Dodgers 3, Red Sox 2

Last night, Karin & I watched the first half of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca. Then we turned it off, agreeing to save the rest for later. We were tired, and we wanted to see what was happening in Game 3 of the World Series.

The Dodgers and Red Sox were tied with one regular inning to go. We decided to watch the rest of the game. (It was about eleven o’clock.)

Ha! The game went into its tenth, eleventh, and twelfth innings. The managers made moves and countermoves. Runners populated the bases but were stranded by gritty pitching.

Long after midnight, Karin went to bed.

The thirteenth inning was wild. Each team committed a blunder that allowed the other to score. The game was still tied at the beginning of the fourteenth inning.

Then, the quality of play worsened. Batters stopped trying to get on base: they swung hard at every pitch, hoping to quickly finish the contest. There were many flyouts and strikeouts. At the end of the seventeenth inning, I decided that nothing of interest would follow, and I went to bed. It was after 3:00am.

Sure enough, the Red Sox failed to reach first base in the top of the eighteenth, and the Dodgers then won by hitting a leadoff home run. It had been the longest game in World Series history – the equivalent of two games, inning-wise; and, time-wise, longer than the entire World Series of 1939. I’d watched half of it.

As I type, the teams are tied in Game 4. It’s the top of the ninth. …

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Update: The Red Sox scored five runs in the top of the ninth.

Update: The Dodgers managed just three more runs.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Update (Sunday): The Red Sox won Game 5 and clinched the World Series.

Cornish ambiance; two new Mormon missionaries; their predecessors, the raccoon killers; I join a reading group

Well, I finished reading Rebecca. The last hundred or so pages were very thrilling. Then I read the back matter: (i) an essay by Daphne du Maurier about how she wrote the novel; (ii) an essay about Menabilly, the real-life “Manderlay” (where du Maurier later resided); and (iii) a disused draft of the epilogue (it sucked so badly, I tore it out of the book).

Cornwall must be one of the best English counties in which to set a Gothic novel. It has the requisite desolation. Fittingly, Aphex Twin is the best-selling musician to hail from that county.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Two new Mormon missionaries have moved in downstairs. Today, they made the rounds in our building, knocking on doors and introducing themselves. When they came to our apartment, I told them that I knew a great deal about missionary life; that Karin & I’d honeymooned in Utah; and that their predecessors, Elders Henderson and Parker, had neglected us, except to skin a raccoon under our window. (Yes, we now know that they did it: they fashioned the tail into an ornament for their car.)

I agreed to discuss the Book of Mormon with the new young “elders.” This, at last, will spur me to read it.

Freeriding

There’s good news, for one semester at least: the faculty, staff, and students of my university will be allowed to ride the city bus for free. I plan to ride as often as possible so that this policy will be extended beyond the fall.

I paid my last bus fare today and rode home from downtown, where I’d attended the Friends of the Library Public Book Sale. I’d bought nine books in five volumes for four dollars. Six of these books are inside two omnibuses by Ngaio Marsh. “She Writes Better than Christie!” is the blurb on the front cover of one of the omnibuses. (No, she doesn’t.) The Friends of the Library Public Book Sale is about the only place where I ever find Ngaio Marsh’s books; curiously, no books by Dame Agatha were available today.

I’d been dutifully reading two chapters, daily, of Dame Daphne, but yesterday I lapsed. I did write four dissertation pages, however. (I still should be able to finish reading Rebecca in two weeks.)

I also am reading one chapter, daily, of The Late George Apley. I should get through that book by the end of August.

P.S. I saw at least two copies of Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators, by Jay Nordlinger, in the “Politics” section of the book sale. You can get a copy cheap if you go in today before 6:00pm. (Here is what I wrote of the book a couple of years ago.)

Reading report

For the third time, I’m trying to read Rebecca. Some passages are very good. Some could have been trimmed down a bit. In general, the book emits a nice, festering scent of dread.

I was inspired to try out Rebecca again because I’d just finished a du Maurier-like James Bond novel: The Spy Who Loved Me. What a weird little book. Its narrator, a young woman, juxtaposes her sordid past with her terrifying present, in which two monstrous goons pursue her through a nightmarish landscape. Toward the end, James Bond becomes the narrator’s life-saver and lover. (I haven’t spoiled the plot, most of which can be discerned by reading the table of contents.) Bond behaves like a douchebag.

In the Bond novel, the haunted past is, for the most part, linearly recounted – not woven in along with the present terror, a technique that du Maurier skillfully employs in Rebecca. Ian Fleming should’ve written a second draft. But, apparently, he never did that with his novels. Not surprisingly, The Spy Who Loved Me was poorly received: none of the book’s plot was incorporated into the movie of that title, and Fleming made the book unavailable as a paperback for as long as he could.

These two fantastical novels have been something of a break from the realism of Sjöwall’s & Wahlöö’s police procedurals, of which I’ve read five in the last two months. I’m halfway through that series. I now have no trouble identifying the funny parts. When certain characters appear – especially the unrefined inspector Gunvald Larsson and the lazy patrolmen Kristiansson and Kvant – it’s a signal that humor is forthcoming. It’s the despairing kind of humor that says, “On such pillars as these, society rests.” The Swedish welfare state is criticized for allowing the lower orders to distract themselves with drugs, drink, and sex while the upper orders squirrel away the crucial assets. It’s a criticism from the Left: it explains why the workers of the world aren’t uniting.