Joan Bennett

            On Tuesday morning I continued to search for an audio recording of “Les frères” by Boris Vian. From what I could find out the only partial recording of the song is where it is used as part of the song “Signe particulier… néant” by Les Quatre Barbus (The Four Beards). But the recording of that song has never been uploaded. 

            I published “My Legionnaire”, my translation of “Mon Légionnaire” by Raymond Asso on my Christian’s Translations blog. That completes my 1987 Serge Gainsbourg folder. All I have left in my Gainsbourg project are ten songs from 1988 and 23 from 1990, plus his novella. I started listening to his song “Amour puissance six” (Love to the Power of Six). Tomorrow I’ll begin memorizing it. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the first of four sessions. 

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            I finished editing my copy of “Mysticism and Materiality: Pearl and the Theology of Metaphor” by Kerilyn Harkaway-Krieger and then returned to working on my Critical Summary. 

            I weighed 86 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. It was back up to twelve degrees and so I didn’t need gloves. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:15. 

            I worked on my Critical Summary and made some progress. Here’s what I have so far: 

            In Kerilyn Harkaway-Krieger’s essay “Mysticism and Materiality: Pearl and the Theology of Metaphor” she argues that it is through metaphor that “mysticism” manifests itself in language. The Medieval poem “Pearl” is then a mystical work of art because of its heavy use of metaphor. She goes on to say that dreams are also a form of metaphor. That would imply that dreaming itself is a mystical experience. As “Pearl” takes place almost entirely in a dream it suggests that this would render it as an even more deeply mystical poem, but also accessibly so because anyone could potentially dream such an experience as the poet describes.

            “Pearl” is a poem about a dream that leads to finding not only a lost daughter who is named or nicknamed “Pearl” but also to witnessing manifestations of religious ideals for which the pearl also stands as metaphor. Krieger points out that “Pearl” is divided into twenty sections, each with five stanzas of twelve lines each. The poem uses alliteration, (ababababbcbc) rhyme, special repetitions of words called “concatenations”, words that sound the same but have different meanings, and puns. The concatenations in the poem bring the link word in the last line of the previous section to the first line of the next section. These mechanical elements combined with particular word choices serve to signal the suggestion of a world beyond space and time. 

            One example of this is how the concept of a pearl is used as a type of stairway of metaphors leading to the infinite. The pearl is introduced as the rare gemstone that has been lost; then the lost pearl is revealed to be the narrator’s dead daughter; then in the dream pearls are first presented as the common strewn gravel foundation of a higher world; then pearls serve as the organized adornment of the speaker’s found but now heavenly daughter; then the pearl is shown to be that essence of human life and consciousness that many call the “soul”; and finally at the top of the ladder of pearl symbolism is the City of God Jerusalem, which is also a pearl decorated with pearls.

            I had the usual tomato, cucumber, scallion and avocado salad with lemon juice for dressing and a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching season 2, episode 24 of Burke’s Law. 

            Alexander, the window dresser in a big department store finds the dead body of store maintenance worker Arthur Colby. In a moment of mindless fright, Alexander jumps and smashes the window to land in the street where he sees a car pulling away. But Burke can’t investigate this case because he is going to Chicago for the police chiefs convention. Tim and Les are left to mostly solve this murder on their own with some help from Sergeant Ames who gets a lot more screen time than she usually does. Colby was banged in the head with one of his own hammers. Les goes to Denise Mitchell the executive assistant to get Colby’s address. She looks for the file but it has somehow disappeared. She calls the Maintenance Department and they give her Colby’s address. She also gives him the address of Guy Hawthorn Jr. who is the vice president of the store. Hawthorn is a kook who sits on his patio and watches his butler and chauffeur exercise on his behalf through mind transference. He says it’s an old Swahili custom he picked up in India. How could he ever find Swahili Africans in India? He says Colby was hired on the recommendation of Maggie French, who runs the Women’s High Fashions Department. He has his butler and chauffeur jump in the pool in their uniforms and finds it very refreshing. Tim goes to Colby’s address but there is a windup toy salesman named Ernie Webb who has been living there for three tears and has never heard of Colby. Les gets word that Alexander hasn’t shown up for work. Tim and Les go there and look around but he’s not home. Then Alexander walks in and drops dead. The lab finds he was poisoned with lead arsena. They are still looking for Colby’s address and Tim suggests the Maintenance Workers Union. Tim goes to see Maggie French. She says she met Colby at the Speed Bowl where she races cars. Les finds through Colby’s Social Security Number that his real name was Al Cole. He changed his name because he had a large criminal record, mostly for extortion and swindling. Cole was careful not to have bank accounts but Les got his address from the cheque cashing place he’d used. Tim and Les go there to find a far more lavish dwelling than a maintenance worker could afford. Tim finds on the floor the kind of key that Webb uses to wind up the toys. They follow Webb to a garage that he is about to open and force him to continue. The inside is packed with stolen merchandize from the store. They take him to the station. Webb and Cole were stealing from the store together but Cole was in charge. Webb wanted to stop but Cole wouldn’t let him. Cole said he had someone with a high up job in the store who could cover up for them. Tim goes to see Maggie at the race track. She says she was married to Cole for a year and got a divorce. But Cole came to her when she was successful and blackmailed her into getting him a job in the store. He threatened to tell her employer about a car accident she once had under the influence of sleeping pills. They’ve found the car that sped away belongs to Davey Carr. Sergeant Ames is riding a Hollywood tour bus driven by Carr. He points out houses and then does imitations of the stars that live in them. He does James Cagney for one house and Kirk Douglas for another. But a passenger interrupts and tells him that’s not Kirk Douglas’s house but rather that of Ed Byrnes. Carr says, “Yeah sure lady but I don’t do him”. The joke is that Carr is being played by Ed Byrnes. At the last stop Tim and Les are waiting. They confront Carr about his car being at the murder scene. Carr is a failed stand-up comedian. After bombing on New Years Eve he got drunk, got into a fight and put somebody in the hospital. Al Cole saw it all and started blackmailing him and taking half his paycheque everywhere he went. He was parked in front of the store to try to get up the nerve to beg Cole to back off. Tim finds a pari-mutuel ticket behind a picture on a wall of Cole’s apartment. It’s a winning ticket worth $87,000. At this point Tim and Les call Burke to ask his advice. Burke says whoever owned the ticket was desperate to cash it. But behind every ticket window is potentially a tax collector leading to a credit check uncovering that Cole was wanted in three states. Burke says they need to find who knew about the ticket. Two unwashed drinking glasses were found in Cole’s apartment and one set of prints was Denise Mitchell’s. Les goes to see her and she admits she got romantically involved with Cole. She says Cole had been talking about big money recently though. She also admits that another of her ex-lovers is Guy Hawthorne Jr. He doesn’t have any money because Hawthorne Sr. only gives him an allowance. Tim goes to Hawthorne who doesn’t know he’s a cop. He finds him in his little private jungle bird sanctuary. Tim tells him he’s a ticket seller at the track and that he remembers Hawthorne standing behind Cole when he got the winning ticket. Tim shows him the ticket and says he can’t collect because he’s a track employee. He offers to cut Hawthorne in for half. Hawthorne pulls a gun and says he’ll take it all. Tim drops the ticket and when Hawthorne’s eyes look down Tim hits him. Hawthorne runs through the jungle and shoots back from time to time until his gun is empty. Tim catches him but they fight and fall in the water until Tim knocks him out. Hawthorne admits that the window dresser tried to blackmail him so he killed him too. The ticket is ruined in the water. 

            Denise was played by Joan Bennett, who came from a line of actors dating back to the 18th Century. She made her first stage appearance at the age of four and appeared in the film The Valley of Decision when she was five. As a young adult she was forced to return to films because she was a single parent. After appearing in several silent films she finally co-starred in Mississippi Gambler in 1929. She starred in She Wanted a Millionaire, The Woman on the Beach, and The Man I Married. She co-starred in Me and My Gal, Little Women, Puttin on the Ritz, Moby Dick, Trade Winds, Vogues of 1938, Man Hunt, The Woman In the Window, The Son of Monte Cristo, The House Across the Bay, The Macomber Affair, The Reckless Moment, Private Worlds, Father of the Bride, Father’s Little Dividend, We’re No Angels, and Scarlet Street. She got very bad reviews from Hedda Hopper and finally sent her a live skunk with the note “You Stink”. In 1951 her husband shot her agent in the groin because he thought they were having an affair and thought that he’d caught them. This virtually ended her film career. She said in 1981 that if it happened today the scandal would have boosted her career. She co-starred in Desire in the Dust in 1960. She became most famous on television when she co-starred as Elizabeth Collins on Dark Shadows. She was so popular from that role that she said it was like being a Beatle. Her memoir was titled The Bennett Playbill. She said Meryl Streep can play almost any role but she can’t act like a blonde. She also said that film audiences don’t remember good women but they never forget bad girls. Until the end of the 1930s she was a natural blonde and played sweet characters. They changed her to a brunette in 1938 and she became the queen of film noir.