Carrie Newcomer: September 2023 Artist of the Month

 

 

 

From the edges of the prairie comes a beautiful new album from Indiana’s Carrie Newcomer. A Great Wild Mercy officially drops on October 13, but there’s plenty of reason to order now. This is the project about which I spoke with her recently. [Link here] It’s also the strongest salve you can buy without a prescription.

 

The song “A Great Wild Mercy” is folk rock at its best. It began life as poem from Newcomer’s own collection. It opens with the image of a woman in a rainstorm huddled under a blue umbrella. She abruptly decides to fold it and let the waters wash over her. But the refrain embodies what the song/poem is really about: There’s a big wide sky filled with stars/That feels so close but feels so far/I'm tired of all the rage, tired of all the worry/I'm ready for a great wild mercy… In other words, it’s about letting go of despair, getting back to basics, and embracing our authentic selves. Bell-like backing within an energetic mix are clarion calls to be true to that path. Indigo Girls percussionist Jim Brock is an understated but steady presence in this and numerous other tracks and is emblematic of how the album’s production–with Newcomer and David Weber at the helm–frames the lyrics but never gets in the way. (You might think that’s what all producers do, but you’d be wrong!)

 

Newcomer’s voice has been described as “rich as Godiva chocolate.” I’m a Cadbury guy, but I get the metaphor. In a world of little girl voices, Newcomer’s mature, smooth, and deeper tones are perfect for coating the world’s woes and whines. Not that Newcomer sugarcoats such things; she’s interested in positive and constructive ways to deal with them and there’s nothing wide-eyed utopian about her approach. A song she wrote with John McCutcheon, “Start With A Stone,” reminds us that nothing worthwhile is born from nothing: Start with a stone/The humblest of things/From this relic of bedrock/Eternity springs. In an indirect but palpable way, this song is a companion to “In the Shape of a Perfect Arc,” which also speaks of how to stay upbeat. It is one of several offerings in which Newcomer’s folk sensibilities are infused with touches of bluegrass. That makes sense as Hawktail musicians such as Jordan Tice (guitar),  Brittany Haas (fiddle), and Paul Kolwert (bass) lend their talents throughout the album.

 

I’m always a sucker for a lovely waltz, so I give a ringing endorsement to “Questions Before Dark,” which focuses on small, seemingly trivial things that suggest bigger questions. “Another Day,” a lullaby, is one of several songs that spotlight Gary Walters’ gentle and dancing piano notes and it might be my favorite track. Who among us would not yearn for enough inner tranquility to sing: I’ve been looking for beauty/In these broken times/By making some beauty/In the world that I find/ Some say it’s no use/It’s too much to brave/But I believe there’s still/So much worth being saved. (The link is to a homemade demo.)

 

Newcomer is upfront about those who inspire her, including Thomas Merton on “Take More Time, Cover Less Ground,” and a monk who finds grace and service in silence (“Singing in the Dark”), but the album’s change of pace song–and the only other one with a pre-release video–is “Potluck,” which she co-wrote with Siri Undlin of Humbird. In the simple act of sharing food, Newcomer and Undlin unveil the “quiet mercy” of community and gratitude. And it doesn’t hurt a bit that the arrangement is tightly constructed but casts the illusion of an impromptu jam.

 

If you want to get a sense of how Newcomer sounds in a rehearsed live setting, “You Can Do the Hard Thing” isn’t on the new album, but it gives a flavor of how Newcomer turns a concert into a living room. It also shows why I’m one of Carrie’s biggest fans. Maybe someday I’ll be as well-adjusted as she!

 

You can watch more Carrie Newcomer videos here.

 

Rob Weir

 

Birnam Wood: Eleanor Catton Astonishes Anew

BIRNAM WOOD (2023)

By Eleanor Catton

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 432 pages.

★★★★★

 

 

 

New Zealand’s Eleanor Catton has become one of my favorite authors. I adored The Luminaries (2013), for which she won the Booker Prize when was just 28. Catton took her time writing Birnam Wood and patience paid off; many critics have touted it as the best book of 2023.

 

Shakespeare fans will recognize Birnam Wood as a hubris device from Macbeth. In Catton’s novel it’s the name of a group of eco warriors who, in their own minds at least, fancy themselves anarchists whose tactics parallel those of 17^th century English Diggers. That is, they are not violent; they appropriate unused lands, cultivate the soil, and raise food for themselves and others. The New York Times called Birnam Wood a “generational (anti-baby boomer) cri de coeur.” That’s catchy, but simplistic.

 

Birnam Wood is smart, loaded with hubris, and is, at turns, horrifying and amusing. Much of the humor is directed at the 20-somethings in the Birnam Wood collective. Their naiveté is on full display, not the least of which resides in founder Mira Bunting. She is resilient, but a wide-eyed romantic who imagines that a network of vegetable-planters will shake both middle-class complacency and the foundations of capitalism. Even her closest Birnam Wood friend, Shelley Noakes, who attends to organizational nuts-and-bolts that the charismatic Mira overlooks, feels herself aging out of the group and is about to bolt like wild spearmint. Shelley sees Mira as a hippie wannabe and she’s not wrong.

 

Mira definitely has a bee in her bonnet when she learns that Owen Darvish owns thousands of acres on New Zealand’s South Island and is passing himself off as a philanthropic steward of the land. When a landslide kills five people in the Korowai Pass near his estate, she’s off in her van to engage in veggie trespassing. (The pass is real; the nearby town of “Thorndike” is fictional but analogous to several farming towns west of Christchurch.) Imagine her surprise when the Darvishes are off  enjoying their knighthoods and Robert Lemoine, an American, is in residence. What’s a late-middle-aged high tech billionaire doing in New Zealand? Especially the owner of Autonomo, a drone manufacturer? It takes Robert a nano second to expose Mira’s pseudonym attempts, yet he claims to admire her spirit. Unbeknown to Mira, he despises the pretentious Darvishes and plans to buy them out. (Catton’s intent is to lampoon status-conscious title chasers.) Is Robert on the level about wanting such a remote property to decompress?   

 

Back at Birnam Wood, Tony Gallo has returned from Mexico after several years abroad. He’s a hunk who once slept with Mira and still fancies her, but he’s also a rogue, so maybe Shelley or Rosie Demarney would do in a pinch. Tony is highly intelligent but, in different ways, is as intractable and quixotic as Mira. For example, he views himself a crusading journalist based on a few blog posts and essays in unread places. Unlike others, though, he has considered revolutionary ideals (semi-) grounded in theory. But when he calls out Birnam’s dreamy idealism with mansplaining aggravation, it serves mainly to contribute to old saw that the Left eats its young. Imagine Birnam Wood debates when Mira shows up with Lemoine’s offer of $100,000 of literal seed money for a Birnam Wood demonstration project at Thorndike. Is this real, or Mira’s Devil at the crossroads temptation?

 

Tony decides to investigate. So should you! You will pick up hints about Lemoine’s motives, but the novel shifts to one about circumstances and choices.  Several crisis points force hands, but Birnam Wood cuts like a surgical knife when dissecting questions of idealism versus realism and the myriad dangers in trying to thread the needle between them. “Bonding” scenes between Robert and Birnam Wood are both droll and cringeworthy.

 

Mira has been compared to Jane Austen’s Emma, which is apt if you can picture Emma Woodhouse in Wellington boots, covered in mud, and sporting a foul mouth. Mira certainly yields no ground as a meddler. There’s an old labor song titled “Which Side Are You On?” To revisit the Times comment assumed anti-baby boomer frame, the brilliance of Catton’s careful plotting and penetrating prose forces us to answer the song’s question, “Exactly.” To the degree Catton tips her hand, it’s in her suggestion that to whom we turn to save the world has potentially apocalyptic consequences.

 

Rob Weir

 

This Time Tomorrow: Time Travels with Alice

 

This Time Tomorrow

By Emma Straub

Riverhead Books, 320 pages

★★★

 

 

 

If you like time travel books, This Time Tomorrow has intriguing moments. Alice Stern had a happy childhood, even though her mother left the family early on. Alice was raised by her father, Leonard, whose children's book, Time Brothers, was made into a TV show so successful that he never had to write again. He sent Alice to a competitive New York City private school, indulged her, adored her friends, and treated her as an equal. (He even calls her “Al-pal.”) Their life at Pomander Walk–a real-life Manhattan cooperative apartment complex–was part salon and part extended childhood.

 

Now 40, Alice has a relatively new boyfriend and is an administrator at Belvedere, the progressive school she attended. She worries that she's being pushed aside for promotion, is depressed that her father’s impending death, and is freaked out from an admissions interview with the child of Tommy Joffey, a guy after whom she lusted when she was younger. To top it off, her lifelong best friend “Sam” (Samantha) is moving to New Jersey with her younger husband and their three children. Sam assures Alice they'll continue to meet just like old times but... New Jersey… Holland Tunnel?!!

 

Then time shifts. Author Emma Straub tells Alice's story in six parts. Part One is the present, but in Part Two she's celebrating her 16^th birthday, Leonard is vibrant, and Sam is by her side. Alice isn't sure how she got there. She left the hospital, drank too much, couldn’t find her keys, and fell asleep in the Pomander Walk guard tower. She awakes, the year was 1992, but she knows that she's from the future. Try convincing your BFF of that; yet oddly she does. She and Sam attend Comic-Con where she picks her father’s brain about time travel. Strangely, he too believes her story.

 

Unlike novels such as The Time Traveler's Wife, Alice seldom finds herself in grandiose situations; more like perplexing ones. All Alice can discern is that her time travels seem to be connected to her birthday, her father, and Pomander Walk. Straub enlivens the novel by dropping in time travel references such as her father's Time Brothers book and movies like Back to the Future and Peggy Sue Got Married. Alice’s small shifts, though, make This Time Tomorrow more akin to Groundhog Day than to a dramatic tale such Time and Again. In Alice’s mind, she has never done anything unexpected and “was just floating. Like a seahorse.”  

 

Each time she shifts back to the present–­2016 in her case­–her father is still dying. But in Part Three, it’s 2006 and she is married to Tommy. He is apparently a big shot of some sort, but instead of the three children he had with Ursula in 2016, he has two with Alice: Leo and Dorothy. (A sly Wizard of Oz reference?) This time she’s at Pomander Walk celebrating her 30^th birthday, Leonard has a second book, a new wife, and Alice visits a psychic.

 

Part Four is a series of time jumps attached to life decisions such as whether she should quit her job. Perhaps, though, she's figured something out. Although each jump has a new set of externals, she begins to wonder if the purpose of the birthday shifts is to keep her father alive: “Leonard is immortal, if only for the day.” Imagine what Sigmund Freud could do with a line like that!

 

In Part Five, she’s 40 again, but a different 40. By this point in the book, Alice is feeling lost and perhaps we, the readers, can relate. I’ll leave it to you to decide if Part Six is satisfying. From one perspective it makes sense in terms of novel logic; in another, it strays deeply into pop psychology territory. I will say that after a while it feels as if Straub has overplayed metaphors of emptiness, regret, and being frozen in time.

 

It is, however, the kind of book that invites the description “charming.” It’s also fun to flash back with her to see what things appear in one time period and disappear in another. A dominant message is that time is precious, and who can argue with that? For the record, she’s the daughter of writer Peter Straub, whose work delved heavily into the supernatural. Like father, like daughter. On a sadder note, Peter died four months after Emma’s This Time Tomorrow was published. Now that’s creepy.

 

Rob Weir

Cape Ann Museum II

 

Cape Ann Museum

27 Pleasant Street

Gloucester, MA

 

 

 

I recently posted a review of the Edward Hopper exhibit at the Cape Ann Museum (CAM). I liked it, but wasn’t blown away by it. 

 

 

Fitz Henry Lane

 

That said, there are reasons to pay a visit to the museum that will compensate if, like me, you wanted a bit more from the Hopper show. Know first of all, that the museum has been in Gloucester since 1875 and in its present location since 1923. During the 1930s the museum began collecting the work of Fitz Henry Lane (1804-65) and now has the largest repository of his work in the world. 

 

 

 

Lane is something of an enigma, so much so that it wasn’t until 2005 that art historians realized his name was actually Fitz Henry, not Fitz Hugh as he had been mistakenly attributed for over a century. He was born in Gloucester, lived in Boston and worked as a printer between 1832-45, then moved back to Gloucester for the last two decades of his life. Gloucester has long been a fishing town and Lane had a clear affinity for the sea and ships. He was particularly good at capturing changing weather conditions, as can be seen in his contrasts between calm and stormy waters. (Alas, death at sea is part of Gloucester’s historical legacy. Remember The Perfect Storm? It was one of many such tragedies.) 

 

 

 

Lane was such a keen ship-spotter that he could tell boats from afar without seeing their nameplates. If you’re a landlubber like me his boat canvases can wear thin after a few, but his obsession was no more unusual than the car aficionados or other enthusiasts of our day. 

 

 

 

Lane is considered a master of luminism, which as the name implies, is about representing light. Luminist painters are often instantly recognizable as their works exude an inner glow. It’s as if they are backlit by some hidden source. 

 

Brace's Rock by Lane

 

On a personal note, Emily and I have been attending Labor Day family clambakes on Eastern Point for many decades. It takes place in Brace’s Cove, so-named for a rock just offshore. Lane painted it and here’s my photograph of it in 2023.

 

Brace's Rock by Me!

 

Because Gloucester is indeed an ocean port, the CAM has lots of maritime objects and paraphernalia. Think everything from lighthouse lenses–see its large Fresnel bulbs–to mastheads, ship models, tools, and so forth. My favorite piece is the Our Lady of Good Voyage carving that once stood near the apex of the city’s Portuguese Church. It has a miracle associated with it. A group of sailors snapped their oars in rough seas, appealed to the Virgin Mary, and she supplied placid waters that allowed them to drift to safety.

 

Our Lady of Good Voyage

 

But back to painting. The Northeast coast has spawned art colonies, including one that hangs on in Gloucester’s Rocky Neck neighborhood. Artists often traveled between them–especially during the summer months–from Cos Cob to Old Lyme, Ogunquit, and Mohegan Island, if you will. With less intention than circumstantial familiarity, a veritable mobile New England school emerged that spanned the late 19^th and 20^th centuries. The CAM has outstanding works from Milton Avery, Cecelia Breaux, Stuart Davis, Winslow Homer, Rockwell Kent, John Sloan, and more. 

 

Avery, Front Porch Sitters

Davis, Gloucester Port

Stuart Davis

Rockwell Kent

John Sloan, Gloucester 1918

    

    
 

Alice Beach Winter

 

The lower level has some classic 1930s proletarian mural art from Charles Allan Winter. In the nearby auditorium you’ll find works that celebrated Cape Ann quarry workers.

 

Charles Allan Winter (ironic commentary!)

 

Leon Kroll, Babson Point Quarry Workers

 

 The CAM also maintains historical buildings and homes, including Lane’s, throughout Gloucester. You’ll probably have leftover energy to see some of them, as the CAM is a regional museum that whets your appetite rather than drowning you in gigantic blockbuster shows. I like museums such as the CAM; they invite you to linger and wander rather than fear you’ll miss something you were supposed to see.

 

Rob Weir

Doctor Rat and A Painted House: The Short & the Long

 

When I travel and have connecting flights, I usually download short novels that I can polish off around the time the first leg finishes and a longer ones that can read in spurts and stops no matter what delays and interruptions occur.

 

 

 

My short book for Boston-London-Geneva was Doctor Rat by William Kotzwinkle (1977, Bantam Books, 215 pages). He’s an unorthodox writer and acquired taste, but this one won a major fantasy award in 1977, though it was dismissed by the New York Times as “zoo-radical-chic.” I love a good controversy and came away understanding both the praise and the mudslinging. It has echoes of 1984 but is usually compared to Animal Farm, though Doctor Rat makes it seem like a petting zoo! Doctor Rat manages to be hair-raising, stomach-churning, and funny at the same time, but it’s definitely not for the squeamish.

 

It is set inside a research test lab in which animals are used for all manner of ghoulish tests. The descriptions describe factory-level animal torture and the lab head, dubbed “Learned Professor” by Doctor Rat, is a veritable Josef Mengele. There are obvious parallels to Nazi deathcamps, yet Doctor Rat supports the lab with Stockholm Syndrome-like fervor. Doctor Rat sees everything as advancing science, “writes” of one gruesome thing after another in his “newsletter,” and carefully “cites” sources. Those  include treatises about his own species such as “How to Roast a Rat.” When a quavering animal is removed from its cage, he shouts “death is freedom,” a distressing echo of “work sets you free,” the slogan above the gates of Auschwitz. Doc literally sings the praises of the lab. As we learn, he is intelligent but was driven mad from endless time in the lab mazes. Thus, Doc’s studies and writings are probably imaginary.

 

When a power struggle erupts between his own compliant species and rebellious dogs, you can guess where his loyalties lie. And Doctor Rat certainly wants nothing to do an interspecies alliance seeking to take over the lab and free its subjects. Brutal experiments and vivisection appear in more detail than most will wish to read–­skimming recommended­–but you can draw lessons about blind followers and discovery-at-any-cost science. Fascist metaphors abound, but back in the 1970s Kotzwinkle also intended critiques of the Vietnam War and unexamined nationalism. This book is horrifying, but the bigger question is whether his points are valid and his implied warnings important.

 

* * * * *

 

 

I wanted something lighter after this, though I only sort of chose my next book wisely. I don’t like John Gresham very much, but a friend suggested trying his non-courtroom novel A Painted House (2001, Dell, 466 pages). I won’t say I loved it, but it has parallels to contemporary American immigration issues.

 

On the surface the novel seems like The Grapes of Wrath: The Next Generation. It takes place in 1952 during a single Arkansas summer when Luke Chandler is seven-years-old. He lives with his family in Black Oak, a backwater cotton country dot on the map. His dream is to one day either play baseball for the Cardinals or become a road grader. That’s a strange combo, but his life his life has been defined by poverty, snakes, tornados, outhouses, family feuds, debt peonage, and disputes between Baptists and Methodists. He is supposed to hate Northerners, though he’s not sure why, and there is no telephone or TV. Luke sees a World Series game at the storeowner’s home, but some worry that “modern America was slowly invading rural Arkansas.” The Chandlers’ unpainted house and barn are symbols of a stuck-in-time existence.

 

Luke’s father is a sharecropper, needs to hire outside help to get the cotton picked, and doesn’t have enough capital to be choosy about whom he hires. He lucks out by securing a hard-working crew of Mexicans that includes “Cowboy,” who loves baseball almost as much as Luke. The Chandlers are unlucky in that they also hire the Spruill family, which includes the brutal Hank, one of the reddest rednecks in the region. The Spruills are down on their luck, but retain a sense of superiority over the Chandlers and especially over Mexicans. Old hatreds, barely hidden secrets, threats, and violence hang in the air like  sharp scythe about to severe hopes of a successful harvest. Not even baseball can resolve hate, but a painted house suggests a frail possibility of redemption. Re: the Spruills’ hatred of Mexicans, it’s like a 19^th century French writer put it, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

 

Rob Weir  

Be Dignified if You Work with the Public

Who gets the meme?

 

We’ve all felt frustration and have dreamt of letting the object of our ire know exactly what we think. If you deal with the public though, check those thoughts at the back of your teeth.  

 

A sad tale.

 

A recent example involved a Northampton police officer’s interaction with a woman whose first language is Spanish. Video coverage from his own body cam shows he was out of control before he left his cruiser. He approached her with a shower of F-bombs, something one should NEVER–mark it in capital letters–do in a job involving the public. He was breathing too much fire to comprehend that the woman he pulled over for a freaking broken taillight had only rudimentary English skills and that his actions–including having her handcuffed–were racist as well as inappropriate. Leave those F-bombs for the locker room, beers with your buddies, or screams in the closet. Do your job with dignity.

 

That’s basic. I once had a job selling appliances. My district manager was an older gentleman who insisted that the old saw that “the customer is always right” is the biggest crock of nonsense ever uttered. Quite a few customers, he averred, were complete idiots, but he added that you can’t say that to their faces.

 

I tried to remember that when I worked with juvenile offenders. Young people often act out and, sad to say, some never grow out of it. I know what the officer felt. It happened rarely, but I been cursed at and called every name I know, plus a few I had to look up. Once a kid threw a punch I deflected. But my job was to defuse, not elevate, bad situations with kids already in legal trouble.

 

As a high school teacher, I sometimes joined colleagues in gripe sessions about those who told us we had easy jobs: six-and-half hours a day with weekends and summers off. (As if!). We all had stories of classroom outbursts and parent-teacher conferences in which we were accused of being personally responsible for their child’s failures and all the ills of society. I remember one involving a math teacher sitting at a table across from me. He was asked by a father, “How’s he doing?” The teacher was flabbergasted, as there had been numerous conferences to address fighting, throwing things, truancy, threats, and non-existent academic achievement. The math teacher calmly reiterated those things. A blank face stared back and asked, “Yeah, but how’s he doing?” WTF! We all thought, “There’s an elevator that never left the basement,” but we said it privately.

 

There’s much that can go wrong in classrooms when you multiply 15-30 students by six periods by 180 days. Once I had a kid try to leap from a second-story window before another student grabbed him. I could tell from his eyes he was higher than a kite, but I made the mistake of saying so to his parents. They threatened to sue me. (The sad ending was that 16-year-old later fatally ODed.) Mostly, I was fortunate, loved my students, and most treated me with respect. But I’d be lying if I said I loved them every day, never threw a kid out of class, or imagined hurling swears at several of them. But no F-bombs. I could have been suspended for that. I could have done so with less fear as a professor instructing students considered adults, but why would I pour oil on a fire? I did have a condescending over-privileged student who deflected all efforts to mollify her. I called her out in clear-but-careful language and kept my real feelings in my head.

 

How about customer service and public relations professionals who get communications from individuals who might be mutant space aliens? Comic Don Novello of Father Guido Sarducci fame once assumed the persona of Lazlo Toth, a crank-letter writer. He published a hysterical book that’s also a textbook on how to write respectful responses to crazy people.   

 

It's hard to keep it together in all circumstances, but there are two hard-and-fast rules. One: Never drop F-bombs like a junior high school boy when approaching a member of the public. Two: Never lay hands on them unless you are physically endangered. The police officer flunked on both accounts. Get thee to anger management training or find another job.  

Ace in the Hole: Old Movie or a Mirror?

 

Ace in the Hole (1951)

Directed by Billy Wilder

Paramount, 111 minutes, Not-rated (but Hollywood Code in place)

★★★

 

 

 Ace in the Hole is on the National Film Registry, though it shows up in some platforms as The Big Carnival. That would “carnival” as in messy sensationalist hype, not lame rides and bad food. The brief title change­ had to with script writer Victor Desny’s lawsuit against director Billy Wilder who likely used insider information to sandbag Desny’s planned Floyd Collins project.

 

The name Floyd Collins might not ring many bells now, but his sad tale was one of the most ballyhooed stories of the 1920s. Collins was trapped in a Kentucky mine and died there while yellow journalists hyped his story to the skies. Ace in the Hole is a thinly veiled Collins tale set in New Mexico. That's where the free-wheeling, high-living Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) lands after being fired from a series of jobs in the newspaper business. In essence, Tatum is an egomaniac who believes he’s better than anyone else, but he is unreliable and too much trouble to keep on staff. He drifts to Albuquerque, where he settles for a paltry $60 a week job and he probably is better than anyone else on the paper, though he commits the unpardonable sin of telling them so. After a year on the job, he is still being handed grunt jobs such as covering a rattlesnake roundup.

 

 He is on his way to the venomous wigglers with photographer Herbie Cooke (Robert Arthur) when fortune seemingly smiles upon him when Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict) is trapped in a mine. Tatum rushes to the scene and finds that Leo is suffering from pneumonia. He clears enough rubble to get within talking distance from Leo, gains his confidence, and is able to bring in some supplies to buy more time. On the surface, Tatum is hailed a s hero. In truth, he’s an S.O.B. who finds himself in relatively good company. Leo's wife Lorraine (Jan Sterling) is a floozy with big dreams of her own that don't include a hick like Leo. She wants to leave him and head for a big city, but that doesn't mesh with Tatum 's plans. He wants her to play the role of grief-stricken spouse and collude with him to delay rescue efforts to keep the story alive so he can milk it for financial gain and sell his talents to either a Chicago or New York publisher. He is even willing to woo Lorraine. You could call this shark versus shark. Given that this is a film noir production, you probably recognize Lorraine a classic femme fatale and won’t need to call Las Vegas for betting odds.

 

The rating system wasn’t in place in 1951, but the infamous Hollywood Code was. Originally the script called for law enforcement officials to be in on the fix of delaying Leo’s rescue. Under the Code however, censors insisted that police should always be on the side of good, so the script was changed. In my estimation, this weakened the film and reduced it to several cynics playing with a working man's life. The Floyd Collins story involved the systemic collusion between disreputable journalism and the public’s yearning for lurid news.

Kirk Douglas was very good in the role of Chuck Tatum, as was Robert Arthur as a photographer whose loyalties were uncertain. Jan Sterling is a largely forgotten actress, but she won an Academy Award in 1954 for her role in a film The High and the Mighty. I suspect though, that modern audiences will find her performance a bit like something from the old racy magazine True Confessions. Not to mention that the floozy role is decidedly problematic today.

 

Nonetheless, Ace in the Hole is another of those old movies that seem strangely familiar when we strip away 70-yar-old backdrops, costumes, and mannerisms and imagine it in modern garb. There are many recent stories that are tabloid-style in content. Perhaps you recall the hype of baby Jessica McClure, who fell down a Texas well, or the 24/7 coverage of the 2006 Sago Mine disaster. Do you remember how people were glued to social media, newspapers, and televisions during the 2018 incident in which a group of scouts was trapped in a cave in Thailand? As I always remind people, look beneath the surface. When we do, t’is often the sad case that we gaze into a mirror.

 

Rob Weir