High Jinks in Old Hollywood

Russ Tamblyn was a known name at our house because my beautiful stepmother dated him when she was just 13, and he, 15. They both attended North Hollywood High although, as I learned from this fascinating memoir, he also attended school at the MGM “Little Red Schoolhouse” with the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Dean Stockwell (Tamblyn’s lifelong friend).

Reading through the early chapters was, thanks to my stepmother, extremely interesting because I could fill in with stories that Tamblyn or his editors left out. For instance, my stepmother enjoyed and appreciated attending multiple premieres thanks to Mr. Tamblyn. She was probably underage for drinking alcohol, but circumstances permitted on many occasions at these star-studded fetes. The first time she tried a particular kind of alcoholic beverage, she came home quite tipsy. My stepmother’s mother called Mr. Tamblyn’s mother to complain that he had plied her daughter with alcohol. Mrs. Tamblyn insisted that was impossible because they were Mormon and “Rusty” didn’t drink.

However, the stories I have heard about or read in Mr. Tamblyn’s letters are not the same as the ones in this memoir. The memoir sticks close to recognized famous names or movements. It seems like every admired actor and sometimes singer, like Elvis Presley, were all Tamblyn’s friends. News to me was his strong involvement in the West Coast Beat scene. Tamblyn was more than one kind of artist, participating heart and soul in the ’60s counterculture. That alone makes the book very revealing. I always wondered why he suddenly checked out of Hollywood; now I understand. He has had two stunning careers, first in acting (with a later return to the screen) and then in art, often paying the price financially for following his heart.

There did seem to be an echoing silence on relationships, particularly with Elizabeth Kempton. What he doesn’t discuss seems to be as important as what he does, and it is hard not to feel that she must have had her own relevant and touching story. What must it have been like to have been a beautiful young wife of such a famous actor who was taken up more and more by the counter-culture? Tamblyn’s relationship with Neil Young is also enlightening.

As a fan of old Hollywood, I greatly enjoyed this book. My Kindle version did not include images but the hard copy I purchased for my stepmother had lots of pictures. Other old Hollywood fans can see images of MGM back lot (it was astonishingly huge and varied) at silverscreenmodes dot com. These images show how vast that back lot was. My stepmother as a teen got to wander around it as she waited for Rusty to be done filming. She got to bump into the likes of Ava Gardner and other names who are now legends, like her first love, the irrepressible Russ Tamblyn.

Our Fatima of Liverpool, the Victorian Woman who helped found British Islam by Hamid Mahmood and Yahya Birt.

In the compelling story of England’s first female Muslim convert/revert titled Our Fatima of Liverpool, authors Hamid Mahmood and Yayha BIrt open a fascinating window into the last half of the 19th century in Liverpool, England. I knew nothing of Fatima Elizabeth Cates until I received this book, and I was very glad to learn about her. She predated the respected and talented translator of the meaning of the Quran, Marmaduke Pickthall, of whom I have been aware since I converted to Islam in the late 70s.

Through this book, I also learned about William Henry Quilliam, at whose lecture in Birkenhead (on the other side of the Mersey River from Liverpool) Elizabeth, as she then would have been known, heard about the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. Learning about the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was not Fatima/Elizabeth’s reason for making the journey in 1887 that—if it were between Liverpool and Birkenhead–would today be roughly 2 miles by plane or 3 miles by car. However, this little tidbit of murkiness stems from my assumption that Fatima/Elizabeth lived in Liverpool as the title of the book suggests. If she did, then a round trip walk in a single evening would indicate what a determined young woman she was, given British cultural 19th-century standards.

The authors do not say whether she was accompanied or walked alone. Chapter 2 states that she was born in Birkenhead in 1865 where her father, an Irishman named John Murray, worked as a porter at the “newly built and expanding Birkenhead Market” (p.19). Therefore, the walk might have been but that of a few minutes. Perhaps Birkenhead and Liverpool are so close that association with the former means one is from the latter. As a Californian, I don’t know.

I am not sure if Elizabeth Murray (birth name) would have known on the day she set out that the title of the lecture was “The Great Arabian Teetotaller” or even that Quilliam was Muslim. The original title of his lecture, when given two weeks earlier at the Mount Vernon Temperance Hall, was “Fanatics and Fanaticism” based on the theme that those who were part of the Temperance movement were jeered at for being puritanical reactionaries. Surely anyone devoted to a cause understands the comfort of finding solidarity with others who experience rejection for efforts to uphold ideals.

The Temperance movement appealed to devout Christians in the U.K. although it had its roots in the USA. Liverpool, then the second largest port in the British Empire, was riddled with poverty, alcoholism, and the misery that attended both. Fatima/Elizabeth wanted to hear the speech of this 31-year-old Temperance movement leader Quilliam, who had just converted that year to Islam after a visit to Morocco. Born in 1856 (making Quilliam 9 years older than Fatima/Elizabeth and 19 years older than Pickthall, who was born in 1875), Quilliam had already gained some notoriety as “the Temperance child” because he famously took a “pledge to abstain from all alcohol at the age of seven” (p.16). In adulthood, he had already achieved status as a lawyer and journalist.

It so happens that Fatima/Elizabeth (her name hadn’t changed yet) sat right next to Mr. James Hamilton, “a wholesale box maker” and “Quilliam’s first convert” to Islam (p.18). After she expressed an interest in knowing more about the religion that, in theory, created teetotallers, Hamilton encouraged Elizabeth to speak more with Quilliam. Eventually, Quilliam gave the young woman a copy of a translation of the Qur’an, which she took home to read, unleashing a torrent of abuse and misunderstanding from her family towards her. (One of the appendices makes it clear that family members who likely helped impose restrictions and abuse upon Fatima/Elizabeth, including her mother, came to her funeral years later, so the resistance to her conversion must have given way to acceptance, finally.)

Fatima, as she chose to call herself after conversion, was significant in striving for converts to Islam. The authors give well-researched figures. They also expose the horrendous discrimination to which the mosque and its attendees were subject, in detail. I agreed with the comment that one would have supposed a Muslim convert spouse such as Hubert Henry Cates, who converted in 1890 and married Fatima in the same year, would have been a comfort, but Fatima petitioned for a divorce the very next year. Marrying another convert did not protect her from abuse. He was used to violence, and conversion did nothing to quell that proclivity. The authors include that petition in the appendices. Indeed, much of what is found in the appendices is fascinating, as indeed is the final information about the two writers who researched and wrote this valuable book.

Since Fatima Elizabeth Cates is not even listed in Wikipedia, unlike Quilliam and Pickthall, Our Fatima of Liverpool represents the first major documentation that tells much of her story. I truly hope more will be discovered and published about this sister and the community in Liverpool. Readers interested in the spread of Islam inside the U.K. may recognize Beacon Books of London as dedicated to responding to that widespread desire to know more about the same with the company’s publication (re-issuance) of Marmaduke Pickthall, British Muslim by Peter Clark in 2016 and the compilation of Middle Eastern stories titled A Question of Precedence by Marmaduke Pickthall in 2017 among other titles.

Who Doesn’t Want to be a Smart Parent/Grandparent?

When I mentioned to some friends that I was reading a book about AI in children’s education, they expressed trepidation–about artificial intelligence, not the book. I understood their feelings, for as a college professor, I had felt similar worry when embarking on the first semester in which I knew ChatGPT was going to be propelling many an essay from my students. As an educator, I know that AI is here to stay. I cannot and should not restrict my students from using something that seems to be almost as prevalent as the air we breathe. Teachers as well as parents/grandparents who want to be involved in their children’s or grandchildren’s educations would do well to understand the positive uses of artificial intelligence. This book is exactly the source to put their minds at ease and get them started in their exploration of artificial intelligence’s myriad resources.

Smart Parenting in the Age of AI starts by explaining how much AI is already present–in GPS navigation and virtual assistants to games and apps that facilitate learning. Chapter 4 offers a list of myriad games and apps for learning, one of which I recognized as a language-learning app I have personally benefited from. The author supplies links, and the reader can go to the website and see what the app or link is about (readers are encouraged to get the Kindle edition, whereby they can quickly find the source under discussion). Guardians who have this savvy book will be able to help children needing to research science subjects or get help with math. Likewise, the author provides links for those with disabilities. Adult readers can investigate any of these links and decide which ones are appropriate for the children under their care.

Frankly, the parent who cares about good grades will start investigating AI early. As the author points out, AI molds itself to the student’s learning pace, and almost every instant of AI-powered learning is interactive. One of the most fascinating details I came across was how the decades of research at MIT into early learning involving AI resulted in the creation of a learning app, in 2016, that could teach an 18-month-old Mandarin Chinese. The interdisciplinary team included brain scientists, child psychologists, and educators out of MIT’s Early Childhood Cognition Lab.

There is not a corner of education that the author does not seem to discuss; it is impossible to neatly summarize the wealth of information in this book, but it is certainly not too dense to grasp. On the contrary, it is easy to read. As a grandparent, it seems to me I would try out the various links and decide if they would be useful. Readers of every age would learn as they explore, for learning does not happen solely with children.

A chapter is dedicated to ensuring data protection and secure AI applications, and then two others to AI’s role in special education including supporting autism and other individual needs. The book takes on a hyper-futuristic element when discussing AI’s expanding role in the classroom, especially where the author supplies the link to an example of schools that are replacing teachers with AI.

If AI can supply intelligent virtual agents (who hasn’t been helped by one at an online bank?), it can also supply intelligent moderation to manage and interpret large amounts of data. From these subjects, the author moves to virtual reality, which has also been with us for some time now. Together, VR and AI should help in bridging the skills gaps within education. Real-life job scenarios and environments can be replicated for virtual internships. More children will be able to experiment in potential fields.

Chapter 13 devotes itself to the need for parental involvement in a child’s AI learning, underlining the fact that the parents who do so will enhance communication with schools and educators.

Extremely succinct, never boring, full of surprises, and overall convincing, this book is a powerful tool that will change the attitude of educators and guardians to whom artificial intelligence feels new and strange. Even those who are not afraid of AI will find the multitude of links and the careful organization of the book result in this being one of the most useful packages they could hope to find. The author has over two decades of experience in healthcare IT and extensive training in the computer science field, with a specialized education in artificial intelligence.

A Muslim Convert’s Fight Against Radical Islam

God and Country: A True Story of My Journey through Indoctrination, Violence and Jihad, by Will Prentiss (Lulu Press, 2019)

This article first appeared in The Hong Kong Review on Dec 27, 2023

Conversion to Islam is not for sissies. No convert whom I have ever read about or met has made that decision lightly. Conversion (sometimes called reversion) to Islam means identifying with a religion that a great majority of non-Muslims in the world view in an unflattering light. Naturally, there are all kinds of political and emotional reasons to depict a non-Western belief in pejorative terms: that Islam has received negative Western press since the time of the Crusades simply underlines the fact that life is bound to become seriously difficult for the person who decides to embrace that religion. (Of note, the decision to become Muslim is gaining ground in the USA and worldwide. A Pew Research in 2017 suggested that Islam will overtake Christianity in the second half of our present century to become the largest religious group in the world.)

The prologue to this arresting memoir shows the narrator as a practicing Muslim driving a big rig through Alabama right before and during 9-11. This opening offers a good dose of the common reaction to a terrible event:  overall horror laced heavily with Islamophobia from those who were not Muslims. Most of us will remember what we were doing that day and how downcast, shocked, and sickened we felt by the terrorist attack.

In biting irony, recent events with the violent Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent retaliatory “war” unleashed by Netanyahu—retribution, genocide, and persecution amped beyond anything heretofore carried out upon the indigenous Palestinian population, confined to what amounts to a large extermination camp, cry out as a parallel to 9-11. These recent events may not have happened on U.S. soil, but they may in some way be considered a retribution against the Muslim world for the attack of 9/11 and the overall negative light in which Islam has been cast. The unfolding events have slammed most Western Muslims of every ethnic background onto a similar unstable political minefield, the same one we trod so gingerly after 9/11.  

A review of God and Country became imperative to me in the wake of these events, for Prentiss’s own life story as a Muslim is unique and demonstrates the difficulties involved in understanding a spiritual message extremely well while also understanding the dangers inherent in becoming brainwashed by radical elements. As Prentiss writes in Chapter One, “As a Muslim, I was now a target for would-be extremists of my own faith and right-wing extremists who opposed my faith. I’ve found that my decision to become a Muslim has landed me into a precarious situation between these two extremes. I’m not alone in this, I know that.”

Indeed, he is not alone. I personally felt great solace in reading Prentiss’s memoir, so different from my own and yet oddly parallel in the need to navigate and understand when others demonstrate unexpected reactions or judgments regarding an individual’s spiritual choice. Prentiss has a fascinating and often heart-rending tale to relate, culminating in decisions he made that resulted in him being outcast by the very Muslim community he had worked so hard to strengthen.

Because Muslim converts come from such a wide array of backgrounds, no reader should ever be able to make generalized assumptions about what propels individuals to choose Islam: reading memoirs such as this one will demonstrate my point. It is part of our Western freedoms to worship or not worship as we see fit, and that is the common denominator.

Prentiss was born into what seemed like a wonderfully stable American family with an almost Leave-it-to-Beaver sanguinity (until that entire edifice crumbled). His greatest problem at a young age was bullies at his Catholic school—something the reader might bear in mind, given Prentiss’s disinclination to “defend” himself as his father repeatedly suggested. The trials of childhood, the author’s attempt to manage the bullies, and the display of corporal punishment at school foreshadow the dangers and drama Prentiss later experiences as an adult.

Early childhood sanguinity abruptly dissolves in the “Black Days” of Chapter Two, when at the age of 7 years, the author discovered his parents in a physical brawl. The scene is shocking and well-described. Many who have experienced parental dysfunction will be able to relate to the confusion felt by young Prentiss. After the divorce, he and his siblings were placed in the custody of their mother: the details documenting her inability to be a stable parent will make the reader wince.

I liked the way Prentiss demonstrates the character traits of his parents, one an arguably “functional” alcoholic and the other, notably dysfunctional. They become interesting characters in this memoir in the ways that their character flaws force Prentiss into one decision or another that brings trauma into his life. Pretty quickly, the inability of the mother to make sound decisions compelled Prentiss to live with his father. While financially responsible, the narrator’s father was not the kind of nurturing parent who could help his son cope with life’s difficulties (like school bullies) or even help run the household. Prentiss and his siblings had to learn to raise each other with only the responsibility of household bills shouldered by the alcoholic father.

In 1981, when Prentiss started high school and first went to live with his aunt and uncle—because they seemed to offer a more stable household than his father could—the bullies of the new high school ruined the narrator’s life. This development was jumpstarted by his aunt and grandmother, no doubt unintentionally, when they conspired at the outset of his freshman year to force Prentiss to buy and wear bell bottom jeans with paisley or flowered shirts while his younger cousins were allowed to follow the current teen fashion trends. He became a magnet for bullies, with no therapy or preventive strategies in place. It is no small wonder that he made friends with another boy who found himself in similar circumstances and the two attempted to run away.

By this time, the reader will be convinced of the high intelligence of the narrator, as evidenced by his ability to tell his story so well. The memoir demonstrates how teens come to find themselves in the bleakest of situations, through dysfunctional families, and no safety net of any substance in place, not even one provided by society. Prentiss’s grades were, predictably, in a downward spiral, and his father’s solution was to wake him up at 2 am each morning and subject him to an alcohol-fueled “vulgar tirade.” The emotional turmoil sustained by this teen led him to dabble in occult seances, which will leave the reader gasping.

It is impossible not to be fascinated by this ongoing trainwreck, and hard to imagine what could make it worse, but worse it becomes when Prentiss escaped his father to live with his mother who at this point had joined a religious cult. As the knowledgeable reader may predict, the sweet gloss at first presented by the cult and its leaders wears away quickly, and Prentiss becomes an abused and tortured slave. It is at this point that he began to teach himself survival skills and learned to appraise those with whom he was living. He learned to assess the hypocrisy of those who preach one thing and do another.

The upshot of dabbling in the occult and learning, in depth, the depravity of cults, ultimately informs Prentiss and help guide him in mature decision-making when he becomes part of a Muslim community. A great deal happens before that, such as returning to his father, finishing high school, joining a Christian community that seemed more positive, getting married and moving to Chicago. Even though this juncture in the narrator’s life offered more hope than he had hitherto known, it was subject to the struggles of any young married couple living in an expensive city. Eventually the narrator’s wife enlisted in the U.S. Airforce and then Prentiss joined her when she was stationed in the U.K.

But here is when chance encounters—which we all have—strongly influenced Prentiss’s life trajectory. They met another couple who, like the Prentiss couple, were made up of a wife in the U.S. Airforce and a husband who had followed to find employment in the U.K. The husband, Jack, turned out to be a shoplifter. Prentiss found out when he went shopping with him and the man almost went forward with shoplifting but changed his mind. Prentiss thought it was a mishap avoided, but realized nothing had been avoided when he was asked to visit a military police station.

This was his first pressured instance of going “underground,” by agreeing to work on a U.S. military base infiltrated by drugs and other problems.  As a devout Christian who wanted to help his servicemen and women get their jobs done with the least danger possible to the peaceful running of their lives, he accepted the job. I found it easy to see the connection to a childhood and youth in which there had been no safety net in place. The narrator clearly wanted to be part of a sound community safety net. Unfortunately, his marriage was torn apart by that job in ways Prentiss explains in his memoir. Again, the problems he endured are very similar to a wide cross-section of Americans. He and his wife returned to the USA, and the narrator had to work long hours simply to make ends meet, the death kiss of many a marriage.

Whenever the author’s life was unraveling in ways easy to understand, I could tell that Prentiss’ connection with God was never severed. On the contrary, it seemed strengthened through the narrator’s determination to understand what God wanted him to learn from these trials. In that quest, Prentiss became a student of Judaism, but ran up against a wall when he learned that he had to disavow the prophethood of Jesus (peace be upon him). That is when he turned to studying Islam, which requires the recognition of not just Muhammad but of Jesus and all the messengers named in the New and Old Testaments as prophets (peace be upon them) sent by God.

Prentiss explains the articles of Islamic faith in this book and underlined his growing dedication to Islam and his unfaltering allegiance to the safety of the country he lived in. When he became an integral and highly beneficial part of the U.S. Muslim community that he embraced, it was with the conviction that he had to remain true first to God and then to the safety of all who lived in his community.

And that brings us to radical elements in the Islamic communities. Every convert I have known has had to face these elements and decide how to think about them, how to face them, and how to deal with them. What Prentiss did will take the reader’s breath away for its valor and commitment to the elements of a safe and tolerant diverse community. I have no doubt that what he endured was agonizing, and yet I feel he made the right decisions, as emotionally difficult as they were to make.

After the fact, many from the Muslim community Prentiss had so long served accused him of betrayal. That accusation begs the question: does conversion imply upholding a faith’s core values or tolerance of the radical actions of those who claim to represent those values? As a Muslim convert, Prentiss chose to remain true to the values of Islam, even when it meant working with people who were not a part of the Muslim community to which he belonged. He chose to fight against the horrors of radicalization because any movement producing horror was not, in his mind, part of the value system of Islam he had embraced. By laying out his story, he allows readers to judge for themselves.

It is not unusual for memoirs by Muslim converts to be self-published for the simple reason that the mainstream publishing industry is not convinced of the earning power of such books. The first two-thirds of God and Country are reasonably well-edited while the last third has a few more issues with mechanics and grammar than the beginning. Nonetheless, this is a highly readable book that should hold great interest for those who would like to learn about the trials facing Muslim converts in the USA. Available on Amazon.

Considering Van Gogh’s Mother

Yesterday, my son Yousef and I visited the Van Gogh immersive experience that, in our town, was titled “Beyond Van Gogh.” Because it was probably the last outing I will have with Yousef before he leaves for the other side of the country and because his younger brother has already moved out of state, my thoughts went beyond Vincent to his entire family. How did his life quest impact the rest of the family?

The exhibition was well worth the visit: the force of tormented genius generously mingled with pure joy is what sweeps over the visitor. As flowers cascaded down the walls, birds flew, boats shrank into the horizon and portraits blinked at me, I absorbed the information that Van Gogh was driven by certainty of the need to make something of his talent. Theo, his brother, was his confidant and financial support. The extracts from letters to Theo appeared on the walls, causing me (as surely everyone else) to think about the strength of the fraternal bond. (According to one article I read subsequently, Vincent might have committed suicide because his brother Theo was going mad and dying of syphillis.)

Van Gogh didn’t start out his life as a human being driven by only one career choice (I might as well say “occupation” since he did not support himself through painting). Before trying out a career as a preacher (his father was a Protestant pastor), he spent years working for art dealers in a company where his uncle was a partner. He also worked at a school as a language teacher. Jumping into the fulltime occupation of destitute artist was his ultimate choice, one that left the world an inheritance. I could not help but wonder what his choice left for his mother.

Forget about the mother, people might say. Truly? And the father? When parents watch their grown offspring struggle down paths of inspiration or desperation, they probably do not much think of how that son or daughter’s genius may enrich the world. They grieve for the loss of balance.

Loss of balance can come from many things, like illness and death, of course. Humans have to make peace with our fate, which is to live and to die. Those who believe in God understand that life affords the opportunity to forge a portal to God’s grace at death. Making peace with life means accepting that life is full of instability. Vincent and Theo’s mother outlived her sons. I hope she was able to make peace with that loss and that she found comfort in God.

Podcast: The Jinn In The Clock & Other Tales | Muslim Bookstagram – MuslimMatters.org

A Muslim Bookstagram Feature: Zainab bint Younus interviews pioneering Muslim fiction author Juwairiah Simpson of “The Jinn in the Clock.”
— Read on muslimmatters.org/2022/06/07/jinn-in-the-clock-muslim-bookstagram/

I was startled and honored early this year to have an Interview request from Zainab bint Younus, a bright young journalist and podcaster for MuslimMatters.org. The podcast can be accessed at the link given here.

College Library Sheds Books to Go Digital

I realize that change is inevitable, but college library shelves without physical books are jarring to those who have never contemplated such a reality. The motivating premise behind offloading physical books is the fact that students have not been borrowing print books. Last week, my own college library’s empty shelves found me with red-rimmed eyes, seeking solace in the company of librarians who shared my grief.

Librarians do not all agree on what should be done about the increasing lack of interest in print books. In May of 2021, Publisher’s Weekly published an article in which Tim Coates, a London-based bookseller and library advocate, warned of a massive decline in public library usage. If check-out rates fell by 31% over 8 years in the USA and 22% over 10 years in Australia, it fell a whopping 70% in the U.K. from 2000 to 2021 (Albanese).

Some library leaders feel the answer is to follow popular trends. If people do not check out books and prefer digital material, these library leaders feel shelves full of books serve no purpose. I see the logic, although people of every age in my own circle say they like to hold a “real” book in their hands. My own experience with books is that discovery of new titles happens, in the main, when I am amidst books in a library or bookstore. Less often do I find and buy a book, print or digital, after having discovered it online. I try my best to discover books through NetGalley and Goodreads, of course. I read a great deal of digital writing, particularly books, but my eyes don’t appreciate the glare of the screen. My greatest relaxation is with print books. Those are the books I don’t forget to finish because they are there, page marked.

Book lovers may share this trait of reading both digital and print books, but we cannot ignore the trend toward online reading. The question is whether digital browsing through social media posts has the same literary effect on a populace as engagement with books. Not surprisingly, literacy levels have plummeted. Writing for Inside Higher Ed, Professor Steven Mintz (University of Texas at Austin) noted in January of this year (2022) that “38 percent of Hispanic adults, 25 percent of Black adults, and 20 percent of white adults” admitted to not having read a book in whole or even partially in the last year, regardless of whether it was print, electronic or audio. Apparently, the same is true for a full 11% of “adults with a bachelor’s or other advanced degree.” I believe Mintz when he writes that the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement reports increasing unwillingness of students to complete assigned readings. That has been my own experience as an academic.

Does it matter to the nuts and bolts of life whether we are highly literate? Writing in Forbes (Sept 2020), Michael T. Nietzel (former Missouri State University president) noted a study by Gallup on behalf of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy that disclosed low levels of adult literacy could cost the U.S. up to $2.2 trillion a year. How? Literacy goes hand-in-hand with “personal income, employment levels, health, and overall economic growth,” writes Nietzel. Thus if 54% of Americans 16-74 (130 million people, roughly) cannot read beyond a sixth-grade level, their income, health, job security, and economic growth will be impacted. Society works as a chain of dominos. How could struggling incomes and more health problems for some not impact all?

Fluency is the ability to communicate in any language. Good and easy-to-find source material enables a better grasp of a language, be it in the language of words, coding, or something else. Without good source material, which social media posts of dubious veracity, replete with grammatical errors, do not offer, how will mankind effectively communicate?

The Whims of H.G.Wells

The name H.G. Wells is more widely known than the names of other literary masters of the same era, if but for the movies based on H.G. Wells’ titles. He was a science fiction writer whose works The Time Machine and War of the Worlds offer readers escapism, thrills, and enough scientific foundation to have made him qualify as a visionary. Tomalin demonstrates Wells’ hold on the young in her preface by describing how George Orwell, as a boy at boarding school, kept borrowing (sometimes without permission) his friend Cyril Connolly’s (editor and essayist) copy of a book by Wells.

Tomalin prepares us in her remark that the boys did not know (as we may not know) that Wells was an atheist, a socialist and a republican. It did not matter to them because his futuristic scientific world full of possibilities seized upon the imagination. We can relate.

The young Wells’ history is unexpected and endears him to us, which is important, for his treatment of others—particularly lovers and wives—can gall. The highly successful 19th century white male writer was the rock star of his day, so he could get away with behavior that would not brand him as a cad and a bounder in his time. (Although it did, actually, and for a long time Beatrix Webb could not see him socially.) His treatment of his long-suffering wife, Jane, is quite interesting. Tomalin speaks well of her, but would anyone want such a fate for a daughter or herself? Yet still spouses put up with such neglect and dismissal if only to pay their bills.

In some ways, this might as well be a biography of significant writers and thinkers of the late 19th/turn of the 20th century, for the portrait Tomalin paints of Beatrice Webb (née Potter) is as fascinating as the one she colors in of Wells. I loved Tomalin’s apology for following the “young” Wells all the way to his death. Her excuse was the adolescent behavior that gripped him throughout his life. Agreed.

It is charming to find Wells a hypocrite. Such creativity cannot be without flaw. If you are a reader of 19th century writers, you will value Tomalin’s exposé of the ever-transmuting relationships that existed between Wells, Shaw, Tolstoy, Henry James and more. My one critique is with the sub-title. To show how he “chang[ed] the world” would entail more of a textual analysis whereas this is a biography of success, ego and relationships.

Boarding School Book Raffle

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wax Works by Julia Juwairiah Simpson-Urr...

Wax Works

by Julia Juwairiah Simpson-Urrutia

The murder of Mlle Schwartz, a teacher at Château Mont Rose, destroys the reputation of the oldest finishing school for girls in Switzerland. It goes out of business.

For eight years, the estate remains locked and boarded up until re-opening as an inn and wax museum. Former students receive notification. They visit. Then they disappear.

When the number of missing women mounts, Interpol alerts Detective Cloquet of Lausanne Sûreté. Cloquet pressures his young deputy, Paul Junod, to shadow expected arrivals Lauren Briant and Rachel Gordon, both alumni of the boarding school. In order to stay close to Lauren and Rachel, Paul has to join their paranormal film team.

Meanwhile, Cloquet revisits Château Mont Rose and finds its headmistress, a woman long dead.

Giveaway ends February 28, 2021.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter Giveaway