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Jay's A TALE OF TWO GANGSTAHS Post - Meyer Lansky and Fidel Castro - Havana Nocturne by T.J English - Bubbles Darlene - "¡Viva la Revolución!"

I wish this wasn’t the case, but I found it nearly impossible to write about T.J. English’s historic account of Havana in the 1950s without mentioning Godfather 2.  I mean T.J. certainly does.  I’m talking about Mafiso Meyer Lansky’s birthday party atop the Hotel Nacional, the most prestigious hotel in all Havana.  This actually happened, circa 1946.  Meyer was a Jewish-American gangster who had come to Havana with the belief he could align the Mafia  with corrupt Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.  In the 1930s – the time of Prohibition in the U.S. – Meyer saw economic opportunity in Cuba.  He forged a dummy corporation he called Cuba National, which included his personal ownership of the Hotel Nacional.  Meyer considered himself, first and foremost, a businessman. He saw the potential of Havana to be a world-wide vacation destination.  He recognized the chaos and corruption of Cuba’s political structure.  In his mind, the island was RIPE for the taking.  He was RIGHT.  For years,  he had been smuggling suitcases of cash into the country to gain access and influence with El Presidente.  Now he was making unheard of amounts of money for himself and the Mafia.  It was a PIECE of CAKE.  The author of Havana Nocturne describes Meyer’s birthday event in a chapter called “The Mob’s Playground.”

OK, Godfather 2 is a work of fiction created in the minds of screenwriter Mario Puzo and filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.  In the movie Meyer Lansky’s name has been changed to Hyman Roth, but their stories remain eerily similar.  Hyman hosts his own party atop his own hotel.  He couldn’t have been in a happier place.  He had invested nearly twenty years of his life to the idea of going (semi-)legitimate.   His hotels and casinos were already profiting hand over fist in Cuba.  Now, he felt he had created a true partnership with the corrupt dictator of the Cuban Republic.  He saw his  investment that was not only making him personally RICH but also creating a thriving tourist industry in the country.

The birthday party celebration in the movie shows Hyman sharing his success with some of the most powerful Mafiosos in the U.S., including the Godfather, himself, Michael Corleone.   There is a powerful visual here.  Hyman has ordered a cake decorated with the shape of Cuba in the frosting.  Filmmaker Francis Ford Copola designs a scene where Hyman “cuts up” the island and makes sure everyone gets a “piece.”   Hyman is so proud of himself.  He puts his hand on Michaels shoulder like any proud Jewish uncle would.  He’s beaming.  He explains that this is just the start of an unlimited new age. “Michael,” he says to the Godfather (Al Pacino), “We’re bigger than U.S. Steel.”

In 1940s Cuba, Meyer was not the only one to rise POWER in POLITICAL UNREST.  While Meyer was married on the island in 1948, a young twenty-two-year old law student made a name for himself with his political leadership in the Cuban People’s Party, or Orthodoxo.  On his University of Havana campus, this man was a fearless leader and a powerful orator.  His name was Fidel Castro. This was a time of a weak Cuban president. Corrupt Fulgencio Batista was temporarily living in exile. In his place, Carlos Prio, found he had little control of violent military groups and political parties that competed for power.  Newspaper editors, political activists, and other political operatives walked the island armed to the teeth.  Fidel, who was hated by right-wing extremists, never left his home without a fifteen-shot Browning pistol strapped to his belt. This era in Cuba was termed El Gangsterismo. This is how we approach the scene in Godfather 2.   In 1952, Batista returned to the presidency.  He relied on his former military contacts to help stage a coup of the Cuban governement.  Almost immediately he was taking in suitcases of cash from Mafia gangstahs like Santos Traficante, Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, and Meyer Lansky.  It was good for everyone involved.  The mob created a thriving tourist industry for Cuba with their casinos, hotels and racetracks.  It was like they were printing money. Of course, Batista was happy to take his cut.  Godfather 2 accurately reflects this Golden Age for Meyer and his cronies.  They were confident.  They felt they owned a piece of the island.  The sky was the limit.  That is until Fidel rolled into town.

  Author TJ. English details Fidel's a SECOND EXILE in his book.  First there was Batista's temporary exile to the U.S.  He was ousted by his own government for corruption and other scandal.  For nearly ten years, he lived in a suite at the Waldorf Astoria, just a few floors down from Lansky and Luciano. This would compare to living in Trump Tower today.  Everywhere he turned, he found himself rubbing elbows with more gangstahs.  In 1952, Batista took back his presidency by force with the support of his military alliances.  Nothing could have made Meyer and his mafiosos happier.  They had their strongman dictatior in the driver seat of the Cuba government.  Ove the years they had handed over so many suitcases of cash to Bautista that they must have thought he was BOUGHT and PAID FOR.  The first thing Bautista did when he took power is vow to stamp out any semblance of political unrest.  "No problema," he must have told his Mafia friends. He would protect their casinos, hotels, and other business ventures. Anyone who looked like a rebel would be plucked of the street and disappeared.  This movement caused Fidel to flee to the backwoods of the Sierra Maestra, where he would recruit and create a small band of anti-Batista fighters. 

Havana Nocturne is dictated by Fidel's quest to take the island back from corrupt politicians and ruthless gangstahs, or vice-versa. T.J. English chases the ghost of poet and journalist José Martí.   Fidel idolized the man and his principles.  Several chapters and passages in the book begin with Fidel's arrrest, torture, or imminent execution, but they all end with his relentless chant of "Revolution!...Revolution!...Revolution!..."  The scene in Godfather 2 where Fidelistas take the streets of Havana and run the mobsters out of town is not only a turning point in the movie but also a turning point in the history of Cuba. 

SO CLOSE AND YET SO FAR:  Up to the point of his (real-life)  44^th birthday party, Meyer had worked on his own “Cuban Dream,” for decades now.  He had positioned himself to create a brand new hotel that would make Havana world famous.    He planned to call it the Monte Carlo.  The new enterprise would become such a money-maker that it would finance Mafia activity around the world.  El Presidente was in his pocket!  It was a done deal.  He didn’t consider that the Cuban people would choose a new leader.   They would become Fidelistas.  They had other plans for their own country.

Of course, without the Cuban people, there would be no Cuban Revoloution. Author T.J. English takes ample time to describe the vibrant culture off the streets.  The island vibrates with the wonders of Afro-Cuban msuical styles  like the son, rumba, mambo and danzon. Music is everywhere in the book.  Band-leaders like Benny Moré, Dámaso Pérez Prado, and Arsenio Rodriguez became important cultural icons.    Sex Tourism was also Big Time .  Shows that flaunting naked showgirls and burlesque dancers became a major attraction in mob-owned casinos and hotels.  Prostitution thrived.  No one from the capitol to the barrios complained about it. My favorite part of the book takes the form of a Cuban dancer’s leisurely walk along the tree-lined Paseo del  Prado that divided Centro Havana with Old Havana.  Her name was Bubbles Darlene and she wasn’t just a dancer, she was an exotic dancer.   No one who saw her  this day would forget her. She was dressed in nothing but black panties and a see-through plastic raincoat.  Upon being stopped by local police, Bubbles announced that she was inspired by a Cuban song, “La Engañadora.”  In English, you can translate that to “The Deceiver.”  Why did she choose that song?  Why did she expose herself on the streets?  Supposedly, it was her way to protest her corrupt Cuban government.  The violent activities of the secret police.   The over-ranging influence of American mobsters.    Bubbles was no deceiver.  On this day she LAID IT BARE for her people.   Her bold display of independence may have SYMBOLIZED the spirit of the streets.   Cubans were tired of being bullied and opressed. They all waited excitedly and anxiously for the BEARDED ONE to set them free. If you saw the movie, you know what happens next:  Fidel marched down the street on New Year’s Day 1959 just a few days after  Meyer’s rooftop birthday party.

"¡Viva la Revolución!"

 

 

Jay's BURN ALL THE LIARS Post - Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers - La Simulacra

   If someone asked me how I would classify Rachel Kushner’s novel The Flamethrowers, I just wouldn’t know what to say.  It’s not the kind of book I can easily group with other books on my shelves here in Mexicali.  I mean Rachel K is all over the place with this one.  From the beginning of The Flamethrowers, I can tell the author wants to explore the place and atmosphere of the art world in 1970s New York City: like Avant Garde, Andy Warhol, Punk Rock.   Who wouldn’t?  LET’S GO!  Maybe I can place Rachel K next to my Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground books. (I have plenty!) But in this novel, Rachel K also spends considerable time traversing motorcycles, love, betrayal, feminism, and Italian terrorists.  The novel is disjointed.  The author shifts back and forth between points of view, first- and third-person narration, arrival and departure of characters; so much so, I often lose my place.  She writes like the post-modern artists her characters aspire to be.  Maybe when I finish this piece, I’ll give Rachel K her own shelf.

Rachel K’s main character, Reno, is a fledgling artist from, you guessed it, Reno, Nevada, who makes the trip to New York City to jumpstart her career.   There is an instant mystery to this young woman, for we don’t ever know her real name.    Because Reno has just graduated from her art school, she must be like twenty-two years old;  she is riding her Italian motorcycle to enter a land-speed race at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah where she plans to transform photos of her motorcycle tracks into art pieces.  (Spoiler alert:  She doesn’t foresee the possibility that her best art will rise up from her motorcycle wreck.)    From there, it’s on to New York.  From readhing Rachel K’s bio, I know she was an art student in real life, and she liked to ride motorcycles.  From her photo on the book jacket, she appears to be a beautiful young woman, so when I read this novel, I envision the real Rachel K smack in the middle of every chapter.  But, if I told you this book was autobiographical, I would probably be WRONG. I mean Rachel K may be drawing on a few personal memories and experiences for inspiration, but I if this book was purely autobiographical,  I don’t think I would like it as much.  The real tension in the book comes from having to determine what could beTRUE and what is just STRANGE. Rachel  abruptly changes point-of-view and writing style.  Reno bounces back and forth between lovers, political movements,  and countries.  Reading this book for me was a drama.  I never knew WHERE it was going or WHY.  This style keeps me on EDGE.   This makes the novel FUN!

I read somewhere favorite author Jennifer Egan once say this:  “My ground rules were: every piece has to be very different…   I actually tried to break that rule later: if you make a rule then you should also break it!”   In reading Rachel K’s novel, I came to terms with a new concept called “simulacra.”  It’s often defined as a false reality.  It could be an artist’s attempt to mimic REAL LIFE.  Like those painters who painstakingly paint a photograph.  Or, maybe like my students who engage in online role-play video games where they discard their own identities for fantasy characters.   Some of them, they tell me, play for sixteen hours at a time.  They leave their real selves behind.  But, isn’t that what all authors try to do.  Don’t they try to transport us to a parallel universe? Yes, but the most interesting aspect of Rachel K’s writing is that her characters are all active participants in simulacra.  They are all LIARS.  They make up their lives as they go along.  You never know who or what to trust.  Neither does Reno.

Let me give you an example:  Reno develops a friendly relationship with a New York City waitress named Giddle.   This seems important to me, for Reno is pretty much a lone wolf.  Seeing how she relates, or not,  with her friends reveals a lot about her true self.   Upon her arrival to New York, she spends much of her free time with Giddle, but clearly Giddle isn’t who she appears to be.  She is not a waitress, she says, but she is an artist.  We have all heard this type of story before, but with Giddle, it’s different.  Giddle says she is not working as an aritst, she’s playing the role of one.  That’s her art.  But, she’s been doing it for three years now.  Rachel wonders for who and why.  When is Giddle going to complete her piece?  Along time ago, I read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickle and Dimed, where the author goes undercover to work as a waitress to expose exploitation and discrimination of minimum-wage women.  Ehrenreich was a serious journalist who wrote down her true feelings and observations every night after work.  Giddle just drinks and fucks.  Though the course of their friendship, Reno realizes everything that Giddle says just may be a lie.  In fact, all the time Giddle shares her crazy stories, she may be sleeping with Reno’s lover.    If Giddle is sleeping with her lover, why would Reno maintain the friendship?   She must believe she is like playing a fantastical role in her own life, just like Giddle is playing a waitress.

By the way, Reno’s first lover in the book is a much greater liar than Giddle.  His name is Ronnie.  He’s pathological.  He’s the Lebron James of bullshit. He winds up stories you can't believe, but you can't turn away from either.  When Reno met him in a bar, he was wearing a Mardsen Harley T-shirt, but he knew little about motorcycles. His stories  about doing  time in prison seemed to pull her in, but later she found out all his jail-time stories came from his brother. He just shared them in first-person.  This is WEIRD in an interesting way for the reader.  Reno must be attracted to people who lie.  It becomes a pattern in the novel.  Reno knows they are lying and the characters who lie to her know she knows it, but this the "simulacra.”  Maybe the people Rachel meets are boring, but she recognizes meaning in their stories.  (Spoiler Alert:  Later in the novel, Rachel recognizes her own self in a fantastical Ronnie story about his world-wide travel on a small boat and possible sexual abuse.  This is WEIRD and TELLING.  Ronnie's trip may explain a little about his depraved behavior, but it says nothing for the fact that he hadn't yet met Reno.)  At this point, I ask myself, is Reno YOUNG and IMPRESSIONABLE?  Or, is she DESPERATELY LONELY

I’m not writing a book report here – the novel is just too BIG for me – but that won’t stop me from sharing my favorite part.  It has to do with CHINA GIRLS.  Not Girls from China. Not Chinese Girls.  Not the David Bowie Song.  When Reno made it New York City, she found she had the necessary atributes to become a film model.  “Who know I’d be a model?  But here I am modeling flesh tones…”  In the 1990s film makers hired young women, often lab technicians, to pose in a few shots that would be positioned at the beginning a reel – to measure their skin tones against a range of color samples.  They were called CHINA GIRLS.   I imagine there  is a complex process for duplicating color on film.  If the colors of clothes or landscapes are slightly altered, this may be of little consequence, but any artificial change in flesh tones could become a great distraction and ruin a film.  The China Girl could be used as a colour control reference.  She’s hidden at the beginning of the film.  She's basically invisible:  An UNSEEN model.  The only ones who see her ar the photographers and filmmakers.  In the final print of her modelling session, Reno would see her crooked teeth, but no one cared.  She was anonymous.

It's clear to me that Reno is not so much LONELY, but she is ENCHANTED by the BIG LIE. She buys into the false narratives of her so-called friends because it brings her closer to them.  The China Girls look like models but they don’t do anything. Giddle is going nowhere.  Each time Reno falls in love, she is betrayed.  She wants something so bad, but she doesn’t know what it is.  I believe Rachel K suscribes to Jennifer Egan's first rule for literature: Break All the Rules.   She is not trying to entertain. Instead of giving us something we want, she strives to make us uncomfortable.  What is ENCHANTMENT really?   “Enchantment,” Reno says, “means to want something and also to know somewere inside yourself, not an obvious place, that your aren’t going to get it.”

 

 

 

Jay's KINDRED SPIRITS Post - Giant Love - Edna Ferber and James Dean - and Elizabeth Taylor, Too

   Last week, I read a book called Giant Love.   Giant, as in James Dean's last movie.   On the bookcover, Jimmy D is seated in the backseat of a vintage car in the middle of a barren cotton field. In this movie, he plays Jett Rink, a poverty-stricken farmhand, who works for an arrogant Texas cattle baron.   This rich bastard, portrayed by Rock Hudson, lives in the big house situated in the far background. Jimmy/Jett must be stretched out in the big boss’s car!  It’s clear from the beginning of this movie that Jett is killing himelf to get just a little bit ahead, but in this picture he looks pretty cool.  His cowboy hat is tilted forward to shield his eyes from the sun.  He’s removed his gloves and holding them out in his outstreched hand.  His legs are are elevated and resting on the front seat.  He’s cool, because he’s confident.  Although there is nothing in his life to hint that he will ever make it out of there, in this picture, he looks like he’s thinking about it.  He’s a dreamer.  He's a believer.  I mean, he’s James Dean.

Wait, I’m leaving out something important about this bookcover. Embedded inside the letter “O” in the word “Love” in the title of this book, I see a black and white  portrait of a middle-aged women’s face.  That’s Edna Ferber.  She’s the best-selling author of the novel Giant that the film is based upon. Edna is sporting a shallow-crowned hat adorned with huge black ribbons.  A matching black veil comes down to just below her nose – just enough to shade the eyes and add a touch of mystery. At first glance, I thought the book would be about Jimmy D, but that’s not the case.  For the first two hundred pages or so, it’s all about Edna: her dreams, her ambition, her courage, her devotion to her art.

I GET IT.  The book is written by Edna’s grandniece, Julie Gilbert.  The author looks at her aunt with the same AWE I maintain for Jimmy D.   When I think of Edna and Jimmy D, I think KINDRED SPIRITS.  I gradually got into this book, for I was sure it was going somewhere.  In reading about  Edna, I was going to learn more about Jimmy D.  They are both relentless in their pursuit of the truth.  They don’t back down, no matter what anyone tells them. This was going to be a Goodread.  I was sure of it.  I enjoyed reading about Edna’s formative years.  She grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin.  I know that town, for I have read biographies of Harry Houdini.  Wouldn’t you know it?  Edna and Harry attended the same high school at the same time.  Harry’s name was Erich Weiss at the time.  I don’t think they knew each other on a personal level, but as Erich turned into Harry, master showman, Edna developed into a world class writer, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her novel So Big.

Currently, I’m at a point in my semester teaching where my students are beginning to whine about the amount of work I assign.  I’ve never known how to respond to excuses for not completing their work.  Many, if not most, of my students come from immigrant families.  English is there second language.  Believe me, I understand their frustration.  I myself spend a significant portion of the day leaning how to write in Spanish.  But, instead of making things EASIER for them, I unfortunately tend to make things HARDER. To help them raise their game,  I end up giving them MORE WORK. I want to say, “You are not ALONE.”   Nothing is EAZY.  Now, after reading GIANT LOVE,  I just may share a story or two in the classroom about Jimmy D and Edna F.  They both  learned about failure at an early age. I’m going to continue my name-dropping here.  Edna’s start in literature reminds me of another favorite writer, Stephen King.    Like Stephen K, Edna was both a voracious reader and a relentless writer. In the 1920s, She may have been the same age as Stephen K when she attempted her first novel.   Like Stephen K, she became completely submerged in her story.   When she wrote, she projected herself into the setting of her stories; she  lived the lives of her characters.  Writing was her life.

When I read Stephen King, I see the same type of intensity.  You just don’t know where the author stops and the story begins.Stephen King became so frustrated with the writing of his first novel Carrie that he eventually threw the manuscript away in a wastebasket and then went out got hammered. That’s it, he must have thought. It’s over, like “I gave it my best try, but I’m just an alcoholic loser…” Later that night, however, destiny struck when he came home on a bender to find his wife waiting for him. This time, she wasn’t going to kill him – she had found “Carrie” in the wastebasket, and spent the whole night reading it. She thought it was great and encouraged him to finish it. I’m not sure if he quit drinking that night, but he started writing again. Eventually he became one of our nation’s most celebrated literary figures.

Edna F would know how Stephen King felt.  At age 24, she completed her first novel, Dawn O’Hara: The Girl Who Laughed,  but far from feeling a sense of accomplishment, she felt a sense of dread. I don’t think there was any drugs or alcohol involved, but once reading her finished product for the first time, she hurled it into the trash. Unlike Stephen King, Edna was not married.  In fact, she never married. Her great niece, the biographer, believes her life as a spinster may have had to do something with her total commitment to her art.  At the time she threw her novel in the wastebasket, she was still living at home in Appleton Wisconsin.  Luckily for her, her mother found her novel and read it. She promptly sent it off to a leading New York publisher.   A few years later, they were Edna’s writing was appearing in the best literary magazines across the country.  President Theodore Roosevelt became one of her biggest fans.  He once said, “She is the best woman writer of her day in America.”

  I’m not writing a book report here about Edna F, nor am I going to rehash the life of Jimmy D, but I did take the time to watch the film Giant as I was reading this book.  Legendary Hollywood director George Stevens brought the film to the big screen in decade of the fifties.  This couldn’t have been an easy task, given the racial and gender hatred embedded in Edna’s novel.  In Marfa, Texas, the setting and location of the Giant film shoot,  the locals must have been restless.   If they had read the movel, they couldn’t have been to comfortable of the picture Edna painted of Marfa’s people, history, and traditions.  I mean, who was this Edna F to tell their story.  Giant may have been promoted as a beautiful love story between Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor, but the screen quickly filled up with ugly racial hatred and gender bias.  The Mexicans in this movie were cruelly treated.  They lived a life of hard work and terrible poverty.  For the most part, they were treated with contempt by the wealthy landowners like Rock Hudson.  Edna weaved this theme into the story, for this is what she saw with her own eyes in her ten years researching the novel.

This is why I want to close this post with Edna's fight with the studios to enhance Elizabeth Taylor's role in this movie. Edna know first-hand what it was like to battle the sexist interpretations and attitudes of her own industry.  She must have projected herself into the Elizabeth's role as the outsider in the story of Giant.  Elizabeth played Leslie, the Virginia woman who was swept off her feet and married to a rich and arrogant Texas landowner. As long as I’m here, I’m going to include Liz as another KINDRED SPIRIT of Edna and Jimmy D.  I’ve never seen any fear or intimidation in the way she conducted her life or played her parts. In the story of Giant, Liz/Leslie seems to be shunned and disrepected by her male counterparts, and she’s having NONE of IT.  In Giant, there is a Sunday Afternoon Scene in the Big House, where Liz’s husband holds his hand out and steers her away from the “men talk” he was discussing with his neighbors and business partners. To the other side of the room, there were women knitting quietly.  I think one of them may be working on her stamp collection.  The message is clear to all viewers:  In Texas, women were there to look pretty and stay quiet.  When Liz looked over from the men to the women, she understood she was being shut out.  But WAIT!  In her mind, she had done nothing wrong. She was as STRONG and INTELLEGENT as any of the men.  But I think that’s Edna’s point.  In this day and age, what other choice did a woman have but TAKE IT.  Liz had nowhere to turn.   I mean, she was married to the BIGGEST PENDEJO in the room.

As soon as the production of Giant had ended, Jimmy D just couldn’t wait to drive his new Porsche Spyder racing car up route 99 from L.A. to Salinas.  His Hollywood contract stated clearly he was forbidden to drive this car during the filming of Giant, but now that the filming was over, and all he had left to do was voice-overs – that’s not considered “filming,” is it? - this mean’t he was FREE.  Free to do what he wanted. He planned to register his new car and win this weekend in a professional race. He didn’t make it past Paso Robles. It was nearing 5:00 p.m., close to dusk, Jimmy D was of course driving the Spyder at wrecklessly high speed across a deserted stretch of road where Routes 46 and 41 intersect.  He was forced to hit the brakes when a young driver in a station wagon  coming from the opposite direction failed to see his approach.  Jimmy flipped the Spyder! He suffered a broken neck in the head-on collision. He was pronounced Dead On Arrival at a hospital in nearby Paso Robles.

Two days later Elizabeth Taylor was called back to the studio to do a voiceover for a scene she had done with Jimmy D.  She was devastated by the death of her close friend. She was nearly at the point of a nervous breakdown when they told her they couldn’t delay the session.  She would be obligated to come into the studio and respond to a recording of Jimmy D’s voice.   Elizabeth Taylor was a Big Star.  Of course, the studio did everything to accommodate her in her time of grief.  When the asked her if she was OK, she screeched “FUCK YOU!” and then she  nailed her lines.

To Edna and Jimmy D, Liz was a KINDRED SPIRIT.