I've just been reading Kenneth Tynan's essay The Girl in the Black Helmet which I'd never read, a shocking oversight for a brooks fan. this essay, I think, triggered a bit of a brooks revival after he published it in 1979. if you're already a fan, you'll love it; if you're not, you might get curious enough to see one of her films.

I try not to push my tastes on everyone, but I do like to tell people about things I think they'd like, if they don't know about them (or don't know they'd like them). I have to say, honestly, if you care about "film" as such you really should see a brooks film (pandora's box, probably) sometime in your life. the sooner the better. silents can be hard to get into, but you'll be carried along, don't worry.

An excerpt from Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which is about, among other things, ancient gods struggling to survive in modern America. Shadow, by the way, is the man caught in the middle of the gods' machinations. Czernobog is some obscure ancient slavic god. Mr. Nancy is Anansi, the west african trickster god. When I read this my first thought was "isn't Cherryvale Kansas where Louise Brooks was born?"

Toward the end of the afternoon they stopped, at Czernobog's request, on the outskirts of Cherryvale, Kansas (pop. 2,464). Czernobog led them to a meadow outside the town. There were still traces of snow in the shadows of the trees, and the grass was the color of dirt.

"Wait here," said Czernobog.

He walked, alone, to the center of the meadow. He stood there, in the winds of the end of February, for some time. At first he hung his head, then he began gesticulating.

"He looks like he's talking to someone," said Shadow.

"Ghosts," said Mr. Nancy. "They worshipped him here, over a hundred years ago. They made blood sacrifice to him, libations spilled with the hammer. After a time, the townsfolk figured out why so many of the strangers who passed through the town didn't ever come back. This was where they hid some of the bodies.

Czernobog came back from the middle of the field. His mustache seemed darker now, and there were streaks of black in his gray hair. He smiled, showing his iron tooth. "I feel good, now. Ahh. Some things linger, and blood lingers longest."

They walked back across the meadow to where they had parked the VW bus. Czernobog lit a cigarette, but did not cough. "They did it with the hammer," he said. "Votan, he would talk of the gallows and the spear, but for me, it is one thing..."

..."They should be grateful, the people here. There was such power raised. Even thirty years after they forced my people into hiding, this land, this very land, gave us the greatest movie star of all time. She was the greatest there ever was."

"Judy Garland?" asked Shadow.

Czernobog shook his head curtly.

"He's talking about Louise Brooks," said Mr. Nancy.

For no particular reason, I was sitting around thinking about who my heroes are. Without further ado:

Alan Turing has been one of my heroes for a long time. He was pretty much everything an intellectual should be. He was one of a handful of people to all but invent artificial intelligence, cryptanalysis, and computer science. And not just because he was incredibly smart, but because he was creative. While everyone (including him) was still doing the math, he was already thinking about the turing test. But he wasn't just a brilliant academic; he also applied what he knew to the war effort, helping to crack the Nazi enigma code and keep intelligence flowing to allied commanders. and yet he was persecuted for his homosexuality and (probably) killed himself after being convicted of indecency and forced to undergo a "cure". I can only imagine what else he might have done had he lived.


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You know how with a Shakespeare play, at first the language seems weird and stilted, and you wonder how anyone could possibly take it seriously.. until you get into the story and then you don't even notice, you're in the play's world. It's the same with silent movies, I think -- it seems strange at first but, with the good ones, you get pulled into their world and you forget the medium and just watch the story. I find that with Louise Brooks anyway -- she's not just beautiful but magnetic and engaging, unequaled at drawing you into her story.


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