A Cross Country Fantasy

photographs from the site of Henry S. Gurr

Amazing photographs from Robert M. Pirsig's original 1968 motorcycle excursion across America with his son Chris and John and Sylvia Sutherland, which in turn inspired the 1974 bestseller 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', which I am presently reading. Both these images and the book are fuelling a sense of wanderlust and desire to escape the dreariness of winter, of the grey monotony of the city, and I have a yearning for spring to arrive and bring with it long bicycle rides, berry picking, ginger ale, and walks through forests.

Lamb to the Slaughter

My task in today's Swedish class was a close reading of the Swedish translation of Roald Dahl's darkly comedic short story 'Lamb to the Slaughter' (1953), known in Swedish as 'Mysteriet med det Försvunna Mordvapnet' (The Mystery of the Vanished Murder Weapon).

The tale concerns a wife who bludgeons her policeman husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb, puts the lamb in the oven, establishes an alibi going to the grocery store to buy vegetables to accompany her roast, and proceeds to serve the murder weapon to the investigating officers.

After a fruitless search, the policemen bandy about possible locations of the murder weapon, while waiting to be served their dinner.

"It's probably right under our very noses."





Lamb to the Slaughter was adapted for television twice, first in 1958 as part of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, directed by the master of suspense himself, and starring Barbara Bel Geddes (Midge in Vertigo).

Another adaptation was included in Tales of the Unexpected, in 1979. Tales of the Unexpected was a collection of tales based on the short stories of Roald Dahl.

Recent Acquisitions



Recent acquisitions accumulated during Alex's visit and the following weeks. Alex arrived laden with marvellous gifts including a copy of her recently published novel The Constant Losers, and another Ngaio Marsh mystery to add the the growing collection. During our day of op shopping I unearthed an orange sweater emblazoned with a galloping horse and jockey amongst a plethora of psychedelic tie dyed t-shirts and a few days later, some sturdy yet becoming winter boots, excellent for stomping around leaf strewn footpaths and staving off numb toe syndrome.
While kitted out in my new jersey and chimney-sweep boots, I can carry around my high literature in a brilliant University of Auckland Library bag, featuring the classic 'This Book Must Not Be Borrowed' slogan previously found in library reference books.

Personal Preference

How to learn Swedish verbs:

There is an easier and more effective and entertaining way of learning the verb forms, though: By reading Swedish texts, newspaper articles, comic strips, and novels written in an everyday language (translations of Agatha Christie crime novels or love-stories by Barbara Cartland or whatever you personally prefer), you will soon meet all the common verbs - they are actually not that many - in a meaningful context, you will see their function in different sentences, how they are used in idiomatic phrases, and you will not have to spend time on the numerous verb forms that theoretically exist but are rarely used. The first pages of such a book in Swedish may naturally take some time to tackle, but it will not be long before you will be able to recognize and understand an amazingly large number of words. With a basic knowledge of the verb system in Swedish it will be even easier.

Now to begin my collection of Agatha Christie crime novels in Swedish for educational purposes.

Wood from the Trees





obsessed with the forest green penguin crime & mystery titles. the only problem lies in whether to begin collecting the works of Ngaio Marsh or Raymond Chandler?
and so to begin the florence wild crime library.

Whilst working at Special Collections daintily vacuuming mold off rare and old books, I began taking Ngaio Marsh novels off the shelves one by one to reread as I cleaned.

I would be satisfied if my personal library held the complete works of Ngaio Marsh, Raymond Chandler, Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming, along with sundry others.

I am always surprised I can read murder mysteries again and again, I would have thought the interest and intrigue would have worn out after one reading.

ISSUES

LIBRARY CARD PROTEST OVER WITCHCRAFT

NZPA

A Wairarapa Christian minister is crusading against what he says is Masonic paganism by renouncing his library card.

John Cromarty, of St David's Church in Carterton, objects to a Masonic Lodge being used as a temporary library because he says the group is connected to witchcraft, the Wairarapa Times-Age reports.

In a letter to Carterton Mayor Gary McPhee, Mr Cromarty said he and his wife had handed in their library cards and were asking their friends not to visit the lodge, which was housing the town's books while a new events centre was built.

He said while Freemasonry did some good in the community and portrayed a facade of being compatible with Christianity, its foundations were rooted in witchcraft and paganism.

A past master and a Freemason of the lodge, Warwick Cashmore, said Mr Cromarty's attitude was extremely disappointing.

"The basic tenants of freemasonry are brotherly love, relief, and truth," he said.

Private Libraries


Shelving Trolleys as bookshelves. Reminiscent for me of a work I installed at Elam's Fine Arts Library in 2007, when I catalogued my room by Dewey Decimal System and filled trolleys with random room detritus waiting to be shelved. No more messy floors!
Would solve pretty much every storage problem, with space for the 'q' books as well. Probably the only piece of furniture I want to buy.
But only if I could sort my books by Dewey Decimal System, naturally.
Perhaps this could be the storage and display model for my dream of running a private library/archive/business/entrepreneurial scheme.
If the whole artist hoopla falls through, you see.


via Brutus Magazine

First House


First House (1950) designed by Group Construction Company, later 'Group Architects'.
via the Architecture Archive, University of Auckland

Affectionately known as 'the Group', they are now the subject of a new book Group Architects: Towards a New Zealand Architecture (Auckland University Press, October 2010), edited by Julia Gatley, also responsible for the acclaimed Long Live the Modern: New Zealand’s New Architecture, 1904-1984 (AUP, 2008).
The book will be launched with an exhibition of the same name during Auckland Architecture Week 2010 at Gus Fisher Gallery. The exhibition combines drawings, photographs, models, furniture, paintings and sculpture by members of the Group. Houses, the building type for which these modern architects are best known, are depicted in photographs and models.

I wonder if 'Allan Wild and Colin Wilson in Conversation' (reproduction plywood chairs) 2008, will be included.

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time


Upper Baker Street, c. 1905, Baker Street and Portman Mansions, c. 1900, and Bell Street, N.W. 1, c. 1904

Carlisle Street, N.W. 1, with some 'Baker Street Irregulars'

City of London street, c. 1900, Marylebone Road, 1900, and Paddington Station, 1896

Melcombe Street, N.W.1, 1898

'Upper Swandham Lane'

Sherlock Holmes and his interest in dogs.

'I have serious thoughts of writing a small monograph upon the uses of dogs in the work of the detective.'

"May I draw your attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.


Sherlock Holmes 's sitting-room at 221B Baker Street

Illustrations from 'My Life With Sherlock Holmes: Conversations in Baker Street', by John H. Watson, M.D.

Murder at the Savoy



In 1969 Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö wrote the crime novel Murder at the Savoy, the sixth novel in the series The Story of a Crime. Because it went beyond the previous ideals and format of crime fiction, the series is today regarded as the starting point of an iconic genre. Sjöwall & Wahlöö’s stylistic authorship brought insight into real police work and made visible society’s social and political structures in a new way. Crime fiction moved from being a genre in which an upper-class character had been solving murder mysteries at castles and estates, towards creating an understanding of the real work of a police detective. The couple’s collaboration and their perspective have been inspiring crime writers ever since, and have now inspired us to create an art project.

The novel’s plot begins with a murder at the Hotel Savoy in Malmö. It is the summer of 1969 and the CEO of an international company has been shot. The clues lead back to shady weapon deals linked to top leaders in society. The government orders parallel investigations by the secret service. Chief Inspector Martin Beck is called down from Stockholm to solve the case together with Per Månsson from Malmö.

Malmö Konsthall has invited 15 artists to participate in the exhibition project Murder at the Savoy. The novel functions as a platform allowing artists to blend fiction and reality at different places in Malmö. The novel’s plot, characters and settings, or social and political dimensions have influenced the creation of these art works. Murder at the Savoy is designed to be an exhibition about a crime and the project therefore involves a number of different art forms and genres. For example, visitors will encounter works that reflect upon the role of the police and the media in society. The project will present photographs, paintings, sculptures, performance art, installations and videos at various locations in the city.

The excellent Malmö Konsthall has me all in a tither, with what looks to be a brilliant concept for a show opening on the eve of my two week sojourn to the UK.
MURDER AT THE SAVOY - EXHIBITION OF A CRIME runs only for a week, and I will be rueing the missed opportunity to engage in the exhibition which incorporates performances around Malmö, plus other public programmes relating to the crime genre.

The thing that excites me most is that the concept for the show explores many ideas I investigate within my own artistic practice, noticably the underlying themes and plot devices from the crime genre and murder mysteries, the blending of fiction and reality, primarily through popular culture references, and the interdisciplinary approach I take to these ideas. Hypothetical works whirl around my head and I think about stealthily installing a work of my own accord. Indeed, I even did a cycle-by (as opposed to a drive-by) of the Hotel Savoy this afternoon, in all its art deco glory, to scope out the scene of the fictional crime.


The scene of the crime in 1964.
During the exhibition the Malmö City Archive will present a photographic journey through the footsteps of the murderer using photographs from the time (1969). Here's hoping I can see this at the opening.

text and images from the Malmö Konsthall press release.

And whilst Murder at the Savoy has a rather nice ring to it, the original Swedish title is naturally, far superior - POLIS, POLIS, POTATIMOS! - which translates to "Police! Police! Mashed Potato!"
A variation of a well-known children's rhyme, "Polis, Polis, Potatisgris!" (Police, Police, Potato Pig!).

I look forward to the Sunday vernissage at the Hotel Savoy with much anticipation.

Codex Seraphinianus


"Location of the city of Mazeolium unknown, except for existing somewhere within the vast Cherry Tomato Archipelago. Note the fully operational Rovers, after a successful transition from sister city, The Village."

A maze from the Codex Seraphinianus, Luigi Serafini's encyclopedia of an unknown world, written in an undecipherable language.

"...the book lies in the uneasy boundary between surrealism and fantasy, given an odd literary status by its masquerade as a book of fact."

"Some people with whom I have shared this book find it frightening or disturbing in some way. It seems to them to glorify entropy, chaos, and incomprehensibility. There is very little to fasten onto; everything shifts, shimmers, slips."

Available at Elam's Fine Arts Library, and I may just have to request the copy held at Konstfack in Stockholm.

The Intrepid Shamus


The Raymond Chandler Mystery Map of Los Angeles. Locales frequented by Philip Marlowe, the way LA used to be, as described by Raymond Chandler. Painstakingly researched, it resides somewhere between fiction and reality, with Chandler's Los Angeles overlapping the city in it's present state, revealing buildings and locations Chandler attempted to disguise and camouflage, nestled amongst iconic sites like Union Station and The Chinese Theatre.
I am in awe of the cartographical detective who created this.
Hollywood, Bay City, Los Angeles.

Curtains! Adieu to ze little grey cells


Yesterday I read the final Poirot novel by Agatha Christie, Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. Written in the forties, the Queen of Crime stowed the manuscript away for thirty years in a bank vault, to be released as she, like Poirot, was about to kick the bucket.
As part of my three goals I wanted to achieve in my lifetime, reading Christie's oeuvre was one, along with learning how to lip read and to buy a one way ticket somewhere in the world.
So far I have successfully completed one of these.
Having been reading the works of Agatha Christie on and off since I was twelve, it was getting to the point where I could no longer remember which ones I had read and which I had not (part of the enjoyment is the familiarity of all the plotlines, the repetitive dialogue and the archetypal characters, all cardboard cut outs off each other). The English Upper-class are all so painfully alike.
Christie was my favourite novelist, even though members of my family scorned me for reading them, for it could hardly be called 'high literature'. Until my mother put me on to Ngaio Marsh, I would rarely issue any other author out of the library, except if there was a Christie drought and I didn't have a choice.
That is what happened yesterday, and Curtain was the only tome left to be read. I had been holding out on this one as I knew Poirot met his demise in the end, and I wasn't sure I would want to read any more once I knew he was dead. So it was a sad farewell to an inevitable end, that I knew was coming and had been putting off for many years.
At least his hair and moustaches we black and immaculate until the end, even if it was a wig and a fake moustache.

A whole new world

Three pages into Tintin in the New World and already I am in raptures. Could this be the greatest use of appropriation ever?

"Old age? Auguring asteroid! I'm not yet fifty! Tintin, my lad, if you'd learn to drink scotch and love women, you, too, would have cheering memories in old age!"
"I have no feeling for either."
"How do you know till you've experienced them?"
Yes, Snowy thought, why doesn't he try? Maybe he'll grow up a bit and stay home more.

I think it's only going to get better. A few sentences later the Captain is saying something about how Tintin bought two Arabian steeds and 'rode them an inch to foamy death'. Cripes, what the deuce is this?

Hardboiled in a nutshell

The lobby looked like a high-budget musical. A lot of light and glitter, a lot of scenery, a lot of clothes, a lot of sound, an all-star cast, and a plot with the originality and drive of a split fingernail.

A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pyjamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins.
A cigarette girl came down the gangway. She wore an egret plume in her hair, enough clothes to hide behind a toothpickm one of her long beautiful naked legs was silver, and one was gold. She had the utterly disdainful expression of a dame who makes her dates by long distance.

- Marlowe. Drink while waiting?
- A dry martini will do.
- A martini. Dry. Veddy, veddy dry.
- Okay.
- Will you eat it with a spoon or a knife and fork?
- Cut it into strips, I said. I'll just nibble at it.
-On your way to school, he said. Should I put the olive in a bag for you?
-Sock me on the nose with it, I said. If it will make you feel any better.
-Thank you, sir, he said. A dry martini.

'You're a man named Marlowe?' she asked, looking at me. She put her hips against the end of the desk and crossed her ankles.
I said I was a man named Marlowe.
'By and large,' she said, 'I am quite sure I am not going to like you one damned bit. So speak your piece and drift away.'
'What I like about this place is everything runs true to type,' I said. 'The cop on the gate, the shine on the door, the cigarette and check girls, the fat greasy sensual Jew with the tall stately bored showgirl, the well-dressed, drunk and horribly rude director cursing the barman, the silent guy with the gun, the night-club owner with the soft grey hair and the B-picture mannerisms, and now you - the tall dark torcher with the negligent sneer, the husky voice, the hard-boiled vocabulary.'

Passages from 'The High Window', by Raymond Chandler.

Another sunday rolled around, and I started another detective story. I read, eat some popcorn washed down with a glass of pepsi and accompanied by the American Graffiti soundtrack and some Sinatra. A top-notch sunday really, maximum excitement with minimum exertion.

Chandler's writing is exciting enough. I find myself rereading passages and experiment reciting them in my head, with inflections on different words, some parts sped up, others slowed down. In my head I feel like I am almost spitting the words out, and my voice is scathing and rambling and rude and witty and charming all at the same time. I love how the descriptions of people and places are so sharp and original and lyrical. I begin to test out phrases in my mind from my everyday life in Chandleresque prose . And its intimate, you know, written in the first person. Sometimes I find it hard to pick up what is dialogue and what isn't. The way you feel that it is only you who can understand Marlowe's jargon and insults, and the puns and wisecracks float over the other characters' heads (sometimes this happens, sometimes not).
Raymond Chandler, I feel, could be a man to agree that 'the pen is mightier than the sword'. Then is it strange that he writes hard-boiled fiction? Perhaps not.


We watched 'The Big Sleep' last night, with Bogie & Bacall. It was great, it is great, a staple of the film noir genre, major stars acting well, snappy dialogue, all that jazz. Its presevered by the Library of Congress, for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and all.
But Chandler's lyrical descriptions couldn't quite be transformed to celluloide and
the film just didn't quite get there. Its nice to think some books still come out trumps over cinematic adaptation.

Letters and Notes


With the easter break looming, I was in dire need of some new reading material. The books I had brought with me to Malmö are all much loved and well thumbed, my volume of Sherlock Holmes novels, a couple of Ngaio Marsh's, Gatsby, and The Skinny Louie Book by Fiona Farrell, one in the new Penguin New Zealand series, given by an aunt as a parting gift. I am the kind of person who will read the same books, watch the same films, and listen to the same music again and again, and never tire of it. But even I need some welcome additions to the list every so often. I was excited to learn Malmö stadbibliotek had shelves detective fiction (in english) for my to read and re-read, along with some Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Murakami. The usual suspects.

One thing I did find out of left field was a TINTIN ROMANCE. Well this is what it appears to be at first glance, and probably the reason I borrowed it. Actually, its a novel by Frederic Tuten, titled Tintin in the New World: a romance . Apparently, Tuten transplants Tintin from his comic book confines into a fleshed out, realistic world with all its wicked, grave and abstruse trappings. Sounds like my kind of story.


cover of Tintin in the New World with artwork by Roy Lichtenstein (1993)

I only bought six records with me to Sweden, Roy Orbison 'Mystery Girl', Fleetwood Mac 'Rumours', The Beatles 'Please, Please Me', The Righteous Brothers 'Greatest Hits', Elvis Presley '50 000 000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong' and the Original Soundtrack of 'The Singing Detective'.
However with the purchase of an ipod before I left, slowly a collection of music is beginning again.
The past few days of avid reading have been accompanied by some excellent tunes.

Cowboy in Sweden and The Story of Them

As I never listened to either of these in Auckland I feel like I can associate them solely with my new life in Sweden. Now I just need to build up another record collection - with Cowboy in Sweden and at least one Them album in there.