"Marilyn: A Biography" by Norman Mailer

And so I finally came to appreciate Norman Mailer in my mid-40ies, if earlier I was just vaguely familiar with his name.
Excuse my ignorance but in my other, previous life I used to confuse several similar sounding authors into one, now I clearly can tell this is Norman Mailer and I actually truly enjoy his writing. The discovery started with "Gospel according to Son" which was thrilling. I had even purchased "Castle in the Forest" for a future enjoyment. And now, just as I am very slowly going trough another Umberto Eco novel, Marilyn biography has caught my eye and I finished it with a biggest interest before I even became aware that I am sucked into it. Excellent.

Sure, Mailer sounds obsessed - but how can one otherwise be inspired if not obsessed? Is it not in a heat of the inspiration that we write trough sleepless nights while little wheels are turning inside our head, with a steam floating above opened lid? Mailer was a hot blooded male, for sure, not just a little bit jealous on her husbands and lovers, fantasizing about Monroe in the darkness of the cinema, just like thousands of other guys. In fact, just today one of my work colleagues grunted with audible approval upon seeing Monroe's face on some advertisement, her sex appeal frozen in time forever, like a mosquito in Amber. Just as we think we know everything about her - and who actually knows anything at all about anybody? - here is a writer who is not just a gossip collector or a amateur psychiatrist but a very talented author taking me by surprise with phrases like "When the wings of insanity beat so near, one pays attention to a feather" (talking about life coincidences that make perfect sense from a future perspective) . Oh man, this is so much different that one's run-of-the-mill paperback biographers, this is actually someone who has a gift and something to say (no matter how unusual it does sound sometimes). I am very impressed with Mailer's writing.

As for Monroe herself, to me she is here actually less important than the author himself. I am so impressed with Mailer that I would probably enjoy his writings about just anything.
She was simply too god in her sex bomb/pouting/eternally stupid blonde/walking sex toy role and nobody can convince me that she was a intellectual somewhere behind all that cellophane. Very possibly troubled, lonely, abused and mentally unstable, she left a film legacy that is still a joy to watch, though memories of her colleagues are blood chilling in their disdain and reading about torture others had to go trough because Monroe was unable to remember one sentence ("Its me, Sugar") my blood pressure rises immediately - I would probably puke green, right in the middle of the movie set. Everything about her was self-destructive and on many occasions she seems to have been floating aimlessly, from town to town, from one house to another, from man to man, never satisfied or happy with herself. I am almost 100% sure that had she lived, she would turn into obese caricature of herself and her legend and legacy lives only because of early death that preserved her legend just as it started to crack a bit. Let's be honest here, 36 years old Monroe was not so hot as her younger self, the years of substance abuse were clearly showing on her last pictures - what we usually see today are carefully selected photographs from her glory days, when death stopped her in the tracks she was already on her way down. It is the supporting characters, like Simone Signoret or Arthur Miller himself who sound far more interesting to me. However, thanks to Norman Mailer, it is a fascinating read no matter how one looks at it.

Sailing again

Sailing again.
A new job, new company, new itinerary.
On a first glance, it perhaps seems strange why on earth have I left my previous position where I had better salary and had a certain promotion waiting for me. Here, I am paid less and starting absolutely from the bottom again, nobody knows or cares much about my previous experiences. But - and this is a very important "but" - I hoped that perhaps working conditions and life in general might be less stressful and I was ready to bite the bullet & even take lesser financial results just to have some kind of "normal life" and not a brutal, 16-17 hours working day constantly. It is a sad truth about cruise ship crew life and until someone pulls the necessarily laws and fines, this will be a reality for most of us.

I had embarked for the very first time in Muscat, Oman - extremely tiresome, 15-hours journey - and arrived into desert country where architecture looks like something out of "Arabian nights". It is very clear these people are wealthy since they had build all of this in the middle of desert and it looks very clean, glitzy and rich. My ship had started its voyage in Singapore and it slowly sails towards the Mediterranean Sea, than Baltic later.

Everything is so different here that I want to pinch myself.
First - passengers are extremely elderly people who can afford 42-day cruise and since they are not in a hurry, everything is about their comfort and leisure. They browse around, chat with a crew, enjoy their nap in the sun and here definitely I have nobody haggling over prices of the key chains. The atmosphere is extremely relaxed, my working hours surprisingly tolerable (I had a bad luck to arrive just before seven navigation days, but once we hit Europe it will be one port after another), company not only encourages but insists we should eat in a spiffy, top-deck restaurant with passengers (beautiful view from the top of the ship) so this is goodbye to greasy canteens. When I look back at the years I had spent working under really difficult circumstances and a constant, huge stress, this looks like oasis. I used to work from 8.30 a.m. until 3-4 a.m. next morning for weeks and months, this was just a normal, regular policy and many were weeks that we never saw the outside world because we were constantly working - I remember not having time to do my laundry and re-using & re-cycling the old socks. Now here, they have computer machine where working hours are carefully logged and not only I have decent working hours but even on navigation days I got 3 hours dinner break, which is a huge relief for feet. It still ends up in 11 working hours per day, no matter how one looks at it, but the atmosphere is far more relaxed and my initial impression is that I could and should have come here long ago. My previous salary was slightly better but I worked under huge stress for way too long and all these years of exhaustion left no trace whatsoever on my life - except that stress resulted in a weight gain and I feel completely out of shape & older than my age. For the start, I am treated as a complete beginner here - I keep quiet, will see what time brings - financial gain will be far lesser than previously but it looks like I will have a decent working life and won't be dead tired at the end of the day. What a life, when 11 hours working day seems so relaxing and beautiful, compared to what I used to do.

"The Prague Cemetery" by Umberto Eco

If I was a young, impressionable reader, I would probably proclaim Umberto Eco a genius and his work a masterpiece - he certainly writes very well, is very erudite and sophisticated, definitely  a class above most of the popular writers. Dan Brown in comparison, is just a little schoolboy standing next to man of intellectual power like Eco. This also means that Eco writes his books very sporadically, as he is a well known university lecturer and often busy with other projects. His most famous work, a medieval crime story "The Name of the Rose" perhaps unfairly made him into something of medieval Arthur Conan Doyle, which is wrong since Umberto Eco wrote this only once and moved on since - I had not read anything from him for a very long time and was intrigued with both the title and cover of his latest novel, which turned out into curious experience.

It is very hard to enjoy a novel where the main protagonist is so immensely negative.
"Negative" is an understatement here - Eco did everything to make his main character one of the worst people anybody has ever encountered in a literature. His Simonini hates the whole world, is disgusted of women, bursts with prejudices of all sorts and loves himself only. The sheer venom, malice and hatred this man has in his veins initially put me off reading - I had to set a book aside for a good month, before I could continue and than suddenly I got caught up in a story and in fact finished it with a greatest interest. Which still doesn't mean it was enjoyable, pleasurable experience because once I had finished the last page, I felt simultaneous overload of historical informations AND a disgust about what I have just read. There is not a single person, country or government that Simonini does not hiss at, out of some long-standing imaginative phobia or prejudice. If Umberto Eco wanted to explain how 19th century public opinions could have been swayed and various secret plots made trough manipulation of public and media, he had definitely succeeded - the novel is loaded with historical facts and real-life people, author's knowledge of history is almost intimidating, but at the heart of the story there is slow-brewing, dangerous hatred that was strong, powerful force back than and today. I sighed out with relief once I finished the last page.

"Rebecca" (1940) by Alfred Hitchcock

Majority of the old movies are nothing new for me - they are not called "classics" for no reason - but they might be a very new experience to a new generation of kids who had no such luck to actually watch them in cinema or were raised on blockbusters and left in total ignorance of film history. Recently I talked to a friend's daughter, a sweet young thing very self-assured and opinionated, who knows everything about current movie stars, hit movies and what's hip but she is not familiar with anything from black-and-white era. With everything the market offers - and there is a healthy dose of ubiquitous romantic comedies - the girl was mesmerized with Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" and could not stop talking about the thrill of it all, how much she enjoyed it and loved the experience of diving into something different. "Wait until you see "Rebecca" was my answer. So I treated myself with it, again.

So glad that DVD format makes the old, classic movies available - this, now elderly 70+ years old masterpiece is and always was breath-taking experience.
From the very first, legendary opening lines to the very end this is one of the cornerstones of a cinema history, but where some other old movies are simply, well old, this is something gripping and involving, truly magical, gothic and strangely faithful both to du Maurier and Hitchcock. Even if director himself was not completely happy with being under someone else control (David O. Selznick was simply not a man to ignore) it has his signature all over the screen, from complicated characters hiding secrets from each others to evil lurking in the shadows, morbid fascination with death, innocent heroine (it never occurred to me earlier that she is never called by her name) lost in the imposing majesty of Manderley to twists and turns of a fascinating story itself. And - the best of all - this is a movie with Mrs. Danvers (magnificent Judith Anderson). Now I can finally admit that I always found her the true owner of Manderley and if anybody asked me, I would drown both Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier, in my version Mrs. Danvers would live on and on forever, bringing fresh flowers in Rebecca's bedroom and occasionally even try those silk stockings and underwear made by nuns from convent. (What kind of nuns knew how to sew sexy underwear?) Hitchcock would have been amused to find that audience of the future find the villainess the most appealing character in the movie. I got a lot of fun ideas involving Mrs.Denvers and me but will keep them for myself.

Gabi Novak discography

Želim malo nježnosti i ljubavi/Otok Wight (1970)
Very pretty little number that starts slowly and than builds up to a anthemic refrain, composed by Alfi Kabiljo and Mišo Doležal, this sounds like it was tailored for Gabi Novak and her "good fairy" image. Novak is a rare bird, a singer who project tenderness and sensuality without ever sounding artificial or cutesy - not only a possessor of a fine, gentle voice that is quite appealing in its intimacy, but a artist who sound sincere and classy simultaneously, she was equally a every man's dream and every woman's idol back than. Perhaps at the peak of her popularity - or at the wave of one of those, since her career seems always to have these sudden peaks every now and than - Novak had a huge radio hit with A side and completely overshadowed Ana Štefok who also recorded it (to my knowledge, it was a pop festival song performed by two different artists).

Side B is a dreamy hippy ode, cover of certain foreign hit (Wight is Wight), kind of flower power daydream strummed along the guitar and Arsen Dedić contributed Croatian lyrics. Novak had such appealing, effortless voice that listener can walk away from her recordings never really understanding what kind of magic she actually used, since she deliberately never indulged in mannerisms or acrobatics - her soft croon is soulful and completely natural.

Gabi Novak (1982)
Ever since a good decade ago Gabi Novak happily embraced marriage and motherhood, a certain glamour was deliberately replaced with descent into ordinary world - I still remember neighbor ladies chatting and bemoaning that their beloved "Gabika" now can be seen shopping with baskets overflowing on the streets, just like everybody else - a curious phenomenon of a big pop star drastically changing image with absolutely no regret or passing thought. This surely had not changed the fact that she always continued to be a wonderful singer and elegant lady when situation calls for it, only a certain professional obligations like performing and touring were cut to a minimum.

Since she never purposely or forcefully placed career on the first place, Novak seems to have waves of success once in every decade without much sweat - this album was a very strong, solid collection built around her recent hit singles and pop festival performances - "Pamtim samo sretne dane" and "Što je ljubav" for example, were already four years old at the time of album release, which only proves that Novak had her own rhythm and waited to have enough decent material for an album, instead or fast rushing with some uninspired job. It also gave enough time to audience to embrace these songs. It is a very modernized Gabi Novak in a synthesizers-land (usually obtrusive Mato Došen is kept in check here, without meddling too much in sound effects, since half of the album was arranged by Arsen Dedić who does very good job indeed) and songs came from pens of various composers like Dejan Petković, Drago Mlinarec, Kemal Monteno and Arsen himself - the final result sounds like true "the best of" all-hits-no-filler album and not only it gave singer a timeless repertoire that will live for decades since but it sounds very well tailored for her particular, effortless croon.

Pjesma je moj život (2002)
Gently nudged back in the recording studio 17 years after her last studio album - her husband and now grown-up son apparently convinced her that she still has something to say, even at this late point in the game - veteran pop singer decidedly avoids any meddling in a new pop trends and re-visits her early beginnings when she was singing jazz music. The idea was perhaps "Gabi sings Arsen" though this was ultimately abandoned for a different approach, in any case the resulting album came as a huge surprise not only because it sounded so sophisticated, jazzy and elegant but also because it showed what a wonderful singer the lady still is, after all these years.

The biggest hit was a old hit duet (originally recorded with Radojka Šverko back in 1980.) "Za mene je sreća" with new, young kid Maja Vučić and it sounds different now, where once it has been conversation between two girlfriends, now is all about different points of view between generations. Matija Dedić and his friends surround her with excellent music that never interfere with magical, intimate voice and husband Arsen duets on one title. The best of all, however is when Novak is simply left alone to shine in ballads like "Kuća za ptice" that moves like a warm wave. This really came as a such unexpected treat and a magnificent statement of how to live and age gracefully in a world of music that it came as no surprise that album eventually sold very well, got awarded with all sorts of prestigious awards and earned praise from everywhere - it also reminded audience what a national treasure Novak is, who spent a lifetime creating a soothing and comforting music while living clean life and a low profile without excesses.
This album was always a warmly welcomed gift to my friends who loved it with no exception - even the language barer could not hide what a lovely music this is. If I want to present something truly beautiful coming from Croatia, this is what I give as a present.