TheBlessingWay/KarlMarx/GobletofFire

Today I read the next fifty pages of Tony Hillerman’s The Blessing Way. Now that the novel has its victim, a young man called Luis Horseman who has died under mysterious circumstances, the tension between rational and supernatural elements in this novel take on a more concrete form. On the one hand, the anthropologist McKee continues to investigate rumors about witches that may have some bearing on the case, but McKee continues to believe that the witch phenomenon has more to do with the need for a societal scapegoat rather than being authentically supernatural. On the other hand, Leaphorn pursues an investigative method similar to that in a standard police procedural, while also remaining seemingly open-minded about the possibility that the supernatural might have a role to play. Not unlike Chester Himes’ Grave Digger and Coffin Ed, Leaphorn is both a part and apart from the community that he polices in the sense that he is caught between two worlds and two belief systems.

I also read the next fifty pages of Jonathan Sperber's Karl Marx. This section of the book covers the period from the mid-1850s to the mid-1860s, for the most part a period of continued political reaction in Europe and a period when Marx continued to make a precarious living from his freelance journalism. Sperber argues that this journalism has been unjustly overlooked by many students of Marx’s work and he emphasizes not only its voluminous nature, but also the way it shows how Marx, through his discussions of such issues as the Crimean War, the workings of the British Empire in India, and the worldwide recession of 1857, “fleshed out his economic and political theories and tested them against the intractable reality of the age of reaction.” The internationalist emphasis of much of Marx’s writing (although somewhat limited by his intractable and unexamined Eurocentrism) during this period, I would add, makes it particularly useful for understanding Marx’s attitudes toward colonialism and imperialism, and how very different those attitudes were from later Marxist work in this area. It’s also during this period, during 1857 and 1858, in particular, that Marx had his best chance of returning to Europe (as he’d been planning to do ever since he arrived in England) and resuming his activist work as a newspaper editor. For a variety of reasons, he decided not to take this opportunity and in doing so basically confirmed that he would never leave England.

I also watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005). This is my favorite adaptation in the series and Goblet also happens to be my favorite novel in the series. In both cases, this is partly because it follows what is in my view the weakest installment in the series (Prisoner of Azkaban) but it’s also because there’s a very marked shift in tone in both the book and the movie. At the end of the film, Hermione remarks, with regard to the return of Voldemort, that everything is going to change now, but the changes were obvious right from the start of the film. Under the direction of Mike Newell, Hogwarts takes on a much darker, more threatening Gothic character. It sheds the fairy tale castle of the first few movies and instead becomes a fortress. Symptomatically, there is only one scene set in a classroom, and that involves a demonstration of the unforgivable curses! Finally, the presence of the Tri-Wizard Tournament gives the film a really solid plot line and this combined with excellent performances from both the three young actors who are clearly starting to come into their own and the outstanding ensemble cast gives the film a depth, pace, and resonance none of the other episodes have to quite the same degree.