Hedgehog

Based on the book, Elegance of the hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery; translated by Alison Anderson. It well captures the essence of the book, even while necessarily trimming detail. Renée Michel is the concierge at a luxury apartment building in Paris who hides herself and her interests behind the appearance of the stereotype all tenants expect. Paloma Josse is the precoscious 11 year old daughter of a government minister and his hooked-on-psychoanalysis wife; she has decided to kill hersel fon her 12th birthday, in 165 days, to spare herself the absurdity of living an empty meaningless life.

When a tenant dies, the estate agent brings around a new tenant, a Japanese man who immediately is impressed with the concierge. "Did you know," he asks the concierge, the family that has left? The agent chimes in "they were very nice, very happy."

"All happy families are the same," Renée says, automatically, not thinking about it.
"But all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way," retorts Kakuro Ozu, the new tenant. Then he asks about her cat, and before the concierge can say anything the agent says its name is "Leo."

Kakuro senses that Leo is named after Leo Tolstoy; the sentences he and Renée exchanged are from Tolstoy's work "Anna Karenina." And so Renée realizes when, after the new tenant and the agent leave, she dashes into her room of books, takes a copy of "Anna Karenina" from the shelf, and finds the quotes. She immediately berates herself: she counts on not being known by her tenants as anything more than an indistinct concierge.

Soon Kakuro meets Paloma. Riding on the elevator, he asks her if she is indeed learning Japanese. Oui, she answers, and begins speaking in Japanese. Asking if he can correct her, Kakuro does so gently, amused and impressed by his new young friend. And they do become friends. Kakuro asks after Madame Michel, and Paloma wonders if he also knows that the concierge, inside of her rough exterior, is a gentle and intelligent person. In her review of the book in the NY Times in September 2008, Caryn James writes: The sharp-eyed Paloma guesses that Renée has “the same simple refinement as the hedgehog,” quills on the outside but “fiercely solitary — and terribly elegant” within. Yet there is no mention of “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Isaiah Berlin’s essay on Renée’s beloved Tolstoy, which may make this the sliest allusion of all.

The film captures these three characters perfectly. Paloma's writings (in the book) become a video journal she is making as her last act in life. René and Kakuro are fully developed characters. All three are enamored of things Japanese. Kakuro gives Renée a present of a beautiful 2-volume ciopy of "Anna Karenina." Soon he  asks her up to his flat for dinner, and convinces her that her being a concierge should nto be a barrier between them.



I watched it twice, two days in a row, and, if anything, enjoyed it more the second time.

House of Bamboo

This all started with a column in a New Yorker issue in August, Critic's Notebook: Trouble in Mind. To wit: The most exciting spasm of violence in Samuel Fuller's wide-screen, color-splashed 1955 film noir, "House of Bamboo", is one that doesn't happen. It involves an American crime boss (Robert Ryan) who runs a syndicate in Tokyo, a hard-nosed expat (Robert Stack) who has recently joined the gang and arouses suspicion, and a billiard ball. In the first Hollywood feature to be shot on location in postwar Japan, Fuller transports to an exoticized setting his usual concern: the conflict between the moral repugnance of violence and its visual and visceral thrills. The movie is famous for its gunplay - a bathtub shooting that's sordidly funny, a police ambush of silhouettes seen through the rice paper screen, and a climactic shootout on a flying-saucer-like carousel perched on a rooftop high above the city. But for one terrifying moment, captured in a single tense shot and embodied in Ryan's seething, panterish self-control, Fuller makes his fierce sympathies ambiguous even as he imagines gore beyond what Hollywood mores allowed - and hints that he enjoyed it. The writer was Richard Brody.

In watching the commentary provided by two critics, several names jumped out:

The street with no name

Pickup on South Street

I shot Jesse James

Cinemascope

The film itself was interesting. It begins with a narration, which itself is unusual: a film, not a documentary, begins as if it were a documentary. It is post-WW2 Japan. A supply train chugs along, and stops for a peasant struggling to move his oxen off the tracks. In quick order, it turns out he is not a peasant, for he chokes the engineer who comes out to yell at him. Other train personnel are similarly mugged. And the lone US soldier is shot, and killed. A peasant woman hears the shot, rushes over, sees the dead body, and screams into the camera.

Robert Stack lands in Yokohama, takes a taxi to Tokyo, and chases after Mariko, the sweetheart of his buddy (who in prior shots is seen on an operating table being interrogated by US Army personnel, who find the picture of Mariko in his wallet; he confesses that they were married, but that it is a secret). Stack's character (Spanier) begins to intimidate pachinko managers, shaking them down for protection money. At the second joint he is ambushed by men working for Ryan's character (Sandy). He is thrown through rice paper screens, and beat up a bit. In short order, he joins the gang, and becomes a favorite of the boss. Such favoritism rankles Sandy's long-standing second-in-command, and tension is born, to manifest itself in various ways (including the above-mentioned bathtub scene).

Yasujirō Ozu

From reading The elegance of the hedgehog, I became aware of this Japanese film maker. Luckily, the library where I work owns 3 of Ozu's films on DVD. I have watched three of them over the past week. Aside from enjoying them, I noticed a few details about each, and all, that simply stood out. Ozu's films are different than just about any other film I can think of: the camera work is completely different, and that makes the films different than, say, Hitchcock.

My tendency and habit are to become emotionally involved with the film (otherwise, I turn it off), so evaluating one critically is not something I do well. Yet with Ozu's films I found myself seeing some aspects without trying: they just appeared clear to me.

The camera looks at a room, at a space, before a character enters, and remains after the character leaves. Thus space is assigned its own worth, given its own respect, as Renée Michel might have said (if, perhaps, more eloquently). Women's roles are clearly in transition in the three films that I saw: while embracing the traditional, they are redefining their roles. And the war looms as a major factor, of course, though it is never overdone.

On searching Ozu's name in the web, I found a website devoted to his films (or, rather to Ozu himself, his films being an aspect of the site. In fact, the site is about film, and Ozu is simply one part thereof). Of course, there are others; one is Senses of Cinema.

Late spring 1949. A father and daughter live together in apparent happiness. Somiya is a college professor; Noriko is an office worker. In her twenties, she is unmarried, and that soon becomes an issue (for everyone but her; she is content with her life). The professor's sister presses him to have his daughter marry, and busies herself finding a suitable match. At first the professor is content, but soon realizes that if he himself does not press Noriko to marry she might wind up with an unfulfilled life. He and his sister concoct a scheme, wherein he pretends to be planning to marry, as a way to pressure Noriko. Aghast that her father is planning to remarry, she gives in, and marries. In a wrenching final scene, the professor peels a pear, wan, resigned, poignant.

One fascinating aspect of this film if the professor's reluctance to pressure his daughter to conform to traditional expectations and roles. He's happy living with her, having her take care of him. Yet he is pressured by those around him, and sacrifices for her future good. Divorce seemed to be casually mentioned, and I wondered when divorce became an acceptable topic to mention in Hollywood films (I think of Lucy and Ricky sleeping in separate beds in the 1950s, as an example of different mores).

The camera work was stunning. I could not remember ever having seen a camera dwell on a room without a being in it. I've read that one criticism of Ozu is that his camera is always mere inches off the ground, but that seems absurd, though not entirely an inaccurate comment.

The two main actors in this film, and others of Ozu, were Hara Setsuko and Chishu Ryu.

A posting by Peter Bradshaw on Wednesday 16 June 2010 in the Guardian celebrates the 90th birthday of Setsuko Hara.

AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON

Sanma no aji

Her best friend, who is divorced and happy to be so, pushes her to marry. Her father's friends, with whom he regularly has restaurant meals that include copious amounts of saké and the more-than-occasional beer, soon begin to press him on why his daughter is unmarried (including one who has remarried).  on seeing his former teacher living with his old, unmarried daughter,

Escape from Amsterdam

Sherwood, Barrie. (2008). Escape from Amsterdam. New York : Thomas Dunne Books.

After reading Housekeeper and the Professor, and Elegance of the hedgehog, watching Ozu films as a result therefrom, I yearned for more Japanese. This book seemed in keeping with that theme, yet offering a slightly different take.

Started out fine: a young man deep in debt is informed by his father that he and his sister have inherited prints and other assets from a deceased aunt that could results in vast sums of yen for them. Seeing his ticket out of debt, Aozora goes looking for his sister in southern Japan, where he imagines she is working. They both must appear at the lawyer's office for the inheritance to go to them.

As he travels south, Japan does emerge as a character in this novel, and the narrative moves along nicely. Mai's phone is being used by another woman, and her cryptic answers draw Aozoa south. But as he arrives at Amsterdam, a theme park that promises all the pleasures tourists might want, from parades featuring a Princess Michiko look-alike (that is one of two of Mai's jobs) to prostitution, the story weakens. From there is goes on a sort of glide pattern, and although Sherwood tries, he can rescue the book from its two and a half star rating.

The elegance of the hedgehog

Barbery, M., & Anderson, A. (2008). The Elegance of the Hedgehog. New York: Europa Editions.

Indeed an elegant tale. With its refined taste and political perspective, this is an elegant, light-spirited and very European adult fable. (Kirkus)

Funny, poignant, incisive. Renée Michel is concierge in an upper-crust building whose tenants are all wealthy, some socialists, some not, and all are oblivious to what goes on under their very noses. What they see is what they know, what they expect to see, and all else is dismissed as irrelevant before being even seen. A proletarian autodidact, she ponders Kant, enjoys Tolstoy (her cat is named Leo), and considers the films of Ozu and Wenders sublime. Paloma Josse is the overly-smart 12 year-old younger daughter of a Socialist minister (government and watching rugby and drinking beer, along with entertaining seem to be his interests; nothing can be called a passion for him) and his wife (the only things that approach being passions for her are her psychotherapy sessions and her devotion to anti-depressants). Paloma has a cold war with her parents, and a hot one with her university-aged older sister. Already aware of the vacuity of life, she has scheduled her suicide for the day of her 13th birthday.

Renée and Paloma alternate narratives. Each observes the absurdity and predictability of the other tenants, and keep her interests, intelligence and passions secret. Each delves into her interests. Paloma dissects the emptiness of schooling, both hers (uninvolved teachers, students involved in drugs and sex) and her sister's (predictable pseudo-intellectualism).

When a tenant dies, his family sells the apartment, and the buyer is a Japanese man who immediately sets to remodel the flat. Both his project and his person set tongues a-wagging, and despite their purported lack of interest, many of the tenants are aching to see what is being done inside the 4th floor flat, as well as get to meet the new tenant.

Kakuro Ozu is an elder Japanese man who exquisite manners and mysteriously sublte nature excite the interests of so many of the residents of 7, Rue de Grenelle. In a chance meeting with the concierge, he asks her if she knew the former tenants of his flat. In answering in what she hopes is a disinterested manner, she inadvertently quotes the opening line of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (all happy families are alike) . Monsieur Ozu catches it, and supplies the ending of the line (Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way). Renée is aghast that she has, perhaps, given herself away. Indeed, she has, and it is the beginning of an elegant, beautiful, exquisite set of relationships between three kindred souls: Kakuro, Renée and Paloma. Add Marcella, Renée friend, and the story sparkles.

A gem.

The Housekeeper and the Professor

Ogawa, Y¯oko. (2009). The housekeeper and the professor. translated by Stephen Snyder. New York : Picador.

An unique novel, in more ways than one. A housekeeper is sent to care for a mathematics professor who has a memory span of 80 minutes (as a result of a car accident many years back). Thus, every day she must reintroduce herself to the Professor (neither he, nor she, in fact, have names). He asks for her telephone number and birth date, and uses such numbers to familiarize himself, and communicate, with her. One day she tells him she has a 10 year old son, and thus must rush home; he insists she bring him to his cabin and feed him there. On seeing the boy, the Professor nicknames him root, as he says that the boy's head reminds him of the square root symbol - √

The professor teaches them about prime numbers and other kinds of numbers, and turns out to be a rabid baseball fan; but for his memory ending in 1985, he and Root share a love for the Hanshin Tigers. Root and his mother develop love for the Professor.

In reading the book, I developed some of the interest in, and infatuation with, numbers that she did; I also saw parts of Japanese culture that are part of the author's descriptions and narrative. A beautiful, simple, engrossing book. A gem.

Books on Finance During Trouble

1. The House of Morgan Ron Chernow. Atlantic Monthly, 1990. 332.12 C


Can a bank actually be heroic? Ron Chernow suggests as much in his exhaustive history of J.P. Morgan and its instrumental role in the development of the industrial Western economy from the late 19th century to the end of the 20th. But the clear-eyed Chernow does not ignore the less-than-heroic in this National Book Award-winning title, which is as much a social and political history as it is the story of the Morgan dynasty. Of the fallout from the Crash of 1873, Chernow writes: "Not for the last time, America turned against Wall Street with puritanical outrage and a sense of offended innocence." When World War I erupted: "Wall Street, which prided itself on its prescience, was once again caught napping by a historic event." Both tendencies remain in place today. What we do not have is a Wall Street king like John Pierpont Morgan, the man who built the banking dynasty and who had the power to intervene personally in the Panic of 1893 and save the U.S. Treasury by launching a syndicate to replenish the nation's gold supply.


[Emphasis added. Seems some things never change.]



2. The Go-Go Years.  John Brooks. Weybright & Talley, 1973. 332.645 B

Just as the stock market moves in cycles, even though each new generation seems to think each new high and low is happening for the first time, so, too, do market players often imagine that they're breaking new ground when most are not. Today's high-flyers are pretty much the same as those depicted by John Brooks in "The Go-Go Years," his account of how the stock market changed during the 1960s. At the very moment when stocks were truly going mainstream in America, Brooks produced one of the most enjoyable and insightful books ever written about the tribes and tactics of the stock market. Chronicling the escapades of almost-forgotten swashbucklers such as Gerald Tsai and Saul Steinberg, he produced incomparable observations about Wall Street's merry-go-round of triumph and tragedy. He describes 1968 as the year "Wall Street had become a mindless glutton methodically eating itself to paralysis and death," something that happened again in the period 2004-07. And what of our capacity to learn from our mistakes? "Reform is a frail flower that languishes in the hot glare of prosperity," he observes. Given that prosperity still looks a while off at this point in 2010, maybe reform will actually bloom.

3. The Bubble Economy. Christopher Wood. Atlantic Monthly, 1992. 332.6322 W

"What everybody knows is seldom worth knowing," begins "The Bubble Economy," an incisive, readable assessment of the Japanese real-estate boom and bust of the 1980s. Christopher Wood, the former Tokyo bureau chief for the Economist, writes with such flair that it's a shame he gave up journalism, becoming a financial analyst and the publisher of the newsletter Greed & Fear. His book has aged well; swap out names and institutions and it might have been written last year. "Isaac Newton actually arrived in Japan in 1990," Wood writes. "His presence did not prove a pretty sight in a country where too many people had concluded that the laws of gravity, when applied to their own financial markets, had somehow been suspended." Like a faded rock star, the 367-year-old Newton is back for another world tour.

4. When Genius Failed. Roger Lowenstein.  Random House, 2000. 332.6 L


A raft of books have been written—and are still being written—trying to explain the complex financial products, such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, behind the near collapse of Wall Street about 16 months ago. The last time something this complicated took the system to the brink, it was the crash in 1998 of the gigantic hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management, when its "relative value" trades went bad. Luckily Roger Lowenstein was on the case—there is no better writer for explaining the intricacies of finance in eminently understandable terms. His description of how Wall Street reached its precarious state in 1998, necessitating a rush to bail out LTCM, captures the birth of the "too big to fail" doctrine: "Almost imperceptibly, the Street had bought into a massive faith game, in which each bank had become knitted to its neighbor through a web of contractual obligations requiring little or no down payment." A decade later, we'd done it again. If more people had read "When Genius Failed," today's miseries might have been avoided.

5. Point of No Return. John P. Marquand. Little, Brown, 1949.  FIC Marquand

While Wall Street hardly has trouble generating stories that seem straight out of a novel, there are a handful of sublime works of fiction that capture the spirit of its strivers in ways that nonfiction cannot. These novels, like Tom Wolfe's excellent "Bonfire of the Vanities," show us what the traders were thinking as well as what they were doing. Nearly four decades before "Bonfire," John P. Marquand wrote "Point of No Return," a lost masterpiece that shines a bright light on the mind-set of that species of Banker Americanus that helped to build the modern financial-services edifice and that colonized suburbia. Marquand's protagonist, Charles Gray, managed not just to survive but to thrive in the 1929 stock market crash, the Depression and its aftermath, and he has collected an enviable set of trophies: the new house in Westchester County, the wife, the two kids and the country-club membership. But "Point of No Return" is hardly a cheerful success story. Instead, it's a gripping portrayal of a man obsessed with roads not taken and of the insecurities that lie just beneath a veneer of seeming achievement. "The more you get, the more afraid you get," says Gray. "Maybe fear is what makes the world go round."

— Mr. Duff McDonald is the author of "Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase" (Simon & Schuster, 2009). He is a contributing editor at New York magazine.