The full title of Scott Seward Smith‘s debut novel is Red Line Blues: The Passion of Owen Cassell, Closet Conservative (2018).  Close to middle age, Owen Cassell is divorced from Lisa, drinks heavily, and eventually has sex—with one woman, Audrey.  That he is a closet conservative (and Republican) certainly matters inasmuch as Audrey is a callow liberal and would be bothered by any boyfriend hiding his political outlook from her.

Smith gives only so much space to the subject of this relationship, focusing as he does on Owen’s connection (as speechwriter) to Mitt Romney, the life and doings of his grandfather, and other things.  But it is all too bad that happiness through being loved must remain at bay.  We are meant to believe, I think, that Owen should not be the coward he is, and that Audrey should not dismiss a man because of his political outlook.  This, however, is, or may be, “the popular current,” to use Alexander Hamilton’s words.

There is no fluid prose in Red Line Blues but it is ably written.  It’s straightforward.  It harbors a good attitude toward America, wherein, in fact, Owen is not a ruined man.  Smith writes that “everything to him [Owen] seemed renewable, like the very spirit of America itself.”  That Smith respects the spirit of America is one reason this is one of the most mature novels I’ve read.

The Wind and the Lion (1975) is an adventure yarn with Theodore Roosevelt (Brian Keith) as one of the chief characters.  If director-writer John Milius admires Roosevelt, as I have read, why did he fail to make him a serious man?  Keith’s performance is fine; Milius’s writing is not.  It turns ludicrous.

Wind also stars Sean Connery (good) and Candice Bergen (bad).  Appearing as well is John Huston, whose presence produced in me the desire to see The Man Who Would Be King, for it’s a much better period piece than this.

Cover of The Wind and the Lion

I wasn’t sure Tom Perrotta‘s Mrs. Fletcher was a novel that would speak to me and so I discontinued reading it.  I may also discontinue watching the HBO TV series, Mrs. Fletcher—Perrotta-created—if I find it a letdown.  Judging from the first, late-October episode, it might not be.

Director Nicole Holofcener and scenarist Perrotta do crisp, bright work here, and the 30-minute episode is very effective at depicting something in particular:  a teen boy (Jackson White) who, because he is callow, fails to appreciate the mother (Kathryn Hahn) who helps him move into his college dorm room.  Hahn, as Mrs. Fletcher, knows how to do uneasiness and discomfort, and is never unsubtle.  I want to see more of her.  I hope Perrotta maintains his smarts.

From outer space has come a disease, a germ attached to a satellite, which has killed nearly every person in a tiny American town.  The satellite is removed to a laboratory where the brainy scientists in The Andromeda Strain (1971) speedily learn about it and naturally hope to neutralize it.  The film, by Robert Wise, suggests that without scientific development we go nowhere but, as well, we don’t always need it for the survival of humanity.  (It can ensure something altogether different.)

Based on a Michael Crichton novel, Andromeda is obsessed with laboratory technology and carries dramatic punch.  Thus, to me, it is engrossing.  The trauma and contingency that James Wood says exist in Ian McEwan’s fiction are here in full force.  I disagree with Pauline Kael that the chief characters are “dull” but, like her, I frown on the fact that the melodramatic climax has nothing to do with the central dilemma.  Also, the government germ warfare stuff is a fatuous bore.  Still, the film can be recommended.

Are merry-go-rounds capable of speeding up the way the one in Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951) does?  Were they in the 1950s?  I don’t know, but I suspect Hitchcock thought he had a better story than he did in this fascinating thriller.  However spotty the plot, though, Strangers is a terrific directorial achievement with some great things done with eyeglasses and Robert Walker’s pathology.  Laura Elliott is vividly good as naughty Miriam.

English: Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) boating into the Tunnel of Love in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 Strangers on a Train (trailer) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)