Good Evening,

Friends, a brief note here.

Sometime during the course of this blog we must find the time to discuss Arthur Phillips's masterful novel, The Egyptologist. What we witness is nothing less than the catastrophic disintegration of the identity of the protagonist, one Professor Ralp M. Trilipush - from his own perspective.

The book is far more than a mere murder mystery, but it is a mystery in the way that all good novels are mysterious. The Egyptologist is not sentimental in the traditional sense. Words like 'sad,' 'tragic,' 'horrible,' and the like are a dime a dozen. Let me just say that the unraveling of Ralph M. Trilipush is almost more than I can bear.

One wants to help him, ease his pain, his burden, even if Trilipush (if that's even his real name) is quite possibly a murderer.

Let me leave you with this, hopefully tantalizing clue. It is important to remember that in the Hollywood of the thirties, forties, and fifties, the studio system was in full force. Actors and actresses were publicly stage managed and their public images were carefully groomed. The public relations apparatus completely dwarfed anything available or practiced for movie stars today.

Talent scouts might find a cute farm girl from Nebraska, bring her to Hollywood, change her name, get her singing lessons, dance lessons, acting lessons, provide her with a suitably glamorous wardrobe, of course, perhaps pump her full of diet pills, and voila - a star is born!

This same public relations apparatus also went to work to teach gay male stars how to remove all supposed effeminate traces from their mannerisms and vocal tones and speech patterns, so that they could convincingly behave as though they were heterosexual. It was not socially acceptable to be openly gay in the era of thirties, forties, and fifties Golden Age of Hollywood.

I mention all of this because we have every indication that the identity of Ralph M. Trilipush was a collective creation (a group effort was involved), a kind of conspiracy, if you like. One suspects that this conspiracy may have even been involved in a murder, so that the Ralph Trilipush we know can emerge ( not that there was necessarily a man named Ralph M. Trilipush who was killed and whose identity was subsequently stolen).

It's not that neat. It's not that simple. Next time we go back to Death of a Salesman.

wingedcentaur