The Wayward Bus: A review of Steinbeck's novel

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       John Steinbeck's post World War 2 novel The Wayward Bus is a consistent masterpiece. The plot, which concerns travelers trying to take a bus through rural rainy California, is overshadowed by the complex characters who populate the tale. It's no mean feat for an author to vividly describe more than a dozen characters and get inside their heads, reveal their desires, fears, wants, hates, generosities, prejudices and more, but it's done to perfection. The central character is Juan Chicoy, a handsome 50-something bus driver who also runs a small diner/gas station with a bus stop in a remote California outpost near the Mexican border. With him is his wife Alice, an insecure, homely woman who uses tantrums to mask her fear that Juan will leave her. The hired help is Kit, a teen whose bad complexion gives him the unfortunate nickname of Pimples, and Norma, a mousy, naive 20sh young woman with a crush on Clark Gable.

        One day the bus breaks down and several passengers spend the night at the diner. They include Mr. Pritchard, a rich businessman traveling with his wife Bernice and 25-year-old daughter Mildred. Also, there's Ernest Horton, a young salesman who fought in World War 2, and a bitter, spiteful old man named Van Brunt. They are soon joined by Camille, a beautiful blond who attracts the attention of all the men. With the exception of Alice, they all board the bus and take off for San Ysidro, which is the next stop. It may rain, and Juan tells them risk is involved. The friendless Norma soon bonds with Camille, and Pimples, Horton, Pritchard, and even Van Brunt try to find seats on the bus that provide them the best views of Camille's legs. The cynical Juan observes it all from his driver's seat. That's all the plot that needs to be mentioned. The strength of the novel are the characters and how through stress Steinbeck deftly tears through their exterior defenses and reveals what they are really like. The Pritchard's marriage is an illusion. The husband talks to his wife Bernice like a toddler, granting her favors, and she subtly controls him through infrequent offerings of sex and severe headaches designed to induce guilt and capitulation. When the bus breaks down, their sham marriage is open to all to see when stress causes them to fight. Eventually, after his clumsy attempt to sweet-talk Camille is rebuffed easily, a temporarily enraged Mr. Pritchard rapes his wife Bernice in a cave, where she's resting with a headache.

        It's a gritty, horrifying scene, but Bernice's reaction reveals even more their perverted lives. While sitting in the bus, ignoring her guilt-ridden husband, she's calculating what she can get out of his guilt from the rape. She thinks it may be worth an orchid house. Alice, Juan's wife, is also a compelling character. A once attractive woman who has lost her looks, she lives in fear that Juan will leave her. This fear, far from placating her, makes her a shrew. She terrorizes the help and browbeats Juan, who takes most of it with a smile. What's behind Alice's behavior is a desperate attempt to be noticed by her husband. She has a very real fear that he is tired of their life and wants to leave. "Alice braced herself for the rage she knew was coming, and then Juan looked slowly toward her. His dark eyes were amused and warm, the focus changed again, and he was looking at her, and she knew that he saw her."

        Juan's decision on whether or not he will leave Alice will directly influence the success of the passengers getting to San Ysidro once the bus bogs down in soft mud and can't move. Camille, a cynical beautiful blonde, is another interesting character. She's a stripper, but tells everyone she is a dental nurse. She'd like to ditch the mousy Norma who idolizes her and babbles of the apartment they will share in Los Angeles, but is too soft-hearted to extinguish her dream. Mr. Pritchard believes he knows Camille, and during his clumsy pick-up attempt an exasperated Camille tells him where they've met. It was at a businessman's strip show. "You remember the girl that sits in the wine glass? I've seen what you boys look like. I don't know what you get out of it and I don't want to know. But I know it isn't pretty, mister," she coldly tells him. John Steinbeck was a prolific writer, and those who have already read The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men will enjoy the lesser-known but just-as-good novel. There is a pretty good film adaption of The Wayward Bus made in 1957,

Doug Gibson

Victor Serge: The First Neo-Conservative? Reviewing The Case of Comrade Tulayev

 

ESSAY/Review BY DOUG GIBSON. 

NOTE: Recently, I discovered on the Internet archived reviews (at a Geocities site!!) that I had published more than a generation ago for The Event, a now-defunct Salt Lake City alternative weekly. If The Event had a website, I was unaware of it. It is my desire to re-publish these pieces on the above blog. Here is the first post.

        Is the late Victor Serge making a comeback? Seemingly forgotten for decades, his many novels not available at most libraries, let alone bookstores, the Russian revolutionist-turned dissident who survived Stalin’s gulag is the subject of a new biography by radical journalist Susan Weissman. It’s a pleasure to see Serge’s life revived for the 21st century, although Weissman, like many leftists, seems to ignore that Serge rejected all forms of Bolshevism and by the end of his life was an anti-communist. Those leftists who do know that deal with it in proper Marxist fashion by attacking Serge, an act which would make Stalin proud.

       The conservative Weekly Standard’s Stephen Schwartz recently reviewed Weissman’s biography of Serge and profiled the first neo-conservative. He was born in Belgium. Early in his life he was a violent anarchist and spent several years in a French jail. After being freed in 1916, Serge gravitated towards the Bolshevik revolution. He was a dedicated adherent of the revolution, and was disgusted by the anti-democratic betrayals committed by Lenin and Stalin. Serge chose to align himself with Trotsky, a move that led him to a prison cell. That he escaped with his life, writes Schwartz, was due to the protests of French writers Andre Gide, Andre Malraux and Romain Rolland. Serge was exiled to Mexico. He went to Spain, where the failed Spanish revolution disillusioned him to Trotskyism. He eventually settled in Mexico. He died mysteriously in 1947, likely murdered by communist agents, writes Schwartz.

       Serge was a prolific writer. His novels include Birth of Our Power, Conquered City, Midnight in the City, The Long Dusk, Men in Prison and The Case of Comrade Tulayev. His novels are allegories of totalitarianism. Men in Prison was an account of his time in a French jail. Midnight in the Century provides readers a glimpse of what he endured in Stalin’s gulag. Birth of Our Power details the successful Russian revolution.

       After learning of Victor Serge, your reviewer was determined to find one of his novels. It wasn’t easy, but eventually a battered 1963 paperback copy of The Case of Comrade Tulayev was purchased through the online auction house Ebay. The novel is set in 1930s Russia, at the height of Stalin’s purges of the veterans of the revolution. A powerful communist leader named Comrade Tulayev is murdered (modeled after the 1934 murder of Leningrad party boss Sergei Mironovich Kirov). Tulayev’s assassin is a low-level party functionary named Kostia, who in a moment of frustration impulsively shoots Tulayev.

       The murder sets off a chain of events in paranoiac Russia. It’s used as an excuse for a round of purges where powerful party leaders are arrested and charged with complicity in Tulayev’s death. Not one is guilty of the crime although most eventually “confess.” Meanwhile, no one ever suspects the anonymous Kostia, who by the end of the novel has prospered.

       The key strength of Comrade Tulayev is how Serge is able to get into the heads of his characters. Erchov, a high commissar in state security assigned the impossible task of finding Tulayev’s killer, is aware that he is soon to be purged, but is unable to escape his fate. His fear and sense of helplessness make him inert to resist as his world starts to crumble around him. When he is finally arrested, he can only applaud the smooth manner in which he was taken into custody.

       Others arrested include a thuggish province leader lured to his capture with a promise of adulterous sex. He’s the sole one unaware of his fate. The strongest “suspect” is a veteran dissident who scorns his captors and cheats torture by starving himself to death. His suicide seals the fate of his interrogator.

       A unique character is Popov, an emaciated old veteran of the Bolshevik revolution who has maintained power by betraying colleagues. In a unique twist, his daughter protests an arrest he has helped orchestrate. When she is arrested, Popov realizes that in the dysfunctional world of power he resides in, he will soon be arrested as well.

       Stalin, who is called The Chief, is a study of reserved fanaticism in Comrade Tulayev. His calm demeanor belies an unflinching loyalty contaminated by madness which thrives on fear. In fact, Stalin’s character as sketched by Serge (who knew him) is so much like the Inner Party torturer O’Brien in 1984 that George Orwell must have read Victor Serge before writing his classic tale.

       The Case of Comrade Tulayev is a powerful novel that deserved to be re-discovered. It reminds us that wickedness feeds on itself, and that the chief incentive to be cruel is fear that the torturer will soon be the tortured.

Remembering Bill Stevenson, Utah Republican

 

(I wrote this tribute to former Utah Republican Party chairman Bill Stevenson shortly after his death in May of 2010. It was published on the now defunct StandardBlogs on The Standard-Examiner newspaper website. I’ve been thinking of Bill lately. I rescued this post from Wayback Machine and am happy to publish it on this blog. - Doug Gibson)

The world’s a little bit smaller with the death of Bill Stevenson, former Utah Republican chairman. He was 80 when he died on May 19. It’s a shame that there’s not even a news article about this man’s death in the Salt Lake City papers because the dominance of the Utah Republican Party owes itself to men like Bill, principled, honest, and determined to build a base from the grassroots up, not the top down. Bill was part of the era of Ogden’s Richard Richards, former national Republican chairman.

Bill’s heyday was a long time ago. When I first met him, more than two decades ago, his tenure as state GOP leader was already over. But he stayed active in politics, working behind the scenes for such pols as Chris Cannon, Enid Greene and Greg Hughes. His last major push was for New Mexico’s Gary Johnson, who runs the Our America group, and may be a candidate for president in 2012.

Bill taught me that a lonely man with his principles is more important than a wealthy man with his principles  for sale. I loved him and I’m sure he’s up there with many of his colleagues, keeping an eye on Utah. Read his obituary here.

The original Wayback blog post is here. It includes a few comments.

What's the big issue in the 2022 midterm elections?

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I have not posted on this blog for almost two years. I was going to resume with a long take on the midterms on Tuesday. But I realized I don't need a long take to figure out what voters care about this cycle. I just need to think about conversations with my wife, many friends, and co-workers.

But let's use my wife as the example: A major subject in our lives is how much more expensive it is to live. We'll fret over the costs of gasoline, or the cost of eggs, or the dairy-free margarine we prefer. Or how much more expensive it is to enjoy lunch at one of several middle-class restaurants. Or how more expensive airplane tickets will be for that special vacation we've been planning 10-plus years for. 

We are pretty fortunate middle-classers. Unlike many others, we don't have to tap into our savings, or worse, use credit cards to meet daily essential needs. Across America, lots and lots of people have to do that.

Inflation is the key issue today. It's easy to understand why. It affects virtually everyone. If you, or your family, are paying thousands more each year just to exist, it's your issue. And it's what you are thinking about. Crime and immigration are also concerns, but they pale in comparison to your pocketbook. 

It's not selfish to care so much about inflation that it's your major issue. One isn't coveting when inflation plagues us. One isn't greedy, or unfeeling to consider inflation a major issue. We just want to make ends meet. We want to provide for our children. And we want policies and politicians to prevent inflation, not egg it on. 

In my world, we're talking about inflation. Across the nation, we're talking about inflation.

Here's what my wife and I never talk about: a perceived threat to democracy if our preferred political party does not win. 

Republicans are tub-thumping the threat of inflation. It's their chief priority. I hope they continue to care about the issue if the GOP wins Congress. I'll be very disappointed if the next Congress emulates the previous Congress with constant investigations and impeachments.

Democrats are tub-thumping a threat to democracy if they lose elections. It's a bit ironic since Democrats spent tens of millions of dollars boosting -- in the primaries -- Republican candidates who they cynically thought would be easier to beat.

Maybe they will be easier to beat. Or maybe a lot of these "democracy threats" will win Tuesday, which would be even more ironic.

I don't predict elections. When I do I am invariably wrong. But I know that inflation is a far bigger concern than a temper tantrum that democracy will end if a candidate loses. 

We're a strong country. Politics is always cyclical. We abide, and we endure. And we dismiss political demagoguery.

Just what in Hades is President Trump doing with his stimulus tantrum?

--- Column by Doug Gibson 

Just what in the hell is President Donald Trump (seen above) doing with his after-the-fact tantrum/demand that the finally negotiated stimulus/budget deal be changed? The president knows that his administration was involved in negotiations that resulted in a deal that included $600 direct payments for individuals, $1200 for couples, and $600 for dependents ... depending on income.

Demanding that it be increased to $2,000, or he may not sign the deal, brings us to a situation that after today, may lead unemployment benefits to end for many. It could also shut the government down in nearly three days.  

I speak as a supporter of the president despite his checkered past and still mercurial behavior. He's done a good job in office. My support for his re-election was based on policy. I wanted him to win. I'm not happy to have a future commander in chief who I fear, by 3 p.m. every day, has forgotten what he ate for breakfast, and even lunch is a bit foggy. I also believe that the Democratic Party, the past generation, has moved further left than the Republican Party has moved right.

But he lost the election. Politics is cyclical. This was a unique year in which massive voting produced curious results. Trump gained in popularity but a consistent antipathy for Donald Trump the past four years -- truth be told tub-thumped with enthusiasm by still-influential media and arts -- made Joe Biden the getter of most votes in our nation's history.

Donald Trump is mad he lost. Everyone gets it. He believes he was cheated out of the election. He is angry and resentful that prominent GOP pols, notably Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are saying it's time to accept the results. This anger is what motivates President Trump's $2,000-or-maybe-I'll-not-support-this-deal switch midweek. He did it to both embarrass -- and potentially damage -- pols such as McConnell. 

Trump's frustration is so high that he is willing to hamstring two Republican U.S. Senate seats in Georgia, in which Republican incumbents are running against a pair of pseudo-socialists. The vote is scheduled for Jan. 5. If the Democrats take both seats, they will control both houses of Congress.

Democrats seized on Trump's remarks, using them for political advantage. Speaker Nancy Pelosi dragged in Congress for a unanimous consent vote for a $2,000 stimulus, meaning a single vote against would kill the proposal. No Democrats spoke, so the GOP was forced to kill it, providing "wonderful optics." This minor comedy provided Pelosi the opportunity to deflect that she refused every reasonable-OK-not-atrocious stimulus deal offered prior to Election Day, preferring the president not get a political victory rather than provide needed relief.

Let's be honest, the stimulus relief and budget deal is terrible legislation. It exemplifies everything that is bad about Congress; a hasty, cobbled together, several-thousand-page sleep-aid of mostly indecipherable legal speak, chock-full of pork, favors and personal preferences, with cash thrown at the "proles." 

But, unfortunately, what I have described is kind of the norm for Congress. It's up to voters to throw these enablers out, and we never seem to do that. 

The point is that the president knew the game, and the negotiations. If he wanted $2,000, the very public, taped demand he made could have been out two weeks ago. It shouldn't be tossed in after the fact, after the deal was reached.

Because the president did this out of personal pique, I am hopeful that later today, or perhaps Sunday, even Monday, Trump will back away from his implied threat to create chaos, and sign the budget/stimulus package. He can then resume -- to his heart's consent -- his quixotic attempt to change the election results. 

And then, after Jan. 21, we'll have a new president. I will call him my president. And I hope Republicans challenge him often, and effectively.

‘Mortality’ is an appropriate epitaph to Christopher Hitchens’ life of writing

 

(Saved this piece from Google's Wayback today.) “Mortality,” by the late Christopher Hitchens, is a slim volume that serves as an epitaph not of Hitchens’ life, but the accompanying end of his writing, which fought its death. Most of “Mortality” are collections of magazine pieces Hitchens published while afflicted with esophageal cancer. However, the volume, sans self-pity and written with a curiosity that is not morbid,  includes fragments of thoughts that Hitchens felt compelled to write on paper while on his deathbed.

Hitchens was fortunate that he died still able to write. One of the most painful sections of Howard Sounes' excellent biography of another writer, Charles Bukowski, is the brief, terse mention, near the end of Buk’s life, that he had degenerated so far that he couldn’t manage the act of writing. To a Hitchens, a Bukowski, and I suspect most writers, that is real death. In “Mortality,” it’s clear writing serves as an enemy to the author’s cancer.

To writers, writing is an addiction. I recall watching a documentary on Oxycontin addiction. The addict, trying to describe what it does to him, said that his lust for the drug had long exceeded a point where he received any initial euphoria from the Oxycontin. Instead, he said, the drug was needed so he could feel normal for a little while.

Of course writing is a positive, and painkiller addiction a negative, but there is a similarity here. Writing is not an easy act. It can be frankly, a royal pain in the ass. But as Gertrude Stein and others have maintained, “having written” provides euphoria.

I suspect, even as he lay dying in a hospital bed, writing provided Hitchens a chance, in a world of pain, to feel normal, if not euphoria.

Hitchens probably wouldn’t approve of this, but I’ll be sappy and express a hope that he’s still observing and writing.

--- Doug Gibson

--- Originally published in October 2013 in StandardBlogs.

Mr. Jones is a gut-punch of a film that reminds us of evil, and its unlikely cheerleaders

Review by Doug Gibson

I've watched the film "Mr. Jones" several times the past few days. Each viewing is a stronger punch in the gut. This is the most important film of the year, and even if there wasn't a pandemic it would likely have a limited release, with its commercial life relegated to streaming.

I watched it with my son, 15, yesterday. He's readying for 10th grade; an intelligent 4.0 student as well as an accomplished amateur boxer. His reaction to the film -- succinct and appropriate: Why haven't we learned about this in school?

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"Mr. Jones" is a true story, albeit with composite characters and some non-relevant historical license (George Orwell (Joseph Mawle) floats through the story, quoting "Animal Farm" and sharing two apocryphal scenes with the main character.)

It's the story of Gareth Jones, (James Norton) a young Welsh policy wonk in the early 1930s who had a passion for journalism. Through dogged persistence, also called shoe-leather journalism, he once snagged an off-the-cuff interview with Adolf Hitler.

The film opens with Jones, an adviser to a top British government official, warning his boss and others about the danger Hitler poses. His listeners respond with condescending laughter. Afterward, Jones is let go by his employer; not for his advice. His employer is genuinely fond and appreciative of Jones. It's the global depression; he can't be fit in the budget.

Jones has been researching Stalin and his economic policies in Russia. He can't understand how Stalin has so much money. The numbers don't add up. With a letter of recommendation from his boss, and some help from a journalist in Russia, Paul Kleb (1), he secures a press credential to visit Russia. His goal, greeted often with amusement, is to interview Stalin.

He is advised to contact a journalist for the New York Times, a Pulitzer Prize winner named Walter Duranty (Peter Sarsgaard). Duranty, the media star there, is known as the man with Stalin's ear. In Moscow, Jones is assigned two days (he expected a week) in a luxury hotel. He finds out journalists are not allowed to leave Moscow. He learns Kleb, who had told him on the phone he was working on a big story on the Ukraine before the line went bad -- was murdered on the same day.

Duranty is cordial but patronizing with Jones, inviting him to a party with other journalists, in Duranty's suite at the same hotel. It's a sex party, and Jones declines entreaties for sex with women, drug use, and sex with men. A memorable line comes from an intoxicated journalist telling a bewildered Jones to associate the party with Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death," at least until that book is banned, he adds.

I've hewed tightly to the plot to set the film's scenario, but I'll move faster now. Jones develops a friendship with an employee of Duranty's, a journalist named Ada (Vanessa Kirby). She provides Kleb's notes on Ukraine, entrusted with her, to Jones. Using his association with his prominent former employer in Britain, Jones manages to finagle, from an arrogant Soviet official, a government-approved trip to the Ukraine area to see their engineering success. Once on the luxury train, Jones easily eludes his alcoholic minder and transfers himself to a cargo boxcar. Inside, he sees travelers herded like cattle, freezing as the train moves forward.

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The second half of the film provides historical gut punch after gut punch. The movie at times seems to  be a stream of consciousness, the viewer transported behind Jones' eyes, as he plays witness to an evil far greater than the 20-something journalist dreamed possible. It's also an evil hidden from the world, and enabled by a media unwilling to confront it.

In the boxcar, every eye turns to Jones as he eats an orange. When he tosses the peeling to the ground, more than several try to get a bite at it. At one point Jones offers money to buy a winter coat from a traveler. The seller has no interest in money, but he'll trade for a loaf of black bread. When he arrives in Ukraine, Jones quickly learns the answer to his questions. Stalin's government is transporting all the grain harvested to Moscow. Menacing soldiers push people around, ignoring dead bodies in the streets. People are starving to death.

Jones narrowly escapes capture after disembarking from the train. A starving old man, noticing his camera, accuses him of being a spy to a soldier. After escaping the city, we spend several scenes of Jones wandering through deserted, frozen country, with long empty fields dotted with mostly silent villages. The white cinematography is superb, and director Agnieszka Holland frames the land so perfectly; so beautiful but so desolate, a gorgeous hell of death and suffering.

It is very, very hard to endure some of the ensuing scenes. I'll mention a couple because this is history and no one should complain about "spoilers." The scene that hit me the hardest was Jones encountering a cart on its way, collecting the dead along the road. A toddler, little more than an infant, is crying loudly next to his dead mother. The cart's driver tosses the mother in the cart, and without a thought, tosses the crying toddler, alive, into the cart with the dead bodies.

Another scene involves Jones entering a house where three children live. They are cooking meat. During dinner Jones inquires, to the oldest child, who provided the meat. She gives the name of her brother. Is he a hunter, Jones asks. No one at the table responds. Jones gets up and walks around the house. At an open back door, he sees a corpse preserved in the snow, a portion of meat from his leg cut out.

Later, at a bread line, a woman tells Jones that millions have died. He is then captured and returned to Moscow. He is released after being forced to say that the Ukraine has no problems and the people are happy. Before Jones is allowed to go home, six British engineers are arrested as "spies."

Duranty tells Jones that he got him released. An angry Jones confronts the corrupt journalist, offering him a piece of bark --- the food staple of Ukranians -- and tells him to place it next to his Pulitzer. Duranty tells Jones it's a pity, he would have made a good journalist.

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The final third of the film covers Jones' return to Britain and his attempts to tell about the forced famine, only to be hit with a continued barrage of fake news. A successful attack on his credibility is led by the Pulitzer-winner Duranty. Seventeen years ago, Sarsgaard effectively played an ethical journalist in the film, "Shattered Glass,"' about the New Republic plagiarism scandal. But the now-older actor is even better as the hobbling, slithering esteemed liar Duranty, happy to perpetuate fake news that feeds a famine. As National Review's Kyle Smith points out in his review (linked in this paragraph) Duranty was not a stereotypical hack or useful idiot, he was "a deeply evil man."

Even Jones' ex-employer demands he retract his claims. He won't. But he enters a journalistic and cultural purgatory that, frankly, is not uncommon in history. His principles insist he do what is right, rather than what is easy (apologies to "Albus Dumbledore").

Norton's Jones is a contrast. A deferential, glasses-wearing, mild young man with resolve of steel and a moral code that can withstand the taunts of the 1930s' version of Twitter and cancel culture. He doesn't take his blows without showing injury. Gordon's Jones cries as he is mocked.

He endures, and he finds an opportunity to get the truth about Ukraine in print, boldly barging into publisher William F. Hearst's vacation home and pitching his story. Hearst accepts it, seeming to take pleasure at taking on Duranty and the Times.

The movie ends with Jones' reports in the press and being widely discussed. Hearst ran a conservative empire so, like today, I'm sure Jones' reports were tagged as "conservative propaganda" by Duranty and others. But the facts got out; and that is what is important, as Jones' notes to a skeptical Ada early in the film.

While the film is about Stalin's Holodomor (Holocaust) it is also about fake news, and there are parallels to today, although of course not to the extent of covering up an event that killed millions. The past four years a fake Russian conspiracy charge against the current President, and many others, has been propagated, debunked, and nevertheless still propagated by both politicos and prominent media. One can read definitive accounts noting this hoax by journalists from the right and the left. History perhaps, doesn't change as much as we think.

Back to my son's questions: Why don't I know of Gareth Jones? Why does Walter Duranty still have a Pulitzer? There's a simple answer. Truth and courage does not always provide a great reputation among the world.

Jones was murdered about a year later in Mongolia while reporting. According to the film, his guide was associated with the Russian secret police. Duranty lived a cosseted, comfortable life, dying in Florida at the age of 73.

(1) Kleb, a composite character, is obviously in name an homage to Paul Klebnikov, a journalist for Forbes murdered in Russia in 2004.