Notes from the Peanut Gallery
Among the paperbacks I’ve unearthed as I clean out the basement of our family house was A Kind of Rape by Henry Kane, who had a long run on the literary fringe, writing mostly crime novels. To my surprise, there is no Wiki profile of him, but I found an informative tribute article by successful author Lawrence Block, who was influenced by Kane’s work. Born in NYC in 1918, Kane earned a law degree but focused on writing. He wrote for radio and TV and created the series Martin Kane, Private Eye, which ran from 1949-’54, shooting a limited number of episodes, 28 according to IMDb, airing live. It was nominated for an Emmy in 1953 for Best Mystery, Action or Adventure Program. At least four actors starred in the role. Kane wrote more than 60 novels, including A Kind of Rape, copyright 1974, which I just finished. It is the story of a beautiful 24-year-old actress who marries a highly successful lawyer 30 years her senior, and their circle of elite friends and acquaintances. Set largely in Manhattan, it is also a portrait of the sexual revolution in full swing. Most readers will likely see what is at the root of the unhappiness of a young beauty who has it all, and perhaps the narrative’s main event as well. Still, it is a good read, at times underwritten, at times overwritten. It is chock full of run on sentences, and filled with challenging vocabulary, as well as profanity and pejoratives describing gays. Despite the latter, its overall tone is one of tolerance, as the following, spoken by a shrink, manifests: “… We’re all of us only lousy little human beings racked by nerves, frights, ghosts, guilts; quintessentially, down there at the basics, we’re all alike…” The title refers to those psychiatrists who take sexual advantage of patients. The 251 pages of the Dell paperback edition read like considerably less. I was disappointed that the story ends without a depiction of the reaction of the circle to the main event. That and repetitiveness are my only quibbles. There is one sequence that is riveting, as good as writing gets. Kane passed away at 80 in 1988.
Anyone keeping score at home, here are the totals of presidential pardons and commutations:
Carter — 534 — in one term, 32 commutations.
Reagan — 393, 13 commutations.
Bush I — 75 — in one term, three commutations.
Clinton — 450, six commutations.
Bush II — 200, eleven commutations.
Obama — 212,1715 commutations.
Trump — 24, 13 commutations that include Roger Stone.
Good new from a headline at nypost.com: “New York City marks first day with no coronavirus deaths since March.”
More PC madness, stuff I cherry-picked from an artcle by David Harsanyi at NYP: A term that was new to me: “Cisgender,” an adjective denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex; and another: “Heteronormativy,” an adjective denoting or relating to a world view that promotes heterosexuality as the normal or preferred sexual orientation; the term “peanut gallery” is racist because it hearkens back to the days when poor and black Americans were relegated to back sections of theaters; Twitter announced that it was dropping “master” and “slave” from its coding, to create a “more inclusive programming language.” “Eenie meenie miney moe…” is also on the outs, as some people altered the follow up phrase, “Catch a tiger by its toe…”
If I refer to Washington’s NFL franchise in the future, I will continue to use the term Redskins.
My thanks to the woman who bought the huge tome on cosmetics in Russian, and to the young man who selected a thriller in same language; and to the gentleman who rode up on his bike to settle his tab; and to the five kind folks who donated books. Fortunately, all but my constant benefactress kept it to a few copies.
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