It Scarred Me For Life, In the Good Way

Birnbaum has it out with Louis de Bernières and learns about certain recurring pleasures:

"I sometimes go back and read the books that I loved when I was a kid. There was one about smuggling called Moonfleet by John Meade Faulkner. It’s a wonderful adventure story. All about finding diamonds in rotten coffins. And crypts under churches full of smuggled brandy and that kind of thing. I still read that book with great pleasure."

(Click on that link, by the way, for a free book. Well, a free ASCII file, anyway, but it's as long as a book, because it has all its content!) As it happens, Moonfleet is one of my favorite Fritz Lang films--and, yes, it's just as warped as you think a children's adventure story directed by Fritz Lang would be. Especially with George Sanders and Joan Greenwood as a debauched lord and lady. And people took their children to it!