The Magician's Wife

...Lonely, and ill-at-ease amidst her husband's clockwork attendants, Emmeline is left to brood over her recent miscarriages...

...Even though she only asserts herself at one, crucial point in the story, Emmeline never seems as passive as her actions might imply...

...Not that he invented the field: Plato, I think, did that in his distinction between speech and writing in the Phaedrus...

...But Scorsese has also made some miscalculations...

...MEDIUM WITH A MESSAGE Frank McConnell f "Media Studies" has a father or a godfather, it's surely H. Marshall McLuhan (1911-80...

...The descriptions of Compi}gne and of Algeria are richly atmospheric and full of sensuous detail, but through Emmeline's wary gaze we see more than Second Empire trellises and frescoed ceilings, more than the Moorish towns with their alleys and orange trees and the camel caravans stealing across the Sahara...

...Tsarong is perfect in his scenes with the Red generals whose bureaucratic huffing amusingly contrasts with the spiritual leader's calm certitude...

...The ambitious Lambert accepts this mission in person at Compibgne, and the novel's panorama of ddcolletage, foie gras, velvet-suited postillions, Shvres porcelain, and candlelit Gautier recitations gives way to the spare expanse of the North African desert...

...Economics...

...And some of the most memorable shots aren't spectacular ones of nature or war but odd, sneaky glances and telling gestures: Kundun staring down with wonder at the beautiful shoes he can now wear after a childhood of poverty...

...Born in Edmonton, Alberta, to a devoutly Methodist woman, by his college years McLuhan was a voracious and intense reader--his first great passion being, significantly, Chesterton...

...but also a tireless self-promoter and a flamboyant showman (which does not mean "charlatan...

...It was the wimpy professor's dream (and McLuhan, whose work I venerate enormously, was, also, a wimpy professor) to have his erudite and/or vatic mutterings published and to find them celebrated in the Big World...

...The irony is that "Media Studies," as practiced now, has little to do with, and cares little about, McLuhan's crucial insights...

...Commonweal 2 2 February27, 1998 This state of semiretirement ends when Napoleon III puts together a bizarre political scheme: eager to quell rebellion in Algeria, France's partially conquered territory, he decides to send Lambert to perform there, in the hopes of convincing the Algerians that France has a great sorcerer on its side...

...When the Dalai Lama dreams of the slaughter of his people, Scorsese positions the ruler amid a mass of blood-drenched corpses and pulls the camera back into a distant overhead shot that turns the welter of bodies into a Jackson Pollock painting...

...It is largely a dreary exercise in discovering the ways media "disenfranchize" or--these guys' favorite word--"disempower" marginalized groups...

...Yet this fihn is quite an achievement for Scorsese, a step forward because it's a step sideways...

...Some of the best of Gordon's book explains how his man's obsession with media was tied to his deep, ferocious Catholicism (McLuhan converted in 1937...

...In the story of the Lamberts' brief, near-tragic adventure, he has concocted a bewitching portrait of an era, and a tantalizing tour through exotic locales...

...Director, National Bureau of Economic Research Program in International Trade and Investment Registration: by April 15, $25.00...

...The coup de thd~tre that united the two partners--they met when Lambert summoned Emmeline from an audience and produced a bouquet from the folds of her scarf--has faded to a distant memory, and Emmeline feels ignored by her preoccupied husband, who has taken to sleeping alone...

...and from the midsixties to early seventies he was, if not as inescapable as the Beaties, considerably more so than the Kinks (who were as good as the Beatles...

...The two principal settings in The Magician's Wife (whose plot is based on a real historical incident) allow Moore to draw an implicit parallel between French and Arab cultures, whose elaborate ceremonies, in both cases, barely veil the rigid structures holding power in place...

...But when the Dalai Lama must express his anguish, Scorsese can only have Tsarong hide his face and shake his shoulders...

...These heavy-handed directorial tricks are meant to cover the fact that the nonprofessional can't really produce the requisite emotion...

...If he does, the region wilt erupt in war...

...If all goes well, Lambert's technologically advanced legerdemain (it makes use of electricity) will amaze and dishearten followers of the local Islamic holy men, in particular the charismatic mystic known as Bou-Aziz, who is on the verge of declaring a jihad to defeat the infidel French...

...For the contemporary reader, her apprehension gives the novel an ironic twist...

...The acting of nonprofessionals in all roles is mostly wonderful but in the lead role of the grown Kundun, Tenzin Thyjthob Tsarong demonstrates the limits of the amateur actor, even when he's physically appealing and apt...

...But Algeria, too, has its luminaries and social protocol, as Emmeline soon discovers...

...And in our century there were earlier and brilliant analyses, including Eric Barnouw's studies of broadcasting and Harold Innis's epochal work on the influence of print on the shaping of modern consciousness (work absolutely essential to McLuhan's own best writing, and oddly--characteristically-soft-pedaled in Gordon's book...

...He wrote, co-wrote, or edited over twenty books, plus hundreds of essays and speeches...

...Most impressively, like The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Moore's new novel is a masterly portrait of a woman in uncertainty...

...And that's not what McLuhan was about...

...Observing Mass at Compi6gne the morz~ng after the cr~rde-the solemn presentation of a deer carcass to the emperor's hounds--she sees the kneeling empress as the hostess who had "presided over the satanic celebration of the kill," and thinks "not of the blood of Christ, but of the bloody spectacle of last night, the red, tarry torches flaming in the darkness, the growling hounds, their jaws flecked with blood...

...It's an overly aesthetic effect, something the director generally avoids...

...Editor, Journal of Interno'aona...

...Of the same mind himself, the emperor turned the Second Empire into a spectacle radiating faux imperial glamour...

...Despite the scenes of brittle diplomacy and the menace of future war, The Magician's Wife is not the most suspenseful of Moore's novels...

...On a fellowship to Cambridge, his Catholic enthusiasms expanded to, among others, Aquinas (he always described himself as a Thomist), Gilson, Eliot, and the Joyce of Finnegans Wake...

...Abracadabra Celia Wren he Empire must be a succession of miracles," a minister once remarked to the French monarch, Napoleon III...

...With her misgivings about French interference in Algeria and her respect for Arab civilization, Emmeline seems more astute than the conspiring diplomats who surround her...

...Her observations increasingly make EmmeIine doubt the good faith of the French Empire...

...Epitomizing the decadence of his regime were the annual sdries, week-long, glorified house parties held at the palace at Compi6gne...

...our hero, riding through Peking, innocently enjoying a Red Chinese children's chorus, only to have the performance cut short by his more savvy adviser who recognizes propagandistic drivel when he hears it and politely rolls up the window...

...By contrast, in Islamic devotion, Emmeiine finds a real piety...

...Margo Todd,Vanderbilt UniversiW Globalization and Inequality with J. David Richardson, Director of Graduate Studies, Economics, Syracuse University...

...Celia Wren is Commonweal's theater critic...

...Even before leaving France, she begins to doubt the very underpinnings of her own culture...

...Fred Lawrence, Director, Longergan Workshop, Carney 405, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02167 617 782 7319 (H), 617 552 8095 (0), FAX 617 552 0794 C A L M I N College FACULTY SPRING CONFERENCES in CHRISTIAN SCHOLARSHIP MAY 28-30, 1998 Susan M. Felch, Director Puritanism and Its Discontents with Laura Lunger Knoppers, Associate Professor of English, Pennsylvania State University Guest Speakers include: Dr...

...And without his flamboyance, it's doubtful that "Media Studies" would have the cachet it currently enjoys in the universities...

...While Kundun's father's corpse is, according to custom, chopped up and fed to vultures, the director has Mao's imperialistic demands read on the soundtrack, which seems to present a glib, false parallel between a sacred rite (no matter how grisly to our Western eyes) and the brutal dismemberment of a country...

...Robert C. Feenstra, University of California, Davis...

...Moore does a particularly admirable job tracing the fluctuating warmth and chill of her prolonged, subtle flirtation with Deniau...

...He was a kind of genius, yes...

...But McLuhan made it all sexy, imbued it all with an aura of freedom and play...

...after April 15, $35.00 Supported with funds from The Pew Charitable Trusts For further information contact AnnaMae Bush, Coordinator, Summer Seminars Calvin College, 3201 Burton Street SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546 phone: 616-957-8558 _9 fax: 616-957-6682 e-mail: abush@calvin.edu _9 Interuet site: www.calvin.edu/fss Commonweal aj 3 February 27, 1998 tempted to betray her husband and her country...

...On meeting the Emperor's paramount local enemy, Bou-Aziz, she senses that he possesses true wisdom and holiness...

...Emmeline's doubts, her moments of euphoria, her tortured meditations over scraps of conversation, her shrewd assessments of personality, her restrained anger and her more frequent resignation are all as convincing as any of the book's historical details...

...McLuhan's mother had been a successful performance artist, and it rubbed off on her boy...

...Where they envision expansive glory for the Second Empire, she foresees an Algeria tormented by oppression, ideological conflict, and violence...

...Made an unwilling partner in Lainbert's conjuring act, which she now considers an elaborate fraud rather than a piece of artistry, Emmeline finds herself The Boston College Lonergan Workshop welcomes David Tracy, Jean-Luc Marion, and Richard Kearney "God: The Contemporary Problematic" April 24 & 25, 1998, Boston College For information, contact...

...The question of the day for the French ambassadors as well as the North Africans is whether Bou-Aziz will declare himself the "Mahdi," a messianic spiritual and temporal leader foretold in Islamic tradition...

...She is also bored: After his years of diverting European high society, Lambert has retired to a Tours estate to work on the uncanny mechanical figurines that terrify visiting tradesmen...

...Institute for International Economics Guest Speakers include: Dr...

...It is as uncharacteristic of his other works as Hard Times was for Dickens, as the "Old Possum" poems were for Eliot...

...And the Lamberts' guide in Algeria, a courteous Arab expert named Colonel Deniau, who speaks of the spiritualism of the desert, turns out to be a political opportunist willing to help France wipe out Arab civilization...

...But like Henri Lambert, Moore is a magician able to create an extraordinary vision with apparent effortlessness...

...The magician's marriage, ironically, has lost its magic...

...Now, the Summa Theologiae and the Wake may seem an odd pairing--and McLuhan was to become famous for odd, outrageous pairings of ideas--but Gordon helps us see how it makes perfect sense in terms of the man's religious convicCommonweal 2 4 February27, 1998...

...Napoleon III, she finds, is a rouged libertine...

...John Morrill, Cambridge University Dr...

...Only a truly major, fertile artist dares not to be himself...

...Emmeline's perception combines the wonder of the tourist with a fledgling ability to monitor political subtext, like a novice Kremlinologist...

...The prolific Brian Moore introduces us to the intriguing eponymous heroine of his new novel by following her through the frivolities and veiled maneuvering of a sdrie...

...the measured development of scenes, with their pellucid descriptions and delicate exploration of political dynamics, makes the pace seem cautious...

...And the last sequence of Kundun's escape from his enemies into India has too many slowmotion shots and gnomic utterances on the soundtrack This turns the escape into something lyrical instead of the passage through purgatory that the climax requires...

...Napoleon IIl's invitation shatters a period of tedium and melancholy for the clear-headed Emmeline, the wife of the celebrated French illusionist Henri Lambert...

...Each autumn, members of various 61ites--aristocrats, socialites, artists, politicians, etc.--were invited to Compi6gne, assigned rooms according to status, and required to adhere to a rigorous agenda of dressing, dining, watching hounds devour the entrails of hunted stags, and other social niceties...

...the Centre for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto, his home school, was founded mainly as an adjunct to his personal and apparently inexhaustibIe, research...