Books
14.
The Monster of Florence, by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi
The inept and misguided investigation by the complicated Italian justice system into the still unsolved mystery of the titular
Monster of Florence reminded me of Bong Joon-ho's
Memories of Murder, where rural South Korean police are unable to solve a series of murders because their forensic expertise was non-existent and the police sought the easiest answers possible. Unable to break the Sardinian Trail and find evidence to add to your investigation? Bribe the local town fool with food and drink into confessing that he was the one responsible for the killings. Want to exploit the Monster of Florence's notoreity? Create ever expanding and increasingly outlandish conspiracy theories of satanic cults among the Italian aristocracy and parley it to ever more important positions and power.
Through his conversations with one such member of the Italian aristocracy, Preston gets to the cultural differences that complicated his negotiation with Italian officials as his own legal troubles began. To an American and a writer like Preston, the truth is absolute, and it's an absolute good to uncover it. The Italians place great value on preserving and gaining face; Preston and Spezi's inquiries into the truth behind the Monster of Florence challenged authority and the people who had become powerful based on the fictions they created to explain the Monster.
Unfortunately, the book itself felt like a burden to read, especially in light of Erik Larson's
Devil in the White City, which I read not too long ago. Part of the feeling likely comes from Preston's conflicting need to tell a story in which he becomes an important character; you can almost feel Preston strain to stay objective in certain absurd moments of his life. Part of it comes from the scope; the murders potentially spanned from 1968 to 1985, though the majority of them took place in the 1980s. You can feel Preston struggle to tell the stories of these murders and the investigations, and a lot of the telling feels superficial, lacking the depth that Erik Larson achieved in
Devil in the White City.
I'll admit to feeling incredulous about the fantastical theories the Italian authorities pursued and the bureaucratic nightmare in which Preston and Spezi found themselves in the second half of the book. The stakes in that section feel greater than in Preston's recounting of the investigation into the Monster's murders.
The book tries to straddle between a more dramatic, literary retelling of the events and a journalistic account of the Italian authorities' and the writers' investigations and Preston's and Spezi's subsequent legal troubles. However, it felt strangely lifeless, possibly because of the conflicting objectives.
15.
The Great God Pan, by Arthur Machen
A horror classic, an inspiration to Lovecraft and other "weird" fiction writers, Machen's The Great God Pan points to a more prevalent impression that Greek mythology, but specifically Pan, had on English writers at the end of the nineteenth century. Like Dr. Faustus or Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Raymond unleashes something through his experiments in "transcendental medicine" that science cannot predict or control. Like subsequent examples of weird fiction, the violence, the transgressions, and the horror is merely hinted at, alluded to, but never described outright, both to preserve the mystery and the delicate sensibilities of the readers at the time.
Dr. Raymond's experiment led to the birth of Helen, a beautiful daughter of Pan and Dr. Raymond's experimental subject. Helen, in turns, drives men insane and into ruination. By naming the central cause of ruination "Helen," Machen is clearly drawing a parallel to Helen of Troy, a great and fatal beauty who was also a child of a mortal woman and a god. There's clearly underlying cultural tension between the pagan, Hellenic culture represented by Helen and the Christian, industrialized culture of late-Victorian England.
16.
Fools: Stories, by Joan Silber
Joan Silber's short stories collection, Fools, is a moving collection of six structurally and emotionally interconnected stories. These connections create the emotional webs that bind characters across time and continents, and Silber weaves the web skillfully, pulling at our expectations and understandings of the characters based on the story's perspective. Characters present their lives the way they want us to know them by, and we see the confirmations and contradictions when other characters react to those stories. A daughter reflects on the lessons her anarchist mother imparted on her. We hear from the son of a friend of the anarchist mother; we hear from the girl who stole money from him and drove him to pan-handling to survive.
These characters are all fools, driven by their ideals about love, ideology, religion, and our struggles to define ourselves. A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself, wrote George Bernard Shaw in
Advice to a Young Critic. Silber reflects our own foolishness back to us and gently invites us to consider the many ways in which we are fools.
Because the characters tell us their lives, it's notable when huge swaths of live are covered in brief sentences. Silber's stories are similar to Julian Barnes's
The Sense of an Ending in this regard. The things that would otherwise define us in the moment - our jobs, our relationships, where we live, what we eat, how we dress - are barely discussed as the characters instead tell us about moments of foolishness, of learning, of growth.
Silber's work is satisfying in its cohesion and comforting in its gentility and strong empathy towards the readers and its characters. "I have great faith in fools - self-confident my friends will call it," wrote Edgar Allan Poe in
Marginalia. To that end, I suppose we can describe
Fools: Stories as a wholly foolish work.
Movies
27. Muppets Most Wanted
Perfectly fine family movie, but not as entertaining as the last one. It's missing the heart from Jason Segel's and Amy Adams's characters or from the conflict between Segel's character and Walter. The songs aren't as memorable either; there's nothing like "Man or Muppet" from the last movie.
