Rules of the game

Looking for Jean Renoir's film, I found this book written by Ted Allbeury. Kirkus gives it quite a review:
Superbly crafted thriller set during the Cold War, about which it is now possible to feel nostalgic.Ursula Jaeger is remarkable not just for her beauty, intelligence, and gentleness. She also has second sight: show her a picture of Ronald Reagan, for instance, let her study it, and she can tell you much of what occupies his mind. This ability quite naturally has big-time spying organizations salivating. At the moment, the KGB has her, the CIA wants her, and England's SIS thinks it knows how to steal her. David Fisher, a top-flight agent stationed in Germany, draws the assignment to kidnap Ursula as she visits her father in East Berlin. Being the clever, resourceful professional that he is, Fisher carries it off without a hitch. But naive, duped Ursula is anything but a professional. She's terrified, and it unavoidably becomes part of Fisher's job to reassure and calm her sufficiently so that she can be as productive for the West as she was for her former masters. He brings that off too, but in the process an unexpected thing happens to icy, self-sufficient Fisher. For the first time in his life, he falls in love. Meanwhile, the Americans have soured on "Operation Aeolus." They want the mission aborted and the package (read: Ursula) returned. Fisher, of course, understands that to do so is tantamount to consigning his beloved to Lubyanka and the far-from-tender mercies of a vengeful KGB. Carefully, guilefully, he plans an escape for them both, but as all veteran readers know full well, the cold is a hard place to come in from.Literate, intricately plotted, full of believable and appealing characters: Rules of the Game shows the impressive and still-underrated Allbeury (Show Me a Hero, 1994, etc.) at the top of his game

Jean Renoir

Having read about a Clifford Odets play being staged, I read his Wiki biography, wherein Jean Renoir is cited: Renoir dedicated a chapter of his autobiography to his friendship with Odets.^[54]

That led me to look up Renoir, and read about him; I took his memoirs off the shelf, and read that chapter referred to above. I also read about his films. These are three of his works:

The Rules of the game (1939): A comedy drama set on the eve of World War II. It contrasts the affairs of the French aristocracy and the working class at a weekend house party. Masters and their servants are involved in an immoral erotic charade that builds to a shattering climax.

 Grand illusion (1938): A classic tale of adventure. Duty and honor conflict in a German prisoner of war camp during World War I, when an aristocratic French officer becomes friends with the commandant yet must cooperate with his comrades in a daring escape.

 Boudu saved from drowning Boudu sauvé des eaux (1932): A well-off bookseller rescues a tramp from a suicidal plunge into the Seine and his family dedicates itself to reforming him. He shows his gratitude by shaking the household to its foundations, challenging the hidebound principles of his hosts.

Man on a train

Just saw on shelf, took out, didn't watch,

The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)

After reading The Stranger, by Albert Camus, I googled the term Camus, and got this result: http://goo.gl/ir4wz
 Many critics have also noticed a striking resemblance between the film and Albert Camus' The Stranger. ^[3]

On the road; Not fade away

from 21 January 2013 issue of New Yorker:

On the road: "Walter Salles's pleasant but undistinguished adaptation of Jack Kerouac's novel." David Denby

Not fade away: "the movie is a psalm to those who, far from pursuing the path of the Rolling Stones, stayed trapped under a rock." David Denby

Einstein's Jewish science

Judith Goldsmith, a favorite Hewlett Woodmere patron, asked for this book. She always has interesting questions and requests; always. O, for more such patrons.

Einstein's Jewish science : physics at the intersection of politics and religion