YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS: CASABLANCA’S CONSCIENCE

My favorite movie in the world is Casablanca, which I could probably quote from start to finish.  Being crazy about that movie, I’ve read all kinds of books about it, the making of it, the people who wrote it, acted in it, directed it, etc. I’m familiar with the backstories, the origins of the movie, its initial release and its longevity and its legends.  So when I saw the new nonfiction book, Casablanca’s Conscience, by Robert Weldon Whalen, I had to check it out.  

The book is an interesting contemplation of Casablanca  through the lens of philosophy, and more particularly through the lives and thought of three philosophers who were living and writing at the time in which the movie’s set: Hannah Arendt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Albert Camus.  You may think (I certainly did at first) that this is just an excuse to talk about the philosophers by linking them to a popular movie, the same way books like The Physics of Superheroes is a sneaky and entertaining way of discussing concepts of physics after luring readers in via superhero stories.  And probably I wouldn’t have read a book discussing those three philosophers if there weren’t the Casablanca connection, so if that’s what the author intended, he succeeded.

The lives and philosophies of Arendt, Bonhoeffer and Camus are interesting in themselves (so I would have deprived myself of some great stories and deep thought if I hadn’t been lured in by Casablanca), and the author manages to bring their biographies and their concepts to bear on the key themes of Casablanca in a way that makes them accessible and brings new insights into why this movie is so popular and so affecting to so many people decades after its initial release. The book discusses the movie’s setting in a place where so many characters are exiled (including Humphrey Bogart’s Rick), a place where none of the characters is really at home, and how that affects the story, and how the omnipresence of death (one of the first scenes has a person being shot by the police for running away, and people are killed throughout the movie) echoes the omnipresence of death in Europe at the time. For all the death and despair lurking around the story, Whalen sees Casablanca as a kind of purgatory, not hell: there can be a way out, and the whole movie is about how you find the way out.  The philosophers have insights into the sense of exile, of how to find meaning when the world seems absurd and purgatorial, and what a person needs to survive in these circumstances. 

Do you need to have watched the movie to read this book?  Of course you do, but who would even pick up a book like this if they hadn’t seen the movie (probably multiple times)?  Do you have to have a background in philosophy or history in order to appreciate this book?  Not in the least.  The author shines in explaining what these three people thought and where those ideas came from and how their lives affected their thought, and he does an even better job of connecting the ideas to the movie, so that, after reading this book, not only do I want to see Casablanca again, but I think even after all the times I’ve seen it, this time I will have new insights into the beloved characters and the well-known plot.  And I can hardly give better praise to a book like this than that: it will illuminate even a movie I’ve seen so often I know it by heart.

THE FUN OF AN EVIL PROTAGONIST: YOU’D LOOK BETTER AS A GHOST

There should be a category of fiction, something like “Oh My God, What Kind of Terrible Person Am I for Enjoying This So Much?”  Okay, that name is a little long, but it conveys the essence: books where the characters are doing terrible things, but the narrator (usually, but not exclusively, a first person narrator) is so much fun to be with that you find yourself rooting for that character and wanting them to get away with it.

This is a genre that I personally tend to gravitate towards: not only the early Dexter novels, but more recent examples like How Can I Help You?  I don’t want to think about what that says about me, but a well-written book with a sense of (dark) humor and a horrible protagonist seems to be my reading catnip.  And if you are like me in this regard, allow me to recommend an excellent new book in this genre: You’d Look Better as a Ghost, by Joanna Wallace.

Our protagonist, Claire is, not to put too fine a point on it, a serial killer. An unrepentant serial killer who doesn’t even have Dexter’s code to help decide who deserves to die.  Over the course of the book, she kills at least four people and comes fairly close to killing a score of others, sometimes because they are horrible people, sometimes because the people she kills might be in a position to reveal her crimes, and sometimes just because the people annoy her at the wrong time.  I am sure that if I met Claire in real life, I would be afraid of her.

But sitting inside her head over the course of this book is a different matter. She’s funny.  She has a dry sense of humor which she doesn’t even seem to realize herself.  She’s observant and critical and the ways she describes people and conversations made me laugh out loud a lot more often than I should have.

You do find out – sort of – how Claire got to be the person she is (spoiler alert: her mother was a monster), but even Claire herself would tell you that she’s a monster, she’s not a normal human being and she barely understands how normal human beings operate. 

We start out at the funeral for Claire’s father, whom she loved, and for whom she kills one of the people (in a fairly gruesome way).  She’s an aspiring artist and when one of the judges for an art competition in which she’d entered work sends her an acceptance email and then immediately rescinds it because he got two Claires mixed up, naturally she has to kill him, too.  And then one thing leads to another.  Because she’s still emotionally a mess from her father’s death, she’s not as careful as she should be, and someone sees the man entering, but not leaving, her house and he’s never seen or heard from again, which leads that person to start trying to blackmail Claire. Not the smartest thing to do to a serial killer, but the would-be blackmailer is smarter than most and Claire has to work to figure out how to handle the situation.  Her handling of the situation leaves her vulnerable to other people connected to the would-be blackmailer, and her situation gets more and more complicated.  

I don’t want to go into more detail about the plot.  Some of the fun of the book is discovering how, every time you think Claire has gotten herself out of trouble, she finds herself in more trouble, and often the trouble comes from the least likely sources. The plot is twisted in the best possible way.

The first two murders are graphic and gruesome, and even I (longtime fan of Jo Nesbo) wondered briefly if I was going to be able to keep reading it, but it turns out those are the most gruesome things in the book and once you get past them, the horror is much less body-based and much more psychological.  You don’t need a really strong stomach to get into this, but I feel I should warn you about how the book begins.

I wanted Claire to get away with it, all of it. As a law-abiding citizen, I realize I shouldn’t be rooting for such a horrible person to continue her crimes, but such is the delightful writing here that I couldn’t help myself.  

The ending is perfect. It’s in keeping with everything that’s already happened, with the characters involved, and with the genre in general.  I laughed long and loud when I reached the end.  It was that good.

If you want a really good evil protagonist in a twisty book that makes you laugh despite yourself, check out You’d Look Better as A Ghost.