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Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

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Today Is the Darkest Day of the Year

In the Northern Hemisphere, where 90% of the Earth’s population lives, this is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. Conversely, in the Southern Hemisphere, it is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. Apparently, it all has something to do with the way our planet is tilted on its axis, with us in the North being farther from the Sun.

Since I am retired, it doesn’t matter to me that it gets dark early. I no longer have to put up with December traffic on my way home from work in the dark.

And as for darkness, it really isn’t all that dark, With all the external building lighting, together with the numerous fairy lights from my computer, television, air purifier, microwave, and whatnot, I can usually make way way around my apartment in the wee hours of the morning without kicking the furniture with my bare feet.

As for the title of this post, it comes from Simon & Garfunkel’s hit song, “The Sound of Silence”:

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

The Poet of Apprehension

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The Young Patricia Highsmith

She was a gorgeous Texan from Fort Worth who just happened to be perhaps the best woman mystery novelist of all time. Graham Greene called her “The Poet of Apprehension.” Her novels and stories were unusually dark, beginning with her first novel, Strangers on a Train (1950), which was turned into a film by Alfred Hitchcock. Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was depressed and preferred relationships with women. Eventually, the depression dragged her down and destroyed her good looks.

I have just finished reading her novel The Cry of the Owl (1962), one of her darkest novels. Robert, her hero, is a strange kind of asexual Peeping Tom who falls for a young woman by watching her prepare salads and entertain her boyfriend Greg. Things begin to develop dangerously when Jenny, the young woman, ends her relationship with Greg and begins to fall for Robert. There follow two murders, several attempted murders, a suicide, some incredibly sloppy police work, and encounters with the neighbors from hell.

When Greg teams up with Robert’s ex-wife Nickie, they both decide to make life difficult for Robert in every way possible, up to beating him up, wounding him, or killing him.

By the time I finished reading the novel about an hour ago, I began to understand that relationships can go bad at warp speed.

In addition to The Cry of the Owl, I have read the following Highsmith novels and collections, each of which I loved:

  • The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)
  • A Game for the Living (1958)
  • A Suspension of Mercy (1965) – Released in the U.S. as The Story Teller
  • A Dog’s Ransom (1972)
  • Little Tales of Misogyny (1975)
  • The Black House (1981)

Fortunately, Highsmith was a fairly prolific writer, and I have only just begun to scratch the surface of her work.

Nightmare Alley²

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How do you feel about celebrating the holidays in a morass of darkness? That’s what I did today when I saw the 2021 remake of Nightmare Alley, directed by Guillermo del Toro and starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, and Rooney Mara.

If there are any predictions possible from seeing a single film, I would have to say that we are entering a period of gloomy decadence. All the scenes take place either in heavy rain, a blizzard, and—just for a change—a modicum of dusty and hazy sunshine. Standing out from the dark edges are glittering reds, blues, greens, and browns.

Although the 2021 version followed the original 1947 film directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Tyrone Power as Stanton Carlisle, the del Toro film is ever more shady, especially with Cate Blanchett as the psychoanalyst Lilith Ritter. She not only robs Carlisle of his ill-gotten gains, but shoots his ear off with a 22 caliber pistol. Blanchett bids fair to become the neo-noir equivalent of such noir queens as Audrey Totter and Gloria Grahame.

Both film versions are worth seeing. In fact, I would also recommend reading the William Lindsay Gresham 1946 novel upon which they were based.

One side note: There is something unspeakably grimy and evil about the whole carny world as it is presented in books and films. If you are drawn in, you might also want to check out Robert Edmond Alter’s Carny Kill (1966). You might also want to dip into his Swamp Sister (1961). Neo-noir doesn’t get any better than this.