The Scottish Muriel Spark was an unusual tragicomic artist, a bright Catholic author. Her sixty-page tale, “The Go-Away Bird,” revolves around the orphaned Daphne du Toit, who lives with her guardian, white Chakata, in a British colony in Africa. When she is not there, she is in England, having disappointing, even adulterous, love affairs and being exploited for money by one Greta Casse. In the African colony, however, sinister aggression arises. Spark informs us of the following: “Daphne called aloud, ‘God help me. Life is unbearable.'” The utter insufficiency of human relationships is one of the story’s themes. So—for all the story’s droll content—is death as liberation.

Daphne frequently responds to people’s words by saying, “Oh, I see” and, to be sure, she will see what is ultimately true. A Catholic, Spark nevertheless does not believe, as I do not, in eternal Hell. No doubt she does believe in divine judgment. Death, in any case, is liberation in what is perhaps a Catholic universalism in the superb “The Go-Away Bird.”

In Suicide Killers, a 2006 documentary by Pierre Rehov, would-be Muslim suicide bombers prove they are eaten up with religion.  Bad religion.  Arabs who abhor the bombers’ violence are here too, and they also are Muslims.  One of them, an Israeli Arab, says he was completely changed by the experience of a Jewish woman dying in his arms after a jihadist explosion.  This is rational, but irrationality is what carries the day.  To a Palestinian terrorist, to kill a Jew is to serve Allah:  One of them tells himself, “You didn’t kill them, God killed them” . . . The Israeli bombing survivors whom Rehov interviews—all of whom are women (why no men?)—are not exactly insouciant about the jihadist attacks.  A woman named Yael was so traumatized she is now “scared of everything.”  I’m glad Rehov didn’t neglect these survivors.

The movie touches on the poverty of the Palestinian people, but also on the tendency of Arab dictatorships to keep their people poor—people who firmly believe in the hereafter and are so often anti-Jewish.  A recipe for terrorist action, this.

Suicide Killers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A coarse narcissist, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) dislikes that he is no longer the beloved star of a Western TV series. His stuntman and close buddy, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), is probably a murderer; we don’t know. The best thing about them, as Kyle Smith describes, is that they “stand for an old-school way of doing things—all macho movies and masculine camaraderie.” These are the protagonists of Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood (2019), written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. There is no toxic masculinity in this film. What there is is nostalgia for pop culture in the late 1960s, such as the drive-in movie theatre showing Lady in Cement. Indeed, this even includes the sexiness of hippie chicks, when they are sexy.

But the hippies blow it. The backdrop of the Charles Manson murders exists here. Rick Dalton lives next door to Polanski and Tate, whose house three of Manson’s hippies are approaching. These are obviously dark moments, and Tarantino alters history so he can cheer himself up—and because he is a moralist of sorts. Does he not have Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis) refer to Polanski as a “Polish pr–k”?

Sharon Tate, played by Margot Robbie, is in the film and, like Rick, she is a narcissist; but a friendly one. And in any case, she is not an authentically human character. Neither are Rick and Cliff; they’re caricatures. Hollywood was meant to be a revenge fantasy, a work of artistry but not art. And it’s entertaining. It’s lively and peppery, with dandy costumes by Arianne Phillips. It emanates, moreover, from a man coldly aware that Manson does not invite nostalgia.

A coarse narcissist, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) dislikes that he is no longer the beloved star of a Western TV series. His stuntman and close buddy, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), is probably a murderer; we don’t know. The best thing about them, as Kyle Smith describes, is that they “stand for an old-school way of doing things—all macho movies and masculine camaraderie.” These are the protagonists of Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood (2019), written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. There is no toxic masculinity in this film. What there is is nostalgia for pop culture in the late 1960s, such as the drive-in movie theatre showing Lady in Cement. Indeed, this even includes the sexiness of hippie chicks, when they are sexy.

But the hippies blow it. The backdrop of the Charles Manson murders exists here. Rick Dalton lives next door to Polanski and Tate, whose house three of Manson’s hippies are approaching. These are obviously dark moments, and Tarantino alters history so he can cheer himself up—and because he is a moralist of sorts. Does he not have Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis) refer to Polanski as a “Polish pr–k”?

Sharon Tate, played by Margot Robbie, is in the film and, like Rick, she is a narcissist; but a friendly one. And in any case, she is not an authentically human character. Neither are Rick and Cliff; they’re caricatures. Hollywood was meant to be a revenge fantasy, a work of artistry but not art. And it’s entertaining. It’s lively and peppery, with dandy costumes by Arianne Phillips. It emanates, moreover, from a man coldly aware that Manson does not invite nostalgia.

Offered in the anthology New York Stories (2011), Edith Wharton‘s “A Cup of Cold Water” is a New York (City) story from long ago. To a NYC bank the man Woburn owes his job, and he loves Miss Talcott, a member of the city’s aristocracy. But Woburn must be rich to marry the girl; at this he is an unscrupulous failure. Eventually he stops a destitute young woman—Woburn himself is nearly destitute now—from committing suicide. Jesus informed us that if a person gives a cup of water to a thirsty Christian, by no means will he lose his reward. Hence the story’s title. Although not a Christian, the young woman is a down-and-outer helped by Woburn in various ways, after which he does receive a reward of sorts. It is renewed strength and moral sense.

Plot and structure here sustain the reader beautifully. Perhaps the most appealing thing about the story are the paragraphs concerning a cotillion where Woburn and Miss Talcott respectfully see each other but do not speak. Wharton’s piece is a sympathetic winner.