To add a though, I agree with Hal and Kevin. There's quite a bit to
say--too much for here--but in essence, it seems to me that *Green Book *is
not simply about a white man rescuing a black. It's just as much about a
black man saving a white man. And the white man knows that element is
there, and so does the black. They "save" each other, some ways similarly
and some ways differently. That's powerfully represented by the hard talk
at times between the two as they travel through the south in the early
'60s. That angry raw talk on both sides reveals the tension of the time and
place, but it also shows the increasingly strong feelings and tough respect
the two have grown to have for each other. That might be race on the
outside, but it's much more than that, and deeper.

When Tony gets back home, around the holiday dinner table one of his
relatives makes a racist joke, like those that had been told countless
times in that company. This time Tony stops him. He's changed.

Tony's wife has never received letters from him or heard him talk the way
he does in the letters she's received from him during the trip, and she
knows who was behind them. When Don joins Tony's family at the end, she
embraces Don and whispers thanks to him for the private and even intimate
influence he's had on her husband. That was not racial. That was entirely
about Tony's altogether different kind of personal growth, as a man and a
husband and a father to his sons, and as a human.

That's enough...  The connections to *HF* are clear.

It's a good, good film. Worth seeing, and seeing again. It has a saving
effect, and I think race is just the starting point.


On Mon, Feb 4, 2019 at 7:41 PM Mac Donnell Rare Books <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> There are two incidents that echo this indiginity in the movie, one with
> an interesting twist. That's all I can say.
>
> Kevin
> @
> Mac Donnell Rare Books
> 9307 Glenlake Drive
> Austin TX 78730
> 512-345-4139
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>
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>
> ------ Original Message ------
> From: "Barbara Schmidt" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: 2/4/2019 5:08:10 PM
> Subject: Re: Huck Finn and The Green Book
>
> >I have not seen the movie or read the book.  But reading Kevin Mac
> >Donnell's comments and Hal Bush's thoughts on it brings back a vivid
> >chapter from Robert Caro's _The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the
> >Senate_, p. 888-89 in a chapter titled "The 'Working Up'".  LBJ discusses
> a
> >conversation with Gene Williams, his maid's husband, about Williams's
> >reluctance to drive LBJ's car along with LBJ's beagle from Washington, DC
> >back to Texas during the Senate recess. He quotes Williams, "a colored
> >man's got enough trouble getting across the South on his own, without
> >having a dog along." LBJ told several versions of such a incidents
> >including another about his cook, a college graduate and her husband who
> >drove the limousine of the Vice President of the United States back to
> >Texas. "When they had to go to the bathroom, they would stop, pull off on
> a
> >side road, and Zephyr Wright, the cook of the Vice President of the United
> >States, would squat in the road to pee. ... That's wrong." The chapter is
> >available on google books and the amazon search inside feature.
> >
> >Barb
> >
>