The Big Goodbye

A behind-the-scenes look at the lives and times that brought us the 70s film noir classic Chinatown. Well-researched and compelling, Wasson’s book dives into the many influences on and vagaries plaguing the film’s creative process and screenplay. It was hard to put down. Wasson focused on Roman Polanski, screenwriter Robert Towne, producer Robert Evans, Jack Nicholson, and Faye Dunaway, along with Sharon Tate, Anjelica Huston, John Huston and more, all connected to the project in some way or another, and at a time when Hollywood was becoming more corporate, less freewheeling and inventive. Ben Affleck recently signed a deal to direct an adaptation of this one, not surprisingly for Paramount. C'mon, Jack, how about a return to the big screen? Who else could pull off John Huston?

Snow Country

“The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.” The famous first line of Yasunari Kawabata’s short novel Snow Country (1948) captures an experience I know well, having travelled many times through this unending passage en route to Niigata’s Naoetsu from Tokyo. I remember the first time, twenty years ago, the blinding daylight as the train reappeared, and out the windows the snow deeper than the average person is tall. In the novel, written in 1935 and later reworked for publication, Shimamura gets off at Echigo-Yuzawa Station; Yuzawa was then a small town where visitors went to enjoy onsen and respite from the capital. He’s a ballet critic (or so he says), and is married, but idles most days away and, after the tunnel, in this world of snow he escapes to, calls upon the services of geisha. To a slight extent he becomes involved in a love triangle with two women who live there, both somewhat provincial and equally mysterious to our protagonist narrator. One is Komako, a geisha who dwells in other people’s hovels and is bent on drinking herself to infirmity, and the other is Yoko, who's nursing a dying man and lives with a shamisen teacher. Just as Shimamura is idle with his time, he’s idle in the sense of doing little to support or encourage those around him. He, the narrator, comes across as almost devoid of empathy, choosing to give us an unsympathetic report on Komako’s gradual spiral and Yoko’s grief. This “snow country” for him is a fantasy world. The women, however much he needs them, are playthings that shine then fall like the diaphanous moths he describes dropping off door screens and other surfaces made to separate. What I particularly liked about the novel was how it challenges the reader. There's an uneasy contrast between Shimamura’s unfeeling nature, revealed through his own narrative, and Kawabata’s poetic prose layered therein. And I found myself trying to draw lines between the author and the protagonist. Shimamura is unlikeable in his idleness but also perceptive, and he recognizes beauty. Or is he? And does he really? Perhaps in this snow country, despite his keen sense of the true world around him, he'd rather wander blind in self-gratifying unreality.

This is one of three novels that landed Kawabata the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968—according to the Nobel website “for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind.” The other two are The Old Capital and Thousand Cranes.

The geisha Matsuei, who Kawabata based Komako on.

Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World

A tough read filled with schemes and twists, a torrent of money laundering, murder ordered from the top, and (for me) difficult-to-pronounce names. Kleptopia (2020), by Tom Burgis, is a dark but briskly told tale about the world's biggest thieves and the flow of riches they loot, with a focus on Washington, Moscow, Kazakhstan, Swiss banks, London, and the Congo. Exhaustively researched, the myriad stories Burgis unfolds, many crossing over others, are centered around a bunch of powerful crooks who the author sees (and is able to see) as key players in the dirty money game, along with some of their enablers. I liked it, but keeping track of who's who was hard, and I was left feeling rather helpless in the grand scheme of things, not to mention overwhelmed.

Excerpt from Kleptopia (Tom Burgis):

“The Nats, they declare themselves the saviours of besieged nations while overseeing the plunder of those nations. Drain the swamp, they cry, as they luxuriate in it. They have taken hold in central Europe, eastern Europe and Russia, with imitators on every continent: Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duterte in the Philippines, Erdoğan in Turkey, Netanyahu in Israel, Maduro in Venezuela, Trump in Washington. Left and Right: these are just their costumes. The mafia would admire the loyalty they inspire: at the Donald’s impeachment trial for his Ukrainian favour-trading, Republican senators listened to cast-iron evidence that he had abused his office, then acquitted him. Those who resist them believe that, once they are gone, the institutions they have distorted will snap back to how they were. But like a parasite altering a cell it invades, so kleptocratic power transforms its host. Those who use their public office to steal must hold on to it not just for the chance of further riches but in order to maintain the immunity from prosecution that goes with it. When elections come around, losing is not an option.”