A Mirror Darkly
1974 is in the rear view mirror. E. Howard Hunt passed away last week, or maybe it was early this week, a close relative of last week all things considered. Hunt was the CIA man who said “uh,oh” when the Watergate burglars were nabbed in the act by the DC police. Hunt’s death got me to thinking about 1974, the year Stephen King’s novel CARRIE was published, forever altering the book publishing business, not to mention how we view the Senior Prom. In many ways CARRIE and Dick Nixon were experiencing adventures in unpopularity, although Carrie never chewed the lid off a child proof aspirin bottle ( correct me if I’m wrong.)
Lest we think the Blockbuster Era began last week, or early this week, Hollywood had delivered AIRPORT and THE TOWERING INFERNO, and the Hardy Boys were in Hong Kong seeking the CLUE OF THE HISSING SERPENT. Karen Black appeared in THE GREAT GATSBY in 1974: she played “Karen” in EASY RIDER, and of course, was shooting NASHVILLE, released the following year. This ushered in the Karen Black Era and ushered out the Katherine Ross Era.
To paraphrase St. Paul we see life through a mirror darkly. The present feels unique and strange, but a glance back to 1974 reveals startling parallels. Mere months before the fall of Saigon. 1974 resonates with the message that we can survive horrible events, even Hollywood’s rendition of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Child proof caps have come a long way, every kid worth their salt knows how to open one for you, but back in 1974 they were kind of a novelty. E. Howard Hunt mastered them quickly. And he could see across the street.
January 26th, 2007 at 11:54 am
“E. Howard Hunt passed away last week, or maybe it was early this week…”
Is that a parody of the opening of Camus’ “The Stranger”? And does it have something to do with the fact that our reigning President recently claimed (rather absurdly) to be reading it?
Is there a sneaky subtext here? Or are you sending out messages to some sleeper cell?
Or have I had too many abalone entrails?
January 26th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
David, your interpretation is more interesting than my post. Somewhere in the archives of this blog lie the bones of my theory that THE STRANGER is the most influential novel of the past 50 years. Maybe a presidential advisor thought the same thing. Then again maybe they watched the FLINTSTONES. Or maybe he read THE STRANGER while watching Fred and Barney trying to drive a dinosaur ( Fred and Barney that is.) Maybe he got tired of all that and leafed through a copy of DER SPIEGEL. We’ll never know.
January 26th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
So, that’s your gentle way of hinting that it’s the abalone-entrails thingie.
That IS a problem with blogs, isn’t it? Not the abalone bit, but the part where you reference the way things drop off the page and into archaeology.
Every blog needs a “Greatest Hits” sidebar, but I’m not sure how this would be implemented.