City of Thieves – A Smart and Tragicomic Buddy Story

A former English teacher, a nightclub bouncer, a DJ, and a wrestling coach, the list of odd low-end jobs David Benioff committed himself to now brings more fascination to his current famed roles of author, screenwriter, and TV series creator. Benioff’s first novel 25^th hour (published January 2001) was adapted into a movie (script penned by Benioff himself) by Spike Lee. Later, he worked as a screenwriter for notable features like Troy, The Kite Runner, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He hit his career high with the creation of groundbreaking TV series ‘Game of Thrones’ (alongside D.B. Weiss). Now there are talks of Benioff and Weiss writing and producing a new series of ‘Star Wars’. But a decade back, before his involvement in Game of Thrones and the disappointment of X-Men Origins, Benioff wrote a splendid historical novel titled City of Thieves. It’s a buoyant, snappy tale of friendship set during the German army's 900-day siege of Leningrad during World War II (between 8 Sep 1941 and 27 Jan 1944).

“The arithmetic was brutal, but brutal arithmetic always worked in Russia's favor” says the central character Lev Benioff, a statement that perfectly sums up the prolonged, punishing military blockade in history of the war. By the end of the siege, 632,000 to 1,000,000 city residents were believed to have died, the reasons ranging between starvation, artillery attack, etc. City of Thieves, however, isn’t a novel that sheds light on the full horror on the siege (there are plenty of historical books to do that job). It’s simply a moving coming-of-age story, duly amplified by the war backdrop. Benioff plotting sense wavers between realism, fairy-tale notions, and grim sense of humor. The novel is at its best when it elucidates the absurdities of war and horrors inflicted upon the harmless, civilian populace. It satisfyingly clubs together black humor, pathos, and brutality that often punctuates the climate of war. Yet the narrative devices and moral lessons are cloyingly Hollywood-ish at times. Being a screenwriter, Benioff has written the story in three acts with neatly sketched characters and a sort of happy ending. Many of the motifs and imagery in the novel aren’t exactly fresh. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading this light-hearted tale, although a part of me questioned the nature of crafting harmless entertainment from the real, deep suffering of war-afflicted populace.

City of Thieves starts with an interesting prologue: a screenwriter named David, curious about his grandfathers’ tantalizing World War II experiences in Russia, visits him and records his tales. The screenwriter says he has filled a week’s worth of tape, and yet expects to smooth few gaps and inconsistencies. He persistently asks the grandfather, “A couple of things still don’t make sense to me…” The grandfather interrupts him by remarking, “You’re a writer. Make it up.” Thus begins the dreamy, devastating, and humorous tale of the skinny 17-year-old Lev Beniov, set in the winter of 1942, during the Nazi siege of Leningrad aka Piter. Naturally, readers would assume that the screenwriter is David Benioff himself and City of Thieves is a slightly embellished real-story of his grandfather Lev. But this imaginative prologue is just written to hook-in the readers, similar to Coen brothers’ ‘This is a based on a true story’ declaration in the opening credits of Fargo (1996). All the four grandparents of Benioff were born in US, and the whole tale is product of the author’s imagination.

David Benioff

Lev is the son of a mildly famous Jewish poet, who is arrested by secret police (4 years earlier) and duly executed. Lev’s mother and sister have left Leningrad, but he determinedly stays in the city and dreams of being a proletarian hero (a “Nevsky for the twentieth century”). But Lev is no hero. He is just an anxious virgin with a penchant for playing chess, and crushes on his cello-playing neighbor girl. One day, Lev and his friends spot the corpse of a German parachutist floating down from the sky. The starved young gang drinks the dead soldier’s cognac, while looting his possessions. Lev steals the knife, but soon he is rounded up by the Red Army and spends the night in a dark cell. His cellmate, Kolya is a handsome braggart and a Red Army soldier, who says he has been unjustly charged with desertion.  They both know that execution is imminent, probably in the early morning. However, the duo has a shot at redemption. A local army colonel’s beautiful daughter is getting married, but there are no eggs in Leningrad to prepare the wedding cake. Lev and Kolya are sent on a mission with a curfew waiver, and 400 rubles to find dozen eggs in the next five days. The wild goose chase of a journey makes the ragtag pair to confront cannibals, a cabin full of concubines, band of partisan fighters, and even a feared leader of the Nazi death squad (Einsatzgruppen). Throughout Lev and Kolya’s search for a poultry collective, we come across the dire atrocities of war: huge apartment blocs collapsed to the ground, dogs strapped with dynamite to blow up Panzer tanks, snack made from books’ binding glue (known as ‘library candy’), and many more.

For the most part, Benioff sharply blends in passage of humor and horror. Kolya’s boastful mini-lectures convey the whole spectrum of emotions – despair, courage, sex, and love – oft bridging the barriers between the characters’ emotions and readers. Of the many motifs in the novel, the one I found fascinating is Kolya’s love for author Ushakovo and his novel ‘The Courtyard Hound’. At one point, Lev realizes that there is no Ushakovo and comprehends how it’s a harmless lie, designed by Kolya to protect his pride. Both Ushakovo and Courtyard Hound’s protagonist Radchenko happens to be an idealized, romanticized version of Kolya. This particular invention shines light on Kolya’s central character trait or possible fragility: fear of embarrassment which dominates his other fears (including the death). Lev relates Kolya’s vulnerability with the frustrated authors and poets of his father’s literary circle. Hence, the non-existent novel beautifully symbolizes our search for avenues to escape the reality’s horrors (and also pays tribute to the sprawling Russian literature).

Benioff packs off the novel with many other foreshadows and symbolism, the prominent ones being the eggs and the knife; one standing-in for the delicate nature of life and the other representing the ubiquitous presence of death and human suffering. As I mentioned earlier, the novel might seem too neatly stacked for some readers, especially its simple-minded narrative device to embody the whole immorality of the war through the German character of Abendroth (I didn’t like those climactic turns). All such strictly packaged Hollywood notions make City of Thieves excessively dramatic (particularly towards the end). David Benioff should have been aware of these criticisms. Hence he tries to answers our misgivings through his novel's character itself, “What's wrong with drama? If the subject demands intensity, it should get intensity”. On the whole, it’s a thrilling, bittersweet coming-of-age tale, encompassing the monumental events of history. 

A Head Full of Ghosts – A Chilling Reinterpretation of the Worn-Out ‘Exorcist’ Story

When I picked up Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts (published June 2015) I expected a tale of demonic possession with all its familiar scares and lore that carries enough power to provide a spine-chilling reading experience. In other words, I expected a horror novel where I could be a detached observer and witness the horror inflicted upon its characters by exhibiting remote sadness and grim fascination. But ‘A Head Full of Ghosts’ bestowed an entirely different, and most importantly, an unforgettable experience; different in the sense that if few years from now someone asks me, ‘Hey! Can you recommend a scary literary fiction for people who hate traditional horror novels?’ my mind would instantly spell-out the title of Mr. Tremblay’s novel. A Head Full of Ghosts starts off in the familiar ghost tale trajectory: a smart but lonely teenage girl hearing voices and doing or saying creepy things. However, we slowly get subsumed into the narrative, so much that we aren’t a distant observer anymore, but get deeply ingrained into the helpless, circumscribed condition.

Paul Tremblay’s masterful speculative fiction is a clever 'exorcism' tale that pays mild homage as well as ferociously deconstructs or reinterprets the spate of possession tales, which more or less turns an afflicted woman’s body and mental state into a form of popcorn entertainment. What primarily generates the novel’s intimate, enclosed perspective is the choice of its narrator: a precocious 8 year old girl who watches her family’s breakdown from the periphery without the means to fully comprehend it. Consequently, this view-point keeps the readers unbalanced or indecisive about the story's alleged supernatural dimensions. Divided into three parts, A Head Full of Ghosts opens with 23 year old Meredith Barrett returning to her old house, where her sister Marjorie was allegedly possessed by a demon. She is with the best-selling writer Rachel to tell her story (commissioned to write a book) from the beginning and without unnecessary embellishments. Fifteen years earlier, Marjorie had been the prime focus of a six part reality television show called ‘The Possession’. That reality show is hinted to have only worsened the Barrett family’s situation, exploiting their ignorance and suffering for the sake of entertainment. Now the grown-up Meredith aka Merry wants to set things straight, once and for all.

While each chapter tells the tale of Marjorie’s alleged possession from Merry’s vantage point, there are bridging chapters which smooths the rough edges in Merry’s tale through Rachel’s inquisitive questions. Furthermore, the intermediary chapters also include series of blog-posts, written by a funny and cynical blogger (titled ‘The Last Girl Online’), who analysis the 15-year old reality TV show, providing number of possible interpretations on the on-screen events and also picking apart the pop-culture influences strewn across the show (a kind of clever self-parody on Tremblay’s narrative strategies too). Paul Tremblay sets his story in small-town New England, a setting that has spawned lot of dark horror fiction (especially from Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft whom are referenced in this novel). Although the chunk of the tale unfolds from 8 year old Merry’s POV, it’s full of vivid realizations that draw a lot from the disturbing hindsight of traumatized 23-year old Merry.

Author Paul G. Tremblay

The Barrett family was under lot of financial strain before Marjorie’s downward spiral. Further threatening their familial togetherness is the increasingly estranged relationship between unemployed dad John and working mom Sarah. Being jobless for nearly two years without the prospect of experiencing the proverbial ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, dad John rejuvenates his interest in Catholicism. Mom Sarah, burdened by her duties at home and work takes solace in few drinks or nervously fidgets with a cigarette at hand. Nevertheless, the sisterly bond between Marjorie and Merry are strong at this point, with the elder and younger ones jubilantly making up wacky, feel-good stories in a cherished private notebook. But that bond too gets ruined by teen Marjorie’s increasingly bewildering behavior. Marjorie still makes up stories for Merry, but these new ones are creepy and nightmarish. Merry hears about her sister’s weekly appointment with Dr. Hamilton. But Marjorie’s bizarre conduct only keeps on escalating. Feeling reassured by his renewed belief in Catholicism, dad John brings in Father Manderly, despite mom Sarah’s objection. Later, the family’s deteriorating financial woes brings upon opportunistic members of a reality TV show. Mom’s mild disagreement is drowned out by the voices of media, Church, and religious dad. Merry wants her caring sister back, telling tall-tales while cuddling under her cardboard house. But she also likes (at least initially) this newfound attention from strangers. Of course, the vital question that rises amidst all these developments would be: Is there really a demon inside Marjorie’s body? Eight year old Merry is confused over that (and we too). Demon or not, what’s happened to Marjorie is horrifying and lamentable.

Any way, do we really need one-dimensional personification of evil, in the form of a demon to scare us when the realistic step-by-step disintegration of a family retains the same power to send a shiver down our spine? Yes, A Head Full of Ghosts is a work of horror. But its scary elements are palpable, not otherworldly. It’s subtly indicting (feminism-laced) commentary on patriarchy, relentlessly harassing, feeble-minded religious institutions, and misogynistic cultural landscape (which breeds regressive fictions and vitriolic reality-TV shows) disturbs us the most than the profane non-stop chatter that comes from Marjorie’s mouth. Paul Tremblay’s writing refers to vast array of similarly characterized tales (especially William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist) without ever getting weighed down by its references. Prominent among the author’s influences (mentioned in the blogger’s chapter) is Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story The Yellow Wallpaper (an early significant work of feminist literature). The blogger named Karen Brisette is the voice of cynic within us, which enjoys getting spooked by such tales of demonic possession and yet makes fun of its familiar theatricalities. Karen’s whole riff on the way exorcism-related stories are ingrained within the pop culture DNA adds another layer to 8-year old Merry’s perspective. Furthermore, this narrative framing device allows Tremblay to offer a commentary/criticism on his own work.

Thanks to the fully fleshed-out characters and their imapctful internal conflicts, all the layers of criticisms and sharp observations within ‘A Head Full of Ghosts’ perfectly works. Dad John is not bad but only a frail guy. The same goes for Mom Sarah. They hope to bring Marjorie’s suffering to an end, although they allow themselves to be manipulated or exploited by outside forces (an irony, since they think Marjorie is afflicted by malevolent outside force). The husband-wife conflict and their relationship are tangible, bringing authenticity to the proceedings. What’s more commendable is the manner Tremblay weaves the appalling incidents through the observant yet confused eyes of Merry. There’s a deep ambiguity in Merry’s narration that keeps us on the edge. Just like the way she is unable to discern whether Marjorie is ‘faking it’ or not, we are kept off-balance, making us wonder how much Merry recounts from her memory and imagination. The twists are perturbing, and thankfully don’t disrespect the reader. Tremblay doesn’t take 180 or 360 degree narrative turn to shock us just for the sake of it. The so-called twists are what (deep-down) we feared would be the ultimate truth, and yet hoped it would be wrong. Altogether, A Head Full of Ghosts would haunt me for some time (particularly its genuinely tear-jerking ending). It’s a must read for those who enjoy reading the works of contemporary, genre-transcending horror authors like Victor LaValle, Nathan Ballingrud, Stephen Graham Jones, Helen Oyeyemi, Sarah Langan, etc. 

Killers of the Flower Moon – A Profoundly Disturbing Account of Greed and Racial Injustice

History is a merciless judge. It lays bare our tragic blunders and foolish missteps and exposes our most intimate secrets, wielding the power of hindsight like an arrogant detective who seems to know the end of the mystery from the outset

New York reporter and author David Grann’s debut non-fiction book ‘The Lost City of Z’ (turned into a spectacular Hollywood movie by James Gray in 2016), a critically acclaimed best-seller, dealt with the obscure and fascinating real story of a Victorian British explorer (Percival Fawcett), whose calamitous journey through the Amazonian Jungle (in 1925) in search of a lost city was full of chilling details. It’s a sensational historical mystery, riffing on the themes of obsession, perseverance, death, and madness. Grann’s follow up book Killers of the Flower Moon: the Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (published April 2017) retells one of the most unknown and terrifying chapters in American history. The true-crime non-fiction delves deep into string of unsolved murders that occurred in the Osage Indian Nation of Oklahoma in the 1920s. David Grann has spent little more than five years for the book, profoundly focusing on yet another monstrous crime committed by the American whites against the Native Americans.

‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ is a tale of murder, greed, bigotry, betrayal, valor, and persecution which unearths crimes that has long been exorcised from history. Like most of the Native American tribes, the Osage were forced from their native lands in the late 19^th century to northeastern Oklahoma (in the 1870s). The migration and other tyrannical processes set forth by the federal government nearly wiped-out two-thirds of the Native American population, in a span of 70 years. However, the Osage people were blessed with well-reasoned, perceptive leaders, who unlike other tribes firmly settled on their new land, and also secured mining rights. Although the vast stretches of lands in Oklahoma were initially considered ‘worthless’, by the tail-end of 19^th century the Osages had discovered black gold. By the early 1920s, oil leases and mineral rights generated millions of dollars for the Osage (a total of $30 million in 1923 alone which Grann says is equal to at least $400 million today). Around this time the Osage people were considered the wealthiest in the United States (per-capita). A single well on Osage land is said to have pumped out 680 barrels in a day.  Soon, the lavish lifestyle of the Osage attracted unsavory reports from biased, racist reporters (words like ‘rich redskins’ are thrown out). 

The Osage of the 1920s were wealthy beyond most rich American whites. They bought huge mansions, luxurious cars, and even hired white servants. But the tribe’s wealth pulled in army of financiers, outlaws, opportunists, and other loathsome fortune-seekers. In an attempt to legally fleece the tribe members, the federal government appointed ‘prominent’ white citizens (lawyers, judges, real estate magnates, bankers, etc) as legal guardians to many Osages who were deemed ‘incompetent’ to handle their money. The guardianship allowed them to steal liberally, while strictly restricting the tribes’ ability to spend. But still the most invaluable aspect of ever-growing oil money is the ‘head rights’, which couldn’t be bought off by white-skinned outsiders. That’s when the killings began.

In May 1921, two badly decomposed bodies were discovered by chance in different locations within the Indian reservation. Charles Whitehorn (age 30) and Anna Brown (age 34), both the deceased were members of the tribe and had been shot dead. In the next four years, at least 24 people were poisoned, blown up, hit by cars, and shot for their money and oil rights (including some local whites who apparently helped their Osage neighbors). Known as ‘Reign of Terror’, these baffling series of murder posed heavy challenges to the local and state authorities; partly because they were corrupted to the bone and partly due to their utter lack of deductive skills. These were frontier men, who often uprooted crime through shoot-outs and hangings. Meanwhile, the murders caught the attention of an ambitious, authoritative young bureaucrat named J.Edgar Hoover, who considered the cases as a perfect opportunity to prove the worth of his newly formed bureau of investigations (later known as FBI). Hoover sent in Special Agent Tom White, a former Texas Ranger and a man of action. White formed a team of undercover agents, who took over different roles in the Osage community: from cattleman to insurance salesman. Soon, the team zeroed-in on a kingpin behind this bloody conspiracy. David Grann meticulously recreates the stunning breakthroughs and tense interplay between criminals and lawmen, which eventually led to the capture of a master criminal. Contrary to the records of FBI, however, the tale doesn’t end there. He further delves into yellowing archival records, old newspapers, and fading memories (of Osage descendants) to come to a shocking conclusion. As Grann has said in an interview (to Rolling Stone), “When I began the story I was thinking, 'It's a whodunit kind of thing, right?' And by the end, it was like, 'Who didn't do it?'”

David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon is a success in two ways: he deftly constructs the details of the murder and its investigation so as to turn it into a compelling puzzle; he never forgets to chronicle the human impact of the brutal murders in the Osage community, then and now. In the opening passages, we get the feel of Erik Larson’s ‘Devil in the White City’, a well-documented non-fiction book on 1893 Chicago fair and serial killings by H. H. Holmes. However, ‘Flower Moon’ is much darker, eschewing the idea of a singular villain figure, and shockingly ambiguous than Larson’s book. What the Osage confronted in the 1920s is not a great criminal mastermind, but a highly ingrained culture of killing. There is more to the story, mentioned in the annals of FBI investigations. The last section of the book, which unfurls the harsh truth behind the hundreds of murders and suspicious deaths of the Osage, tells a lot about the darkest ideals of American society. Beneath its boasting of transformation towards modernity and economic ascension lie unimaginable violence, naked greed, and indelible racist notions. The FBI narrative that pinned the ‘Reign of Terror’ on a single individual also tells a lot about the universal conception of evil: that the law would come in and remove that particular evil to once again ‘normalize’ the society. But the truth is far more frightening, as we avoid acknowledging the society’s depth of complicity pertaining to a crime.    

 

Martin Scorsese is possibly developing a film adaptation of the book with Leonardo Di Caprio and Robert de Niro

“History can often provide at least some final accounting”, Grann writes. Nevertheless, the author’s powerful writing style does more than that. It is true that it’s too late to identify those who violently preyed upon the Osages, let alone punish them. Yet Killers of the Flower Moon would make sure that these diabolical acts in American history aren’t easily forgotten. When all is said and done, the legacy of sadness and persecution encompassing the Osage and other native tribes still remains. So will the stain of blood that saturates their history. It’s a truly devastating and fury-inducing read, showcasing where the real horrors of history rests: in what we don’t know and in what we fail to acknowledge.