The Elegance of the Prancing Horse

As I’ve said before, luxury vehicles, and Ferraris in particular, have become the province of football players and rappers. The gold chain set. I won’t bore you by repeating how much that has changed from the days when well-bred (and, of course, well-heeled) connoisseurs were the main target for these brands but, instead, call your attention to the Ferrari on the cover of Motor Clásico 53.

Understated and elegant, modern audiences may be surprised to learn that, in its day, the car was decried for its controversial styling (apparently the culprits were that pair of twin headlights). When a car like this is derided for styling excesses, you know that you’re firmly in a nouveau-riche-free zone.

This issue didn’t stop at GT Ferraris, though. The preference for elegant touring, albeit in a non-sporting vein, continues very markedly with the two other cars on the cover. Both the Sunbeam and the Hispano were cars firmly aimed at the upper echelons of society. Back then it was the nobility and doctors, which meant the cars were extremely comfortable as well as imposing.

That’s one thing in common that luxury cars of the past had with those of today: they made a statement. The difference was in the statement they actually made: the old one was about class (in the sense of good taste, although there was an element of social class in there as well. The modern statement is purely about money).

I will say one thing about modern cars, however: they are faster, and they are more capable. Unfortunately, in most places, enjoying them the way they should be enjoyed is illegal. So be sure to have a map of where traffic cameras are located handy if you’re going to have a little automotive fun.

Almost as if to balance such wonderful excess, the issue also contains an article about a 100cc motorcycle. How’s that for frugality? See? Classic car lovers can also appreciate minimalism!

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of science fiction and fantasy crime stories entitled Thin Air. He hopes readers enjoy the stories as much as he loved writing them. You can check it out here.

The Horror, The Horror

I remember the 1980s horror boom. Half of the paperbacks on any given supermarket rack were horror books (the other half featured muscular dudes with their shirts half torn off). And like the video game boom of the same era, it seemed destined for a serious crash.

But it was utterly glorious while it lasted.

Paperbacks from Hell by Grady Hendrix is a celebration of that wonderful insanity. It starts out by giving a historical sketch of the genre before the 1970s, with particular attention paid to the books that redirected the genre into the channels that overflowed during the glory years. Once the history is done, the book dives into its subject matter with bloody gusto.

Hendrix’s writing is eminently readable, and he is anything but a stuffy scholar: he knows his stuff, and knows it well enough to know when not to take it too seriously (after all, I’m pretty sure a lot of the writers weren’t taking it too seriously either, or were stoned out of their minds. Or both).

The book is organized by type of horrific antagonist as opposed to by author or by era, so you get a chapter on attacking animals, another on serial killers, etc. This is an unusual way of telling the tale, but it seems as good as any other, especially considering that this wasn’t a structured movement. In fact, the only organizing principle in the boom appeared to be that since horror was selling, every paperback company in existence rushed in to get their books on the market before the gold rush ended.

Finally, there’s a section about the end of the line, which basically tells us that horror hasn’t disappeared as a major player, but evolved into the current psycho-thriller craze in much the way we have birds when we once had dinosaurs. No matter how much you like birds, you can’t actually compare them to the baroque majesty of thunder lizards.

I really have only one major criticism, which is that Stephen King and Dean Koontz are pretty much ignored except as benchmarks in the genre. I would have expected at least a few of their books to receive some of the detailed attention that the others do, but it’s clear that a conscious decision was made to exclude them.

Despit that , the book works on several levels. On a purely intellectual, you’ll have a decent overview of a chaotic time. But even more than that, you’ll find yourself wanting to pick up a horror book from the era, the more outrageous and sleazier, the better. Because that’s what these books were about: strong emotions and sex, and more shocks… and more sex. If anyone tried to write something like this today, whoever is in charge of policing political correctness wouldn’t just ban their books, they’d actually invade the writer’s house in the process of writing to keep them from completing the volume.

They are the product of an earlier era, an era that had, for all its failings, a lot more freedom of thought and expression than we enjoy today. These books could only be the product of that era.

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of science fiction and fantasy crime stories entitled Thin Air. He hopes readers enjoy the stories as much as he loved writing them. You can check it out here.

The Childlike Weirdness of Cabiria

I’ve seen Giulietta Masina in two films, La Strada and the one I will be discussing today, 1957’s Le notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria).

The main thing about her acting (or the way Fellini directed her) is that her characters are dreamy and childlike, looking at the world through an innocent lens. In La Strada, it lifted the film above Fellini’s vision.

But Cabiria is a different kettle of fish. A very different one indeed.

This film tells the story of a successful albeit low-class street prostitute in the ruined suburbs of postwar Rome. She has made sacrifices, but has managed to buy herself a house with the proceeds.

That reality seems enormously at odds with the character she plays, an innocent who is taken advantage of by all and sundry. To my eye, it’s completely unbelievable that such a person would have succeeded in that particular era and occupation.

Worse, the character is inconsistent. On the one hand, she is a vapid little waif swept along by the wind while, on the other, she can descend into the aggressive and vulgar role of a lower-class Italian. It’s a bit of a weird juxtaposition, and in my mind, it didn’t quite succeed.

This isn’t to say the film is bad. It isn’t… except for the last twenty minutes, and the reason those are bad is that the ending gets telegraphed at that point, and you spend the rest of the film dreading the inevitable.

I enjoyed the rest of it, however… so make of that what you will!

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of science fiction and fantasy crime stories entitled Thin Air. He hopes readers enjoy the stories as much as he loved writing them. You can check it out here.

The Hispano

Back in the 1990s, Spain didn’t have a ton of automotive glory to look back on. Fernando Alonso was still a youngster and SEAT, the one Spanish brand that survived, was part of the Volkswagen group. There was nothing like the absolutely amazing history of brilliant Spanish motorcycles to compare it to in recent times.

Nevertheless, Spain will always have the great Hispano-Suizas. No one can take away from the country the fact that, in their day, these cars were considered to be on a par with the best in the world… and likely better than all of the others.

It’s therefore completely forgivable that Motor Clásico tends to feature this brand a little more than might be expected from the fact that it died out as a serious manufacturer at the time of the Spanish Civil War.

And they’ll get no complaints from me because I am always ready to read about Hispanos. They’re the kind of cars you just don’t get enough of in the English-language press.

Minis, on the other hand, have been done to death, with the only interest in this issue coming from the fact that one of these was built in Spain by Authi, which is cool.

I don’t always pay that much attention to the motorcycle articles, but in this case, the Cleveland 20 was unusual enough to catch my eye. And there was another great museum featured, this time the sorely-missed Donnington Collection.

A good issue.

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of science fiction and fantasy crime stories entitled Thin Air. He hopes readers enjoy the stories as much as he loved writing them. You can check it out here.

Of Contributor Copies and TBR Piles

I recently read the December 2020 issue of The Fifth Di…

This is a contributor copy, and yes, I’m waaaaay behind on these, but I have several excuses. The first is that I often lend out my contributor copies before they go into the to-be-read pile, which means that, by the time they cycle around, they will have aged quite a bit (at present, the pile is about 98 books / magazines tall, which currently means it takes a year and a half to cycle through. I have sworn to get it back down to about 25 books. This project is not going as smoothly as I hoped).

The Fifth Di… is one of those publications which likes my work and also publishes quite a bit of work by writers I respect, so I like reading these when they cycle through, because they often give me a good idea of what some of the good writers int he field are doing. For example, in this issue, there was a horror story by Elana Gomel entitled “The Unweaving”, which I found to be one of the most imaginative tales I’ve seen in ages. Utterly bonkers, but in such a good way!

This isn’t a place to read excerpts of mass-market novels or novella-length fiction, but it IS a great place to see what the SFF genre is turning out, without having to worry about whether the authors were vetted for ideological purity (from what I’ve seen this mag takes both left- and right-leaning tales indistinctly, which is how things should be, and only the quality of the tale matters… not the politics of the writer).

Of the other stories, my favorite was “Krampus Night” by Thomas Kodnar. Another horror story, this one is just dripping with local color.

A good volume.

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of science fiction and fantasy crime stories entitled Thin Air. He hopes readers enjoy the stories as much as he loved writing them. You can check it out here.

A Snake and Two Fakes

I’ve never been against fake AC Cobras. Since I don’t own a real one, the proliferation of Fake Snakes makes absolutely no difference to the value of my collection, and I suspect the fakes are a hell of. lot of antisocial fun in their own right. But I’m always a little weirded out when a classic mag puts a fake on the cover without a huge sign saying something like “we test the fakes”.

Now, of the three Cobras on Motor Clásico 51’s cover, two are modern reproductions, even though, as Autokraft versions, they are allowed to call themselves AC Cobras. Can you spot which ones? (there are no points given if you called the two furthest from the cameras… it’s much too easy, anyway).

Interestingly, the fastest of the three tested was the original–because these maniacs sourced a 427–while the Autokraft versions could be made a little more luxurious. Thirty years later, those replicas are probably classics in their own right.

I’ll be honest, however and say that the car on the cover that pushes all my aesthetic buttons isn’t the Cobra, or evern the extremely pretty little Alfa, but the square-rigged Lancia. I’m not really a fan of the automotive designs of the 1920s, but there just something about that particular bodywork that I really enjoy. I think it’s the combination of the shape of the lights, the fenders and the rectangular passenger area that does it. For whatever reason, I love it.

Finally, there’s a bit of nationalistic pride in the fact that this issue features the Juan Manuel Fangio Museum in Argentina. It’s a testament to how thorough Motor Clásico is in their attempt to tell their Spanish audience about the world of classic cars that they’ll go all the way out into the Argentine countryside to feature this museum. But I’ve been to the place, and it’s utterly worth it, so there’s that.

The nicest thing about the museum report is that it’s not something isolated. Motor Clásico does a lot of museum reports, and they’re all lovingly done. While they might not have had the resources of the British classic car mags in htis era, they were definitely the most serious about their craft… which I respect.

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of science fiction and fantasy crime stories entitled Thin Air. He hopes readers enjoy the stories as much as he loved writing them. You can check it out here.

Straight in the Feels

Remember when I wrote about that Christmas book? Well, that wasn’t the only holiday-themed volume I picked up that day. I also grabbed myself a copy of Miracle on 34th Street, which is a weird thing to do, since it’s the novellization (albeit written by the original creator, Valentine Davies) of a movie I’ve never seen.

Once again, it was a gift for my Christmas-loving wife, but after she read it, I put it on my enormous TBR pile, and it cycled through.

Man, am I glad it did. This is a book of the kind that restores your faith in mankind. It’s not so much the Christmas theme that does it (I’m not a huge fan, and I’m also not religious in the least) but the way the characters act and feel during the holiday season, and the way they interact with each other, expressing love in their individual ways.

There’s not much to say about the book that would be new to people, except to say that it’s perfect for its intended purpose. Fast-paced, charming and with just the right emotional punch to be engrossing without turning maudlin.

This is one that everyone should read. The more cynical you find yourself being, the more you’ll likely benefit from just letting go of “reality” for a while and going off on a wonderful fairy tale ride in a rose-tinted world where people are stripped down to their essence… and, for once, not found wanting.

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of science fiction and fantasy crime stories entitled Thin Air. He hopes readers enjoy the stories as much as he loved writing them. You can check it out here.

The Spain Issue

Motor Clásico is a VERY Spanish magazine. That’s actually one of the most interesting things about it: by being far from any center of automotive production, it gives the Spaniards a wonderfully offbeat view of the hobby. I’ve always been really surprised and impressed by the formal and serious way they approach reporting on classic cars.

And when the topic is Spain, they become the kings of protocol

When it comes to Spanish automobiles, there really could only be two marques for the cover of such an important issue: Hispano Suiza and Pegaso. Of course, they used both, though I would have given pride of place to the Hispano, as it’s a much more important marque in the overall scheme of things.

Within, there are wonderful articles not only about these two marques but also an in-depth view of the Spanish auto industry up until about 1980 that you would never get anywhere else, because no one but Spanish readers (and a few people, like me, who are utter fanatics about everything around old cars) could possibly give a damn.

Still, as a once-in-a-lifetime read, I appreciated it and probably learned more from this that I would have from any 10 random other magazines that rehash the stuff I already know about important marques and important countries.

I’m enjoying this huge pile of old Spanish mags more than I probably should.

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of science fiction and fantasy crime stories entitled Thin Air. He hopes readers enjoy the stories as much as he loved writing them. You can check it out here.

The Epitome of the European Film in My Head

Yes. I know. The Seventh Seal is the masterpiece, the one that showed us all what European film should be. But watching it, I felt that, though the film is certainly memorable, it isn’t all that European in some sense. I could see an American filmmaker doing it perhaps in the ’60s. Or even Monty Python–the black humor is just their cup of tea. (and Python, though British is not European in the sense I mean. Not clear? Too bad, we’re talking about European art films… it’s not supposed to be clear).

Anyway, as Bergman finally moves Scandinavian film away from its recent religious fetish, we get a perfect example of what I consider a European art film of the kind college professors would discuss in Nabokov stories. We get Wild Strawberries.

This one isn’t plot-driven. The plot is only there to give the character an excuse to open the doors of his memory. And yeah, I know. It sounds like the ideal formula to cure insomnia, but therein lies Bergman’s genius: the things that happen to the old doctor while reminiscing are, of course dreamlike, but they’re also interesting. He loses the love of his life to his brother. His eventual wife is unfaithful.

And the things he finds along the way are also interesting. His daughter in law calls him a selfish old man. They meet a couple that is constantly fighting… who wrecks a car.

In the end he finds a measure of acceptance and respect even though nothing changes except for a little thing within and the message (although I always get these wrong), appears to be that life is a mix of emotions, good and bad, and in the end it’s all worth it if we know how to look at it. Or something like that. I assume Mr. Bergman wanted everyone to draw their own conclusions as opposed to giving us answers. He seems to have been good at that (or really bad at giving answers).

I found this one right on the verge of fantasy without going over (dream sequences can do that), and as such, it predicts the rise of Latin American Magic Realism.

Having said all that, I enjoyed this one a lot more than I expected to. As a story, I found it better than the great Seventh Seal. If you like to think about a film afterwards, this one is for you.

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of science fiction and fantasy crime stories entitled Thin Air. He hopes readers enjoy the stories as much as he loved writing them. You can check it out here.

Christmas in September

A couple of years ago, WorldCon was moved to December instead of its usual summer date, so I found myself in Washington DC on both my birthday and my wife’s birthday (we have birthdays on consecutive days…), which meant that I found myself in Barnes and Noble buying stuff for both of us.

Neither of us is in the least bit religious, but my wife is a Christmas fanatic, so it was a good time to be shopping for her. We both like looking at the way things used to be.. so the little book I found was a perfect gift.

Now, it’s fashionable to be cynical about Christmas, and talk about Baby Boomer privilege or whatever the current silly catchphrase might be, but I look at things in a more innocent way, and consider Christmas as a time of wonderful cheer and happiness, so this book was very cool to read.

It’s not a sophisticated tome, by any means. It goes through the obvious and the obscure, looking at the way people enjoyed Christmas between 1900 and 1999, and it’s an enjoyable ride all the way through. Highlights include the famous 1914 Christmas truce and a lot of movie memories.

Toys through the ages are a theme, of course, and so are the topical Christmas songs of eah era.

Now, it’s easy to dismiss a little book like this one on the gift shelf during the holiday season as an unimportant little piece of fluff, a quick way to get out of thinking about what to give someone… but if you can turn off your unpleasant inner critic and open yourself to a bit of innocent delight, you’ll enjoy this one a lot, and maybe reemerge with a little more faith in humanity than you came in with. And there’s a LOT of memorable stuff in here.

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of science fiction and fantasy crime stories entitled Thin Air. He hopes readers enjoy the stories as much as he loved writing them. You can check it out here.