Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival, Greenblatt - A*

         Late Tudor England suffered from many maladies: the weather of the Little Ice Age, filthy streets, plague, entertainment featuring animal fights, religious conflict, and endless real and perceived conspiracies against the Queen—it was a cultural wasteland governed by a somewhat delusional, self-absorbed monarch. However, in the 1580s, from England “burst forth” magnificent advances in science and intellectual growth that propelled centuries of greatness. The author posits, “In the course of his restless, doomed, brief life, in his spirit and stupendous achievements, Christopher Marlowe awakened the genius of the English Renaissance.”

         The son of a shoemaker, he was born in Canterbury in 1564. At 14, he was awarded a scholarship to the King’s School, Canterbury. “Admission was a coup. It changed Marlowe’s life decisively and forever.” How he acquired the skills to pass the admission test is unknown. Learning and speaking Latin was a requisite for success. As the classics preceded Christianity, what one studied in school did not sound similar to the preaching one heard at church. Virgil and Ovid often wrote about lust and desire. “The books to which Marlowe was introduced in school offered an escape from the confining orthodoxies with which he and virtually everyone was hemmed in.” Three years later, he was off to Cambridge, where he was exposed to a rigorous academic life at a time of ongoing religious conflict in England. He brilliantly translated Ovid’s Amores, introducing a new style followed for centuries, and is believed to have indulged in proscribed sexual activities. He spent time in the library, hunched over a four-hundred-year-old atlas featuring the name of Tamburlaine, the title of his first play. After receiving his BA, he stayed on for another three years, declaring, as his scholarship required, his intention to become an Anglican prelate. He had no such intention, spent a considerable amount of time away from Cambridge, and consequently was denied the degree. When a letter from the Queen’s office arrived stating he had been in the service of the Crown, his degree was immediately granted.

         Marlowe had been engaged and sent overseas to spy by Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s secretary and spymaster, whose primary mission was to protect the Crown from Catholic assassins. It was an opaque world in which one was uncertain who was a friend and whom one could trust. In 1587, Marlowe moved to London and rented rooms near the two existing theaters. With the construction of the Rose on the south side of the river, written material to perform was needed to entertain the burgeoning crowds. Into this world, where plays lasted a few weeks, maybe a month, Marlowe introduced to the owner of the Rose Tamburlaine the Great. “Virtually everything in Elizabethan theater is pre- and post-Tamburlaine. No one in English poetry had ever spoken with the grandeur and magnificent self-confidence of Marlowe’s Scythian hero.” The play had not a scintilla of the era’s morality and was a vastly popular success. Henslowe, the theater owner, asked for, and Marlowe cranked out, the sequel. Both were written in unrhymed iambic pentameter—blank verse. It changed everything, not unlike the arrival of talkies. As popular as the two plays were, some thought them blasphemous.

        Henslowe suggested a series of plays on the Wars of the Roses, with Kit Marlowe collaborating with Thomas Kyd and William Shakespeare. Shakespeare did most of the work and is heralded as the author. He admired and emulated Marlowe’s writing but was wary of risk-taking. Marlowe’s next solo success was The Jew of Malta, fiendishly plotted and unlike anything before. The play was a Machiavellian portrayal of the rise of the Stanley family, the sponsor of the theater and the playwright, in Tudor England. In 1593, Lord Strange became the Earl of Derby, and because of his family’s loyalty to Catholicism and rebellious relatives in France, he was highly suspect in the hyper-paranoid world of Elizabeth’s court. A year later, he died of poisoning. For Marlowe, the taint could easily spread to him, particularly as he was indifferent and skeptical about religion and inclined toward homosexuality. He spent time in Sir Walter Raleigh’s circle and was thought to be sympathetic to the ideas of a scientist, believed by the authorities to be an atheist, who worked for Raleigh.

       “It seems entirely possible that the peculiar atmosphere of liberty among those who assembled in Raleigh’s Durham House triggered in Marlowe his most transgressive and risk-taking impulse. Sometime in 1592, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus was performed—Marlowe understood that he had struck theatrical gold. He had unearthed a deep vein of popular fear and fascination." The play is considered a “tragic vision of a looming catastrophe.” Faustus is Marlowe’s most autobiographical and riskiest work. Faustus celebrates a Black Mass, in Latin—a language banned in England since 1559. It is imbued with Calvinist doctrine and features Faustus making a pact with the Devil. It stood in complete opposition to the evangelicals of his era.

          While plague killed one in six in London, Marlowe was away in the country, lounging with a wealthy friend and working on The Massacre at Paris. In May of 1593, Marlowe was arrested and summoned back to the capital. Although no charges were pressed, the reason for his arrest were documents in the possession of his friend Thomas Kyd, who may have implicated Marlowe as an atheist while he was tortured. Another supposed friend supplied the Privy Council with endless purported scandalous statements attributable to Marlowe. He clearly was in trouble—trouble that could only end in hanging. Nonetheless, nothing happened after he returned to London. On May 30, he spent the day in a bar with three friends. Around six in the evening, there was noise in their private room, and Marlowe was dead. All three men told the police that Marlowe had attacked one of them, who killed him in self-defense. Theories abound about what happened and why. As all four men had at one time, or would in the future, be in the service of the state, many believe he was assassinated for his atheism by officers of the state.

         “The medieval worldview was still intact in Elizabethan England. The structure of society was ordered as it was by God. For the cultural life of England to move forward, someone had to come along and break through the suffocating carapace of inherited dogma.” That person was the reckless cobbler’s son from Canterbury. “Through the fissures Marlowe had made, the light began to flow. Shakespeare saw that he could now enter territory into which no one before Marlowe had dared to venture.”

           I’ve found this to be an extraordinary book. The author is a brilliant writer, and Marlowe is beyond fascinating. The most profound contribution in this book is its depiction of the totalitarian and paranoid views of Elizabeth and her advisors. Perhaps that was simply the nature of the era—but it feels closer to a 20th-century dictatorship.

The Writing In The Water, Lindqvuist - B+

         Julia Malmro, a successful middle-aged writer researching a book, meets a 28-year-old cracker (someone who pierces firewalls for fun). They have a wild weekend fling, and Kim disappears from her life. Kim, though, is more than a wealthy slacker. While hanging out in Cuba, he uncovered a ring of 340 Swedish pedophiles, a painful process given that he was cut by his grandfather and abused by a physician. They reconnect at Kim's summer home a few months later when a group of neighbors are murdered just across the bay. The host of the party is a childhood friend. Kim takes a peek at the dark web and concludes it’s highly likely the victim had been hiding wealth, engaging in illegal activities, and was killed by professionals. Kim shares this with Julia and heads to the sanitarium where the host’s teenage daughter is being held. As she is being cared for by the electrotherapy torturer and abusive doctor who once treated him—and after he rescued Astrid from the lake following the shooting—he’s not about to let her be abused again. He easily saves her and manages to obtain a video from the boy she was talking to when her parents were murdered. Surreptitiously, he slips it to the police, who, among other things, hear Chinese spoken in the video. The lead detective now knows he has a case involving money likely coming from Shanghai, Red Army machine guns, and Chinese spoken in a Shanghai dialect. Kim decides it’s time to visit Shanghai, and at this point, everyone is certain the deceased—and at least one of his guests—was up to no good. In Shanghai, Kim learns that a major Swedish industrialist, one whom the government would not wish to embarrass or offend, was likely also involved. The two men confirmed as the killers, who had failed to kill Kim in Shanghai, are later found executed there. Kim stops in Cuba, does some work, and confirms the identity of the Swedish industrialist. There’s a fabulous ending with all the bad guys hauled in. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the two most successful Scandinavian thrillers to come to my attention—the Millennium series and Jo Nesbø’s books about Harry Hole. This is just as good, if not better.

The Death Of Trotsky: The True Story Of The Plot To Kill Stalin's Greatest Enemy, Ireland - B +

        Lev Bronstein, later Trotsky, was the "precocious son of an illiterate Jewish farmer" from Ukraine. Josef Dzhugashvili, later Stalin, was the brooding, angry, and hateful former seminarian from Georgia. They first met in 1905 and despised each other from day one. Trotsky was a brilliant orator, tall and charismatic. Stalin had a withered left arm and limped because of webbed toes. Trotsky led the Red Army to victory in the revolution, while Stalin was the General Secretary of the party. Trotsky ignored everyone around him; Stalin cultivated and befriended all he met. Trotsky did not even return from vacation to attend Lenin's 1924 funeral. Stalin easily won the succession battle, expelled Trotsky from the party, later the country, and revoked his citizenship. Stalin seldom had much to say; Trotsky wrote prolifically from abroad.
        Ramon Mercader, the man who would eventually assassinate Trotsky, was a movie-star-handsome Spanish communist born in 1913. He fought in the Spanish Civil War and became further committed to the left. His devotion to the Soviet Union was so absolute that his recruitment was very easy.
        Throughout the 1930s, and in particular when the Great Purges began, Stalin tied almost all evils, failures, and counter-revolutionary activities to an affinity with Trotsky. Everything that went wrong in the country was attributed to his influence, even though he had been in exile for a decade and had no role or input in any aspect of Soviet society; his children, grandchildren, and relatives were either murdered or exiled. After a decade of wandering Europe, Trotsky was offered refuge in Mexico and arrived there in 1937. Within days, a handful of Soviet agents followed. Trotsky and Natalia stayed with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. He worked tirelessly refuting every accusation made against him. The NKVD was everywhere and knew every move he made. One of the family's devoted communist friends was Ramon Mercader. Trotsky had a falling out with the famous artist and moved to a smaller house. In 1938, Stalin learned that Trotsky was writing a biography of him. It was bad enough that he published endless denunciations of everything Stalin did, but this was too much. He began to punish those who had failed to capture and kill Trotsky. He assigned the task to an NKVD agent who had recently assassinated a Ukrainian in Holland. Pavel Sudoplatov had to organize an operation in Mexico that did not lead back to Moscow and figure out how to besiege a guarded, secure residence.
         The agents began crossing the Atlantic on forged documents. Trotsky's colleagues throughout Europe were being murdered. He predicted they would kill him at a time when events in the war would reduce the headlines. In May 1940, three months before he was killed, 20,000 communists rallied in Mexico City demanding his expulsion. A few days later, an NKVD force attacked, breached the wall, began firing guns, and threw incendiary bombs into the house. Somehow, no one was hurt. After a few days, Ramon arrived offering his sympathies and the loan of a car for the staff. Natalia had her suspicions, but he was incorporated into the inner circle. He left for a few weeks in New York, and months later he returned to Mexico.
         Stalin was advised of the effort's failure and asked to consider the next option. The primary risk of an assassination by Mercader was that his capture could expose all of the NKVD agents in North America. Nonetheless, he approved the order. Trotsky had become very fatalistic about his future, but on August 20, 1940, he was in high spirits. A terribly anxious Mercader showed up at about 2:20, unannounced, but was ushered in, saying he was coming to say goodbye. Before he went into Trotsky's office, Natalia thought that he looked anxious and unwell. He smashed the business end of a handheld ice axe with a foot-long handle into Trotsky's head. The gory wound was three inches deep. He died the following day.
         No amount of interrogation could stop Mercader from insisting that he was acting on his own because of his disillusionment with Trotsky and that he was not part of the NKVD. He maintained that position through a 20-year imprisonment. After his release, he was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal and lived in Havana until his death in 1978. This is a solid book, with a little too much information at certain points, but all in all informative.

Inside Man, McMahon - B+

                Two members of the FBI's PARS unit, a specialized group consisting of quirky intellectuals who observe otherwise unfathomable patterns to solve crimes, find one of their CIs dead in his double-wide. When they realize a team of bad guys is on their way, they take whatever they need and torch the trailer to ensure that it isn't obvious he was a snitch. While waiting to draft another CI, they are sidetracked into a serial killer case and switch back to what is now finding a significant domestic terror group. With remarkable insights and deft touches, this team gets it all done. This novel is the second in the series and an improvement on the first.

Murder At World's End, Montgomery - B+

          In another twist on an Agatha Christie classic, it is the spring of 1910, and we are off the Cornwall coast in the house of a Viscount who has every room in his mansion sealed off because he fears the noxious gases that will emanate from the passage of Halley’s Comet. The night—and the comet—pass, as does the Viscount who is found with a crossbow bolt in his eye. He has met his maker in exactly the same manner as his father did two decades earlier. Suspicion falls on the newly arrived Stephen, whose baggage includes a criminal record. He must find the murderer and will do so in conjunction with the person he spent the night with in the attic nursery—bat-crazy old Aunt Decima, who is probably smarter than everyone in the building. They team up with the maid, Temperance, and are miles ahead of the dimwitted nitwit Scotland Yard sends. Off they go on a fun-filled investigation that leads to the murderer. And best of all, it’s the first in a series.

The Last Kings Of Hollywood: Coppola - Lucas - Spielberg And The Battle For The Soul Of American Cinema, Fischer - B+

        The great American studio system began to unravel after its most successful year—1947. There was an ugly strike, Olivia de Havilland sued Warner Bros. to break her contract, Harry Warner and Louis B. Mayer were testifying before HUAC, the Supreme Court ruled that the studios must sell their theaters, and television arrived. “The cruelty and hubris of the men who had created the system” tore it down.

          Twenty years later, the studios were on their last legs and turning to younger people to rescue them. The first of the arrivistes was a film grad from Hofstra, Francis Coppola. He had been working at Warners for five years when he met a recent USC grad, George Lucas. The two began a very close personal and professional friendship. A year later, a skinny kid from Phoenix talked himself into a job at Universal and quit Cal State without even emptying his locker. Steven Spielberg was going to work in television.

         Coppola and Lucas left for San Francisco to set up Zoetrope Studio as an independent, hoping to free themselves from L.A. and the traditional studio culture. They ran up debt and produced only Lucas’ THX 1138, which Warner Bros. was threatening not to distribute. Francis’ failure to go to the mat for George eventually led to their break-up. In order to keep Zoetrope open, Francis accepted Paramount’s offer to direct The Godfather. The $75,000 fee might be enough to save the company.

          The Godfather became the most successful film ever made. It outgrossed everything before it and made Pacino, Caan, Duvall, and Cazale household names. Francis’ six percent of the profits made him wealthy and the most famous director in the world. Spielberg was overwhelmed when he saw it and sank into despair over a contract that kept him in television. Lucas followed with American Graffiti, another career-defining blockbuster.

           While his two elders prospered, Steven extracted himself from TV and successfully directed a feature film. He was then asked to make a movie about a shark from an as-yet unpublished novel, Jaws. The ever-efficient Spielberg filmed all of the on-land scenes on time. But when production moved to the waters off Martha’s Vineyard, everything went wrong. The boats were too small, the sea was uncooperative, the shark barely worked, and the equipment was not designed for salt water. The shoot ran far over schedule and budget. Spielberg feared being fired and had nightmares about that summer for years. Of course, 1975 saw the birth of the summer blockbuster—Jaws earned even more than The Godfather.

         As 1975 came to a close, the three men were working on Star Wars, Apocalypse Now, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The filming of Apocalypse in the Philippines became one challenge after another. Three weeks in, Francis removed Keitel from the role of Willard and replaced him with Sheen. Before production could recover, a typhoon wiped out the sets. Then Sheen suffered a heart attack.

          Lucas, meanwhile, was in London and Morocco filming Star Wars, uncertain what his team at Industrial Light and Magic could achieve, as the footage initially looked poor. He and his wife, the film’s editor, argued constantly throughout the process. When he screened an early cut at home, a friend suggested the opening crawl to introduce the story. Star Wars exceeded all expectations, outgrossing both The Godfather and Jaws. It was a game-changing phenomenon. Nineteen seventy-seven became a landmark year in Hollywood. Close Encounters opened at year’s end to critical acclaim, while Francis struggled to shape over a million feet of film into Apocalypse Now. Its release kept being delayed.

          The film finally premiered in late 1979, winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Financially successful but critically mixed, it saved Francis from ruin, as he had personally financed it. The Empire Strikes Back was released in the spring of 1980. It too had a difficult production, but its success was enormous. George came very close to complete independence from Hollywood, as the studios were now only handling distribution.

           The studios still had money and infrastructure, however, and they began to fight back. Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg at Paramount partnered with Lucas as producer and Spielberg as director on Indiana Jones. The film was a major success and offered Paramount a franchise that could print money. The studio particularly loved Harrison Ford, the centerpiece of the series.

         Both Coppola and Lucas faced severe financial and personal challenges at roughly the same time. After buying land in Santa Monica and attempting to build an experimental, non-Hollywood studio, Francis had to file for bankruptcy—both for Zoetrope and personally—when the effort failed. Meanwhile, after a decade spent on the Star Wars trilogy, George and Marcia divorced. Her $50 million settlement strained his finances considerably.

          After the phenomenal success of E.T., Universal built Steven his own building on a quiet corner of the lot. They later asked him to direct Schindler’s List. Unsure whether he could handle such a difficult subject for his first truly “adult” film, he hesitated—but ultimately created a masterpiece.

        Francis was eventually able to pay off his creditors after reuniting with George to make Tucker, and by agreeing to direct The Godfather Part III. Lucas, ever the visionary, embraced the digital future and eventually sold Lucasfilm and ILM to Disney for billions. The two men reconciled and returned to working on smaller projects. Steven’s success continued well into the new century.

         Thus, our story comes to a conclusion. The impact of these three men on world culture is almost impossible to overstate. It is hard to think of anyone else whose influence has been so broad and lasting over the past century. Perhaps I am wrong. One thing I am certain of, however, is that the author does not measure up.