The Snowman a Chilling Novel to Read as Winter Lurks

 

 

 

 

 

THE SNOWMAN (2007)

By Jo Nesbø

Knopf, 512 pages

★★★★

 

  

 

 

Get ready for it, faithful blog readers. I’ve been at the League of Women Voters annual used book sale and came back with a large bag filled with novels of favorite authrors and books I wanted to read years ago but was too busy to get to them. Older books are still good books!

 

I have read several Harry Hole mysteries from Norwegian author Jo(n) Nesbø. Hole might put you in mind of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch in the sense that both work on “cold cases,” serious crimes that were never solved. Both are prone to drinking too much, don’t suffer fools gladly, and have been unlucky in love. Harry Hole is also suspected of being out-of-touch with modern police methods and impossible to manage, hence he’s on everyone’s potential firing list whenever police screwup and the need arises to feed the media or public officials a scapegoat. Hole’s ace in the hole–so to speak–is that he is the only investigator in Norwegian history to have solved a serial killer case. (Being Norway, not the USA, that’s a short list!)

 

Several things rock Harry’s world. First, Katrine Bratt transfers into his cold case group in Oslo. She’s bright, beautiful, and from Bergen, which likes to forget that Oslo is the capital. Bratt exudes an inapproachable iciness and a whiff of (perhaps dangerous) ambition. She’s allegedly married, but seems to be coming on to Harry. Second, Harry’s ex-wife Rakel Fauke whose son Oleg looks upon Harry as a fatherly role model though biologically, he’s from a Russian dalliance before Harry or her current husband. Harry’s heavy drinking is partially linked to Rakel, the great love of Harry’s life who got away. She’s been cheating on husband # 2–with Harry–though she claims she only wants his sexual prowess. (They are Scandinavians, so what can I tell you?) Third, Harry’s drinking makes him seem even more of a dinosaur, something that young homicide cop Magnus Skarre occasionally spills in discussions with Harry’s boss Gunnar Hager. Harry’s always a step or two ahead of them, but he knows his head is on the chopping block.

 

Speaking of which, the first snow of the year leads Harry and Katrine into a missing persons case. Strange noises outside lead Birte Becker to investigate. Her husband is at a meeting, Birte tells her son Jonas to stay inside, and that’s the last she is seen. Did she run away? Unlikely as her pink scarf suddenly appears on the snowman they built and her cellphone is missing. When the ring leads Harry to the snowman, something more ominous is clearly afoot. If there is any doubt, Sylvia Ottersen, the mother of twins, also disappears. Police scouring the woods behind her barn make a gruesome discovery: Sylvia’s severed head upon a snowman’s body. Harry suspects a serial killer and Katrine unearths a pattern of disappearances of women with children 24 years into the past, always at the first snowfall.

 

Don’t be put off by the heft of The Snowman; it’s a twisty mystery with more suspects than a campout of patrons waiting for the mall to open on Black Friday. Several doctors are on Harry’s list, as is a missing Bergen cop, an obnoxious TV host who runs a prostitution ring, and Katrine. Questions abound. Why kill mothers? Why are doctors quiet about their research into rare medical conditions? Why haven’t crime scene forensics found more blood? What’s the significance of the killer’s MO (modus operandi)?

 

I found this novel both gripping and creepy. Perhaps it could have benefitted from judicious editing, as its pattern of “fingering” the wrong person as the Snowman wrong wears thin. Red herrings are standard in mysteries, and there’s always the possibility that the translation into English is to blame, but the quarter of the novel is, at once, thrilling and ragged. It sometimes seems that Nesbø stitched unused ideas into this novel. Two nearly fatal standoffs add tension, but steer The Snowman into adventure-story territory. It might not be a perfect mystery, but you will go through it like loose snow. It’s also far superior to the film made in 2017, which is hard to find, so warm up the cider and hunker down.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Eleanor the Great, or Eleanor the Pretty Good?

 

 

 

 

 

 

ELEANOR THE GREAT (2025)

Directed by Scarlett Johansson

Sony Pictures Classic, 98 minutes, PG-13 (language, inferences)

★★★

 

June Squibb’s later-in-life career was resurrected when she appeared in Alexander Payne’s Nebraska in 2013. She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress and has been in demand ever since. Some have dismissed her as a sort of Betty White Lite, though Ms. Squibb’s career has been far more substantive. White died at age 99 in 2021, so perhaps it’s time to crown Squibb as the queen of defying ageism, though she prefers pricking its hide with satirical barbs. At the same time, though, questions persist whether she lampoons ageism, or merely supplanted assumptions that the elderly are senile with stereotypes of comical cranks and rebels.

 

Scarlett Johansson made her directing debut in Eleanor the Great with June Squibb in the titular role. She plays Eleanor Morgenstein, a 94-year-old Jewish woman who has returned to New York City (from Florida) because her best friend and roommate Bessie Stern (Rita Zohar) has died. Shall we say that her new roommate, her daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht), is all the things Bessie was not: pushy, frantic, judgmental, and a terrible listener. Eleanor quickly surmises that Lisa is too busy to pay attention to her, a truth reinforced in flashback sequences in which Bessie pours out her Holocaust survivor’s guilt and pain. Lisa wants her mother to go to the local Jewish Community Center in the belief that it’s simply a benign holding cell for old Jews. (For the record, Ms. Squibb is Jewish, having converted when she married Charles Kakatsakis in 1959.) In a classic screw up, Eleanor accidentally wanders into a support group for Holocaust survivors and, when pushed to speak, appropriates Bessie’s stories as her own, a  feeble and misguided attempt to feel as if she belongs.

 

Eleanor’s moving story–it’s not hers, but her mind is obviously sharp enough to remember and recreate what Bessie told her–makes her an instant celebrity among the group. It also catches the ear of Nina Davis (Erin Kellyman), a college journalism student working through grief of her own; her mother has recently died and she has lost her moorings. Analogous to Lisa, Nina’s father Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a successful-but-harried news anchor. Despite gaps of age, religion, race, and experiences Eleanor and Nina become close friends. In Nina’s eyes, the world-wise Eleanor becomes a mother substitute.

 

All is well until Nina wishes to profile Eleanor for a class project. Eleanor plays her assumed role so well that Nina’s father wants to profile Eleanor for a news story. Nina is hurt as dear old dad is stealing her story and Eleanor reluctantly agrees to go on the air. As generally happens in movies and in life, the bigger the lie, the deeper the hurt, humiliation, anger, and psychological damage is left in the exposure wake.

 

The problem with a story such as this is how to end it. Johannson wiggles out of it, but only in a sort of way that leaves her open to accusations of schmaltz, romanticism, and contrivance. Each is a valid interpretation of Eleanor the Great. Johannson came in for criticism–some of it unkind. I wonder, though, if the larger problem lies in the genre often tagged comedy-drama. It’s hard to laugh your way out of cultural misappropriation, as many have found out when caught lying about combat experiences, family pedigrees, academic honors, or in the case of ex-Congressman George Santos just about everything! Johannsson and script writer Tory Kamen opted for a soft landing that is sentimental in a mawkish way. Isn’t this a circumstance that calls for drama, not smiles and fluff?

 

For all of this, Eleanor the Great ranks at the top end of so-so movies. Squibb is a portrait of being conflicted but naïve, Kellyman is moving as a broken-hearted not-quite-a-woman, and Ejiofor is convincing as the kind of newsman who eats nails for breakfast. In other words, they work well together because each is distinct. I’m not surprised that most critics found it hard to whip up enthusiasm for the movie, or that the box office was less than $5 million. But if we lash our swords to the wall above the fireplace, Eleanor the Great can be seen as Eleanor the Pretty Good.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (2023)

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Apple/Paramount Pictures, 206 minutes, R (violence, language)

★★★★★

 

In the 1920s/30s, Oklahoma’s Osage Indians were the richest people in America. Killers of the Flower Moon reveals the secret of its title in the film’s opening sequence. A medicine man is conducting a ceremony during a flower of the moon ceremony, a coming of spring ritual. In this one, though, there is also a lamentation on the decline of the Osage. As he finishes and shots ring out, one hits a marshy pond, and up from the ground comes a bubbling crude. A 1906 treaty ceded mineral rights to the Osage, and overnight they own one of the richest underground oil reservoirs ever discovered.

 

Killers of the Flower Moon is noteworthy in other ways. It might be the last great film from director Martin Scorsese. It was also a box office bomb for several reasons, not the least of which was Scorsese’s ego. He spent over $200 million dollars on the film and had trouble finding a studio to commit to that sort of budget. Apple Studios finally greenlighted it, but its distribution deal with Paramount Pictures was such that it didn’t stick in theaters for very long. With PR, salaries, residuals, and other costs it needed to yield about $600 million to break even, and its $150 million box office receipts didn’t make a dent in that. It didn’t help that movie was nearly 3 ½ hours long. Many people dodged it for that reason.

 

Yet, Killers of the Flower Moon is one of the best films of the decade. Scorsese wisely based the movie only partly on David Grann’s best-selling book of the same title. Grann focused on how the conning of the Osage gave rise to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The movie pays attention to this, but turns to the trial notes of Thomas Bruce White Senior (Jesse Plemons).  In practical terms this means the production crew fashioned a movie rather than trying to duplicate the totality of Grann’s non-fiction book. Instead, the film centers on the complicated relationship between Ernest Buckhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his Osage bride Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone).

 

Ernest is just back from combat in World War One. In 1919, he visits his brother Byron (Scott Shepherd), who works for their uncle William King Hale (Robert DeNiro). Though the Osage are so rich they buy cars and hire chauffeurs to drive them, they are deemed “incompetents” in need of white legal guardians to “manage” their money. Bryon and Ernest engage in direct robberies of Osage people, but discover that more can be made from graft, a talent at which Hale excels. Because the 1921 Tulsa race riot in which 300+ African American citizens were killed is fresh in everyone’s memories, the Osage seek gentler means of persuasion. But when their agent in Washington, D.C. is murdered and Osage bodies begin to proliferate in Oklahoma, tensions rise. This so-called Reign of Terror left more than 100 suspected murder victims, with roughly a third of them eventually traced to Hale. The movie glosses the extent of these, but zeroes in on Mollie’s family. Among the victims are her mother Lizzie Q (Tantoo Cardinal) two of her sisters, several kin, and nearly Mollie.

 

Ernest marries Mollie, just as Bill Smith (singer Jason Isbell) wedded her sister Reta. These marriages were engineered or approved by Hale, but Hale is given a Svengali-like treatment. Smith clearly cherishes Reta (Ja Nae Collins) as Ernest does Mollie. The open question is whether Ernest loves her more than he is afraid of his uncle. Eventually the Bureau of Investigation, the forerunner of the FBI, gets involved with savvy Native agent John Wren (Tatanka Means), prosecutor Peter Leaward (John Lithgow), and numerous others blowing the lid off the scam and murders. In all, there is a huge cast that includes Brendan Fraser and musicians Charlie Musselwhite, Sturgill Simpson, Jack White, and Peter Yorn in acting roles. Scorsese also included more than three dozen Native Americans in his film.

 

President Calvin Coolidge gets a shout out for supporting the investigation, but I won’t it is an absolute travesty that this film was nominated for ten Oscars and won zero, not even Robie Roberston for Best Original Score. The brilliant Lily Gladstone lost the Best Actress Oscar to Emma Stone, who did little more in Poor Things than appear naked. To use a baseball slogan, they wuz robbed.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Avery, Gottlieb and Rothko in Gloucester

 

 

 

AVERY, GOTTLIEB & ROTHKO: BY THE SEA

Cape Ann Museum

Gloucester, MA (Ending September 27)

 

 

Adolphe Gottlieb "Over and Under" 

  

The above show is likely to end before most of you can get to Gloucester but if you can, be sure to see it. I wouldn’t call it my favorite art show of the year, but it’s certainly high on the list of the most intriguing. 

 

Milton Avery, "Gloucester Dawn," 1921

  

On the surface, these three would seem an unlikely match. Milton Avery (1885-1965) is best known for his throwback pre-Renaissance painting style, one that deliberately flattens the canvas. Avery is one of the preeminent colorists of American painting. There are discernible objects and people on the canvas, but he paid little attention to what their “natural” color should be. Faces are often blank or rendered so quickly that details dissolve into a mass of whatever color he chooses. You can read into them any expression that you wish, but most people say that they evoke calmness. His work is sometimes compared to that of Ernst Kirchner, though to my eye Avery’s work seems joyful and Kirchner’s danger and doom. Avery also painted domestic scenes and collaborated with his artist-wife Sally Michel Avery.

 

 

 

Mark Rothko. Wharf, 1924 

 

The most famous of the trio was Mark Rothko (1903-70) who was also the most polarizing of the three. His earliest inspirations were Paul Klee and Henri Matisse, but he was perhaps even more influenced by psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. The stereotype of Rothko, though, is that he only painted colors. Before you actually stand before such works you might think, “What’s the big deal? My 5-year-old could paint a canvas that’s all black.” No; he couldn’t! And no; Rothko was not mono-dimensional. More on this in a moment. 

 

Gottlieb, Boxes on the Beach, 1938

 

 

I confess that the name Adolphe Gottlieb (1903-74) was merely one I ran across from time to time, but knew little about. He was the founder of The Ten, a group that did much to popularize abstract expressionism. His pictographs caught my eye. To me they evince what you might get if you mixed sea motifs with Aboriginal and Japanese art. This, I hasten to add, is my emotional response to his works, not something you’d learn in Art 100.

 

So how do you hang a show of three artists who don’t immediately seem relatable? We can start with the fact that three were great friends. The show in Gloucester is there because all three came to Cape Ann during summers in the 1920s into the 1940s. Why Gloucester? Because it was several of the dozens of art colonies that thrived during the Depression and war years. It’s amusing the think of this now, but locales in the east alone such as Ogunquit, Gloucester, Provincetown, the White Mountains, the Brandywine region of Pennsylvania, Saratoga Springs, the Hudson River Valley, and sections of New York City were filled with artists who came there because they were cheap places to live! If you look in the right places, you can make out small shacks in which they lived (especially in the Perkins Cove section of Ogunquit, Maine).

 

Another important thing to keep in mind is that where artists end up often bears little resemblance to where they started. Avery, Rothko, and Gottlieb were all realists at one stage of their career; all three eventually embraced abstract expressionism, a term whose very ambiguity tells you something. Once one stops trying to paint realistically, new ways of seeing open up. Rothko, for instance, was once a member of the Industrial Workers of the World and could have spent his career as a propagandist. But then he went to Gloucester to paint boats and crashing waters. Next, he was a surrealist, but his career arc was one of simplification. Why not paint three color swatches for a beach, water, and sky?

 

Below I offer several paintings from each artist. I start with the ones that are most “realistic” (another loaded word) and end with one of their later works. Even if you can’t get to Gloucester, you’ll see their work elsewhere. What do they express for you?

 

 

Milton Avery: Confession: He's a favorite of mine! 

 

Portrait of Rothko 1933

 

Shore Sitters, late 1930s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Mark Rothko

 

 

 

You've seen how he started. What do you make of these?
 

 

 

           

 

Sand, Ocean, Sky

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

Adolphe Gottlieb 

 

Rockport, 1934

Mariners Incantation, 1945

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Forgotten Dream, 1946 

Note: the top photo is a Gottlieb work from 1959 

 

Hidden History Uncloaked in The Night Birds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE NIGHT BIRDS (2007)

By Thomas Maltman

SoHo Publishing, 370 pages.

★★★★★

 

There are many books named The Night Birds, but the one to read is from Thomas Maltman, which was published in 2007. To call it a different kind of Western doesn’t do it justice.

 

First a quiz: Name the president who declined to stop the largest single-day execution in American history. Answer: Abraham Lincoln. It wasn’t traitorous Confederates dancing on the end of ropes. On December 26, 1862, 38 Dakota Sioux warriors were hanged in response to a clash between Natives and German settlers near Mankato, Minnesota. Maltman uses the Sioux uprising in his work of fiction, but also did his homework. As an old TV series once put, “Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.”

 

Our narrator is Asa Senger, a lonely boy in 1876. An elderly Dakota Sioux man is found near a Kingdom Township home. This touches off fear in the area, though the man is a frail, trader. Minnesota was once a dangerous place for whites to be, even in areas where whites and Natives lived in relative peace. Though Asa was born in a few months after the uprising of 1862, his parents remain wary and retain their animus against the Sioux. Into Asa’s life comes Aunt Hazel, his mother sister. She has been in an asylum for 14 years because of her epilepsy. Bromide had been used to control epilepsy since 1861, but it took years for this knowledge to make its way into remote areas. The Sengers only reluctantly accept guardianship over Hazel and she is mostly confined to an attic room. Asa is warned that his aunt is delusional.

 

Asa, though, grows curious of his aunt, who tells him stories but swears him to secrecy. What tales she tells! At this point I should warn readers that both Germans and the Sioux had a penchant for recycling names, the Germans believing they paid homage to deceased relatives by naming babies after them, and mystical Sioux believing the spirits of the dead can be reborn. Hazel had a brother named Asa who died in the1862 massacre, along with both of her parents. The Senger family lived across a small river from a Sioux encampment and young Hazel slowly cultivated Sioux playmates. Her parents regularly traded with the Sioux. Though suspicious of each other, a fragile truce prevailed. Hazel learned some Dakota and grew close to Wanikiya, a boy roughly her age, who grows up to be an important person amongst the Dakota. Asa also learns that Wanikiya killed his “Uncle Asa” and that Hazel was a captive during the war. Her story is certainly not in keeping with the many so-called “captive narratives” that proliferated from Colonial period through the 19^th century.

 

The Night Birds is a multi-generational family story that, in its own unique way, is a melting pot story. Reading it will enlighten you about American history, peels back hidden cowboys-and-Indians myths, and shows how easy it is for victors to reinvent the past. At a time in which immigrants are imperiled in the United States, it also raises questions about who and what an American is. It is noteworthy that the Senger family had to flee Missouri because of their abolitionist views, yet somehow don’t connect the dots regarding Native Americans.

 

Maltman’s novel is filled with small details that help readers imagine life on the edge of the frontier. Maltman makes us contemplate what it would be like to plow land that has never seen a blade and to live where you nearest neighbors don’t look, dress, or speak like you. He also subtly juxtaposes individuals and circumstances. There is scalping, but it’s often done by white bounty hunters or in war as trophies. In a book in which Young Asa encounters Jesse James, who is a “savage,” the Dakotas who killed Asa’s forebears or the ruthless James-Younger gang?

 

Perhaps it’s best to muse upon the book’s title. The “night birds” are not owls or hawks; they are nocturnal nightjars, small fowl slightly bigger than sparrows who sleep during the day, roost on the ground, and are so well camouflaged you could be on top of one and never see it.  The are insectivores, but their prolonged call and trill is downright eerie. Now think of life with minimal illumination.

 

Forget books with similar titles; this older novel is one of the best books I’ve read this year.

 

Rob Weir

 

Take My Turban, Please

 

I’m turning in my turban and crystal ball. I’m done with baseball prognostication. I officially suck. Every year I get excited by spring training rosters and scouting reports. Every year those rosters change faster than a lane-jumping Massachusetts driver. I’m 1 for 6 in predictions, which is roughly the batting average of a lot of MLB players who should be loading trucks instead of pretending to be professional athletes.

You have the right to make fun of me. Here’s what I predicted.

AL East:  Blue Jays, Yankees, Red Sox, Orioles, and Rays. Yep, I had the Rays dead last and, natch, they are in first. The Yankees could still possibly slip past the Rays but that’s unlikely. About all I got right was predicting the Red Sox would do much better than naysayers predicted. Oh yeah, I also predicted that Gerrit Cole would not do well coming back from surgery and that Giancarlo Stanton would go on the IL. Cole probably has neck problems from watching home runs soar over the wall. It was a no-brainer to predict Stanton would get hurt again.

NL East: Mets, Phillies, Braves, Marlins, Nationals. I got the well-duh! bottom two, but the Mets have been putrid. I gave the Braves dark-horse status, so I was sort of on the right track with them. But I’m gobsmacked by how the Mets can spend so much money and stink like a New Jersey landfill.

AL Central: Tigers, Royals, Guardians, Twins, White Sox. You’re used to this by now. My pick for the basement is now in first place, though the Guardians are just a game back. My pick for second? In last place, just a few games ahead of the Tigers, who played like an endangered species and traded their two most-talented pitchers (Skubal & Mize). I wish KC would change their name to the KC Blues and go back to being a farm team for the Yankees. Bobby Witt deserves better. For what it’s worth, it’s possible that no one in the pathetic AL Central will finish above .500!

NL Central: Cubs, Pirates, Brewers, Reds, Cardinals. The Cubs have had a fine year and Pete Crow-Armstrong should be the MVP, but the Brewers have the best record in MLB. The Pirates? Third in baseball’s second-worst division. With luck they can finish above .500 but there will be no playoff ball in the Steel(ers) City.

AL West: Mariners, A’s, Astros, Rangers, Angels. Okay, I’m totally done with the 10-games under .500 Mariners. They are as overrated as Seattle’s Best Coffee. Who’s in first? The Astros, though the Rangers despite playing .486 baseball are just three games back. This tells you just how bad the AL West is. The A’s are only 4 games better than the Angels, who have down for so long it (always) looks like up to them. (Old blues song!) How could they have wasted Mike Trout’s career by being so inept?

NL West: Dodgers, Padres, Diamondbacks, Giants, Rockies.  Bingo! I’m five for five, though how hard was it to pick the Dodgers? They are so loaded that they ran away with the division even with Ohtani on the IL for much of the year. The Padres simply can’t keep up with the Billionaire Dodgers, who are odds-on favorites to win their third World Series in a row. The Pads will be lucky to fend off the D’Backs who are a mere game behind for a Wild Card. Substantial change is needed in San Fran before they can compete, but they’re still miles ahead of Colorado, MLB’s worst team. I propose they change their name to The Rock’ems.

No World Series predictions from me. With my luck, the Guardians will wear the Crown!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twain's End: Speculative History or the Real Deal?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TWAIN’S END (2015)

By Lynn Cullen

Gallery Books, 368 pages

★★★★

 

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who wrote under the pseudonym Mark Twain, is perhaps the most-heralded American writer of all time. He was also an in-demand public speaker known for his humor and grasp of vernacular language. Millions have visited his home of 17 years in Hartford, Connecticut. Those who dig into biography are often astonished to learn that like many so-called “funny men,” Sam Clemens was not as jolly as his public persona. By the early 20^th century, it would be appropriate to say that he was an imperious, depressed crank who had begun to disappear into his fictional identity. His life had been marked by one misfortune after another.

 

That famed Hartford home was closed in 1891, as the family was deeply in debt, courtesy of Sam having squandered the equivalent of $10 million on failed inventions. They left to live in Europe, which in those days was cheaper. Sam further embarked on a world speaking tour to raise money. In late 1900, Clemens retired his debt courtesy of his earnings, a robber baron friend who secured his copyrights, and the management of Ralph Ashcroft. Yet Sam was not a happy man. His favorite child Susie died in 1896 at age 24, and his sickly wife Livy (Olivia) was bedridden by the time they moved to New York. Sam hired Isabel Lyon to be Livy’s personal secretary/nurse, but he commanded more of her time than Livy. When Livy died in 1902, a morose Samuel Clemens began to disappear into Mark Twain.

 

Novelist Lynn Cullen picks up the narrative in 1909, when he was about to move into a large Tuscan-style villa dubbed “Stormfield”* in Redding, CT. Though named for a Twain character, the remainder of Twain’s life were indeed stormy.  Cullen’s Twain’s End puts forth some debatable history; but it’s based upon a diary kept by Lyon. In March of 1909, Twain blessed the marriage of Isabel Lyon and Ralph Ashcroft. One month later, he fired them both and penned a 429-page screed in which he accused Isabel of swindling his money, treachery, and being a “salacious slut.” At least that’s Twain’s story.

 

Cullen pieces threads to give credence to a different tale. Did Isabel marry Ralph because Twain would not marry her? Cullen lays out the possibility that Twain’s flirtations and Isabel’s ambitious mother led Isabel into a coquettish role that blinded her to thing such as Sam’s increasingly eccentric behavior, his cruelty toward surviving daughters Jane (aka/Jean) and Clara, and the enormous difference in their ages. In 1909, Isabel would have been 46 and Sam an over-ripe 74. The last point raises the question of whether Twain and Lyon had ever been intimate. That’s unlikely when Livy was alive, but Cullen is willing to consider that Isabel may have engaged in dangerous flirting, such as giving Sam massages and dropping hints that she would be open to sexual intimacies that he allegedly rebuffed. After the public blowup, Twain even repossessed Isabel’s cottage On Christmas Eve of 1909, Jean died of an epileptic seizure in her bath. Any ounce of sympathy Sam had left went down the plughole with Jean’s life. Cullen casts Jean in a pragmatic peacekeeper role, as opposed to her younger sister Clara (1874-1962), who was (if possible) more vain, cruel, and irresponsible than her father. She hated Isabel and saw her as a gold digger, though she might have been protecting her own anticipated fortune.

 

Barring more evidence, there is no way to resolve these clashing narratives. Twain’s End could be close to the truth, or merely a fanciful work of imagination. You can, however, learn a lot about the vanities of fading Gilded Age elites from Cullen’s novel. Did Helen Keller engage in a love triangle with Annie Sullivan’s husband John Macy? There’s more evidence for this than of Twain being intimate with Isabel, but Twain’s parlor room rudeness toward Lyon during Keller’s visit to Stormfield would been in keeping with class deference expectations. Not to mention Sam’s vanity in building a mansion at a time in which he expected to die. He always predicted that since he was born in 1835 when Haley’s Comet was in the sky, he would “go out with Haley’s Comet.” Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910, when the comet was visible. Isabel and Ralph never sued the estate, but what does this tell us? Draw your own conclusions. Guess who got Sam’s money.

 

Rob Weir

 * The original Stormfield burned in 1923. It was rebuilt but is a private home not on public view.