strange and random happenstance: The Algonquin

Showing posts with label The Algonquin. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Book Review - J.J. Murphy's Murder Your Darlings

Murder Your Darlings: Algonquin Round Table Mystery Book 1 by J.J. Murphy
Published by: Signet
Publication Date: January 4th, 2011
Format: Paperback, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

"In all reverence I say Heaven bless the Who-dunit, the soothing balm on the wound, the cooling hand on the brow, the opiate of the people." - Dorthy Parker

Dorthy Parker may be at the center of a vicious circle of writers in New York, in fact, THE Vicious Circle... that still doesn't mean that any of them are responsible for the appearance of a corpse under their celebrated round table at the Algonquin. But, as any good writer knows, that doesn't eliminate them from the suspect pool. The fact that the corpse is a reviewer that one or more of them has wished dead at one time or another doesn't help matters. Once the press gets a hold of the story and starts to sensationalize the scenario, things are libel to get out of hand. Dorthy and her fellow writer, Robert Benchley, decide to solve the case on their own without the cops, who seem to be questioning all the wrong people. Not to mention the flatfoots seem obsessed with the young wannabe writer Billy Faulkner, who Dorothy just knows couldn't have done it. She must make sure that Billy is safe and not the prime suspect! With her dog's lead in one hand, a cup of tea filled with anything but in the other, and a heart longing for the married Benchley, Dorothy will solve this crime if she has to go to every illegal gin joint, speakeasy, and bad play that stands in her way.

Murder Your Darlings throws you headlong into the heart of the Vicious Circle at the height of their powers. Therefore I will caution, the unwieldy cast coupled with the plethora of puns does take a while to adjust to, like getting your sea legs or finding your tolerance level for alcohol. But once you grasp who everyone is and what they're notorious for the story fully captures you. I wouldn't say that it's one of those books you just start and plow through cover to cover, with it's wonderfully short chapters and it's witty dialogue it's a book you can pick up and set down like an indulgent afternoon snack. You get a little bit of refreshment and go on with your day, mulling over the wonderful little world you've been reading about. It's a nice leisurely stroll to the conclusion, which, when reached, makes you wish that you had a few more hours to bask in the time period. I was left with a happy glow that I still look back on fondly and look forward to having again when the next book comes out. Perhaps this time a who's who and maybe a map would improve the reading experience. Or little bios of everyone... because this wonderful world is made that much more interesting when you know the history. Thanks Wikipedia, I phrase I rarely utter and which I'm sure Dorothy would abhor.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments

Labels: Bright Young Detectives, Dorothy Parker, J.J. Murphy, Murder Your Darlings, Mystery, Roaring Back to Reading, Robert Benchley, The Algonquin, The Algonquin Round Table, The Vicious Circle, William Faulkner

Friday, January 24, 2020

Book Review 2019 #3 - Erin Morgenstren's The Starless Sea

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Published by: Doubleday
Publication Date: November 5th, 2019
Format: Hardcover, 512 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

When he was young Zachary Ezra Rawlins found a door. Graffitied on the side of his home. Appearing overnight and painted over by the end of the day. He did not go through it and did not tell anyone about it but over the years wondered what would have happened. Therefore it comes as a shock when perusing the stacks of his school's library during winter break that there is a book with his story in it. This impossibility leads him on a hunt that will forever change his life. A hunt for a bee, a key, and a sword. A hunt that leads him into the cross-hairs of warring parties. At a literary themed masquerade at the Algonquin Hotel in New York he meets the players who will lead him down his path. Mirabel, the painter, and Dorian, the storyteller. But this path doesn't come without dangers. Far beneath the Earth there are tunnels and rooms and each and every one of them is filled with books and stories and adventures to be had. But they are all in danger. This subterranean world was once alive and vibrant and here Zachary Ezra Rawlins has finally stepped through the door into a magical world in it's death throes. What would have happened if he had arrived earlier? What will happen now that he's here? Can he save the library with his new companions or is it all lost before his adventure has really begun?

The Starless Sea is an ode to books and book lovers and all forms of stories. The plot twists and turns and is a complex puzzle waiting to be solved. A quest for the reader and for Zachary Ezra Rawlins. When you reach the end it becomes a beginning and it almost feels necessary to turn back to the first page and relive all the adventure and heartache. There's something nostalgic about it, it harkens back to well loved movies and books and even video games. There's more than a dash of The Neverending Story, and Labyrinth, and The Magicians, and and and a million other books and adventures I loved as a kid and adult. Though I have noted the discontent in some readers who were expecting a new iteration of The Night Circus. At first I to was hoping for that and while The Starless Sea is definitely not that it's so unique, so it's own thing, that I love it for what it is and the work you put in to understand and follow what is happening is justly rewarded. Books shouldn't be easy. Books should make us think, challenge us in ways we didn't expect, take us on an epic adventure that makes us realize why we fell in love with stories in the first place. I fell into The Starless Sea and don't care to be rescued.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Erin Morgenstern, Labyrinth, Library, New York, Nostalgia, Storytelling, The Algonquin, The Magicians, The Neverending Story, The Night Circus, The Starless Sea, Zachary Ezra Rawlins

Friday, September 12, 2014

Charles Addams

Charles Addams might be an odd inclusion for literary New York, but I ask you this, have any of the authors profiled so far been able to so completely tell a story with just a line or two of text and an image? I should think not. Also, if we want to get technical, his work was complied into many books and he was given an honorary Edgar Award for his body of work, so there. Charles Addams was America's premiere cartoonist for all things dark and macabre. His unique sense of humor was able to tap into some deeply shared hive mind bleakness that made his work relatable to everyone. With his comics making the leap to television his name became famous overnight with The Addams Family. Because that kooky family literally couldn't be thought of as anything else then his own creations, hence his family.

Chas Addams published his first cartoon on January 13th, 1940. He would go on to draw more then 1,300 in his lifetime, many of which were published by The New Yorker. As I have previously mentioned, The New Yorker eventually moved from Hell's Kitchen to right across the street from The Algonquin, making it easier for many of the writers to slip out for "board meetings." Their new location was at 28 West 44th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenue.

The facade of the building was changed a little when new owners took over in the early nineties, but the trace of the offices that Addams would exclusively visit and was "often present on the premises" of remains with this lovely "Literary Landmark" plaque. Don't expect to find it hunting on google maps trying to make your imaginary visit as real as possible. Sadly you'll have to actually visit New York because this plaque is located in the building's vestibule. And if you look closely, a certain "Cartoonist" Charles Addams is mentioned on the plaque! Eat your heart out Dorothy Parker!

Because Chas's literature is a visual type of storytelling, he gets a few more pictures then the other authors profiled this month... and also because I seriously can't choose a favorite with his work. Each and everyone one of his covers for The New Yorker could be framed and have pride of place on your wall. But what I think most interesting to point out here is that his work fit well with The New Yorker because there was something so specific about it that made you feel as if these comics could only happen in that thriving metropolis. A combination of the macabre and the urban that captured New York City's zeitgeist.

Addams also captured the fringes of society, the weirdness that is on the outskirts, right out of view, right at the transition from urban to suburban, he captured it with such deftness. If you look at these two covers, you'll realize that both are from 1961. Just think of Addams's popularity to do multiple covers in a single year!

I can not talk about Chas without talking about his cars, after all it was his passion and he had his fatal heart attack sitting in one in front of his apartment. He was able to capture this dichotomy from urban to suburban because he often travelled back and forth between his apartment in the city and his house in Sagaponack, New York. As he raced along the streets he was able to see this transition and then put it into images. That house in the Hamptons is now home to the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation, where his studio remains intact, and the Foundation carries on works in his name.

But if you don't feel like leaving the city, then it's time for another stop on our stalking dead authors tour... between 5th and 6th Avenue directly behind MOMA if you are looking up the island, was Chas's home in the city. Here is an excerpt from Linda Davis's Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life describing her visit there:

"The Addams dwelling at 25 West Fifty-fourth Street was directly behind the Museum of Modern Art, at the top of the building. It was reached by an ancient elevator, which rumbled up to the twelfth floor. From there, one climbed through a red-painted stairwell where a real mounted crossbow hovered. The Addams door was marked by a "big black number 13," and a knocker in the shape of a vampire.

The apartment consisted of the top two floors of the building. It stood under a leaky ten-thousand-gallon water tank which had flooded the bedroom at least once, destroying the drawings, photographs, papers, and other mementos Addams kept in boxes under the bed, as well as on closet shelves. The layout was equally eccentric. The bedroom, where Addams worked most of the time, was upstairs, accessible to the downstairs living room and kitchen only by outside service stairs.

Inside, one entered a little kingdom that fulfilled every fantasy one might have entertained about its inhabitant. On a pedestal in the corner of the bookcase stood a rare "Maximilian" suit of armor, which Addams had bought at a good price ("a bargain at $700") from the Litchfield Collection at Sotheby's Parke-Bernet gallery thirty years earlier. It was joined by a half suit, a North Italian Morion of "Spanish" form, circa 1570–80, and a collection of warrior helmets, perched on long stalks like decapitated heads: a late sixteenth-century German burgonet; a German trooper's lobster tail pot helmet, circa 1650; and the pointed fore-and-aft helmet from the sixteenth-century Italian suit, which was elaborately etched with game trophies, men-at-arms, monsters, birds. There were enough arms and armaments to defend the Addams fortress against the most persistent invader: wheel-lock guns; an Italian prod; two maces; three swords. Above a sofa bed, a spectacular array of medieval crossbows rose like birds in flight. "Don't worry, they've only fallen down once," Addams once told an overnight guest. The valuable pieces of medieval weaponry, which would ultimately fetch $220,113 at auction, mingled with books, framed cartoons and illustrations, photographs of classic cars, gruesome artifacts, and such inexpensive mementos as a mounted rubber bat.

Everywhere one looked in the apartment, something caught the eye. A rare papier-mâché and polychrome anatomical study figure, nineteenth century, with removable organs and body parts captioned in French, protected by a glass bell. ("It's not exactly another human heart beating in the house, but it's close enough," said Addams.) A set of engraved aquatint plates from an antique book on armor. A lamp in the shape of a miniature suit of armor, topped by a black shade. There were various snakes; biopsy scissors ("It reaches inside, and nips a little piece of flesh," explained Addams); and a shiny human thighbone — a Christmas present from one wife. There was a sewing basket fashioned from an armadillo, a gift from another.

In front of the couch stood a most unusual coffee table — "a drying out table," the man at the wonderfully named antiques shop, the Gettysburg Sutler, had called it. ("What was dried on it?" a reporter had asked. "Bodies," said Addams.) The table had holes in each corner for draining the fluids, a rusted adjustable headrest, and a mechanism for raising and lowering the neck. There was also, Addams genially pointed out, "a rather sinister stain in what would be the region of the kidneys." The table was covered with the usual decorative objects — a Baccarat goblet, a couple of plates, a miniature castle, a bowl of ceramic nesting snakes."

As a final stop, I think it's time to see some of these works in person. Sadly, because the two times I was in this New York institution I had not heard of this gallery I can not verify if it is still there, but Neil Gaiman and the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation back me up, so there's hope... At the Main Branch of The New York Public Library at West 40th Street located right on 5th Avenue there is a gallery devoted to Charles Addams. As Gaiman said "[t]o this day, one of my favourite places in the world is the tiny Charles Addams art gallery on the third floor of the New York Library (follow the signs to the Mens' Toilets and it's just before you get there)." So follow those directions from Neil and revel in the artwork of a man who was a literary great and was somehow able to capture what it meant to be human and a New Yorker, in the most wickedly delightful way possible.