I found myself browsing copies of After The Sun every time I visited my local Waterstones. Eventually, I gave in and bought a copy. I should have done so sooner. After The Sun is the second book by Jonas Eika and the first to be translated into English. It contains five short stories (the final story being a sequel to one of its predocessors). Each story reads like a vivid dream about cryptic relationships, hypnotic addictions, and psychic callings taking place in various backdrops. The streets of Copenhagen, the bleak corners of London, and the beaches of Mexico all become roads to twisted underworlds. Dark and intimate, the writings of Jonas Eika occupy a strange and uncharted space between the works of J.G. Ballard and Bret Easton Ellis. Eika is a writer still at the beginning of his literary career. He has already gained critical acclaim and won the Nordic Council Literature Prize. I’m interested to see where this promising writer will go from here.
A while ago I positively reviewed The American Astronaut directed by Cory McAbee. The other day I watched Deep Astronomy and The Romantic Sciences a new film made by Cory McAbee in collaboration with the art collectives Small Star Corporation and Captain Ahab’s Motorcycle Club.
The film starts out with a man named Rudy drinking in a bar with his friends when he spots a robot in disguise as a human drinking from an empty glass. The robot tells Rudy that in a few days time she will be shot into space as humanities representation to the stars. What follows is a collection of presentations, musical numbers, animations and tongue in cheek philosophical monologues that make up a narrative explaining why the robot is being sent to space.
The film is undoubtedly eccentric. Its unusual structure and fusion of mediums work surprisingly well. Deep Astronomy and the The Romantic Sciences is a science fiction film based primarily around ideas. Creative in its concept but simplistic in its presentation it was shot primarily in a bar and a few dozen lecture halls.
Entertaining, humorous and perhaps even a little educational, I enjoyed Deep Astronomy and the The Romantic Sciences. I’d recommend watching it and since the film makers have uploaded it to their website where you can watch it for free and with a run time of one hour eleven minutes you’ve no excuse not to.
In 1974 Werner Herzog was informed that his close friend Lotte Eisner was sick and possibly dying. Determined to see his friend the auteur director set off on a pilgrimage from Munich to Paris on foot. He departed on Saturday 23rd November and finally arrived on Saturday 14th December. Everyday he wrote an entry in a diary documenting his journey. The diary was published in a thin volume titled “Of Walking in Ice,” which I found in a used book store then began on 23rd of November and finished on the 14th December, reading each entry forty-nine years after it was penned by Herzog. Herzog describes the various sights he seen on his travels which he sometimes lists vaguely and other times describes in vivid and poetic detail. He tells us of the pains he suffers, the harsh weather, the grim landscapes of desolate road sides and decaying villages, the strangers that watch him with curiosity and suspicion and his almost hallucinogenic day dreams. Over all Herzog provides us with an account of a unique experience that is poetic, dreamlike and memorable.
I went to see Oppenheimer on Monday after the opening weekend. I purchased my ticket at the box office that morning, shortly before the film began, and left the cinema late in the afternoon. Oppenheimer has a lengthy runtime of three hours. As I headed back out into the daylight, an older man turned to me and asked how I felt about the film.I shrugged. “It was ok.”It was incredibly well made. It was quite impressive visually, and all the actors fit their roles perfectly. It was, of course, very informative.But it had many flaws that I couldn’t forgive. These were things this stranger and I agreed on. The film follows a non-linear structure. The film switches back and forth between Dr. Oppenheimer’s security hearing in 1954 and the Strauss Confirmation Hearing in 1959, flashing back and forth again throughout the life of Dr. Oppenheimer, covering his time at Cambridge, his academic career, his flirtation with communism, his family life, and his love affairs, finally focusing on his time leading the project at Los Alamos, the Trinity Test, and his McCarthy era struggles. Director Christopher Nolan has used non-linear structures in his work before, but I don’t think it works well here. The film feels unstructured, confused, jumbled, and as cut up as a William S. Burroughs novel. The soundtrack is overly dramatic and unnecessarily loud. It obscures, drowns out the dialogue, and distracts from the film itself. In this brief conversation, I never expressed how I felt regarding how the film treats the Atomic bomb. The scene portraying the Trinity Test was by far the most visually impressive scene in the entire film. Nolan insisted on only using practical effects and not relying on CGI. Something that worked out very well for him.For a moment, everything goes quiet, and we chillingly hear the delivery of that infamous line of scripture: “Now I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” But other than that, the scene lacks a sense of severity. I think something similar could be said about how the film handled the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The incredible devastation caused by the two atomic bombs was glossed over.In fact, the destruction itself is only addressed twice. The first time is when Oppenheimer gives a bad-faith speech in celebration of the Manhattan Project’s success. He envisions the audience of cheering scientists engulfed by a blinding white light, a lady in the audience affected by the early stages of a nuclear explosion, and a pile of black ash.The second time, a guilt-stricken Oppenheimer is shown sitting at the back of a lecture hall, listening to a description of the burns obtained by civilians and averting his eyes from a slide show taking place off screen.After that, the victims are reduced to nothing more than a statistic. This in no way portrayed or communicated the highly destructive effects of the atomic bomb. One could argue against this criticism by saying that the focus of the film is Dr. Oppenheimer himself and not what occurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.But to this, I would say that we cannot properly discuss the work of Dr. Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project without dealing with its consequences—the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In addition to that, the film goes on to detail Dr. Oppenheimer’s sense of guilt and concerns about the emerging cold war turning hot and resulting in a nuclear holocaust. This all feels a lot less powerful without covering what happened when those bombs fell. Another cinemagoer came over and greeted the man I’d been talking to, who introduced him as a former physics lecturer (I didn’t catch his name, however). The old man asked him these thoughts on the film, and the physicist made the same criticisms regarding the soundtrack and the structure.The old man asked him about the science of it all, and the physicist pointed out that it hadn’t covered any of the science at all. I suppose that was to keep it approachable for a mainstream audience.Then the old man said, “The real question is: would you have designed the bomb?”The physicist paused for a moment but didn’t hesitate in his answer, adding to my growing concerns regarding “scientific progress.”He said that if invited to a project like the one at Los Alamos, one could not help but go along with it just to see if it could be done, and cynically added, “Anyway, some people will do anything for money.”
In 1970 journalist Hunter S. Thompson set out to write an article on the death of Mexican American news reporter Rubén Salazar at the hands of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department while covering the National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam War. Thomson met with attorney, writer and Chicano activist Oscar Zeta Acosta who was to be his central source for the article. However the two men found the atmosphere of Los Angeles to tense to talk openly. Thompson had been asked by another magazine to help cover the Mint 400 – an annual race through the Mojave desert. The two decided to take advantage of this assignment and head to Las Vegas. Thompson completed the article that would be titled “Strange Rumblings in Aztlan” as well as his assignment on the Mint 400 but the drunken and drug fuelled antics of that now legendary road trip would become the basis of Thompson’s semi-biographical novel “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” In this roman à clef Thompson takes on the name Raoul Duke and assigns Acosta the pseudonym Doctor Gonzo. Duke is a journalist sent to Las Vegas to cover the Mint 400. He and his attorney Doctor Gonzo acquire a fast red spots car and all the drugs they can get their hands on before driving to the city of sin in a drug fuelled haze. Their time in Las Vegas becomes increasingly more chaotic as strange substances are taken, hotel rooms are trashed and deadlines loom closer. Artist and friend of the author Ralph Steadman would provide several illustrations for the book. His twisted figures serve as a perfect companion to the story.
Originally met with mixed responses due to its loose plot and controversial subject matter the novel was eventually recognised as a modern American classic. It would find its way into the hands of a new generation thanks to a cult classic film adaptation released in 1998 directed by Terry Gilliam, starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro in the leading roles. Like many I read “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” as a teenager after I seen the film. At the time the psychedelic adventure and Thompson’s antiauthoritarian attitude appealed to me. Last week I re-read it for the first time and I’m glad that I did. The wild antics still amuse me and the weird humour still makes me laugh. But what really stood out to me this time was Raoul Dukes sense of anxiety and paranoia – his fear and his loathing – that consumes him as he walks out of the hotel leaving his sky high room service bill unpaid, as he disposes of his incriminating rental car and taking out a few one on bad credit and then checks into a hotel full of cops to cover the District Attorney’s Convention on Narcotics with a suitcase packed full of highly illegal substances. But wild antics aside in this book Hunter S. Thompson managed to capture the world-feeling of early 1970s America. Images of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam war illuminate a television screen as Duke comes down from a bad acid trip. Scattered references to the Manson family expose the scar that the Cielo Drive murders left on the American psyche. Thompson shows just how out of touch the establishment were as a passel of police officers listen to an alleged expert give an inaccurate lecture on a drug culture long gone. But most notably Thompson discusses the fading American Dream and in a sobering section often dubbed “the wave speech” he explores the anticlimactic end of the counterculture of the 1960s.
I recently finished reading The Shards – a new novel by Bret Easton Ellis. Before now, I’d only read his first novel, Less Than Zero, and his infamous American Psycho. Both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. I read both of these books several years ago, and since then I have always intended to read more of his work but never really got around to it until the American author released this new work of auto-fiction. It took me a while to read, not just because it’s rather long, but because I wanted to savour the atmosphere and feeling that Ellis sustains throughout the story.
In The Shards – Bret Ellis – now in his mid fifties- reflects on events that have haunted him since his senior year at Buckley High School. The story is set in 1981; the young Bret Ellis and his friends are the sons and daughters of LA’s social elite. They live a lifestyle of wealth and excess. They wear designer clothes, drive expensive cars, frequently attend parties, and have easy access to drugs at all times. The city of Los Angeles is being prayed upon by The Trawler, a sadistic serial killer who stalks his victims, breaking into their homes and stealing their pets before kidnapping and, of course, killing them. As well as a hippie cult that emerges from the mountains to embark on a campaign of harassment and vandalism. At the start of the new school year, Robert Mallory transfers to Buckley High and quickly infiltrates Bret’s tightly knit social circle. Bret quickly becomes suspicious of Robert – rightly believing that he’s not exactly who he seems to be – and begins to investigate his new class mate. Bret, however, is hiding secrets of his own. His girlfriend, The popular Debbi Schaffer, has no idea that he’s actually gay and having affairs with two male classmates. These are secrets he can’t let anyone else know. He can’t disrupt the social norms of life at Buckley High – something that does eventually becomes disrupted as Bret slowly learns the truth about Robert.
Ellis manages to paint a vivid picture of the era and the city of Los Angeles as he lists the familiar names of streets, bars, and restaurants. As I previously stated, he manages to maintain a certain atmosphere throughout the fairly long book—a wild cocktail of desire, detachment, paranoia, jealousy, and suspicion—which occasionally verges on psychedelic, like a bad trip with an 80s soundtrack. The Shards is a coming of age story from hell.
A few months ago I posted my article The Nomads Journey in which I briefly analysed the writings of James Ellis – best known for his work on the Hermitix podcast. Since then, Ellis has published another book, Only Ever Freedom, in which he systematises the ideas put forward in Exiting Modernity and critiques modernist attitudes toward education, credentialism, careerism, money, normality and more. Here Ellis hopes to provide the reader with an inward sense of disconnection – allowing them to move away from the negative influence of modernism and onto the path of internal freedom. I think this is his best book yet and I found my self frequently agreeing with the text. I think Ellis has an interesting ability to describe deep down how many feel about the modern world. Only someone already, on some level, dissident of the modern world would be attracted to such a text. If this book does not serve you as a guide to freedom, as Ellis intended, then it will paint an accurate and honest portrait of our culture.
September 17th will mark the 50th anniversary of the TV show MASH, first broadcast in 1972. The show was a hit and ran until 1983. It’s something before my time, but I’ve seen it through frequent reruns. I once read that an episode of MASH airs somewhere in the world once every hour.
MASH was a situational dark comedy following the lives and work of several surgeons, nurses and other personnel stationed at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital three miles away from the front lines of the Korean War.
It was broadcast nineteen years after the conflict it portrayed and while the war in Vietnam still raged, which made its dramatic scenes of injured soldiers and life-saving doctors powerfully resonated with the American public. To celebrate the 50th anniversary I’d like to explore what made the show and what made it hit so hard. I hope I do it justice. But before I discuss the show, I’d like to briefly explore its origins. In 1951, shortly after graduating medical school, a man named Hienster Richard Hornberger was drafted into the US army. Soon after, he was stationed at the 8055th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) – one of seven improvised hospitals located only a few miles from the 38th parallel. While there, he would go against strict army regulations regarding arterial repair. In doing so, he saved many men from undergoing unnecessary amputations and also became a pioneer in the field of arterial repair in the process. Interestingly, these methods would later become a plot point in the show. Years latter he would write: “the surgeons in the MASH hospitals were exposed to extreme if handwork, leisure, tension, boredom heat, cold, satisfaction and frustration that most of them had never faced before. Their reaction, individually snd collectively, was to cope with the situation and get the job done. The various stresses, however, produced behaviour in many of them that, superficially at least, seemed inconsistent with their earlier, civilian behaviour patterns. A few flipped their lids, but mist of them just raised hell, in a variety of ways and degrees.” After eighteen months’ service, he returned to his native Maine. He settled down into a civilian medical career and began working on a novel based on his own war time experiences with characters based those he served with.
After a productive collaboration with war correspondent W.C. Heinz the novel MASH was eventually published in 1968 under the pseudonym Richard Hooker.
Horberger then went on to sell the film rights for a few hundred dollars – something he would latter regret.
Ring Lardner Jr then adapted the story into a screen play. Robert Altman directed. Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland were cast in the leading roles of Capt. “Trapper” John and Capt. “Hawkeye” Pierce – the latter character Horberger had loosely based on himself. The film – not an entirely faithful adaptation – was a critical and commercial success.
Plans were then made to adapt MASH into a TV series. The producers of which would visit Korea and interviewed several US Army doctors, Soldiers and veterans to make the show as accurate as possible. The show featured a new line up with only Gary Burghoff and G. Wood being the only actors who also featured in the film. Burghoff played company clerk “Radar” O’Riley, one of the main characters, while Wood returned as Brig. Gen. Charlie Hammond in only a few early episodes.
Episodes of MASH were highly character and/or plot driven. Many episodes would focus on a specific character. Some would take the form of a letter home narrated by its writer – this was just one of the many ways MASH would explore the feelings and experiences of its characters. Because of this, I think its best to explore MASH through its characters.
The show would mainly focus on Hawkeye (charismatically played by Alan Alda) – a highly skilled surgeon drafted into the US Army. He would work tirelessly in O.R doing whatever he could for the soldiers. After excruciatingly long shifts, he would retire to “The Swamp,” his tent containing an improvised still in which he would make home-made gin and drink to relive the stress. Hawkeye has a strong moral stance. Having seen the consequences of war first hand, and was strongly opposed to violence. When ordered he refused to carry a gun: “I’ll carry your books, I’ll carry a torch, I’ll carry a tune, I’ll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash-and-carry, carry me back to Old Virginie, I’ll even ‘hari-kari’ if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun.” He was also strongly antiauthoritarian and would rail against military red tape when it got in the way of his doing his job. Despite desperately wanting to leave Korea, Hawkeye was deeply dedicated to saving lives. Interestingly, Horberger disliked Alan Alda’s portrayal of Hawkeye, which he seen as too liberal. Horberger was a Republican and, although not pro-war, did not agree with the show’s anti-war attitude which was neither in the book or the film.
Hawkeye would drink with his good friend and fellow surgeon “Trapper” John (Wayne Rogers). They two would often form a sort of double act at times. He held a similar, although much looser, moral stance to Hawkeye. He was quite the womaniser, despite having a wife and kids at home. One scene I’ll always remember is in an episode called Radars Report. The doctors try to help an injured POW, who attempts to escape and in the process splashes foreign matter into the still open wounds of Trappers patient. The patient then suffers an infection which later kills him. Upon hearing the news, Trapper is furious and we see Trapper standing over the POW with anger in his eyes. Hawkeye enters and quietly says “Trap? Thats not what we’re about.” Without saying a word, he turns around and leaves.
Reluctantly inhabiting the Swamp with the two drunken doctors is Major Frank Burns – who in many ways was the villain of the show. Despite his superior rank and smug attitude, he’s an inferior surgeon. He frequently looses patients. In one episode, Frank decides to remove a soldier’s damaged kidney until Trapper points out he only has one to begin with. It’s latter revealed that Frank failed his medical exams twice and only succeeded after he cheated. Burns wasn’t just incompetent but also mean, neurotic, greedy, smug and hypocritical. Actor Larry Linville played the role perfectly and would occasionally receive a few hate mail expressing hatred for the character he played. While in Korea, Frank is having an affair with head nurse Major Margret “Hotlips” Houlihan (Loretta Swit). The two both hold a stern military attitude and are frequently at odds with Trapper and Hawkeye.
After her affair with Burns ends, writers made Margret a more likeable, relatable character. She would often feel lonely in her position of command. She broke up with Frank Burns unexpectedly after a seemingly spontaneous engagement to Lieutenant Colonel Donald Penobscott. Margret and Donald would get married and then divorced – the relationship being another casualty of war. The camp was ran by Lt. Colonel Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson), a great doctor and reluctant leader. He had a laid back attitude and didn’t like to assert his authority and was lenient with the two maverick doctors and the target of criticism by Burns and Houlihan. Blake would serve as a father figure to Radar – the company clerk who kept the camp afloat. Actor Garry Burghoff shaped the character of Radar – whom he made into an innocent and naive farm boy. Burghoff decided to leave the show to spend time with his family. His final episode was called “Goodbye Radar” and was part of the show’s eighth season. Radar is given a hardship discharge after his Uncle Ed dies, leaving his mother and family farm in need of care. He is reluctant to leave and eventually realises the camp will go on without him. Before his leaving the party, the doctors are suddenly rushed into surgery. In a touching scene, Radar walks around the mess tent where the party would have been and alone gazes up at the banners reading “We Love You Radar” and “Good Luck Radar.” When he left Korea he wasn’t a naive farm boy anymore.
Despite few members of the 4077th being religious, the company chaplain Farther John Mulcahy (William Christopher) played a large part in camp life, helping out the doctors whenever he could and acting as a friend to all stationed there. Despite his strong faith, he often felt powerless in comparison to the life-saving surgeons. He would do what he could to comfort the injured troops and his camp mates during their times of crisis. He’d also do what he could to support the local orphanage.
One of the shows most iconic characters was Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger (Jamie Farr). He was a reluctant draftee who would do anything to get out of the army. He believed that by wearing a dress around camp he would receive a section 8 discharge. Desperate to get back to his native Toledo, he came up with a multitude of elaborate schemes and a multitude of elaborate outfits. I don’t think his desire to leave should be mistaken for cowardice. In one episode, Klinger re-captures an escaped Chinese POW who held the medical staff at knife point. Klinger was the shows first regular character who did not appear in the movie or the book.
Over time, several members of the cast would decide to move on, leading to their characters being written out and replaced. I’ve already covered the departure of Radar, however he was the last of the main cast to leave, departing in the shows eighth season.
The first and most significant departure was that of McLean Stevenson. His exit lead to perhaps the most notable episodes – a story in the third season titled “Abyssinia Henry.”
During surgery Radar enters the O.R and informs Henry that he has received all the Army Service Points needed for a discharge. He’s finally going home.
Hawkeye, Trapper and Radar are happy for Henry, while Frank secretly looks forward to taking his place.
In a touching scene, Henry says farewell to everyone at the 4077th and just before he boards his helicopter to leave, he spots an emotional Radar saluting, whom he embraces in a hug and goes.
Not long after he departs the doctors once again find them self on surgery. Radar enters visibly shaken and says: “I have a message. Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake’s plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan. It spun in. There were no survivors.” The staff do their best to retain composure as they work.
The final page of the script had been withheld for the cast and their reaction was genuine.
It was a truly powerful scene that shook America. The studio received several letters in response – some understanding but mostly complaints.
Producer Gene Reynolds would go on to say the following:
“…if we turned on the [television] set we would see fifteen people [killed in Vietnam every night]. They don’t complain about that because it is unfelt violence, it is unfelt trauma. And that’s not good. I think that if there is such a thing as the loss of life there should be some connection. And we did make a connection. It was a surprise, it was somebody they loved. They didn’t expect it but it made the point. People like Henry Blake are lost in war.”
And also
“Not everybody, not every kid gets to go back to Bloomington, Illinois. Fifty thousand – we left fifty thousand boys in Korea – and we realized it was right for the show, because the premise of our show was the wastefulness of the war.”
Thus ended the third season. Wayne Rodgers would have a contractual disagreement with the studio, leading to him departing the show. The fourth season began with an episode titled “Welcome to Korea.” Hawkeye would return to the camp to find it under Franks reign of terror and would soon be informed that Trapper John had received his discharge. Radar is picking up his replacement at the airport and Hawkeye decides to accompany him in the hope that he’ll be able to say goodbye to his friend. Unfortunately, Trapper plane took off ten minutes before they arrived. Radar and Hawkeye would then meet B.J.Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell).
Hunnicutt was another reluctant draftee doctor. During his time at the 4077th he would miss his wife Peg deeply and resent being unable to see his daughter Erin from growing up. B.J would quickly befriend Hawkeye and prove to be a masterful practical joker. For me, some of B.Js most memorable moments were in an episode called “Bombshells.” He and a chopper pilot plan a fishing trip. A few miles from the camp they spot a wounded solder. They land and load him onto a stretcher. As they turned back to the camp they spotted a man with a leg wound trying to flag down the chopper. They are unable to land, so B.J throws a rope to the soldier, but as soon as he takes hold of it they are fired upon by Communists. The pilot tries to take off but can’t with the extra weight and forces B.J to cut the rope. The pilot is impressed by the doctors heroism and recommends him for a Bronze Star. He soon becomes filled with guilt. He’s disgusted for prioritising his own welfare and leaving a man to die. Like his Swampmate, he was strongly opposed to the war and saw himself morally superior to those doing the fighting. “The minute I cut that line they made me a soldier.”
Frank’s time in command would be short-lived. In the closing scene of “Welcome to Korea”, Colonel Sherman T. Potter would arrive at the 4077 to replace the late Henry Blake. Potter was played by Hollywood legend Harry Morgan. Potter was a different kind of commander. He was a career officer not far from retirement. Unlike Blake, he could often dish out stern military discipline, but he was predominately laid back. He understood the need to keep up morale and would occasionally partake in camp hijinks, but he would often put his foot down when things got out of hand. Larry Linville decided he had taken the character of Frank Burns as far as he could. After Margret married Penobscott, Frank had a break down, leading to him to accost a blonde woman and a general while on leave. He’s then arrested, sent for psychiatric evaluation and then sent stateside. Upon hearing this, B.J said “this reduces the enemy to just North Korea.” The sudden absence of Burns leaves Potter desperate for a surgeon. Potter calls I Corps, where Lt. Colonel Horace Baldwin decides to send him Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden Stiers) to avoid having to pay him a $600 gambling debt. Winchester was an incredibly skilled surgeon with an incredible ego. He is from a very wealthy background and despises the low living standards of the 4077th. He annoyed the other doctors with his arrogance and snobbishness. However, unlike his unpleasant predecessor, he does occasionally get along with Hawkeye and B.J. Also, unlike Burns, he could always counter Hawkeyes witty roasts. Despite often playing an adversarial role, he was still a very likeable character. In “Morale Victory”, Winchester operates on an injured solder. When he wakes up, Winchester proudly informs him that he has saved the young man’s legs, of which he will regain total use. However, he will have only limited use of his right hand. Winchester is surprised to find that, upon hearing this, the young man becomes angry and upset. He says he doesn’t care about having use of his legs – before the war he was a concert pianist. Winchester – a lover of classical music – is wracked with guilt with guilt. He does everything he can to raise the young man’s spirit. Winchester sends away for the sheet music to Piano Concerto for the Left Hand and tells him the story of left handed pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Although reluctant at first, the soldier begins to play and Winchester persuades him not to give up on his musical talents. In another episode, “Run for the Money” he treats several army engineers who were injured after a bridge they were building collapsed on them. While in the hospital, they collectively mock a comrade with a stutter and his commanding officer unjustly blames him for what happened. He encourages the young soldier not to listen to their bullying, telling him he should not be treated like he’s stupid for his impediment. He encourages him to live up to his true intellectual potential and gifts him a leather bound copy of Moby Dick. He then returns to the Swamp, where he’s alone and listens to a tape recorded letter sent to him by his sister, who stutters throughout the recording.
The audience fell in love with these characters and really felt for them during their trials and tribulations. MASH is perhaps my favourite TV show. I enjoyed almost every episode but, of course, some stand out from others, often for different reasons. Sometimes because they’re funny. I always get a good laugh out of 5 O’ Clock Charlie no matter how many times I see it. However, I want to talk about the episodes that stood out because they hit hard.
I’ve already discussed Abyssinia Henry so I’ll go straight onto The Interview – sometimes regarded as the best episode. This episode is filmed as a newsreel, presented by a war correspondent (Clete Roberts) who interviews many of those stationed at the 4077th. Here the characters put forward their feelings about life in the hospital. There’s something about this episode that feels very genuine and haunting. It feels more real than any of the others.
The episode Point of View was filmed entirely from a first person perspective. It was an impressive technical feat in a time before GoPros or digital handheld cameras and with steady cams being still in their early stages. No one had successfully pulled anything like this before.
The episode is filmed from the perspective of a soldier called Private Rich. It begins with him and his squad on patrol when they suddenly encounter shelling, leaving Rich seriously injured after he is hit in the throat with a shell fragment while his buddy private Ferguson is hit in the leg. Medics franticly perform first aid and the two are airlifted to the nearest MASH unit. We see and hear everything he does while on his road to recovery. It’s interesting to see the 4077th from a different perspective and something very powerful about seeing things from the perspective of a mortally wounded solder. Producer Gene Reynolds had the idea of shooting an episode in real time, knowing that such a premise would result in a tense episode. He knew that such a plot would require exactly the right situation, so he called MASH medical adviser Walter Dishell for ideas. This resulted in a script co-authored by Dishell and Alan Alda with assistance from W.C Heinz, Ring Lardner Jr and Hornberger. The product was the season eight episode Life Time.
It starts with several of the main characters playing poker near the chopper pad. A helicopter lands in the compound carrying a critically wounded soldier called George. Hawkeye diagnoses him with a lacerated aorta and uses a pocket knife to crack open his chest further, reach in and press the aorta against his spinal column to stop the bleeding. However, after twenty minutes, lack of blood to the spinal column will likely result in paralysis. A clock is superimposed on the bottom right on the screen counting down the time they have to save George. But they don’t have enough cross-matched blood, they don’t have arterial grafts big enough for a transplant and an ambulance brings more injured soldiers to the compound. The surgeons of the 4077th desperately try to save George against all odds.
It really is a tense episode. I’m willing to say this is perhaps my favourite episode of MASH. I don’t think a brief summery can do it justice. It’s something you have to see for yourself.
I could discuss a dozen more episodes, but I’ll leave it at these three.
I think in my discussion of the characters, the events surrounding them and a select few episodes, you will understand just why MASH was a hard-hitting show. I’ve hardly touched upon the humour here. I think MASH was a perfect combination of comedy and tragedy.
I want to end this article with a quote from an interview with Gary Burghoff.
I’m in a parking lot going into a restaurant in Westconsin. I was doing a theater engagement there and I was going out to dinner and a man approached me in the parking lot. He said: Mr. Burghoff, may I speak with you for a moment? I said sure. He said I was in the trenches in Korea. And I knew enough about the trenches in Korea to know immediately that this was a man who had been through serious trauma because that was a living hell. He said when I came back home in 1952 I was changed and my wife knew that I needed to talk about it and I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. And he said when your show came on the air many years later it was the first time I could reach over and touch her on the arm and say see honey, that’s the way it was. That was the greatest compliment we could because we always tried to tie the entertainment value into the reality as much as we possibly could in our small way.
James Ellis – best known for his work on the Hermitix Podcast – has published three books which collectively make up an autobiography of his own internal life.
Between 2017 and 2021 he wrote a blog under the name “Meta-Nomad.” These writings were collected in a book titled “Exiting Modernity.” Here he critiques education, consumerism, contemporary attitudes and just about everything we see and experience in the modern world. Unlike other anti-modernist thinkers – Ellis does not write from a grand metaphysical standpoint. Instead he writes from a perspective that’s a lot more personal. This makes the work more relatable and I think this is why the book was such a success.
Ellis also published a work of theory fiction titled: “A Methodology of Possession: On the Philosophy of Nick Land“. In one of the early episodes of the Hermitix podcast Elis interviewed Land on whom he also taught an online course and wrote several essays on. Its clear to see this was a thinker Ellis was deeply fascinated by. In the second chapter of the book the unnamed narrator expresses his dissatisfaction with the modern world – mirroring the views and attitudes that Ellis previously expressed on his blog. However here the expression feels much darker. Its hard to tell if this tone is a genuine expression of his feelings or purely to fit with the gothic themes of the book. The narrator becomes increasingly nihilistic leading him to cut ties with institutions, family, friends and the world as a whole. Then browsing the internet late one night he comes across the work of Nick Land on a long abandoned message board. This inspires him to partake in a strange Magick ritual bringing him into an Occult-fuelled psychosis in which he explores Lands philosophy. It is a journey filled with bleak and surreal visions. His situation worsens as he sinks deeper into a grotesque hellscape where he is left to wallow in his Nihilism.
His most recent publication was a short novel called “Be Not Afraid.” It follows an unnamed protagonist – a young man – who works in the basement of a bakery. Every day is the same, time seems to disappear (its interesting that Ellis associates a state of non-time with nihilism). His manager is a rather eccentric figure called Ollneek who is more than happy to share his unsolicited cynical opinions on just about everything. The young man feels the same sense of emptiness that Ellis has described in his other works. Its a feeling worsened by Olneek’s frequent ramblings. Eventually, various guardian angel figures intervene – we see Ollneeks sinister influence for what it really is and the young man finds his way to salvation.
The tail is a sort of parable in which Christianity triumphs over nihilism.
The emptiness of the modern world led Ellis to sink deep into the depths of nihilism – unable to go any further he looked upward and found a sense of meaning in Catholicism.
Collectively his works detail his inner journey – the journey of the Meta-Nomad but where he travels next is something yet to be seen.
I recently learnt about the passing of Jack Grassby. Jack died on January 12th 2022 – only a few months before his 97th Birthday. I think it’s difficult to summarise Jack. He was a truly interesting and unique individual
During the Second World War he served in the navy. I don’t know much about his time at sea but I know on at least one occasion his ship was attacked by the Luftwaffe. He became involved in local Socialist politics and the economic turmoil of the 1970s – something he documented in this book “The Unfinished Revolution: South Tyneside 1969-1976.” It was also sometime in the 1970s that Jack helped found the annual Westoe Village fair.
Jack developed a deep interest in philosophy and became an important figure within local philosophical circles. He would frequently give lectures on behalf of such groups. It was at one of these public lectures that I first met Jack. I believe it was late 2015 and he gave a well informed talk on the philosophy of Nietzsche ironically in a church hall. He was already rather old at this point but despite his age his mind was still sharp. He could speak at length about complex matters such as the thinking of Derrida and Wittgenstein.
Jack’s abilities as a speaker were far surpassed by his abilities as an organiser. I’d seen Jack chair board meetings – maintaining order when rivalries were bitter and emotions ran high. Skills I suspect he perfected during his trade union days. On a few occasions I found myself disagreeing with some of his decisions – sometimes seeing that he was right in retrospect. Unlike other board members Jack was respected by his critics. I think its fair to say that when Jack Grassby spoke everyone stopped to listen.
Jack authored several books on the topics of philosophy and local history. Unfortunately they’re all out of print. A friend and I once found a copy of his “Postmodern Humanism” in a used bookstore in Jesmond. I knew I’d be seeing him the following weekend and brought the book with me. When I presented it to him he smiled and laughed saying “You know, this is all just student stuff.” I asked him if he’d sign it and he did. That book is sitting on my shelf only a few feet away from me now as I type this article.
The last time I seen Jack was on a cold December day in 2019. We’d both attended a rather dry public lecture. Afterwards everyone planned to head to a pub across the road for food and drinks. Jack and I spoke on our way there. We discussed the lecture, my first essay which I’d published a few months earlier, the state of the philosophy scene. Once we got there we’d sat at different tables but before he left he came over to me, said good bye and shook my hand. I’d enjoyed speaking with Jack that afternoon.
He and I exchanged emails for a while after that. By now I’d become rather critical of the philosophy scene and we discussed my criticism via email. Despite my criticism I never had any ill feeling towards Jack – he was one of the few people there I still had any respect for. The last messages we exchanged were in late 2020. I’d told him I was planning to write an essay on Lovecraft and he’d told me of his plans to write an essay on Nietzsche and language. After that we lost contact. I’ve no idea if he ever finished that essay. I never finished mine on Lovecraft.
I know that Jack remained active in philosophical circles after that and only fully retired in his mid-Nineties shortly before his passing. I’m disappointed no one I knew from the period informed me. I only found out after bumping into a mutual acquaintance. I discovered that the North East Humanists paid tribute to Jack in their newsletter but I never subscribed to it. A friend and I had planned to make a short documentary on Jack. We’d pitched the idea to him and he seemed to be willing but due to the lockdowns the project never went ahead. I’m rather sad now to think this documentary was never produced.
Unfortunately Jacks website has now gone down. You can still find partly preserved on the “WayBack Machine.” Although his books are out of print you can still occasionally find them in used book stores and libraries scattered around North-East England. I was surprised to hear that Jacks’ artwork was on display at the Customs House art gallery in South Shields. I’d never known that Jack was an artist. I hope to make the trip to the gallery soon.
Despite everything he did and achieved – I think those who knew Jack will remember him for the strength of his character, his integrity and the strong influence he had on those around him.
Parallel Aesthetics 