Ira Levin


Chris Grieb

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Ira Levin the author of Rosemary's Baby, The Boys of Brazil, and other bestsellers died in the last couple of days.

His first novel A Kiss Before Dying is mentioned in the Romantic Manifesto. She liked it. She also mentions Rosemary's Baby which she did not like.

I believe in The Passion of Ayn Rand Barbara Branden says he attended NBI courses in New York City.

I liked A Kiss Before Dying. I have not read or seen Rosemary's Baby. Boys From Brazil seemed a little far fetched. His play Deathtrap was a big success on Broadway and made into a good movie.

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Ira Levin the author of Rosemary's Baby, The Boys of Brazil, and other bestsellers died in the last couple of days.

His first novel A Kiss Before Dying is mentioned in the Romantic Manifesto. She liked it. She also mentions Rosemary's Baby which she did not like.

I believe in The Passion of Ayn Rand Barbara Branden says he attended NBI courses in New York City.

I liked A Kiss Before Dying. I have not read or seen Rosemary's Baby. Boys From Brazil seemed a little far fetched. His play Deathtrap was a big success on Broadway and made into a good movie.

Only a little. The premis is that humans can be cloned. This has not yet been done but there does not seem to be any insuperable biological reason why it cannot be done. What is far fetched is the notion that a person, a being that not only has a particular biological nature, but more importantly a particular history made up of luck, choice and accident can be reproduced substantially. We know from actual experience that natural clones (identical twins, triplets etc) grow up to be distinct and different -people- even though all were dealt the same biological hand (in a manner of speaking).

Levin did a marvelous send up of Simon Weisenthal, the "nazi hunter" which was very wall played by Lawrence Olivier in the motion picture. Gregory Peck played Martin Bormann. Peck occasionally played a "bad guy". This was so -The Boys From Brazil- and -Duel in the Sun- where Peck played a very Jack Palance-ish kind of villain.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Bob; I believe Peck played Dr Menegle not Bormann. A quick check of IMDB confirmed that Peck played Dr. Joseph Menegle.

Oops. Quite right. It was Mengele.

Peck did not portray bad guys too often.

Lawrence Olivier did a similar portrayal in -Marathon Man-, where he portrayed a Borman like character. That is probably where I got confused. In -The Boys From Brazil-, Olivier portrays a fictionalized version of Simon Weisethal.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Levin's This Perfect Day, 1971 or thereabouts, is a 1984-ish dystopian novel that he supposedly wrote under Rand's influence. I got about a third of the way through thinking it was an allegory of the way people tyrannize themselves with emotional repression. It was considerably less entertaining when I realized that Levin meant it literally.

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Ira Levin was an immensely talented writer. His A Kiss Before Dying is a brilliant novel, and a model of plot-writing. All the events lead inexorably to the climax -- and when the climax is reached and the mystery revealed, one has the reaction so rarely evoked by mystery novels: both, "What a sbock!" -- and: "Of course!" I literally jumped at the moment when the mystery was resolved.

I haven't read Rosemary's Baby in a long time, but I recall being powerfully impressed by Levin's ability to make the hair stand up on the back of one's neck. As I recall it, the novel opens with a rather cheerful scene in which we are introduced to the heroine, Rosemary, and to a particular day in her life. Although nothing one can name about the scene suggests dark undercurrents, nevertheless one has the feeling of something ominous and frightening to come. To present sunshine and simultanenously subtely suggest dark clouds is a difficult task. I suggest to the fiction writers on OL that you try it; you'll soon see the difficulties and appreciate what Levin accomplished.

It has been said that reading fiction requires "the willing suspension of disbelief" -- and I emphatically agree with this. If one is to gain anything from a particular novel, one must, while reading it, accept the world-view of the writer. Then one can evaluate the characterization, the theme, the events, in the light of the writer's success or failure in projecting that world-view. For example, in reading Dickens A Christmas Carol, one ean decide, "But I don't believe in ghosts, so this is all nonsense." Fine, you have a constitutional right to so decide. Alternatively, you can accept th world-view of the story and so be able to enjoy, understand, and evaluate, within that context, the character of Scrooge and the events of the story.

And so with Ira Levin and Rosemary's Baby. I don't believe that Satan decided to have an earthborn son -- and I rather doubt that Levin believed it, either. But if one is to understand and appreciate the remarkable skill of the novel, the growing horror of the events, the author's sometimes profound insights into his characters, one must, from page one to the end, suspend disbelief in the reality of a world where evil is powerful and can triumph.

Let me give another example where disbelief must be suspended. I love opera, the whole phenomenon of opera. But I am quite aware that people do not live at the emotional peak that most operas present, that they do not burst into song at the crucial moments of their lives, that they do not usually plunge daggers into their hearts and spend 20 minutes singing their farewells, etc. But I willingly suspend disbelief in the world of the opera, and thereby make available to myself the joys of a nearly perfect art form.

Or take Atlas Shrugged. Do you really believe that people commonly speak to one another with the clarity and philosophical acumen of the heroes of Atlas? Do you really believe it is possible for a handful of dedicated men and women to change the course of the world in the space of a few years? Do you believe that villians reveal themselves as such with total self-awareness of their motives and goals? Of course you don't believe it, but you believe the novel -- within the context of the author's world-view.

Barbara

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Barbara; I liked your post too.

I was also hoping you might conform my memory that you said in Passion Ira Levin had been an NBI student.

Edited by Chris Grieb
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I'm going to have to read "A Kiss Before Dying." I saw the original film and I liked it, especially because it was filmed in Tucson. The film wasn't good enough to make me want to get the book or even think about it, but I greatly enjoyed "This Perfect Day." The Valley National bank building (then called) is still available if anyone has a hankering to recreate one scene. (Please, no substantial comments about this, because it's this scene that makes the movie worth watching.)

--Brant

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Or take Atlas Shrugged. Do you really believe that people commonly speak to one another with the clarity and philosophical acumen of the heroes of Atlas? Do you really believe it is possible for a handful of dedicated men and women to change the course of the world in the space of a few years? Do you believe that villians reveal themselves as such with total self-awareness of their motives and goals? Of course you don't believe it, but you believe the novel -- within the context of the author's world-view.

Barbara

In fact, in real life a relatively few people have changed the course of the world. In real life, before the Many see, a Few must see first. The path of Mankind has been blazed by a Few.

In -Mein Kampf- Hitler reveals his motives and his plans quite clearly. The problem is the rest of the world chose to ignore him.

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Or take Atlas Shrugged. Do you really believe that people commonly speak to one another with the clarity and philosophical acumen of the heroes of Atlas? Do you really believe it is possible for a handful of dedicated men and women to change the course of the world in the space of a few years? Do you believe that villians reveal themselves as such with total self-awareness of their motives and goals? Of course you don't believe it, but you believe the novel -- within the context of the author's world-view.

Barbara

In fact, in real life a relatively few people have changed the course of the world. In real life, before the Many see, a Few must see first. The path of Mankind has been blazed by a Few.

In -Mein Kampf- Hitler reveals his motives and his plans quite clearly. The problem is the rest of the world chose to ignore him.

Ayn Rand will be remembered historically as the seminal 20th century figure, pushing even its great monsters Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pal Pot into the background. But this will only happen if her admirers take her ideas to the next, beneficient level. I'm not talking about science here, but philosophy, psychology and general human interaction. Einstein is her only significant rival, but his focus is too narrow for this kind of popularity.

--Brant

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Ayn Rand will be remembered historically as the seminal 20th century figure, pushing even its great monsters Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pal Pot into the background. But this will only happen if her admirers take her ideas to the next, beneficient level. I'm not talking about science here, but philosophy, psychology and general human interaction. Einstein is her only significant rival, but his focus is too narrow for this kind of popularity.

--Brant

Philosophy has been with us since before the pre-Socratics such as Thales. We have had philosophy for nearly 3000 years and it has failed to reveal the nature of the physical cosmos (that is our home, where we live) to us. It has failed to produce good science and it has not produced good psychology either. With regard to psychology we are where physics was in the Middle Ages. As to human interaction, humans keep on doing what humans do. We are and have been the smartest baddest apes in The Monkey House. This would not be too bad if we could only get rid of religion. Without our Demon Gods spurring us on to kill our fellows, we could probably settle down to low level of violence. Mediocrity in violence is probably the best we can do. The thieves, liars and killers will always be among us, but under normal conditions they are a manageable annoyance. The rest can be taken care of if we drag the people who run our governments out of their offices every 20 or 30 years and lynch a few of them. As V says: People should not be afraid of their government. Their government should be afraid of the people*

Progress in the natural sciences has taken place in spite of, and in opposition to prevailing philosophical prejudice. How many times must Galileo be tried for heresy or Darwin excoriated by the ignorant before we see that it is philosophy that is the dark side of human thinking.

Any philosophy beyond Reality Lite is wretched excess.

Ba'al Chatzaf

*The best line in V for Vendetta

Edited by BaalChatzaf
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It has been said that reading fiction requires "the willing suspension of disbelief" -- and I emphatically agree with this. If one is to gain anything from a particular novel, one must, while reading it, accept the world-view of the writer. Then one can evaluate the characterization, the theme, the events, in the light of the writer's success or failure in projecting that world-view. For example, in reading Dickens A Christmas Carol, one ean decide, "But I don't believe in ghosts, so this is all nonsense." Fine, you have a constitutional right to so decide. Alternatively, you can accept th world-view of the story and so be able to enjoy, understand, and evaluate, within that context, the character of Scrooge and the events of the story.

But there is willing suspension of disbelief and willing suspension of disbelief. We don't have to accept everything from a writer. I have no problem with the ghosts in Dickens story, after all this is Victorian England, and we can easily conceive the story as an allegory or as Scrooge having hallucinations and/or dreams. With Rosemary's baby we have to accept real whichcraft and the real devil in 20th century New York however, and for me that is a bridge too far. I found the book just silly nonsense. Here I completely agree with Rand (while Barbara disagrees, this is a historical moment!).

I found the film also silly, especially the end which I found embarrassingly stupid with all those shouting people around the devil's baby. Let me add that I like Levin's other works in which some suspension of disbelieve is no problem, for example the Stepford Wives and The Boys from Brazil.

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~ As Barbara said "It has been said that reading fiction requires 'the willing suspension of disbelief'." So true, reading, listening to, or, nowadays usually, watching.

~ Without such, one just really can't 'get into' KING LEAR or WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? (much less THE ILIAD or DIE HARD.) -- One accepts a 'story-teller's story-telling, or, one doesn't (and thereby throws the book or tape into the trash, or leaves the movie or stage theatre.)

~ Definitely a well-defined necessity for finding worth in paying attention to another's...story.

2Bcont

LLAP

J:D

Edited by John Dailey
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~ However... it requires one more thing though: ignorance on the part of the reader/listener/watcher...especially compared to the s-t.

~ Hopefully, ignorance which will be replaced by knowledge from the s-t; but, when stories are 'cutting-edge' for their times...even the s-t may not know enough.

~ Nevil Shute's ON THE BEACH re radiation worries is one example, and Ira Levin's THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (re cloning) is another. Both, as many 'good' stories, were thought-provoking, but the former was on a deeper theme re how to deal with apparently inevitably-approaching death (more accurately: seeing the bullet coming, however slow) regardless its science-flaw assumptions; the latter more technologically (and concretely, indeed, deterministically) oriented at worrying about multiple Hitler embryos (as if all, from birth, would be inherently motivated to be world-dictators).

2Bcont

LLAP

J:D

Edited by John Dailey
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~ Ntl, whether 'metaphorically' oriented or merely 'polemically' so (re warnings about our future), all story-telling, be such moral-fables, vicarious-escapism-of-the-moment, satirical-commentaries, or psychological-insights, have their worth...if for no other reason, for learning from criticizers (if they're good ones) re how bad the stories were done or even their worth of being told (ergo, lessons to learn from for later writers...and...readers/watchers.)

~ Even ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE EXORCIST (esp the book) had their worth, I'd say. Now, as to BIRTH OF A NATION or AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH...such are only for cinema students/buffs and no one else.

~ Actually, I'd add even the genre of 'porn' as worthwhile (though I stress the 'some'...I mean, talk about clones!)...but, that's a genre subjectively defined.

LLAP

J:D

Edited by John Dailey
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In fact, in real life a relatively few people have changed the course of the world. In real life, before the Many see, a Few must see first. The path of Mankind has been blazed by a Few.

Agreed, but note that I specified changing the course of world in the space of a few years.

Dragonfly, as I said, it's your constitutional right to refuse to accept a writer's world view. But I was impressed, reading Rosemary's Baby with Levin's ability to make witchcraft in the 2oth century almost believable-- his ability to infuse the normal, the everyday, the perfectly natural, with intimations of the supernatural. This was a strictly literary appreciation, which I could not have had if I had refused to suspend disbelief.

Brant, compared to the book, the movie of A Kiss Before Dying was a disaster. I won't now give my reason for saying this, because to do so would give away the mystery, but when you read the book you'll see why it would have been enormously difficult, perhaps impossible, for anyone, however talented, to make a good movie of it.

Barbara

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~ Actually, I'd add even the genre of 'porn' as worthwhile (though I stress the 'some'...I mean, talk about clones!)...but, that's a genre subjectively defined.

My reaction to the very limited amount of porn I've seen is that it's so mechanical and dehumanized that it's mostly appropriate to classes on anatomy. But I would love to see a movie that presented fairly exlicit sex as romantic, beautiful, and exciting -- and I believe it could be done. The closest I've seen to it was one scene in a movie called "The Piano" and a few scenes in Marlon Brando's "Last Tango in Paris." The scene in "The Piano" was especially unusual in that it's the only time I've ever encountered a sex scene presented from the woman's perspective; that is, the focus was on the beauty of the man's body.

Barbara

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~ Actually, I'd add even the genre of 'porn' as worthwhile (though I stress the 'some'...I mean, talk about clones!)...but, that's a genre subjectively defined.

My reaction to the very limited amount of porn I've seen is that it's so mechanical and dehumanized that it's mostly appropriate to classes on anatomy. But I would love to see a movie that presented fairly exlicit sex as romantic, beautiful, and exciting -- and I believe it could be done. The closest I've seen to it was one scene in a movie called "The Piano" and a few scenes in Marlon Brando's "Last Tango in Paris." The scene in "The Piano" was especially unusual in that it's the only time I've ever encountered a sex scene presented from the woman's perspective; that is, the focus was on the beauty of the man's body.

Barbara

Hi Barbara,

I couldn't disagree more!

My particular respect for art would never entertain explicit sex. I don't see how it would be ethical for a director to require the actors to engage in sex--no matter how artistic. Though, no doubt you could find actors to do so. If my mate were an actor I would not accept such a thing. And I can't imagine kids being none to happy with their mom fucking on screen all the while claiming she is an artist. On one end you have kissing, but actually engaging in hard core sex is real--it is not play acting. An obvious example is that there is all kinds of killing on stage and in the movies, but none of it is real--it is all make believe. I hold sex in a similar regard.

Michael

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