the white palaces of fashionable East Egg

 

Tomorrow the copyright on The Great Gatsby expires, according to an article in The Washington Post.

The novel was published in 1925.  So -- copyrights last -- 96 years...?

     (Instead of "96 Tears" it's "96 Years"...)

     "Finally set loose in the public domain," the article says, the novel can now be copied, embroidered upon, modified, etc.

     "We'll see new illustrated editions, scholarly editions, cheap knockoff editions and editions with introductions by John Grisham and others.  Fitzgerald's lines could make their way into more songs, plays and operas."

     Remakes can be set in the 1420s, the 1720s and outer space.

     When I read that part, I thought:

Vampire Gatsby.

Zombie Gatsby.

     Author Michael Farris Smith is publishing Nick, a prequel to The Great Gatsby.  It tells about the years leading up to Nick Carraway's move to Long Island.

One Wash. Post Reader Comment questioned the trajectory of the Nick plot--Nick Carraway wouldn't be the same man and would therefore not react to the East Egg characters he meets in the same way....  The Commenter wrote,

------------ I am reminded of the great analysis (by Harold Bloom?) of Shakespeare's facility of building plays around diverse characters:  If you swapped Hamlet and Othello there would be no plays.  Hamlet would instantly see through Iago, and Othello would, without hesitation or internal debate, kill Claudius. -------------------

_______________________________

     When the article says, "Fitzgerald's lines could make their way into more songs, plays and operas"--I thought of Bob Dylan's song, "Summer Days" on the Love and Theft album:

...She's looking into my eyes, she's holding my hand

She's looking into my eyes, she's holding my hand

She says, "You can't repeat the past."  I say, "You can't?

What do you mean, you can't? Of course you can."...

     That part about repeating the past is from The Great Gatsby.  I wonder if Dylan had to get permission from Scribner's and the Fitzgerald literary estate, to use that line...?

     See, there is always work for authors, songwriters, journalists, and lawyers....

-30-

a grander vision

 Apparently the story began with a post on Instagram.  The current wife of Alec Baldwin has been leaving the impression that she is from Spain, but the truth is she's really from Boston.

I clicked on a video where she is speaking for herself, just to see...

You know, this type of stuff catches my attention but then I become bored by it almost immediately.  It's a weird dichotomy...

     Watching Hilaria Baldwin speak, I noted her similarity to an actress, in looks, facial structure--and I had to cast about in my memory: WHO does she remind me of, I know it's someone.... And then I realized--the actress in The Sopranos who threw a steak at Tony Soprano's head.  Annabella Sciorra, maybe?...

     I have a pain in my neck.  People say that phrase like it is just an expression, but in my case right now, it's a fact. I have an actual, "literal" pain in the neck.

Must do stretches to try to work it out -- "shake it off"...

-30-

Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning

 

That one line in the Beatles song "Paperback Writer" -- 

"it's a dirty story of a dirty man" --

why does that sort of crack me up every time?

    Maybe it's because the line itself sounds kind of distasteful -- not very nice.  But the way they pronounce it with their English accents makes it sound elegant and dignified.

"It's a deh - tee story of a deh-tee mahn..."

haha

To my American ear, any British accent pretty much sounds like total sophistication, right?  But actual people in the U.K. would hear a variety of accents and they could then pinpoint where each person belongs in their British "class system."

It's like that movie -- My Fair Lady.

You can watch that and totally learn about their whole class-yadda, which is about organizing society, I guess, and enjoy it as pure entertainment as well.

Hear a Yorkshireman, or worse,

Hear a Cornishman converse,

I'd rather hear a choir singing flat....

-30-

dirty story of a dirty man

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?

It took me years to write, will you take a look?

It's based on a novel by a man named Lear

And I need a job

So I wanna be a paperback writer

Paperback writer

It's a dirty story of a dirty man

And his clinging wife doesn't understand

His son is working for the Daily Mail

It's a steady job

But he wants to be a paperback writer

Paperback writer

Paperback writer (paperback writer)

It's a thousand pages, give or take a few

I'll be writing more in a week or two

I could make it longer if you like the style

I can change it 'round

And I wanna be a paperback writer

Paperback writer

If you really like it you can have the rights

It could  make a million for you overnight

If you must return it, you can send it here

But I need a break

And I wanna be a paperback writer

Paperback writer

Paperback writer (paperback writer)

Paperback writer (paperback writer)

Paperback writer (paperback writer)

Paperback writer (paperback writer)

Paperback writer (paperback writer)...[fade out]

{Lennon-McCartney}

-30-

books about girls with boyfriends

 

In fifth or sixth and seventh grade -- and maybe fourth and eighth -- I had a Christmas tradition that was just for me.  I didn't think anyone else would appreciate it.  A few days before December 25th, I would set aside time to read Christmas chapters in books.

Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

Practically Seventeen, by Rosamond du Jardin

     I think there were a couple other books with Christmas-time sequences in them that I liked, but cannot remember them now.

------------------ [excerpt from Practically Seventeen] -------------------------------- Besides wonderful food, Joe's Grill has a juke box with the newest records in town, so naturally there is always a mob of people we know there.  It's lots of fun dancing in the little open space around the juke box and the men cut in just as they do at the regular dances and it is all very gay and informal.  

After Brose and I had been there a little while I noticed Adam and Alicia dancing 'way over in the corner, but they didn't see us, at least I didn't think so.  

Maybe they just pretended not to so Adam wouldn't have to dance with me, although as far as I, personally, am concerned, he is doing me a favor not to, because I think most older men are terrible dancers.  

And Adam is certainly no exception.  Alicia kept her eyes shut all the time because it is a standing rule in Edgewood that when a girl is dancing with her eyes shut she is perfectly contented and doesn't want to be cut in on.  Now I am very fond of Brose and love to dance with him, but I make it a point never to keep my eyes shut more than five minutes, because I think it is bad form.  And anyway, life is too short.

     They left before we did and I guess Alicia can see with her eyes shut, because when Brose and I got home Janet came out of the library with a pen in her hand (she had obviously been writing to Jimmy) and fire in her eye.

     She said, "It was my lipstick!  Alicia saw you running around with your mouth all over your face.  Give it to me this minute!"

     I gave it to her silently and Brose squeezed my elbow in admiration for such patient forbearance and Janet went back into the library with her darned old lipstick.  It was still quite early, not yet ten, so Brose and I thought we would find some private spot and talk awhile.  Although hoping to find a private spot in our home is really nothing more than wishful thinking.

     Since Janet was using the library, we looked into the living-room.  The fireplace was very inviting with its blazing logs and cheerfully crackling flames, but Alicia and Adam were sitting on a loveseat which was pulled up to face the hearth.  Although we had scarcely made a sound, Alicia said, without taking her eyes from Adam, "Go away, you two.  We got here first."

     Next we tried the dining-room, but Mom and Dad were wrapping gifts in there.  The dining table was stacked with intriguing boxes and there was a drift of holly paper and silver ribbon everywhere. ------------------------------- [end, excerpt]

*        *        *        *

The name of the book's author, du Jardin, was an object of fascination and mystery to me.  A last name that was two separate words, the first one not capitalized.

doo JAR din

My mother said it was

doo zhar DAHN

     with the last syllable ending in a nasal, swallowed "n" - French style.

This kind of captured my imagination.

Practically Seventeen was originally published in 1949.

Amazon has it in a Kindle edition for $6.99, and in hardcover for $768.57.

(Eyebrows raised so high, they sail off into the air above my head.  Yikes.)

     The copy I had as a grade schooler was paperback -- I think it was handed down to me by a cousin in Orwell, Ohio.

___________________________________

Rosamond du Jardin wrote a bunch of novels featuring teenaged girls and their crushes and romances--class rings, etc.  The heroines of the books -- Tobey Heydon; Marcy Rhodes; Penny and Pam Howard -- were always sixteen or so.  But I believe most of the readers were younger girls, as I was.  In grade school and junior high, you want to read about kids in high school.

______________________________

____________________________

And speaking of kids in high school, one more cover of this week's Chuck Berry song is a Christmas present to the world!

     On you tube (adblock) type in

Chuck Berry - 30 Days (Skeleton Dolls Cover)

uploader:  Skeleton Dolls

     First they talk about Chuck Berry and his music - the singing begins at 2:17.  Their enthusiasm is so inspiring!

PLAY

-30-

a worldwide hoodoo

 

Whenever I recommend, on this blog, Listen to

this song, or Watch

this video

on You Tube, the You Tube I'm referring to is the one in the "Adblock Browser."  There is an "m." before the words You Tube.

     So if I share a song here and you can't find it, try the Adblock Browser.

     An I-T got upset once when I said there was more than one You Tube:

"There's one You Tube, it's the same!"

OK.  And I want the one with m. in front of it.

(I'm not listening to 35,000 commercials during a song....)

________________________________

Fantastic:  if you type in

Thirty Days Beatles Chuck Berry 1969

uploader:  Zvi Grinberg,

it's a video, only one minute, 20 seconds -- the Beatles are in the studio deciding how to play "Thirty Days."  There's some talking, and instrumental forays and starts--they're working around... and then they play a little bit of the song.  

The picture is just a photograph, not film.  Only audio was recorded.  

It's like you are just hanging around while John, Paul, George, and Ringo work and practice.

Another one:

Type in

Thirty Days (Chuck Berry) by The Little Big Tones

uploader:  The Little Big Tones

     They play this song very well -- I thought it was great.  The lead singer-guitar player has kind of a Levon Helm vibe about him.  Terrific video.

________________________________

Merry Christmas Eve.

-30-

takin' it to the United Nations

 

According to online encyclopedia, Chuck Berry wrote "30 Days" to pay tribute to Hank Williams' country music.

     I really liked the densely-packed descriptions and references in this song's lyrics.

     On You Tube, type in

thirty days, chuck berry

and play.

-30-

thirty days

I'm gonna give you thirty days to get back home

I done called up the gypsy woman on the telephone

She gonna send out a worldwide hoodoo

That'll be the very thing that'll suit you

I'm gonna see that you be back home in thirty days

     Oh thirty days (thirty days)

     Oh, thirty days (thirty days)

Baby I'm gonna see that you'll be back home in thirty days

Gonna send out a worldwide hoodoo

That'll be the very thing that'll suit you

I'm gonna see that you'll be back home in thirty days.

I done talked to the judge in private early this mornin'

And he took me to the sheriff's office to sign a warrant

Gonna put across charge agin' ya

That'll be the very thing that'll send ya

I'm gonna see that you'll be back home in thirty days

     Oh thirty days (thirty days)

     Oh thirty days (thirty days)

I'm gonna see that you'll be back home in thirty days

Gonna put across charges agin' ya

That'll be the very thing that'll send ya

I'm gonna see that you'll be back home in thirty days

If I don't get no satisfaction from the judge

I'm gonna take it to the FBI and voice my grudge

If they don't give me no consolation

I'm gonna take it to the United Nations

I'm gonna see that you'll be back home in thirty days

     Oh thirty days (thirty days)

     Oh! thirty days! (thirty days)

I'm gonna see that you'll be back home in thirty days

You don't gimme no consolation

I'm gonna take it to the United Nations

I'm gonna see that you'll be back home in thirty days

_________________________

{Chuck Berry - 1955}

-30-

call me

 

another poem by Marianne Moore:

Talisman

Under a splintered mast,

torn from ship and cast

       near her hull,

a stumbling shepherd found

embedded in the ground,

       a sea-gull

of lapis lazuli,

a scarab of the sea,

       with wings spread--

curling its coral feet,

parting its beak to greet

       men long dead.

________________________________

     One of my literature classes at Boston University was taught by a professor who was a Marianne Moore scholar.  She wrote a whole book about Moore and her poetry, and I typed it.

     I invested in an IBM Selectric III typewriter, had it on a typing table in my Brookline apartment.  In my "typing business" I typed several books written by professors, and papers written by students, etc.  Charging by the page.

     To get business, I made signs (on 8 1/2 x 11 paper), with my phone number, and put them up on bulletin boards in the English and History departments.   I received a few obscene phone calls after putting up those signs; but most of the calls were legitimate people wanting me to type something.

-30- 

you abandon your intent

 

Visible, invisible,

A fluctuating charm,

An amber-colored amethyst

Inhabits it; your arm

Approaches, and

It opens and

It closes;

You have meant

To catch it,

And it shrivels;

You abandon

Your intent--

It opens, and it

Closes and you

Reach for it--

The blue

Surrounding it

Grows cloudy, and

It floats away

From you.

------------------------------- That is a poem written by the American poet Marianne Moore.  Title:  

A Jelly-Fish

-30-

ballot security

 

Ben Bradlee

[excerpt from the Index of All The President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward]

Bachinski, Eugene, 22, 23

Bagdikian, Ben, 192

Baker, Howard, 280, 318, 321

Baldwin, Alfred C., III, 65, 114

    L.A. Times story on, 108-11, 222, 225

"ballot security," 28

Barker, Bernard L., 19, 266

    Caddy and, 17-18

    guilty plea by, 233-35

    indictment of, 335

    money given to, 36-37, 41-44, 52-56

    payments after Watergate to, 58, 233

    White House calls by, 35-36, 38, 216...

-30-

stand down Margaret

 

You know when you hear a measure or three of a song, playing over film credits or behind a commercial message, and you wish you could find out what song that is?  Because it sounds like a good one....?

     There's an episode of The Crown (Netflix series) where it tells about Michael Fagan, the man who entered Buckingham Palace uninvited -- twice, in the summer of 1982.  The second time he got in (unnoticed) he went into the Queen's bedroom and had a conversation with her.

     I remember that news story, somehow.

     At the end of the episode, over the credits, a song plays -- sounded like they were saying, "Stand down Margaret; stand down please; stand down Mar--garr--ett".

     Back in the day, if I had heard a little snippet of that song I would not have been able to find the song--I would have been helplessly desolately isolated from the song, from the information...

     Now with the Internet--last Saturday I typed in on You Tube "stand down margaret" and--zzzhhhiinngg! I get to hear the song.

     The best video of it I found has the title

"The Beat - Stand Down Margaret (OTT 1982) - You Tube."

It starts out with a guy yelling happily into the camera--don't let it scare you, it only lasts for about 5 seconds, as he is introducing the band.  Yelling, with enthusiasm in some kind of British accent...

     And then the band plays the song--it's the same one on The Crown episode ending credits!  It sounds so good, I love it!

     I thought it was reggae, but someone in the comments said it's ska.

-30-

hey I don't care - how long it's gonna take

 

-------------- [excerpt from Jackie as Editor, by Greg Lawrence] -------------------- 

Viking was not the only publishing house that Jackie approached. A former editorial director at Random House, Jason Epstein, wrote in his memoir, Eating, "One day Jackie Onassis called me to ask if she could take me to lunch at Lutèce.  We met a week or so later.... 

My friend Pete Hamill, who had once taken Jackie out, said it was like 'taking King Kong to the beach.'...

We took a table upstairs, in one of the small rooms, and ordered shad roe, the first of the season.  She asked if there was a job for her at Random House.  

She wanted to be an editor....However, there was a problem.  Entry-level editorial jobs were scarce and much in demand....

I told Jackie that I believed she would take the job seriously, be a good colleague, and learn the ropes easily.  But I also told her that we would have to create an opening for her, and this  might not be fair to the assistants.  

Before I could ask her to let me talk it over with my colleagues, she said that she understood my problem and didn't want to impose."

________________________________

________________________________

On You Tube type in

Try Just a Little Bit Harder, Janis Joplin

and play.

-30-

he was skeptical; they were nervous

 

------------- [excerpt from Jackie as Editor, by Greg Lawrence] -------------------- Deborah Turbeville said, "Jackie Onassis had a very special way of working, as you probably know, as an editor.  And she always liked to connect her books.  And so she'd been doing books on Atget, or Atget's Versailles, things like that.  

So she yearned to do another book about Versailles, and she was taken by--I think his name was Howard Adams, who was the head of the bicentennial--on a tour of the private rooms in Versailles....

And she fell in love with these rooms, and had the idea to do a book on the petits appartements, and to convey through text and evocative photographs what it could have been like at that time.  So she thought of me to do the pictures.  

And it was kind of connecting Atget's Versailles with a young photographer who Vreeland had used in Allure, bringing about another book with this new photographer on Versailles....

And then she and I flew over to Paris to get the permission to shoot from the curator...which wasn't easy.  It was a lot of protocol, and he was skeptical, and they were nervous.  It was very bureaucratic....She of course went separately, and she stayed at the Crillon, and I stayed at my apartment....

So we went out the next day, and the whole thing was like a fairy tale.  The whole fairy-tale quality of Louis XV's Versailles was what captivated both of us.  And then, I mean, Jackie in the limousine was leaning out of the window when the driver pulled beside the guard.  It was like a Monty Python thing.  

We proceeded into the inner sanctum of Versailles and then we had the meeting with the curator.  He was so charmed by her that he said, 'Okay, okay, okay, you can do it.'  And that was it.  It was unbelievable!"

___________________________

_________________________

On You Tube type in:

Half Moon, Janis Joplin

and play.

-30-

if Charles doesn't like how he is portrayed in "The Crown" maybe he shouldn't have been so mean to Diana

 

-------------------- [excerpt] ------------ Harriet Rubin described Jackie's singular position at Doubleday..."She was there when the company was bought by the German firm, Bertelsmann....Jackie's presence kept the house resisting the tide toward schlock.  

The company that employed her had to maintain a classy presence in the marketplace or they'd lose her.  She was the last visible standard of highbrow in the company, maybe in the industry.  Nobody wanted Jackie resigning in a public relations huff....

Doubleday had a majority of, forgive me, idiot savants, editors who stepped into piles of golden shit or BS'd Alberto and so rose in the hierarchy.  

They don't know a colon from their colon.  

Quality scared them.  

Ideas scared them.  

Colleagues who were independent thinkers scared them.  

     The idiot savants won in the sense that their projects and style of publishing prevailed.  I hope your book deals with the dark side of publishing in which Jackie got caught.  The woes the news media now face were present first in book publishing."

--------------- [Jackie As Editor, by Greg Lawrence.  St. Martin's Press, New York.  2011.]

__________________________________

On You Tube -- type in

Trouble In Mind, Janis Joplin

and play.

-30-

hey hey HEY hey!

 

"Assertiveness provokes resistance."

~ Michel de Montaigne

------------------------------ [excerpt, Jackie as Editor, by Greg Lawrence] ---------------------- In her afterword, which was printed in her elegant longhand, Jackie wrote, "What an extraordinary surprise and gift it was when Peter Beard first showed me the fables and drawings of Isak Dinesen's beloved Kamante.  

I had not known he was still alive.  

To hold his drawings was like touching a talisman that took you back to a world you thought had disappeared forever.  Maybe I was so affected because Out of Africa has always meant more to me than any other book....  It seems to me that so many of the movements of today, ecology, anti-materialism, communal living--were all in Out of Africa."

     Jackie quoted one of her favorite Dinesen passages, which read, in part, "If I know a song of Africa, of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee-pickers, does Africa know a song of me?"  

     Jackie concluded, "Yes, it does have a song for her.  It is Peter Beard and Kamante who made it for her.  Kamante's drawings and Peter Beard's photographs share a purity--of a wild animal looking at the camera with free and vulnerable eyes."

_______________________________________

On You Tube type in

Roadblock, Janis Joplin

(uploader:  Big Brother & The Holding Company - Topic)

and play.

     I really like the part, 57 seconds in, where she goes, "Hey, hey HEY hey!" and the music takes off, going even faster and wilder.

-30-

windshield wipers slapping time

 

photographer Peter Beard

-------------- [excerpt from Jackie as Editor, by Greg Lawrence] ----------------- Another photographer friend who was involved with Jackie and the International Center of Photography was Peter Beard, famous not only for his photographs of endangered African wildlife but also for portraits of supermodels and rock stars such as Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Iman, and Veruschka.  

On the rise at the age of thirty-seven, Beard was charismatic and iconoclastic....  His retinue included Jackie's sister, Lee Radziwill (with whom he had a romantic affair), Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Andrew Wyeth, Terry Southern, and Francis Bacon.  Jackie wrote an afterword for Beard's lavishly illustrated work Longing for Darkness:  Kamante's Tales from Out of Africa, which was published in November 1975.  

This wondrously evocative tome was inspired by the African adventures of the Danish aristocrat Baroness Karen von Blixen (better known as Isak Dinesen, her nom de plume) and her classic memoir, Out of Africa.  That book chronicled many of Blixen's personal experiences in Kenya, where she owned and maintained a coffee plantation from 1914 to 1931.

     Beard recalled, "Jackie loved Longing for Darkness"...and her participation allowed for the book to be published.  "She was very irritated.  Holt, Rinehart and Winston turned it down, and I think Doubleday . . . and she had some quite amusing suggestions of what we might do to break through corporate resistance....Basically, she wrote the afterword, and it was only on that ground that the book was accepted."

----------------------------------------

On  You Tube, type in

Me and Bobby McGee, Janis Joplin

and play.

     Busted flat in Baton Rouge,

Waitin' for a train

And I's feelin' near as faded as my jeans

Bobby thumbed a diesel down,

Just before it rained

It rode us all the way to New Orleans...

-30-

whatever 'in love' means...

 

It makes no sense to be jealous of your spouse's success, but some people are.

What makes sense is:  a husband writes a novel which becomes a great success; his wife is proud of him, and happy for him.

A wife is promoted to a good position at work; her husband is proud of her and happy for her.

Makes sense.

     But some people aren't like that.  Almost as soon as they are married they turn to their spouse and they're all like, "I'm better than you.  And--also--I graduated kindergarten, so-hah!"  Not these exact words, but the attitude.

     Or, they might not act like that right away, but as soon as their partner has an achievement, or receives attention or admiration, then they "start in."

     From everything I've read, it sounds like Prince Charles was jealous of Diana's popularity with the people very early in the marriage.  From the time when her popularity became evident.

     What did he want, an unpopular future queen?  (And--yeah, he's got that now, come to think of it....)

He wanted the attention on himself.

     (Although -- he complains about that, too....)

People can become stuck in attitudes, or mind-sets, or moods.  Prince Charles seems like he's kind of stuck in a mind-groove of complaint.

     In The Crown they show some of his childhood experiences--one was being sent to boarding school at a place called Gordonstoun.  He said it was pure hell.  My first inclination is to feel sympathy, but then I remember he thought being married to Diana was "pure hell," too!  LOL.

     (Men who have been in a war at the front line might say to Prince Charles gently, "Sir, you are unacquainted with hell...")

His relationship with Camilla seems like it's--he goes to her and complains, and she cheers him up.

     See, with relationships, it's whatever works.  (I think Woody Allen even made a movie titled, Whatever Works, on this subject....)

-30-

the ladies who knew too much

 

--------------- [excerpt from The Diana Chronicles, by Tina Brown]------------- The combination of wealth, royalty, and sycophancy was in danger of making Charles as spoiled as his father had always feared.  Despite his sensitivity on other matters, the Prince expected his girlfriends to wait around all day for his attentions like groupies while he was exercising himself or his horse or was otherwise engaged....

An early girlfriend, Georgiana Russell, the strikingly attractive daughter of British Ambassador Sir John Russell, was vocal in her discontent after joining Charles at Balmoral for a romantic weekend and ending up sitting on a riverbank in the cold all day watching him fish....

Almost every week, the press threw a new name into the hat as the next Queen of England.  They scoured the lists of European royalty for a suitable bride for Charles.... Princess Caroline of Monaco was top of the list...but she had become too racy and café society for his rural tastes.  

     The Daily Express invented a romance with Princess Marie Astrid of Luxembourg, then rubbished their own story on the grounds that the Prince of Wales could never marry a Roman Catholic....

The press game was to first hype a girl as the next Queen of England and then discover the skeleton in the closet that would disqualify her.  Fiona Watson, the curvaceous daughter of a landowner, was a prospect until a raunchy set of pictures in the girly magazine Penthouse turned her glass coach into a pumpkin.  

     Hacks chased the lovely Davina Sheffield into the ladies' room at Heathrow looking for a quote about the kiss-and-tell memoir of her ex-boyfriend, James Beard, a powerboat racer and designer....

     In the lulls between girlfriends, a staple newspaper space-filler on a foreign tour was paying some friendly cheesecake model to leap out of the surf and buss the heir apparent.

     The vulgarity of the bridal beauty contest and the noise of press speculation was increasingly irksome to the senior  members of the Royal Family.  The Queen Mother's views on the subject of Prince Charles's future bride matched those of the Queen:  a virgin and soon.  

The Queen Mother believed that she was better qualified than anyone else to prescribe what was required in a Queen-in-Waiting.  When she heard of the engagement of the beauteous and very rich Lady Leonora Grosvenor to Lord Lichfield in 1975, she said, "What a shame; we had been saving her for Prince Charles."  

As Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon,the youngest daughter of a Scottish peer, the fourteenth Earl of Strathmore, the Queen Mother had been a virtuous young thing like Diana when she married the shy, unexciting Prince Albert, Duke of York (aka "Bertie"), in 1923.  

Her wifely support, after the shocking abdication of his elder brother Edward, was the crucial factor in helping the stammering Duke evolve into the dignified monarch George VI, who led the British nation through the trauma of the Second World War.  

She saw in Charles many of the recessive characteristics of George VI, and believed he was desperately in need of a wife strong enough to both handle the pressures of royal life and stiffen his backbone.  "Some plants need watering -- need to be forced."  That was said to be her line on her princely grandson.

     In mid-August 1979, the Prince of Wales finally psyched himself up to propose to Amanda Knatchbull.  The two were aboard the royal yacht Britannia on the Royal Family's annual cruise of the Western Isles of Scotland.  Much to his supposed chagrin (but probably to his secret relief), the admirable young woman turned him down.  

As with Jane Wellesley, her own privileged access was a deterrent.  

The girls who were most appropriate as future brides for Charles knew too  much about the burdens and boredom of royal life and weren't impressed enough with the perks of princesshood to angle for the role.

-30-

cause and effect; force and escape

 

Watching Season 4 of The Crown on Netflix, I was reminded of a phenomenon which I wonder about sometimes -- in some "Love Relationships" -- are the two people in it because they want to be together, or because they want to escape from something or prove something to someone else, or to themselves?  Or, both -- or all of the above...?

A You Tuber whose videos I listen to sometimes calls it an "emotional getaway car" when a person wants a romantic relationship because it helps them put some other emotional pain behind them.

emotional getaway car

("Follow that car!")

OK, breaking down the Prince Charles stuff -- two sets of info, the first one general-basic; the second, more detailed.

General-basic

Prince Charles was supposed to marry some innocent young girl who would give birth to an heir, to follow Charles' eventual reign.  This was his duty, because of who he is.

     First, however, as a free-dating young bachelor-prince in his twenties (1970s), Charles met Camilla Shand, a woman his own age from the "minor aristocracy."  He liked her and got along with her really well.  They had a lot in common.  He wanted to propose marriage to her, but his family and Lord Mountbatten (don't ask) advised him that he could not marry Camilla because her family was not aristocratic enough, and she was not inexperienced in the dating department.

     Charles was pointed toward Lady Diana Spencer and encouraged to take the plunge into romance, marriage, and royal duty.

Charles and Diana married in 1981.

They didn't get along, for a variety of reasons:

Charles resented his parents and the regiment of royal advisers telling him what to do, and kind of turned that resentment on Diana, once he was "stuck with her."

Diana realized even before the wedding that Charles was still emotionally connected to Camilla -- phone calls, buying her jewelry, etc.  She would ask Charles about the Camilla relationship, and get upset about it.

Charles and Diana:  nothing in common.

12-year age difference

Throughout the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales, Charles continued his friendship / affair with Camilla. 

Eleven years of the royal marriage.

1992 - Diana and Charles separate.

1996 - They divorce.

[End of "General-basic."]

____________________________________

     When I was a child, I remember people would sometimes continue a story by saying the phrase, "Meanwhile, back at the ranch..."

     In this story it would be, "Meanwhile, back at the palace..."

     Or -- "Meanwhile, back at the Highgrove estate..."

___________________________________

_______________________________

Part 2 - More Detailed, with Motives

OK -- here's another timeline, running concurrent with the first, basic one.

~ 1972 -- Charles and Camilla Shand meet.  They hang out.

Charles is happy.

Camilla is -- happy to hang with His Royal Highness, The Prince Of Wales, whilst she waits for Andrew Parker Bowles to propose.

~ 1973 -- Camilla marries Andrew Parker Bowles -- she has known him seven years, and was intensely in love with him.

It's sort of -- Charles enjoys being with Camilla because he loves her.  While Camilla enjoys his company, plus he's the Prince of Wales, so there's that added-value of "status."  

     So, while Charles was away serving in the British Navy for eight months, the 

Camilla Shand - Andrew Parker Bowles

wedding takes place.

From

1973 (Camilla's marriage) - [Diana turned 12, that year]

to

1981 (Diana-Charles marriage) = 8 years.

During those eight years Camilla and Charles saw each other, off and on, as friends, and as clandestine lovers.

     Why, we might ask, would Camilla cheat on Andrew PB when she loved him and had "campaigned," according to one source, to marry him for seven years?  Well, Andrew cheated on her, constantly, with any and all women who were--well--in the UK, or in London, sounds like, beginning soon after their wedding day... This hurt and ticked off Camilla.

I can buy into Diana Chronicles author Tina Brown's theory that Camilla in a sense took revenge on her husband Andrew by cheating on him right back, and not just with any man she could find, but with the Heir To The Throne, thank you very much.

Sort of like -- a way to emotionally "clobber" her husband's feelings and ego.

Camilla and Charles are doing -- that, plus lots and lots of chummy, supportive, hilarious, us-against-the-world telephone conversations, from 1973 to 1981.  

     During those years the Andrew-Camilla marriage produced two children, boy and a girl.

Meanwhile back at the Buck (Buckingham Palace) -- Charles is getting pressured to "get on with it" -- to do his duty and get married.

The world watched the Charles-Diana wedding in 1981.

The two people least happy with the situation were Charles and Diana.

________________________________

     For Prince Charles, Camilla started as a friend - companion - love interest.

During the years of his unhappy marriage to Diana, Camilla became his "emotional getaway car."  He could go and see her and forget all about -- duty, scheduled appearances, stories about him and his marriage in the newspapers, unsolicited advice from his parents and members of the royal court, Diana, and her popularity with the people -- (on that one, Charles:  "Grrrrrhhhh!")

-30-

for a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker

 

painting by Zelda Fitzgerald

[excerpt, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald]

I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye.  

I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove.  

Sometimes, in my  mind, I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness.  

At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.

Again at eight o'clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were five deep with throbbing taxi cabs, bound for the theatre district, I felt a sinking in my heart.  Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes outlined unintelligible gestures inside.  Imagining that I, too, was hurrying toward gayety and sharing their intimate excitement, I wished them well.

For a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker, and then in midsummer I found her again.  At first I was flattered to go places with her because she was a golf champion and every one knew her name.  Then it was something more.  I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.  The bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something--most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don't in the beginning--and one day I found what it was.  

When we were on a house-party together up in Warwick, she left a borrowed car out in the rain with the top down, and then lied about it--and suddenly I remembered the story about her that had eluded me that night at Daisy's.  

At her first big golf tournament there was a row that nearly reached the newspapers--a suggestion that she had moved her ball from a bad lie in the semi-final round.  The thing approached the proportions of a scandal--then died away.  A caddy retracted his statement and the only other witness admitted that he might have been mistaken.  The incident and the name had remained together in my mind.

Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible.  She was incurably dishonest.  

She wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage, and given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard jaunty body.

It made no difference to me.  Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply--I was casually sorry, and then I forgot.

-30-

when the jobs left and the drugs came

 

If good people ignore politics, does that leave the practice of politics to bad people?

---------------------------

What is an elegy?

...Merriam-Webster (since 1828)

Definition of elegy

a song or poem expressing sorrow or lamentation especially for one who is dead

____________________________

The author of the book Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance, seems to be trying to position himself as a public figure.

     One Internet Comment said Mr. Vance "is a snob, and an ass."

     (lol, that's -- not his campaign slogan, is it?)

---------------------------------

several Amazon customer reviews of the book:

~ Like the book "White Trash," the time spent reading it is wasted.  There is no real revelation here.  I'm afraid this is an attempt to blame those written about for "the problem."  What this really is, is an attempt by the author to attain political currency for a run at federal office.  It is transparent and embarrassing.

~ Born, raised and lived in West Virginia all my 49 years -- and this book is ridiculous.  Don't waste your time or money.  And no, I do not appreciate being called a hillbilly and I don't know anyone who does.  This book is fiction plain and simple.  Someone trying to make it big by making up stories and selling them as truth.

~ I had high hopes for this book, based on all the reviews.  I found it to be pretty underwhelming and a bit shallow.  He mostly just talks about events that happen, but I wish he delved much deeper into history or politics or culture -- especially given that the NYT said it was "one of 6 books to help understand Trump's win."  

     I didn't really come out of it understanding any more about that aspect.  The author also seems to toot his own horn a lot.  Which is fine, it's his book.  But I was unimpressed.

~ He was from a small town when the jobs left and the drugs came.

~ What Mr. Vance says is true, but it's hardly unique.  It's been going on for decades in every region of the country....This book, to me anyway, reads like every book I've ever read from budding politicians, outlining their heart rending personal stories.  Just saying.

-30-

this song make me crazy

 

Almost heaven, West Virginia

Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River

Life is old there, older than the trees

Younger than the mountains, growin' like a breeze

Country roads, take me home

To the place I belong

West Virginia, mountain mama

Take me home, country roads

All my memories -- gather 'round her

Miner's lady, stranger to blue water

Dark and dusty, painted on the sky

Misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye

Country roads, take me home

To the place I belong

West Virginia, mountain mama

Take me home, country roads

I hear her voice in the mornin' hour, she calls me

The radio reminds me of my home far away

Drivin' down the road, I get a feelin'

That I should've been home yesterday -- yesterday...

Country roads, take me home

To the place I belong

West Virginia, mountain mama

Take me home, country roads

Country roads, take me home

To the place I belong

West Virginia, mountain mama

Take me home, country roads

Take me home, down country roads

Take me home, down country roads

_________________________________

{"Take Me Home, Country Roads" - written by Bill Danoff, Taffy Nivert, and John Denver.  Recorded by John Denver with Fat City, in January of 1971 in New York City.}

-----------------------------------

After you go on You Tube and listen to this song, you can read here the selected Comments from listeners:

The Void knight

   Me, a Polish man living in Russia listening to American music with a little British accent:  Mr. Worldwide

Cooper_knows

   Greetings from a Russian man living in Poland, pal

Tom hanley

   They have internet in Russia?

Cooper_knows

   Tom hanley, of course, or else how will we hack your next election     :  )

Samuel Luz

   I love the fact I am a Virginian, even with the fact that I never left Brazil.

   This song make me crazy.

Bradley Tee

   This makes me miss West Virginia, and I've never left Australia.

Andreas vehmer

   So sie haben dummkopfe in australien dran

Arthur Morgan

   Und wir haben Dummköpfe in Deutschland.

Yashvi patel

   I'm a New Zealander but this song makes me patriotic for America lmao.

RedPandaGaming

   This makes you nostalgic for memories you don't even have.

TT

   Day 7 of quarantine:  I started listening to country music.

Khadija Global Education Agency

   everyone wants to go home, to his own West Virginia.

Steve Johnson

   When I blasted this song in my car it became a tractor

Rambo

   Then I did it, it became a pickup

-30-

misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye

 

There is a movie on Netflix now that's getting a lot of negative reviews, but the ones I've seen didn't mention the points I noticed about it.

Hillbilly Elegy is based on a book of that title, written by J.D. Vance.  (Starting with that title -- to me, "hillbilly" seems like a disrespectful word, I don't know -- I read parts of that book online and, along with the title, there are some things about it that give me a little "cringe."  

Maybe it's the generalizations, or judgments, or something? -- 

Anyway, the title was given by the book's author, so that isn't the fault of the movie director or writer.  Although on the other hand, if it's a negative epithet, the screenwriter could have given the film a different title.  

Although on another other hand, in that case potential audiences wouldn't have the automatic tie-in recognition that this film is based on the book...

Anyway...) --

The Washington Post reviewed it, and so did the New York Times, and a bunch of online websites...

What I noticed about the movie, that I haven't seen anyone else mention, is -- OK, the story is based on an idea that generational family dysfunction and poverty affects a percentage of people living in Appalachia.

     But I'm watching it going, "You can see this type of appalling behavior anywhere, not just in Appalachia."  I think I would take the relative "poverty" component and set it aside a minute, and just look at what you're really dealing with there -- no matter the amount of coins in people's bank accounts, Crazy is as crazy does.  

And it's not typical of, or limited to, Appalachia, Why are we picking on the people who live there?

You can find crazy, yelling, hitting, blaming, battering, tantrum-throwing humans in any segment of society, in the South, in the North, in California or New York or Minnesota, or Russia or Cuba.  

In segments of society where most of the people in it are rich, or kind of rich--"richish"--there may, indeed, be more social pressure to behave oneself "in front of other people" because there might be more social sanction on battering, yelling, cursing, etc.  

It doesn't mean that in those segments of society crazy people are nice at home or in the workplace.  They will just modify their behavior as much as they feel they have to, in an environment or situation.  It doesn't mean that, fundamentally, they are any different from the low-rent characters in this film.  They just have more social pressure working on them.  They want to seem cool and sophisticated.

In Hillbilly Elegy, both the book and the movie, there are people who are, if we might borrow a Southern, perhaps Appalachian, expression--Plum Crazy, and they don't modify their behavior very much.  (Some sociopaths like an audience to their ickiness.)

But--bottom line, I just don't see how any of it needs to be seen as typical of, or unique to, Appalachia -- I mean, watch some reruns of Law & Order, there are no state lines containing the crazy.

     I still think the word "hillbilly" is disrespectful and "bogus," (as they like to say in Boston).  And one reviewer said the thing wasn't even an elegy, so...

     The movie was directed by Ron Howard -- Opie from The Andy Griffith Show.

-30-