by Leslie Thomas
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14:35-14:45; 14:56-15:06; 15:19-15:28; 15:38-15:40; 15:47-15:52; 16:08-16:11; 16:24-16:27; 17:20-17:26
IDENTITY
The one book turned toward the audience on the stack closest the doctor (visible in only two quick shots) is Orange Wednesday by Leslie Thomas (dang, was this one tough to decipher). Fun fact: as a news writer, Thomas covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann for The Evening News.
SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE
(A better synopsis of the book follows this one, courtesy of a reader of my site, but I’m leaving my old synopsis until I have time to better edit the page overall.)
The only review I found easily was the Kirkus review which may have been an automatic translation into English from some other language, but manages to convey that it has something to do with a British officer who looks after some moldering WWII files, and has become friends with an ex-SS, neo-Nazi, and an American, Keenor, who are going to reunify postwar Germany. The culmination is “swift and brutal” and the ending “empty and sad”. It sounds like the book is all over the place, tonally, and perhaps not the Jonathan Demme-esque romp the British release cover would have you think. Certainly, the various cover arts I’ve found online come from very different selling points, and I’m left wondering if it was a hard book to sell. The content reminds of what Catch-22 (which also appears in the Torrance collection) managed to do – balancing the comedy and tragedy of war’s insanity into a delirious chaos. Perhaps the novel’s obscurity is meant to speak to Jack Torrance’s obscurity; he wants to be a legend, like Joseph Heller, but he likely (barring the Overlook) would’ve wound up like Thomas.
The author’s big hit, The Virgin Soldiers, is described in a similar light. That was made into two Hollywood films, and concerns a love triangle, much like the one in Summer of ’42. Anyway, I really have to wonder about why this one was so buried in the image, buried by the editing, so lonely atop its stack, and so seemingly similar to the other WWII books in the various stacks. I imagine it wasn’t just for the loose connection to Pearl S. Buck. Is it possibly connected to the WEDNESDAY of the movie? That section is just under 39 minutes (26% of the film, roughly), and opens on Danny playing on the very orange carpet outside 237.
UPDATE: Reader Tony Gill took me up on a request I’d made to read the book and give us a better synopsis of the novel than the strangely poorly written one on Kirkus Reviews, which had formerly been the only other synopsis online. What follows is Gill’s writing, with only minor style edits. He’s provided further insight for how this ties to Kubrick’s other films, but I’ll only be including that once I make my own writing on Kubrick’s other films visible to the public.
“The novel is set in, I think, the mid 1960s and mostly takes place in the made-up sleepy town of Fulsbad, Germany. The main draw of Fulsbad are the traditional thermal spas, a golf course and old castle turned hunting lodge. Brunel, an English soldier around 30 years old, is posted by himself at a moldering Nazi military archive above the thermal spas, and forgotten about for 2 years, which suits him fine. His two friends are a tabby cat at the archives named Jackson that he gets drunk with and an ex-Nazi, Otto who runs a café with his 15-year-old daughter Hilde, who expresses unrequited love for Brunel. His affection for her is familial… mostly. After being discovered by a retired British officer on holiday while sleeping off a hangover while on the job, Brunel is summoned to report to an equally incompetent commanding officer who mistakes his un-soldierly ways as cover for being a spy. Soon Brunel finds himself recruited for an actual covert mission, but only because the operation is to take place in Fulsbad and he’s the only military presence there. He is to report to 39 Dankestrasse, Hamburg. And answer the question ‘What colour day is it?’ with ‘Orange Wednesday’. Orange Wednesday is the date in November when the ratification of the two Germanys will be signed in Fulsbad (starting in September, every week was named a different colour).
Brunel meets the rest of the team. It’s a collaborative operation of murderous bastards: Brunel, two Russians (Traveski, Gorin), a French assassin (Lestrange), and two other Englishmen (Smith and Findlayson who hate one another), all led by a treacherous American officer named Keenor. By apparent design, nobody knows anyone on the team. The readers are given a backstory for the French assassin, Brunel and Keenor but, oddly, nobody else. Their mission is to do reconnaissance and provide security for their respective country’s ambassadors when they arrive in secret to sign the treaty in Fulsbad, reuniting east and west Germany. However Brunel’s first assignment is to find prostitutes for an orgy. Since Brunel is helpless here, Keenor’s secretary (Prudence) assists. Later, Prudence seduces Brunel. It’s sorta comical because he’s so vanilla and she’s incredibly kinky, hence the British cover art, I guess. She ends up betraying Brunel to her boss for befriending Otto, the ex-Nazi. Otto and Brunel aren’t threats, and so it’s clear Keenor just wants a chance to torture someone on this mission as that is his main skillset. This results in a fairly graphic scene involving Brunel and Hilde being water-tortured by Keenor in the thermal spas. Otto, though ex-Nazi and current sympathizer, is portrayed as a bumbling, harmless old fool. The real bad guy is Keenor of course.
In a twist, on the day of the planned treaty, Orange Wednesday, the two Russians attempt to assassinate their own Prime Minister as part of a coup in Moscow. Brunel barely survives the torture from the previous day and promptly sets off to kill Keenor who is posted with the Russians in the castle parapet overlooking the golf course turned treaty signing theatre. When Brunel arrives, the Russians have a gun to Keenor and are ready to carry out their real mission with a sniper rifle. Brunel shoots one Russian in the shoulder. Keenor kills the other just as he takes aim at the Prime Minister. Brunel punches Keenor. They fight for a while until exhausted. There’s a tense moment where Keenor, the surviving Russian, Gorin, and Brunel reach for guns. At the last minute Brunel kicks a pistol to Gorin who then kills Keenor. Gorin tosses the gun just as soldiers arrive. In the aftermath, Keenor is honoured as a hero by his commanding officers for preventing the assassination. The official story however is that he died in a car accident. Gorin is granted immunity as part of a coverup to avoid embarrassing the Russians. Brunel is given retirement. On the same day Otto is killed by Lestrange only because he felt cheated out of doing any shooting that day. It’s hinted that Otto will likely be scapegoated for orchestrating the assassination if it gets leaked. Brunel returns to England, largely unchanged as a person, leaving a forlorn Hilde behind. End.”
Gill also included a snippet of the writing that he felt typified the tone and style of the book: “Cobwebbed widows paused with custard creams and black forests halfway to their dying mouths, and there was a strong light like memory in the remaining eye of an old man at the next table.”
Next literary reference: Unidentified Boulder Books
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