Author Archives: Hal

The strange coincidences of Miss Hanff

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I originally did this as a comment on someone else’s LJ, back in 2008. But I’d like to get it over here, so it’s more easily searchable.

So. I’ve been owing you this for a while. I mostly do my LJ stuff at my job, where I work the graveyard shift. It’s been such that I haven’t really felt up to it. But, as I say, I owe you, and who knows? This might be the first draft of a letter to le Carré, where I’d like to see what he says before he dies.

Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. Specifically, 1998, and Ulrika is on her royal progress as North American TAFF delegate to the UK, and I’m the consort along for the ride.

We go to London, and as a devoted reader of le Carré and Hanff I want to see two things: “The Circus” and 84 Charing Cross Road. I know neither SOE nor MI6 ever had a HQ near Cambridge Circus, but there you go. I also know that Marks and Co., the bookshop in 84 Charing Cross Rd the book and movie, is now only marked by a brass plaque. Again, no problem, I’m just curious.

So we go to the physical location, 84 Charing Cross Rd and… Well, have you ever seen Charade? Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn? There’s a sequence in it when everyone is walking through a stamp fair in Paris, and then suddenly each of them put two and two together, and their heads start whirling about.

This was very like that. Because, you see, 84 Charing Cross Road is just on the edge of Cambridge Circus.

Now, let’s fill in a bit. “Marks and Co.” stands for “Marks and Cohen,” and was the actual shop. Leo Marks — screenwriter of Peeping Tom, friend of Helene Hanff, and cryptographer extraordinaire — was the son of Mr. Marks. If you read Between Silk and Cyanide, Leo’s memoir, you’ll see that he frequently used antiquarian books as the plain text for various ciphers he would send with agents into the field during his days at SOE/MI6. In addition, le Carré, who worked at MI6 at roughly the same time as Marks (a little later, but not much) does exactly the same thing. Note his use of the Simplicissimus in A Perfect Spy, acknowledged to be his most autobiographical book.

So… If one was a cryptographer who used antiquarian books as plain text, and if one was also the son of the owner of an antiquarian book shop, what would be the easiest way to distribute such books around the world?

One of the big questions that just slides by in 84 Charing Cross Rd is, what in the world was Marks and Co. doing having an ad in the Saturday Review for Miss Hanff to find in the first place? This hypothesis suggests an answer.

But it goes further.

Frank Doel (Anthony Hopkins’ character in the movie) had some very interesting neighbors. Namely, Morris Cohen and Lona Cohen (known during their UK days as Peter and Helen Kroger). The Cohens were Soviet spies of long standing, having been among those assigned to Los Alamos to try to get nuclear information during WWII. Not only did they live quite nearby to Frank Doel, they also worked — wait for it — as antiquarian book sellers.

I don’t think that was an accident. I think the Sovs twigged on to what was happening at Marks and Co., and assigned the Cohens to try to keep tabs on Frank Doel. Hanff jokes this about in the book — or rather, she publishes a letter from Nora Doel (Mrs. Frank, played by an almost unrecognizable Judi Dench in the film) that treats the whole matter lightly.

But I think le Carré also knew what was going on, and placed headquarters at “The Circus” because, even if there was no staff housed there, there were considerable communications going through the place.

Heck, dare we say it? Could Frank Doel be the role model for George Smiley? Was he sufficiently bookish and anonymous in person for that, no matter how much wit comes across in his letters to Helene?

I can’t point to any particular flame. But it seems to me there are quite a few wafts of smoke here. Certainly enough for a Waldropian story or novel. 🙂

I did write that letter. And Mr. le Carré was kind enough to reply:

The problem, of course, is the “All Cretans are liars” issue. What else would le Carré reply? But for this fanboy, it was quite a thrill.

Solaris extra

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I was rooting around, trying to find a clip with Jeremy Davies doing the right gesture in Solaris, because I wanted to do a Lexicon entry… and I stumbled upon this thing, which looks a DVD extra the way they used to be. Really useful for showing how a director and actors work together, and the contributions crafts people make.

The Needle Strikes

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So.

So I haven’t really been talking much about my health, as this site has mainly been an escape for me. But I want to write this down (and probably different health issues, in future posts), because I have a new image, one I think can convey how certain things feel to me.

I have multiple sclerosis, or MS. It’s a shibboleth of the tribe that everyone’s course of MS is different. The main way MS presents in me has the unwieldy name of trigeminal neuralgia (TN). I call it my “MS pain” to folks I don’t want to put off with medical Latin. It’s a very sharp pain in my lower right jaw. I’ve likened it to two electrical wires, sparking. Or a metal pick, stabbing me.

When it’s affecting me, I tend to go “Ow!” a lot, and I seem to twitch. The medical aides and nurses, seeing this for the first time, get very concerned and scared. It’s tough for me to tell them what’s going on, because I hurt, and speech has been known to be a trigger. As has swallowing. Or chewing. Or licking my lips. Or touching my skin in that area. Or drinking. Not all at the same time — every time is different.

I’ve had people ask if the body movements are spasms, or seizures. Today I realized I had a better image: I’m flinching, or wincing. I’m trying to get away from an intermittent pain source. But, being in the nerve, I can’t. Doesn’t stop me from trying, though. But I offer as a hypothetical — if I was repeatedly sticking a needle into your jaw, would you move?

This is why when the pain lasts a bit longer, I won’t move as much. I get used to the pain as a constant (though I still cry out from it — as both Ulrika and our dog Kaylee can attest, from an incident a few years ago). But when it really is off and on — bzzt! bzzt! bzzt! — I flinch each time. Which is probably why it looks so strange. I’m wincing from something no one can see. (Note: in an earlier era, it might have been off to Bedlam for me. It’s interesting to speculate how many inmates were experiencing something we’d diagnose differently today.)

Anyway… I thought it better described how I feel, and was worth documenting.

The Shovel Breaks

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(This was first written in August, 2010 for LiveJournal, and is now on Dreamwidth. But it really needs to be at this site.)

=================

So tonight we were watching Glee S1:D3 from Netflix, and I made an observation about how unlikely this was from choral standards — but, hey, what do I know? I only sang in grade school, high school, and college choirs for 12 years.

And Ulrika said, “I wonder when the shovel will break?”

We both realized there was a lexicon entry — because she got that phrase from me.

*^*^*

There I am living in Harwood Court, a dorm on the Pomona College campus.

I’m talking to Doug Shepherd, class of ’84, and some other folks, and I forget just how this came up, but he says, “Night of the Comet is so bad, the shovel breaks before the opening titles.”

“Oh?” I say. “What do you mean by that, Doug?”

“Well… All fiction is basically the art of throwing shit in your general direction. When you’re in the hands of a master — Tolstoy, say, or Hitchcock — they shovel the shit out of the way so quickly and so cleanly you don’t ever really notice it. Their shovels are made out of a mix of titanium and carbon fiber. But let’s face it — not everyone is that good. So, sooner or later, the shit is just so heavy their shovel breaks. Then the shit the story depends on starts piling up. I mean, it becomes a big pile. Then it starts stinking. You just can’t pay any attention to the story, because this steaming pile of shit is between the story and you, and it keeps growing, because their shovel has broken, and they just can’t get it out of the way.”

“Night of the Comet starts with this text prologue on the screen. And this text is so lame, and so ridiculous… I’m telling you, the shovel breaks before the titles show up.”

“So it becomes something of a measure of quality, y’know? Just when does the shovel break in a story?”

*^*^*

This was the thing Doug told me I remember best, and have found most useful in the passage of time. And now I pass it on to you.

*^*^*

EDITED TO ADD: I was wrong. It’s not a crawl of text. Such is the world in which we live I was able to download the movie to look, check, and verify. It opens with John Carpenter-ish synth riffs, and deep, dark narration by Michael Hanks. It was tough to punctuate the following, because many times you’d think a sentence was over, and then it would go on.

Since before recorded time it had swung through the universe in an elliptical orbit so large that its very existence remained a secret of time and space. But now, in the last few years of the twentieth century, the visitor was returning.

Animated comet goes whooshing by.
Title: NIGHT OF THE COMET

The citizens of Earth would get an extra Christmas present this year, as their planet orbited through the tail of the comet. Scientists predicted a light show of stellar proportions – something not seen on Earth for 65 million years. Indeed, not since the time that the dinosaurs disappeared virtually overnight. 

There were a few who saw this as more than just a coincidence. But, most didn’t.

“Pleeeeease!”

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Lexicon. Comes from Robert Klein’s comedy album, Child of the Fifties.

I was watching TV this morning, when I saw an ad for a Budweiser product. It had the slug line, “100% Hard Seltzer. 0% Beer.” So at least they know their beer has a perception problem, and a product having nothing to do with their beer is an attractive feature.

But once you hear Klein, you’ll understand why the desperation of the ad (and a great deal of ads by many other people as well) reminded me of the bit.

Shannon’s Deal & Logic

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I admire John Sayles a lot. Sayles not only writes and directs movies, he edits them (which, as Tony Zhou points out, is a very small bunch of people who include Kurosawa). Sayles made Matewan, and Lone Star, among others.

And in 1990-91 he made his one foray into TV: Shannon’s Deal. For a show with only one season, it has a very extensive Quotes page on IMDb. With these elegant lines:

[Jack Shannon tries to talk Wilmer Slade out of taking his entire payment]

Jack Shannon: Then you should understand that a payment of this size is going to make Mr. Testa very upset. 

Wilmer Slade: Why do I sense an oncoming assault on logic?

“An oncoming assault on logic.” That’s beautiful. That might be lexicon of the future, that.

What a damned shame it’s not promising I’ll ever see it. Will any of the streaming platforms ever pick it up? And it hasn’t been made a DVD.

Bitch, you almost made me break character

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Lexicon. Wild rephrasing of the original from the movie Chasing Amy:

“‘What’s a Nubian?’… Bitch, you almost made me laugh.”

Now, in my defense, this may have been a mashup with a story from my college days. Professor Leonard Pronko put on one of his periodic kabuki productions, this one titled Lancelot Bewitched. The lead, Kevin Costello, was teased by a number of my friends (Mark Vargas, Cathy Kerry, Topher Jaworski, others). Imagine the following delivered to Kevin in the exaggerated style of kabuki:

“Threeeee times! You broke character threeeeee times! And weeee saw you!”

So I may have taken the laughing and the breaking of character, and merged them.

It’s a theory, anyway.