Exorcism in the United Church?

“Silence! Frenzied, unclean spirit,”
cried God's healing, holy One.
"Cease your ranting! Flesh can't bear it.
Flee as night before the sun."
At Christ's voice the demon trembled,
from its victim madly rushed,
while the crowd that was assembled
stood in wonder, stunned and hushed.

Lord, the demons still are thriving
in the grey cells of the mind:
Tyrant voices shrill and driving,
twisted thoughts that grip and bind,
Doubts that stir the heart to panic,
fears distorting reason's sight,
Guilt that makes our loving frantic,
dreams that cloud the soul with fright.

Silence, Lord, the unclean spirit,
in our mind and in our heart.
Speak your word that,
when we hear it,
all our demons shall depart.
Clear our thought and calm our feeling,
still the fractured, warring soul.
By the power of your healing
make us faithful, true, and whole.

This hymn was written in 1984 and published in the United Church hymn book, Voices United, in 1996. It wasn't written in the Dark Ages, nor even in the 1950s. No, it is recent by hymn standards, and though I am no longer a part of any church, I am astounded and appalled at the primeval horror of mental illness expressed in this hymn. Apparently, folks like me, well-meaning bipolar sorts who are just trying to live a good life, are actually demonically possessed and need Jesus/God to drive those devils out. It seems to me the actual "devils" live in the black, black hearts of people who would write and promote such rubbish in the name of "worship".

There is one small but very significant change in this hymn which I recall from its first printing in an earlier United Church hymn book. The original line read, "Silence! Frenzied, unclean spirit" - but in the "updated" version, that exclamation point has been replaced by a comma. Much depends on punctuation - I don't need to tell you, you know all the jokes. But this subtle change is immensely powerful. 

When you say, "Silence," the room may just quieten and hush down from all its chatter. But if you exclaim, "Silence!", there will be a stunned, abrupt ceasing of all noise, all talk, everything. The room and everyone in it, including those unfortunates with demons skulking around in their "grey cells", will have effectively been silenced. 

This was the only change made to the hymn in its "updated" version. But who was it that changed that exclamation point to a comma, and why did they do it? Why this dishonest softening-down of the exorcist's harsh command, allowing all that other primitive garbage to stand? Did the editor believe that "one small change" would somehow make it more palatable, or (more likely) just slip by unnoticed? This gives the church the ready, easy "out" of, "Well, nobody else has complained about it" (case closed).

But Jesus wouldn't have gotten very far with a polite request. These are DEMONS, for Christ's sake, those horrendous unclean forces lurking in our grey cells (meaning, I presume, the human brain). This is mental illness, guys, the big-time! This isn't just any old blindness or lameness or leprosy.  Asking nicely just won't work.

It seems to me the original was more true to the philosophy of mental illness as something that must be forcibly driven out by a powerful, supernatural "rebuke". Hey listen, I'd even try this if it worked, but all it does is perpetuate the most dire mistruths and distortions, sick myths that should have been flushed down the toilet decades ago, things that HURT people and even make them DIE. I happen to know that this repulsive crap is still being tra-la-la'd mindlessly in liberal churches all over the nation (the United Church being, as one wag called it, "The NDP at prayer"), and even taught to children. I remember singing it countless times in church, and nobody complained or really seemed to even notice. I felt very uncomfortable, but I kept on singing. I'm a different person now, but curiously enough, I'm still bipolar, so all that "Silence!" stuff obviously didn't work. But I have to wonder why the church continues to support the idea that a person's "demons" must be silenced. For survivors of abuse, it's a truly horrendous thought.

"Oh, it's just that we didn't SEE it." "Those were different times." That's how the excuses go, always. But why not? Why is mental illness the very last stigma to fall? It still stands like a ghastly totem, each carven image representing the leering face of a different demon (just kidding! Most of them look a lot like me.) I have an idea: rather than taking another fifty years to "raise awareness" and "start a discussion", let's take a chainsaw to this fucking thing. Just burn it to the ground. 

POST-SCRIPT. And here's the evidence. Buried in what we used to call "the green book" (Songs for a Gospel People), an older hymnary we sometimes used which tended more towards the "traditional" (perhaps, the Progressive Conservatives at prayer), I found this, the original hymn by Thomas H. Troeger, written in 1984 (though the words are more appropriate for 1884). And in this, the original version, the Lord cries, "Silence! frenzied, unclean spirit", not "Silence, frenzied, unclean spirit". What a difference one punctuation mark makes. But unclean is still unclean.

BADDA-BOOM: Let Sir Laurence Olivier have the last word. Driven to the hell of divorce and remarriage by his first wife Vivien Leigh and her inconvenient mental illness, he had this backhanded praise of the way she bore her supernaturally-charged cross:

In 1960, she and Olivier divorced and Olivier soon married actress Joan Plowright. In his autobiography, Olivier discussed the years of strain they had experienced because of Leigh's illness:

"Throughout her possession by that uncannily evil monster, manic depression, with its deadly ever-tightening spirals, she retained her own individual canniness—an ability to disguise her true mental condition from almost all except me, for whom she could hardly be expected to take the trouble." 

Those final words are petulant and even hateful. What he appears to be saying is that his bipolar wife did not even bother to dissemble and conceal her mental agony from her husband. She shared it, she let him in on it, and though sharing everything else in a marriage is considered essential (remember "in sickness and in health"?), well, apparently, it's everything but this. It goes without saying that it is simply in a different category.

The references to "possession", "evil monster", "deadly ever-tightening spirals", etc. are even more hateful than the archaic, terror-saturated language in that vile, detestable hymn. I feel as if I am shouting into the wind here, and I never EVER wanted to become an "advocate" for anything, but as this pandemic grinds on and on and no one in my position can find any support at all, this blog is just evolving that way. 

MEGHAN MARKLE FOR PRESIDENT???

Thoughts on Meghan Markle and her coming political coup. This was a comment I left after a video about the royals and MM in particular, and as it evolved I felt it deserved a longer life here.

ferociousgumby 15 minutes ago (edited)

At this moment the United States is in the worst crisis since WWII, but unlike WWII when they had superb leadership, there is NO leadership and things are in utter chaos. The Democrats are not strong enough now to instill trust in the people. Like newly-hatched ducklings, the majority of people will gladly toddle along behind anything that even remotely resembles "leadership". This has happened before in history, but I leave you to guess when and where. 

I have often heard that in Chinese, the word "crisis" can also be translated as "opportunity". Meghan is about to step into a historically-unprecedented vacuum, a Meghan-sized hole in American politics which she may well fill, absurd as it seems. A sketchy background and having NO idea what you're talking about is obviously no deterrent to being President. Ronald Reagan, the "great communicator", gave speeches with no meaningful content whatsoever and inspired huge loyalty because he came across well on TV. 

Narcissism is hardly a drawback, but rather a huge asset. The free world is now being led by a lunatic, and Meghan can at least speak in full sentences, no matter what the lack of relevant content. The States is just crazy enough to welcome her with open arms, because 90% of the voters HAVEN'T been following her exploits. Everything in her background will appeal to the left: she is bi-racial, "young", a woman, a "royal", and an American who can represent Black Lives Matter AND "girl power" at the same time. She is ticking every possible box, and everything is poised and ready for a devastating coup.

The Troll Doll Channel: ALL MY TROLLS!

"All my children" (except the ones I ordered after this)

SORRY WE'RE DEAD: Badly-translated signs

There's something just a little bit gorgeous about these mistranslated signs. Sometimes they express basic needs (restroom) in the most poetic terms: "ENTERNESS EXIST" and "ONE PLACE ONE DREAM" are my favorites.

First TV broadcast

Baby beauty queen: Shirley Temple at three

There's something beautiful, but a little bit disturbing about this brief clip of Shirley Temple, age three, primping in front of a mirror in a very early short. Obviously she has already learned to mimic adults in a way which was considered amusing back then, but her dancing in these short films was deliberately styled on the seductive hoochie-koochie "shimmy" dancing of the day. Did they see nothing wrong with this? 

No less an author than Graham Greene wrote a review of one of her early features that is jaw-droppingly inappropriate today:

Wee Willie Winkie     Graham Greene

Oct. 28, 1937

.
The owners of a child star are like leaseholders — their property diminishes in value every year. Time’s chariot is at their backs: before them acres of anonymity. What is Jackie Coogan now but a matrimonial squabble? Miss Shirley Temple’s case, though, has peculiar interest: infancy with her is a disguise, her appeal is more secret and more adult. Already two years ago she was a fancy little piece — real childhood, I think, went out after The Littlest Rebel). In Captain January she wore trousers with the mature suggestiveness of a [Marlene] Dietrich: her neat and well-developed rump twisted in the tap-dance: her eyes had a sidelong searching coquetry. Now in Wee Willie Winkie, wearing short kilts, she is a complete totsy. Watch her swaggering stride across the Indian barrack-square: hear the gasp of excited expectation from her antique audience when the sergeant’s palm is raised: watch the way she measures a man with agile studio eyes, with dimpled depravity. Adult emotions of love and grief glissade across the mask of childhood, a childhood skin-deep.

.

It is clever but it cannot last. Her admirers — middle aged men and clergymen — respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire. “Why are you making my Mummy cry?” — what could be purer than that? And the scene when dressed in a white nightdress she begs grandpa to take Mummy to a dance — what could be more virginal? On those lines in her new picture, made by John Ford, who directed The Informer, is horrifyingly competent. It isn’t hard to stay to the last prattle and the last sob. The story — about an Afghan robber converted by Wee Willie Winkie to the British Raj — is a long way after Kipling. But we needn’t be sour about that. Both stories are awful, but on the whole Hollywood’s is the better.

PIERS MORGAN: Meghan and Harry? . . . PLEASE SHUT UP.

PIERS MORGAN: You're right, Meghan, confronting inequality is uncomfortable – but not as uncomfortable as watching unemployed Harry lecturing the world about it from the comfort of your Hollywood mansion hideaway

By Piers Morgan for MailOnline

Published: 09:06 EDT, 7 July 2020 | Updated: 09:29 EDT, 7 July 2020

I've seen less disconcerting hostage videos.

That was my thought this morning as I watched Prince Harry staring blankly into a camera and lecturing the world – yet again - on our need to face up to our privilege.

As he spoke about why we all have to right the wrongs of the past, his wife Meghan stared intently at him, boring her eyes into his skull as if she was virtually transporting her own pre-programmed thought processes into his brain.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist but at one stage it looked like his lips were moving in sync with her blinking eyes.

We're going to have to be a little uncomfortable right now,' said Meghan when she herself spoke.

No s***.

She continued: 'Because it's only in pushing through that discomfort that we get to the other side of this and find the place where a high tide raises all ships.'

This sounded very profound.

Then I remembered where I'd heard it before.

President John F. Kennedy famously said the words 'a rising tide lifts all boats' in a 1963 speech.

Meghan just forgot to credit him. 

An easy mistake, perhaps, when you're desperate to impress everyone with the power of your own world-changing rhetoric.

What was even less palatable than her linguistic plagiarism was Meghan's next claim: 'Equality does not put anyone on the back foot, it puts us all on the same footing - which is a fundamental human right.'

The essence of this assertion is entirely correct.

But there's something quite breathtakingly unedifying about a very rich deeply privileged Duchess banging on about equality from her $20 million borrowed mansion in Hollywood.

One of the few benefits of the coronavirus crisis has been that fame-hungry attention-seeking narcissistic celebrities have been put firmly back in their boxes.

From Madonna sitting naked in the rose-petalled bath of her lavish home as she told us COVID-19 was 'the great equaliser', to Gal Gadot's grotesquely tone-deaf annihilation of Imagine with a bunch of other tuneless virtue-signalling stars, the pandemic has exposed the utter irrelevance of celebrity culture when there's a killer virus on the loose.

For Meghan and Harry, this moment of reckoning has come at a particularly awkward time.

Six months ago, they quit the Royal Family and Britain in a blaze of aggrieved self-righteous glory - and announced big plans to be newly liberated global superstars, trading off their royal titles to make themselves enormously rich.

We were informed that they had 'never been happier' and were 'very excited' about their new lives of freedom from control by evil racist palace courtiers and the even more evil racist UK media.

It was a spectacular two-fingered snub to the Queen and the Monarchy, and to all the British taxpayers who had funded their lavish lifestyle.

And for a few weeks they were one of the most discussed and debated news stories in the world, dominating newspaper headlines and TV bulletins – all fuelling their superstar status.

But then came the biggest health crisis for a century, and suddenly we all forgot about them with the same speed that all their big plans for global domination got cancelled.

Meghan and Harry's terrible 'struggle' that they'd spent months moaning about was now put sharply into perspective by horrendous, chaotic scenes at hospitals around the world as heroic health workers risked their lives to save people infected by the disease.

Frankly, as Rhett Butler might say, we didn't give a damn about them or any other self-absorbed celebrities.

The REAL stars were the doctors and nurses on the Covid frontline.

As the threat of lockdown loomed, the Sussexes faced a dilemma: should they return to the UK from their vast Canadian riverside hideaway so Harry could help his family support the British people in our darkest hour since World War II?

Or should they hop on a private jet to Los Angeles?

They chose the latter, decamping to the sprawling $20 million Hollywood home of American actor Tyler Perry.

And that is where they have stayed ever since.

The house is an eight-bedroom, 12-bathroom Tuscan-style villa, which sits on 22 acres on the top of a hill in the ultra-exclusive Beverly Ridge Estates guard-gated community, offering sweeping views of the city from the backyard and with a massive swimming pool as its centrepiece feature.

It's hard to imagine a more luxurious or spacious place to spend lockdown.

Or a more incongruous place from which to lecture the world on equality.

'It's not going to be easy,' said Harry, 'and in some cases it's not going to be comfortable - but it needs to be done, because guess what, everybody benefits.'

Hmmm.

Again, there's nothing inaccurate about that statement, especially when applied to racism.

(Though his direct attack on the Commonwealth for its racist colonial wrongs suggests a poor grasp of history given it was formed in 1932 to bring an end to the British Empire and make amends for all the racist colonial wrongs with the British Empire.)

But there's something horribly inappropriate about it coming from a jobless prince sitting in a Hollywood mansion, living off his father's money and still reportedly using British taxpayer cash to fund his family's very expensive security costs.

In fact, it's hard to think of a more privileged, elitist life than the one they're now currently living – one that has all the luxury and glamour of royal life without the need to perform any of the duty.

I really didn't want to write about Meghan and Harry today.

I've managed to avoid it for four months and know there genuinely are far more important things to worry about.

But by making such overtly controversial political pronouncements, they are deliberately forcing themselves back into the news cycle and that makes it impossible to ignore them.

Their latest outburst follows last week's extraordinary revelations by Meghan in court documents filed in her privacy case against the Mail On Sunday.

She claimed, with zero evidence and quite staggering delusion, that her wedding to Harry made $1.2 billion in tourism cash so more than paid for itself.

She said she was 'unprotected' by the 'institution' of the Royal Family and was unhappy she couldn't take paid work like minor royals including Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie - who don't carry out public duties, so the comparison is completely irrelevant.

She complained that the Palace didn't correct 'hundreds of thousands of inaccurate articles' about her, which is a laughably exaggeration and, as Palace sources responded, the Duchess didn't seem to understand the difference between untrue stories and negative critical ones that were true.

But honestly, who cares about any of this trivial first world bleating when so many people are losing their lives and livelihoods?

In several weeks, a new biography of the couple, written by friends to 'correct' all the supposed myths about them, will be published and doubtless spray more dirt at the Royal Family, causing further embarrassment and upset for the Queen in her 94th year.

None of this sits well with Meghan and Harry's claim when they quit the Royals that they were doing so for the sake of privacy.

It's now clear that this pair of royal renegades have no intention of remaining 'private' and every intention of continuing to lecture us how to think and behave from behind the protected walls of their gilded new Hollywood life.

This wouldn't matter so much if people weren't suffering so badly from the terrible impact of the coronavirus and the horrific economic fallout as a consequence.

The last thing people want to hear right now is yet more whining from Meghan and Harry about how badly they've been treated, yet more digs at the Queen and other members of the Royal Family like William and Kate who have stepped up so commendably to comfort the British people during the pandemic, and yet more of their haughty, patronising, hypocritical sermons about equality.

So, before I return to more important things, three final words of advice for the Duke and Duchess: please shut up. 

(Please note! I don't own this material and am re-posting it here for educational purposes only, and because Piers Morgan KICKS ASS.)  

I threw away ALL my bras!

Yes. Just now. I. Threw. Away. My. Bras.

ALL of them. They went straight into the garbage bin, and in that bold instant I said goodbye forever to straps biting into me, hooks digging into my flesh, baggy fit, too-tight fit, squashed uni-boob torture traps, and everything else that I have endured since the age of 14.

This is, of course, a pandemic thing. Trapped in the house, you let things slide a bit, so I’d pop something over my head, a bright Indian-print dress, maybe - braless – then found I was going to the grocery store that way, and the earth didn’t fall down.

Nobody was looking, for one thing, which is a real blessing at my age. Some older women complain that they have become “invisible", but I LOVE being invisible because I can go about incognito, almost undetected. The writer/observer/detective in me loves it.

The other thing that nudged me to this unthinkable act is the current war against body-shaming and the general fattening of the developed world, verging on dangerous obesity but fast becoming the norm. Women’s sizes have “sized up” for several years now, so the 10 you wear now is more like a 14 a few years back. It matters not at all, to anyone really, but somehow I hung on to the horror of gaining weight that was instilled in me virtually from childhood.

We were all on diets, all the time. None of us could enjoy food without guilt or saying “I’m being bad”. My older sister was so obsessed that she kept a chart beside her scale in the bathroom, which had a graph with date, time of day, weight, and measurements for bust, waist, hips and thighs. She ticked all those boxes daily, and agonized if she was up a few pounds or a couple of inches. Because she was supposedly my role model, I was expected to follow her, and did, damaging myself in ways I’m still trying to pull myself out of.

When I was 16 I went into a suicidal depression so severe that my parents actually sent me to a doctor. He said I needed to lose 30 pounds and dress the way the boys liked. That would cure my depression. (It hasn't worked yet.) I weighed about 140, and my sister described me as "enormous". These influences programmed and twisted me mentally in a way Nazi interrogators would have approved of. 

But things have changed, and so drastically. I see it every day. I went through a phase of exclaiming to my husband, “Look at that! Doesn’t anyone care any more? She must be 300 pounds!” He would say something like, “Why do YOU care?” It made me wonder. I began to notice women were letting it all hang out, mostly younger women who were quite obese, but middle-aged and older women too, wearing short-shorts and spaghetti-strap tops with no bra, no “underpinnings” like we used to wear even in the firmness of youth.

I was at the tail-end of the girdle era, though said older sister wore them even at her lightest (104 pounds, which she agonized over; she had an ideal of 100 pounds which she never attained, claiming that if she did, she’d be hit by a car and killed the same day). So I don’t remember wearing one. Panty hose was a new thing, so I didn’t have to deal with garters, but bras were another story.

Bras were a rite of passage, like your first period, and being busty at 13 was a good thing, but BOY did you need a lot of coverage and “support” (meaning, disguise and control). A girl friend of mine once made me do up her bra in back because she just couldn’t manage it herself. There were just so many hooks. She was a 36C and wanted me to know it. I was relatively flat then and very depressed. I couldn’t wait to wear those holsters the other girls were wearing, even under heavy sweaters and winter dresses.

OK then, THAT wasn’t healthy – was it? – but what we’re seeing now does shock me sometimes. When I see this let-it-all-hang-out bodily freedom,  I even resent that I was forced to torture and abuse myself just to attain the proper “shape”, which was then re-shaped even more, no matter how excruciatingly uncomfortably. It’s a whole new ballgame now, but meantime I kept on playing the SAME ballgame for literally decades, trying to find something that fit me and supported me (never mind comfort) as my body changed and changed, weight surging up and down, ashamed of it, appalled at myself, covering up, but still wearing the holsters, because. . . I guess it was unthinkable NOT to.

You couldn't go around without a bra. Jesus!

In my day, my deluded, frightening, astoundingly ignorant day, the only people who went braless were rabid feminists and little old ladies who had given up. Drooping breasts were like having a rat’s nest for hair – just so ugly it wasn’t thinkable, not in public anyway, where appearances had to be carefully kept up. My mother wore house dresses around the house, but put on a much more formal kind of dress to go to the grocery store. That's how it was.

The “fat woman” in our neighbourhood was heavily stigmatized, and my mother (who didn’t have friends but “caseloads”) was basically the only person who associated with her. Her friends were blind ladies, ladies with “retarded” or “mongoloid” kids, people no one else wanted whom she adopted, thereby assuring they would be beholden to her forever. So the neighbourhood  “fat lady” was in the same category. She might have weighed 250, not more than 280 tops, and in this era of My 600 lb. Life, that’s almost thin. (People on that show talk about "getting down to 500".) She did wear the requisite confining bra and was cruelly girdled, making her look like a sausage in what must have been torture in hot weather.

Well, all that’s gone now – isn’t it? – so why did it take me so long to dump these things, these things that dug in, cut my flesh, didn’t support me anyway because they never fit? We still hear that shaming statement, “80% of women wear the wrong-sized bra!”, no doubt perpetrated by the bra industry and meant to make women scurry to an expensive specialty shop to be “fitted”. Never do they mention that there is NO SUCH THING as the “right-sized bra”, unless you have them individually tailored to your body, which none of us can afford. Not only that, but they never tell us exactly how they arrived at that 80% statistic. It seems it was plucked out of the thin air, but no one thinks about that. Stats are intimidating and generally designed to induce shame and the consumer response which is the only way to relieve it. So we skulk about knowing we’re wearing the wrong size, depressed about it, but unable to fix it. Nothing is more cruel and nasty and self-punishing than trying on bras, spending a fortune, and finding deep red lines and welts all over your body the next day.

So the bras are in the garbage, but I did make one small concession. I have never worn anything like a sports bra, and thought they were only for young women who jogged, but had the thought that if I walked briskly it might be uncomfortable for me with no support at all. I also jounce violently in the car.  I am 66 years old, breast-fed two babies, and need tell you no more about gravity. Cautiously, I experimented. I ordered  two lightweight sports bras online, and pulled one on – no hooks, no clasps, no underwiring, no plastic or metal or anything at all but soft, very forgiving fabric.  To my amazement, it felt GORGEOUS. Nothing cut. Nothing bound. It felt like a comfortable tank top and actually lifted me up like two cradling hands. (Excuse me for that.) 

I would not wear these every day, in fact I may not even wear them at all, ever. But it made me realize I could have spared myself a lot of distress for a lot of years just by wearing something that looked good and felt nice under a clingy blouse (which I never wear anyway). The sports bras went into a drawer for now, until the pandemic passes, during which time I will do what I swore I’d never do – just throw on one thing, an Indian-pattern dress from China ($20 on Amazon), and be “dressed” – dressed enough to GO OUT. 

What does this mean? I don’t know, but I DO know you will never catch me pulling and twisting at circles of wire under my breasts, and yanking on metal hooks that leave little holes in my back. For these things are now where they belong, in with the garbage and the baggage and all the other things I am shedding and throwing away, in the bittersweet realization that I never needed to torture myself like that to begin with, and never will again.

AT LAST! Harold Lloyd: Introduction to The Freshman

At long last, I was able to post the clip where Harold refers to his screen alter ego as THE GLASS CHARACTER. Almost everyone else referred to "the glasses character", and no one is sure why Harold didn't, but it made a much more poetic name for my novel about his life and work (not to mention this blog and a Facebook fan page!):

The Glass Character: a celebration of Harold Lloyd

I just noticed several more very positive reviews on Amazon.com (though they didn't appear on Amazon.ca, which is why I never saw them!) So here they are, folks. . . I have to make the most of this, as the book had a very modest release and never reached the silent film devotees I had hoped for (nor was it made into a movie, which really ran me over - but I must rise again!).

The Glass Character by Margaret Gunning Amazon.com paperback edition

The Glass Character by Margaret Gunning Amazon.com Kindle edition

Reviews on Amazon.com

Michelle

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly a gem! 

Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2017
Having become recently absorbed, nay, obsessed by all things Harold Lloyd I found myself drawn into Muriel's world---and what a world! I think one would be hard pressed to find a novel that captured the zeitgeist of the early years of motion pictures. The author did a superb job of balancing the events in Muriel's story with Harold's life. I was hooked and highly recommend it to anyone who likes the silent era of filmmaking, smart storytelling and the delicious Harold Lloyd :-)

Mathew Paust

5.0 out of 5 stars Carpet Ride to Magicland

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2014

In case the name doesn't ring a bell, he's the guy with the straw hat and Woody Allen glasses, in the suit, dangling from a clock on the side of a building so far above a busy avenue the cars below look like ladybugs on wheels.

Harold Lloyd.

Movie comedian of the silent 1920s. Called himself the "Glass Character" because his trademark glasses were fake. No glass in them. The guy was a nut. Blew one of his hands to Kingdom Come fiddling with what he thought was a stage prop bomb. It was real. Deliberately gave himself powerful electric shocks to get his hair to stand straight up. Did his own stunts--the clock dangle, the shocked hair, pretending to trip and stagger on building ledges up in the sky, netless--a brave, some would say foolhardy, genius. Nut.

Knowing this and being acrophobic, I can't watch his movies anymore. It even scares me to look at the photos. I'll let Margaret Gunning watch the movies and look at the photos, and I'll read her reports. Well, then again, I don't have to anymore. I've read her book, "The Glass Character". It's all in there.

Margaret, poor girl, is in love with Harold Lloyd. It started out as just a fascination with soundless images. Love snuck up and struck her dumb somewhere amid the exhaustive research she was conducting for a book about what was then still just a fascination. Love. Alas. Margaret is happily married and has two lovely daughters and four darling grandchildren, yet is far too young to leap the gap into the day when her beloved Harold held sway with the girls of a baby Hollywood. Fortunately, for her and for us, she's a novelist. She has the skill to weave the magic carpet to carry her backward in time to those days of yore, those Harold heyday days, and set her gently down along the path the love of her dreams must follow should he wish a rebirth in the imaginations and hearts of admirers forevermore. She's woven that carpet. It's large enough to take us with her on that long strange trip. I rode along on a test flight. We made it back, and I'm still agog.

When we stepped off the carpet in la la land I saw that Margaret had changed. No longer the familiar author of two of my favorite novels--"Better than Life", and "Mallory"--she'd become sixteen-year-old Jane Chorney, a virgin and erstwhile soda jerk in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a terrible crush on movie idol Harold Lloyd. Soon after we landed, Margaret /Jane (and later "Muriel", as you will learn) decided to pack up her meager belongings, cash in her chips (two cents shy of fifty bucks) and head to Hollywood and into the arms of her eternal love. I might have tried to instill sense in her were I anything more than invisible eyes and ears. Unfortunately I had lost my voice and corporeal substance upon alighting in the Santa Fe dust.

So it was off to Hollywood via a wearying, bumpy bus ride, Margaret/Jane/Muriel full of glitzy dreams and innocence, and me hunkered weightless, mute and unseen on her delicate shoulder.

I won't say more. I took no notes and had to avert my gaze any number of times during moments that really were none of my personal concern. The Glass Character is Margaret/Jane/Muriel's story, not mine. What I did see and hear, and learn during our holiday in history is captured with such lucid, insightful poignancy I can't help but wonder if Margaret didn't in fact remain there, dictating her journal to a holographic image of herself in the distant future tapping on a keyboard somewhere in a place called Coquitlam, B.C.

David

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning Star Shines - Great Book

Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2014

I couldn't resist turning page after page when I started reading this novel. It is as fast-paced, frenetic, frantic, as the jumpy quick movements of silent film action. To say this book captures the spirit of the silent film era, of the flashing, double-dealing, over handed and underhanded Hollywood of the 1920s and onward, is a disservice. The reader is drawn right in, involved totally with the heroine of the story. The story is about her, but it is also a thorough portrait of the great film Comedian, Harold Lloyd. He comes to life in these pages, a three dimensional fully rounded fictional character. The good, the bad, the surprising, the ugly. He is totally human and his motives and circumstances are clear.

I've read Gunning's two earlier novels, Better than Life, and Mallory. The Glass Character is far more ambitious in its depth and breadth. It is longer, more expansive than the early works. Gunning has presented her master piece, in this novel. She fully comes of age as a serious, yet entertaining writer, who displays a lovely choice of words and a often refreshing turns of phrase.
If you haven't read Gunning yet, start. If her latest novel doesn't win, or at least get nominated for the top literary prizes, there is no justice.
Don't miss an engrossing, absorbing read. By the way, you'll definitely want to hit YouTube to find full length Lloyd films, outtakes, and documentaries.
Don't leave yourself hanging from the clock hand, get the silent era spirit and enjoy the book!

One person found this helpful

K. J. Janssen

5.0 out of 5 stars THOSE WERE THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2014

You're in for a real treat with Margaret Gunning's Novel "The Glass Character"

If you enjoy traveling back to the time when many of our parents frequented silent films as the prime source of entertainment, then you will love to bury your nose in this madcap treatise on the time and personalities of that era.

If the name Harold Lloyd doesn't ring a bell, you will know him intimately by the time you reach the last page.

We know so much about the entertainment industry today, but so little about what went on behind the scenes of the Silent Film era. You will be shocked by Gunning's expose of that wildcap period of our history.

Don't miss this treat from the pen of a very gifted author.

Harold: from black and white to colour!

An outbreak of "mental health"

I've said all these things before, but can you believe that, in these worst of all possible times, I need to say them again? Since no one is paying heed, I guess I have to. This was a Facebook post, and I think it's good enough to share here if anyone cares to read it. 

I don't know if it's the celebrity influence or not (which it might be, because that is mainly what de-stigmatized AIDS via Elizabeth Taylor et. al), but now people NEVER say "mental illness". They say "mental health", and even say things like "I have mental health" or "I lost my son to mental health." 

I protested for years and years about the use of the terms "mental illness/mentally ill", because if you are mentally ill, the terminology means you can never be "well". How can you be well and ill at the same time? You can't. I used to despair that there were NO runs or events or concerts or fund-raising things for "mental illness" and decried the widespread use of "whack job", "nut bar", and all the other appalling terms used to dismiss "the crazies" (and always said with apparently no awareness at all that it's wrong). 

Now, suddenly, I have "mental health", but boy, I don't feel a whole lot better! It was a great thing when "cancer victim" (which used to be the term even for people who were successfully treated) was replaced with "survivor", "warrior," etc. Now we've at least moved ONE chess jump, from "ill", not to "well", but to "health". Now I suppose I'll be told, "well, aren't you grateful the stigma no longer exists?" 

A few years ago, ONE woman rode a horse across Canada to raise awareness of the plight of the "mentally ill". It was barely covered, and she might have made at most a few thousand dollars. But it was implied she was a little crazy herself to be doing it. In the meantime, little or nothing has changed. 

I believe in these pandemic times that references to "loonies", "psychos", etc. etc. have ESCALATED, with people having no qualms whatsoever throwing around terms that, to me, are as offensive as the n-word. I was just a little stressed lately and tried to book a counselling session at a clinic where I had made a good connection earlier in the year, and was told "your file is closed", and as it turns out, even if it COULD be reinstated, all appointments were booked up until well into September. If you want to get any sort of help before that, you have to go to Emergency.

Hell, I'd be violently triggered if I had to go there for a broken toenail, let alone because I have "mental health", due to the demeaning and humiliating treatment I have received there in the past. No thanks!