Los Angeles and there, flashing by in the background, a McDonald’s from 1976 will appear. Or maybe a Woolworth’s or a Wash King. (Yes, I do realize that most people have never heard of Woolworth’s or Wash King.)

These were the places I would visit with my parents when I was a kid, and it’s kind of neat to see them again, if only on a TV screen. Seeing them today, forty years later, I am often struck by how different the architecture was back then, especially the fast-food joints and coffee shops, many of which were getting on even when Rockford was in his prime. These vintage buildings from the 50s and 60s often had weird, playful curves and tilted walls, all of it stitched together at crazy angles. I remember one restaurant in particular that my mom used to take me to every weekend. It had plastic booths nestled under a rocket-red awning with trippy lights hanging down. It looked like something straight out of The Jetsons.

What I’m Reading: “The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood”

Anyone who follows this blog knows that my two primary obsessions are movies and history. So, you can imagine my excitement whenever I encounter that rare intersection of these two interests: a well-written film history book. And, still further within this category, there is the vaunted production-of-a-classic-movie book, which is a special favorite.

The supreme example of this sub-sub-sub-genre is Mark Harris’s Pictures at a Revolution, which recounts the making of not one film but four, all of which marked the changing nature of Hollywood—and America—at a specific moment in time, 1967. But if Harris’s book is the touchstone of this subject, then Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood is a very close second. Put simply, I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Where Harris’s book describes the making of four movies, Wasson’s reveals the making of four men, the principal creators of Chinatown. These were the producer (Robert Evans), the screenwriter (Robert Towne), the director (Roman Polanski), and the star (Jack Nicholson).

“I’m Probably Wrong About Everything” Podcast Interview

Many thanks to Gerry Fialka for interviewing me on his great podcast. I have no idea why he thought of me, but I’m glad he did. It was fun.

Yes, my lighting sucks. I’m working on it. Check it out anyway, pls…