Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Tag: writer

  • Trammin’ Along with Hans

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    When a tram was first introduced in town of Avonlea, Karl Hans, a retired school teacher, was thrilled to apply for a position of conductor/operator because he had always wanted to become one since his childhood in Frankfurt, Germany, where riding a tram was part of his family life: His father used to take trams to commute  to  and from work; his mother would take a tram to go grocery shopping, and so did Karl for going to and from school. A tram was their paid means of livelihood that spun many a memory with laughters and adventures in the Old Country. So the image of a tram in Avonlea was enough to induce Karl to think of his childhood in Germany and his eyes to be welled up in tears soaked up with a nostalgia of those lovely moments of the past that are now bygone and bygone.

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    Naturally, the  news that the city council had finally approved the city’s real estate tycoon John Elephant’s proposal of establishing a tram line in order to accomodate to the increasing number of the residents imbued Karl with a certain feeling of hope that had been buried under layers of time and forgetfulness as Reality Check had called upon through the years. Karl decided that he wanted to become a conductor of a tram in a heartbeat against his wife Hannah’s disagreement. “Why don’t you enjoy the rest of life in the comfort of armchair with books you admire and music you love? We can manage to live quite comfortably with our Social Security Benefits and your 401 K Plan.” Hannah’s remonstration with Karl was, however, weaker than his determination rekindled by his deep nostalgic infatuation with another ew hope in life. “Hannah, surely our income will be sufficient to maintain comforts of life, but it’s what I really want to do, and I want to make it happen. Besides, we will have extra income to double our monthly budget. So it’s a win-win situation! We are not losing anything at this stage of life.” Karl’s reasoning with his dear wife Hannah won her support of the cause, and the rest of it was history.

    photo (2)Intelligent, civil, and good-heated Karl is now Avonlea’s beloved conductor of a lovely tram that almost everyone uses  on a daily basis, even if some of them owns a car. Karl operates a tram 5 days a week except Fridays and Sundays from 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM. But he does not feel exhausted or overworked. He loves the way his passengers smile back to him and greet him when boarding and getting off his tram. Sometimes, he has not-so-good days for being only a human, especially when Hannah nags for no apparent reason or fault-finds with just about anything with him in the morning or the night before. Nevertheless, the facts that he is living his dreams in memory of his childhood memories that are dear to him and that his age does not mean anything to him to achieve his dream are the mainstay of fulfilling demands placed on his daily tasks at work, at home, and with himself. Hooray for our magnificent Karl and his continuous endeavors in life!

     

    thanks-for-reading-Rok-Hardware

     

  • From PBS Masterpiece Theater – Mr. Selfridge

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    This Masterpiece Theater Mini-Series of “Mr. Selfridge” produced by ITV is a tour de force of excellent performances of the actors, the finesse of drama scripts, gorgeous costumes, and classically elegant settings coordinated as truthfully as possible. It chronicles Harry Gordon Selfridge’s business adventures from the onset of establishing Selfridges & Co in 1908 until his farewell to his labor of love twenty years afterwards.

     From Episode I of Series 1 to Episode 10 of Series 4 (Final Season), we get to see a man named Harry Gordon Selfridge (1958-1947) who was something of a Napoleon Bonaparte knowing no word in his dictionary for “Impossible.” We see the man build a one-of-a-kind department store in London’s Oxford Street as an adventurous American tradesman against the British aristocratic chauvinism. Selfridge was a man who set a standard of modern department store; by placing the cosmetic/perfume counters on the lobby, Selfridge intended to sweeten the atmosphere of the floor in attempt to use it as a magnet for passers-by, especially women. In effect, Selfridge broke down the class-stratified fashion wall guarded by the rich/privileged by democratizing the luxurious items and making them accessible to common people as well.

    Moreover, the ace portrayal of Selfridge would/could not be possible were it not for the fine acting of Jeremy Piven whose quintessential American accent doubled with inescapable American can-do attitudes triumphs over the transatlantic cultural differences in working with the British peers. The viewer will be left with a feeling of heartfulness of the characters upon finishing all of the episodes in this series and cannot help but applaud to Mr. Selfridge for his entrepreneurial effervescence and Mr. Piven for portraying the man in a stellar performance that evokes both pathos and respect.

  • Stardust!

    Sometimes I feel like a mad scientist who relentlessly pursues any signals of supernal intelligent being in the universe when I write my book reviews, poems, and occasionally attempted short short stories on my little lonely blog. I do it because for the love of act of writing and the ambition of writing better. Simple as that.

    And Voila! At last, I was able to catch such signal coming from the most unexpected galaxy of Great Writers this week: That my book review on a fabulously well-written modern thriller, The Flight Attendant got the attention of its equally fabulously brilliant author, Mr. Chris Bohjalian, who not only read the review but also gave me kindly comments on the review thwarts all of my provisional existential worries like magic.

    So I guess my endeavors to improve my writing skills for love of literature and history have not been in vain after all. Francis Bacon’s timeless adage of “Reading makes a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.” has been one of my credos. Now Mr. Bohjalian’s warm encouragement shall be my new, fresh literary memento. What more can I say? I now have stardust.

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  • The Great Surprise from Chris Bohjalian

    I have just checked my neglected tweeter and found out that Mr. Bohjalian, the writer of The Flight Attendant about which I wrote a book review, left such a kindly compliment thereon. I am much obliged for the commendation. This made my day!

    The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian

     

  • The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian

    The Flight AttendantThe Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    Maybe it was because of the hauntingly enigmatic cover page with a title that was both realistic and alluring associated with the popular image of the profession: Glamour, Romance, and Adventure in the high skies of the world separating the profession from its terrestrial counterparts. Or maybe it was because I had once wanted to become a flight attendant myself. But above all of these speculations, I had never imagined myself enjoying a contemporary fiction until I found The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian upon reading the excerpt of the book; that it’s actually a thriller about a lone woman on the emotional run for her life tangled in a web of international intrigues and personal intricacies unraveled in the progress of the story, which compels the reader to stay tuned for each next chapter.

    The story begins when the protagonist Cassandra (“Cassie”) Bowden, a mid-thritish flight attendant wakes up one morning with a terrible hangover in a hotel in Dubai only to find a dead body of a man, a hedge-fund company man partial to Russian literature whom Cassie met on her flight a day ago and spent a night with, lying next to her. Thenceforth, her reluctant adventure of escaping not only from a suspicion of killing the man she barely knows but also from all that has been troubling her mind as her anxiety is translated into a borderline paranoia. But Cassie is hardly a pathetic figure; she is a great functional alcoholic, prefers a one-night stand with a stranger she meets during her flight or at a bar. She also lies pretty well although most of her lies are absent from malice. And yet, it’s also hard to dislike her or stigmatize her as a loose woman, for in one way or another, the reader may find her related to herself in the deprivations of love and security, of intimacy and support. She’s the perfect embodiment of imperfect heroine not uncommon but exceptional to recognize.

    In fact, Bohjalian’s superb narrative skills that show Cassie’s truculent inner crisis without using cerebral terms of psychology lucidly and effectively builds the development of the story all the more flawlessly and sleekly at the same time. Without using flowery words or baroque-styled sentences, Bohjalan’s unlikely heroine of the story seems convincingly realistic and vivid as if the reader were inside of Cassie’s mind. In terms of subject matters of the story, Bohjalian skillfully incorporates social issues of self-destructive alcoholism, white-color crimes, depression, and other types of addiction into the story without inculcating a moral undertone in the narrative. Also, Bohjalian’s choice of flight attendant as the profession of Cassie proves that writing truthfully and entertainingly about everyday life in contemporary setting always works best to attract the reader to the world of literary creation that seem so real. In this respect, Bohjalian follows the footstep of Lucy Maud Montgomery, the creator of Anne ff Green Gables, who once said the idea of a good story results from making use of the real to perfect the ideal which includes encompassing foibles and idiosyncrasies of the human nature because they can enhance literary imaginations viscerally and effectually to the extent possible.

    All in all, The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian achieves its purpose of entertaining the reader with pages filled with vivid characters, lucid descriptions of the scenes, and plots that twist even the most logical assumptions of each chapter thanks to Bohjalian’s diligent research of all the components of the story, ranging from the work routine of a flight attendant to FBI investigation procedures, behavior patterns of a functioning alcoholic, and to the world of financial espionages, all packaged fabulously in straightforwardly powerful language he employs. The reader will be engrossed in the story, wanting to know more about the fate of Cassie as if she were an acquaintance. It’s the art of Bohjalian that lured me into this riveting thriller. The Flight Attendant is a classic of our time that has a style without neologism, contemporary with our time with its powerful, fresh, and universal appeal to the reader of this modern time.

     

  • One Man’s Fighting for Justice and Honor: Film Review on The Verdict by Paul Newman

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    Release date: December 8, 1982 (USA)
    Director: Sidney Lumet
    Story by: Barry Reed
    Screenplay: David Mamet, Jay Presson Allen

    This is not a movie about a courtroom drama displayed by the verbal theatrics that we can easily see in today’s legal dramas. It’s a movie about a man’s redeeming of his honor tainted by his self-destructive resort to alcoholism and disorientation in life pursuant to the destruction of his youthful idealism as a novice lawyer. Once bitten, twice diffident, the lawyer’s god-sent chance to turn over a new leaf in his later chapters of life comes to him when he is asked by a woman to represent her sister, a young woman whose life is forever bedridden in a coma as a result of inadvertent administration of anesthetics by doctors at a Catholic hospital. As the lawyer works on the case for a trial, he regains his confidence, hope, and meaning for his own life.

    Paul Newman’s excellent performance as the lawyer struggling with his own life is the gem of the movie, rendering the verisimilitude of the character that evokes the pathos. His trademarks of fierce blue eyes that seem to be the only distinct features of his weary, forlorn face symbolize a suppressed light of intelligence, bludgeoned confidence, and vanquished hope, all of which still struggle to be liberated from self-imprisonment at any moment. The viewer will never fail to notice the feelings and the emotions Newman’s character tries to subdue or express by his brilliant method acting.

    “The Verdict” is indeed a thought-provoking movie about the human nature and a light of hope that we all have in our lifetime. Without any courtroom theatrics full of sensational machinations and exchanging of fiery tirades between the lawyers of the opposite parties, this movie proves how a well written script based upon a realistic subject matter that elicits universal empathy in concert with the excellent performances of fine actors could work a wonder.