Capsule Reviews in the Time of Coronavirus (12)

Lone Rider: The First British Woman to Motorcycle Around the World
by Elspeth Beard (Kindle edition)

During my recent visit to the Peterson Art Museum, an exhibit called “Adventure: Overland” featured motorcycles ridden around the world or cross country. Among the bikes on display was a BMW R60/6, which the remarkable Elspeth Beard rode solo around the world in the early 1980s over a two-and-a-half year period. Starting from her native England, she traveled across the continental U.S., then through New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, and Europe until her return to England. One of the first women to undertake such a trip, she traveled more than 35,000 miles. Based on a mention of the book at the exhibit, I purchased her 2017 memoir of her adventure, Lone Rider. Partly thanks to this book, Beard's accomplishment has finally received overdue recognition.

Like the best travelogues, the book is as much about her personal journey as her geographic one. Though she had been toying with the idea of the trip for awhile, she partly decided to embark on the adventure after breaking up with a boyfriend. Because of her gender, no one took her plan seriously—these included her own family (classic English eccentrics) as well as several magazines that not only declined her request for sponsorship or coverage, but even mocked her. Of course, this only motivated her more.

Part of her plan was to find work for a brief while in Australia, preferably at an architectural firm, to earn money for the journey as well as academic credit for her college architectural degree. Her experience also exposed the best and worst of the national character of many of the countries she visited—such as the nearly senseless devotion to colonial bureaucracy in India to the ruggedness of the terrain and people of Australia (of all the countries, Oz’s outback seemed to be the most harsh and inhospitable). As a woman traveling alone, she of course on occasion had to fend off unwanted advances. many physical—the men in one country I won’t name here seemed to feel particularly entitled, though they seemed to simply back off when clearly rebuffed. Along the way, she also met up with like-minded riders and traveling companions, including a potential beau who traveled from England to spend some time with her on the road. As one could imagine, she faced a variety of serious obstacles, such as serious illness and motorcycle breakdowns in remote areas.

Beard wrote the book partly due to interest in Hollywood, so it was written with the advantage of hindsight, bringing readers up to date on her life in the years following her accomplishment (she had a child and became a successful architect) and how her experience and some of the people she befriended on the road had a lasting impact on her.

It is a remarkable story of growth and resilience, and a fascinating look at an earlier time that has disappeared as the world has become “smaller” with the advent of tourism, mobile phones and the Internet.

Around the World in Eighty Days and North Korea from the Inside by Michael Palin

Beard’s memoir put me to mind to read a couple of other travelogue books, both by Monty Python troupe member Michael Palin: Around the World in Eighty Days (2010) and North Korea from the Inside (2019). Both are companion books to his BBC travelogue series of the same names. The former is an updated edition of his 1990 book, released after his 1989 circumnavigation of the globe, in which he followed the footsteps of Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg in the novel of the same name. (The 1989 show was the first of what would become a series of trips by the comedian-actor around the globe.)

Like Beard’s memoir, Palin’s trip was undertaken just before the dawn of mobile phones and the web, giving travelers willing to go off the beaten track a sense of exotic romanticism and adventure. Nevertheless, Palin’s well known patience and good humor always shines through.

People sometimes ask where I get my ideas from for my comic-book series. Though news stories “ripped from the headlines” often are a source of inspiration, so are travelogues like these, which encompass other diverse work, such as Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations and the original Top Gear British series.

Don’t Look Up (Netflix)

I’m a huge fan of director Adam McCay’s film the Big Short, which used comedy and bravura filmmaking devices to tell the story and explain the reasons for the 2008 global financial meltdown. Though not to the same degree, I also enjoyed Vice, his biopic on former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Given those films, I looked forward to Don’t Look Up, his farce starring Leo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence and a supporting cast of other well known actors, including Meryl Streep, about the dysfunctional role that politics, media and social platforms play today in addressing global crises. McCay wrote and directed Don’t Look Up out of alarm and personal frustration over the way people and institutions have responded to the threat of climate change and the environment. Dropping the movie in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis also gives it a sense of immediacy and relevancy.

Nevertheless, I felt the movie fell short. It preaches to the choir and, in my view, is too shrill and goes too over the top. Nearly all the characters live up to our lowest expectations, existing as stereotypes of the worst of what people believe about the media and our political leaders. In contrast, in the Big Short, nearly all the characters (most based on real people) had some self-awareness, and a healthy amount of cynicism, for what they were doing, even as they tried to exploit the situation for financial gain. In contrast, nearly all the characters in Don’t Look Up seem to be one-note types with no such inner life or introspection. McCay portrays these figures as buffoons—in the real world, the people who run things often indeed act out of self-interest and some personal or political agenda, but in actuality, are much smarter and canny (and, hence, evil), which makes them more dangerous. I’m not sure what McCay is trying to accomplish or tell us, other than perhaps shame those in positions of power? Don’t Look Up doesn’t really tell us anything we don’t already know or suspect, which I think ultimately makes it toothless and a disappointment.

A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost

Staten Island, one of the five boroughs that make New York City, has received more than its usual share of attention in recent years, partly due to the fact that two members of the cast of the NBC show, Saturday Night Live—Colin Jost and Pete Davidson—famously hail from there. (This was particularly hammered home recently when news emerged that the two had invested in an effort to purchase a Staten Island ferry with the goal of turning it into a nightspot.)

Staten Island often gets knocked because its vibe differs so much from the rest of New York City. Much more suburban (even bucolic for a time) compared to “The City,” it is physically twice the size of Manhattan, but houses less than 500,000 of the city’s nearly 9 million total residents. Perhaps more notoriously, Staten Island’s political makeup is radically different than the rest of New York as well.

This was the main reason I was curious about Colin Jost’s memoir, A Very Punchable Face. Jost, too, is well aware of Staten Island’s reputation—his chapter on growing up there is even titled, “Wait, You're from Staten Island?” echoing the response he often receives when people found out.

While Jost quickly acknowledges all the negative aspects, he also embraces the positive, both sometimes two sides of the same coin. Staten Island is well known to be home of many of New York’s firefighters and police officer—as well as high profile mobsters. Indeed, Jost comes from a family of firefighters—his mother was a doctor who worked for the city and he tells harrowing stories of his mom arriving at the World Trade Center just as the towers collapsed, probably being saved by fellow firefighters who had the wherewithal to find shelter for her moments before. (Davidson’s father died at the World Trade Center.)

Born in Brooklyn, I lived on Staten Island from the ages of 2 to 16, during the prime “golden age” of childhood. Growing up there, I've often said in retrospect that I had the best of both worlds—a Tom Sawyer childhood, with Manhattan just a ferry ride away. I lived on a dead end street, half of which was still wooded. So summers were spent playing ball in the streets and sandlots, and building forts (often multi-story and up in the trees!), with winters spent playing “guns” in snow-covered woods and playing ice hockey at nearby ponds. (I last visited in 2009 and found that families and friends from my childhood still live there—though my street has long since been paved through and fully developed, I was surprised how many woods still exist on the island itself, including by my old public schools.)

Jost has led a charmed (and, yes, privileged) life, which to his credit he’s well aware of. He attended a well-regarded private Catholic High School which led him to, like many comedy writers, Harvard, where he edited the Harvard Lampoon.

Whether or not Jost has reached a level of achievement or celebrity to warrant a memoir, A Very Punchable Face is genial and self-effacing.

The Gilded Age (HBOMax)

For better or worse, I'm a fan of the Downton Abby franchise, so this new series from the same creator, Julian Fellowes, intrigued me. The series takes place in 1880s New York, as new money (such as the railroad robber barons) clashed with old money. Like Downton Abby, the Gilded Age tackles the immense social change that society (and high society) underwent, with all of the families very conscious of social class. 

Though Downton Abbey was more subtle about it, the Gilded Age is soapy and even trashier, but Fellowes nevertheless does a good job of swiftly engaging the audience and investing you in the characters. In this era of limited series, some shows sometimes take awhile to pick up steam, but Fellowes covers a lot of ground in just the first two episodes that were available when I began watching and drew me in nearly immediately. As times, the characters' dialogue and self-awareness are usually a too on point, but the show skillfully keeps you engaged nonetheless.

No Time to Die

I have to say, I haven’t been as enamored of the Daniel Craig Bond films as others. While I understand it wouldn't be desirable nor likely possible to recapture the Connery Bond era—the gold standard of the series—I feel the lightness, charm and panache of those films have disappeared. I'm glad that Bond remains a viable juggernaut, but nevertheless it is simply another action franchise (that, frankly, I feel has been matched if not surpassed by the Mission: Impossible films, which I feel have gotten better with each successive movie.) 

That said, without giving anything away, No Time to Die serves as a fitting end and capstone to Craig's enormously successful run as Bond. I look forward to seeing the series being refreshed and, perhaps, reinvented once again with a new Bond. 

Taking Paris: The Epic Battle for the City of Lights by Martin Dugard

Taking Paris is an easy and breezy read of the taking, occupation and recapture of Paris during World War II. Like a thriller, the story is filled with good guys and bad, the latter of which are particularly repugnant when one thinks of the death and destruction some left in their wake, especially when betraying people who trusted them. Worse, many of them didn't receive the kind of punishment they deserved. 

The book, though, goes beyond Paris, but also to the soul of France itself, best embodied during the war by the somewhat remote Charles DeGaulle, who became the de facto leader of free France despite the best efforts of President Roosevelt. It's well told.