In the first reply to her friend Anna Howe, Clarissa Harlowe writes that not only has her family lately been distracted, it's been in "tumults". <1> She attributes this disturbance especially to Robert Lovelace.
II.
Mr. Lovelace has come to the family country estate to court Arabella Harlowe. Lovelace has much to recommend him as a suitor. He is handsome, well-educated, rich, and bound to become much richer through his inheritances. Why then does he hesitate to make the marriage proposal to Arabella that everyone expects? It develops that hesitation has nothing to do with Lovelace's conduct. Nor is it "bashfulness", as Arabella would like to believe.
Lovelace has set his sights on Arabella's younger sister, the beautiful, accomplished and virtuous Clarissa. But before he can properly pursue Clarissa, he has to have his suit rejected by Arabella. This will require some cunning on the gentleman's part.
No matter. A confident and immoral seducer, Lovelace is no stranger to cunning. He eventually does propose to Arabella, but "not till by some means or other ([Arabella] knew not how) he had wrought her up to such a pitch of displeasure with him...that she was under a necessity" to reject him.
Lovelace thinks he has thus cleared the way to begin his romance of Clarissa. But as in all tragic love stories, he has actually met the person to his annihilation, and Miss Harlowe, hers.
III.
The epistolary form and exceptional length <2> of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1748) makes it challenging for a contemporary reader. Having completed a reading, I can affirm that as a social history and a study of two souls in particular, Clarissa much rewards the effort it asks. "I am obliged to lay down my pen", Miss Harlowe concludes her letter above, "I will soon resume it." Resume Clarissa beyond her first letter, and one of the greatest works in the novel awaits you.
__________
<1>Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa. 1985 Edition: Penguin Classics.
<2>537 Letters. 1534 pages in the Penguin Classics, or about a million words.
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Doctor's Orders
The seasonal change from autumn is bound to have folks coming down with the winter blues. They might try a Wodehouse. It won't hurt; it could help. Doctor Sally, for example.
II.
Bill Bannister is the sort of fellow for whom Sally Smith M.D. has nothing but scorn. Bill's a rich loafer, with seemingly nothing better to do with his privileged position than to play at eros. Dr. Smith is not impressed. "She found [Bill] pleasant and agreeable. But he was also bone-idle, a well-bred waster, a drone who had nothing better to do with his time than hang about seashore resorts, dangling after perfumed and peroxided females of doubtful character." <1>
Dr. Smith is the kind of woman to whom Bill is wildly attracted. "'She's a poem, Squiffy; all health and fresh air and wholesomeness.' 'Ever spoken to her?' 'No, I haven't the nerve. She's so far above me.' 'Tall girl, eh?' 'Spiritually, you ass!'"
Apart from Sally's unmoved heart, Bill is also affianced, to the formidable Lottie Higginbotham. His uncle, Sir Hugo Drake, thinks Bill childish. Badly for Bannister, Dr. Smith shares Sir Drake's opinion, and a misunderstanding about a rocking-horse supports her view. "'But at present you're just a child [Sally said]. 'I'm not.' 'You are.'... The bell-boy entered. 'Please, sir', said the bell-boy, 'your rocking-horse has arrived.' 'What!' cried Bill. 'There!' said Sally."
Cheer up, Mr. Bannister! You are in a Wodehouse. Your difficulties are just being played for laughs, and everything will conclude happily.
III.
A variety of medications are now available to treat the blues, seasonal or otherwise. I've never seen the Wodehouses in a pharmacy, though. Better to visit the local library, or bookstore.
__________
<1>Wodehouse, P.G. Doctor Sally. 1978 Edition: Barrie&Jenkins.
II.
Bill Bannister is the sort of fellow for whom Sally Smith M.D. has nothing but scorn. Bill's a rich loafer, with seemingly nothing better to do with his privileged position than to play at eros. Dr. Smith is not impressed. "She found [Bill] pleasant and agreeable. But he was also bone-idle, a well-bred waster, a drone who had nothing better to do with his time than hang about seashore resorts, dangling after perfumed and peroxided females of doubtful character." <1>
Dr. Smith is the kind of woman to whom Bill is wildly attracted. "'She's a poem, Squiffy; all health and fresh air and wholesomeness.' 'Ever spoken to her?' 'No, I haven't the nerve. She's so far above me.' 'Tall girl, eh?' 'Spiritually, you ass!'"
Apart from Sally's unmoved heart, Bill is also affianced, to the formidable Lottie Higginbotham. His uncle, Sir Hugo Drake, thinks Bill childish. Badly for Bannister, Dr. Smith shares Sir Drake's opinion, and a misunderstanding about a rocking-horse supports her view. "'But at present you're just a child [Sally said]. 'I'm not.' 'You are.'... The bell-boy entered. 'Please, sir', said the bell-boy, 'your rocking-horse has arrived.' 'What!' cried Bill. 'There!' said Sally."
Cheer up, Mr. Bannister! You are in a Wodehouse. Your difficulties are just being played for laughs, and everything will conclude happily.
III.
A variety of medications are now available to treat the blues, seasonal or otherwise. I've never seen the Wodehouses in a pharmacy, though. Better to visit the local library, or bookstore.
__________
<1>Wodehouse, P.G. Doctor Sally. 1978 Edition: Barrie&Jenkins.
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Fifty Years Of Days
I got into the soap opera habit through Guiding Light. <1> CBS cancelled Light in 2009, though, and there went my little daytime TV fix. To the rescue, DOOL. Days Of Our Lives began its television run in November 1965, and the show is set to mark its fiftieth anniversary this month on NBC.
II.
The Horton family, in the town of Salem, was the main focus at Days' beginning in the sixties. The generational descendants of the original Hortons (along with the Bradys) still figure in the current storylines. But the evolving narrative has bloomed, in all kinds of new directions.
There is the intrigue of the wealthy and powerful DiMera and Kiriakis families, led as they are by the aging-but-still-raging Stefano DiMera (Joseph Mascolo) and Victor Kiriakis (John Aniston). Elsewhere, I've been amused by, and sympathized with, the adventures of Nicole Walker (Arianne Zucker). Has Nicole finally found a lasting love with the good Dr. Daniel Jonas (Shawn Christian); or will she find a way to sabotage yet another promising relationship?
A new powerplayer, the folksy-talking and utterly ruthless Clyde Weston (James Read), has come to Salem. Will his scheming succeed in Abigail Deveraux (Kate Mansi) marrying Clyde's evil son; will Abigail be able to resist her secret passion for Chad DiMera (Billy Flynn)?
And what about - but reader, you have the idea.
III.
Through the decades, Days has dramatized and documented the varieties of societal change in its suburban America of the last half-century. To hope for another fifty television years of Days might be hoping too far ahead. I will instead say, congratulations Days Of Our Lives, on the first fifty.
__________
<1>"Talk About A Soap Opera!". BMT, May 2013.
II.
The Horton family, in the town of Salem, was the main focus at Days' beginning in the sixties. The generational descendants of the original Hortons (along with the Bradys) still figure in the current storylines. But the evolving narrative has bloomed, in all kinds of new directions.
There is the intrigue of the wealthy and powerful DiMera and Kiriakis families, led as they are by the aging-but-still-raging Stefano DiMera (Joseph Mascolo) and Victor Kiriakis (John Aniston). Elsewhere, I've been amused by, and sympathized with, the adventures of Nicole Walker (Arianne Zucker). Has Nicole finally found a lasting love with the good Dr. Daniel Jonas (Shawn Christian); or will she find a way to sabotage yet another promising relationship?
A new powerplayer, the folksy-talking and utterly ruthless Clyde Weston (James Read), has come to Salem. Will his scheming succeed in Abigail Deveraux (Kate Mansi) marrying Clyde's evil son; will Abigail be able to resist her secret passion for Chad DiMera (Billy Flynn)?
And what about - but reader, you have the idea.
III.
Through the decades, Days has dramatized and documented the varieties of societal change in its suburban America of the last half-century. To hope for another fifty television years of Days might be hoping too far ahead. I will instead say, congratulations Days Of Our Lives, on the first fifty.
__________
<1>"Talk About A Soap Opera!". BMT, May 2013.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Theft
Katherine Anne Porter's lead character in "Theft" has made a life of not being heard. "She had been pleased with the bleak humility... which ordered the movements of her life without regard to her will in the matter." <1> A splendid long sentence follows - fused with colons; a short paragraph really - expressing the character's sense of having been "robbed". Things, journeys, words, friendships and love: "all that she had had, and all that she had missed, were lost together, and were twice lost in the landslide of remembered losses."
II.
Humility is one thing. Cowardice, another. When her purse is stolen in the story, and she thinks she knows by whom, the woman's habit of mind is to let the matter pass, as "it would be impossible to get [the purse] back without a great deal of ridiculous excitement." An "almost murderous anger" changes her mind, however. She confronts the thief.
The lady is correct in her suspicions. A janitor has indeed taken the purse. But when the janitor explains her thieving, the woman is no longer so eager to getting the purse back. The janitor tells her that she had taken the purse for her niece, who's of marriage age, and "'needs pretty things'". The janitor's next words are piercing: "'You're a grown woman, you've had your chance, you ought to know how it is!'" The woman has sought to make a virtue out of her negligent attitude to life. Meanwhile, her losses have come to fester. We might infer that this sharpens a rage within her, that "almost murderous anger".
What we mustn't neglect to also notice is that when the lady finally does choose a battle, it is with a janitor, a person below her in class and power position. Porter bespeaks the political here, to relate the issues of agency and justice in modern society.
III.
The lady in the subtle weave of "Theft" is unnamed by Katherine Anne Porter. "I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing." A proper name, not least.
__________
<1>Porter, Katherine Anne. "Theft". The Norton Anthology Of Short Fiction, 1986.
II.
Humility is one thing. Cowardice, another. When her purse is stolen in the story, and she thinks she knows by whom, the woman's habit of mind is to let the matter pass, as "it would be impossible to get [the purse] back without a great deal of ridiculous excitement." An "almost murderous anger" changes her mind, however. She confronts the thief.
The lady is correct in her suspicions. A janitor has indeed taken the purse. But when the janitor explains her thieving, the woman is no longer so eager to getting the purse back. The janitor tells her that she had taken the purse for her niece, who's of marriage age, and "'needs pretty things'". The janitor's next words are piercing: "'You're a grown woman, you've had your chance, you ought to know how it is!'" The woman has sought to make a virtue out of her negligent attitude to life. Meanwhile, her losses have come to fester. We might infer that this sharpens a rage within her, that "almost murderous anger".
What we mustn't neglect to also notice is that when the lady finally does choose a battle, it is with a janitor, a person below her in class and power position. Porter bespeaks the political here, to relate the issues of agency and justice in modern society.
III.
The lady in the subtle weave of "Theft" is unnamed by Katherine Anne Porter. "I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing." A proper name, not least.
__________
<1>Porter, Katherine Anne. "Theft". The Norton Anthology Of Short Fiction, 1986.
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Feathers Of A Birdman
There is a strut to the jazz drumming that occasionally keeps time with Michael Keaton in Birdman Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 2014). It's sly and playful. Maybe even a little rude; maybe a little embarrassing. But mostly, it is confident and amused. Appropriate, as Birdman is one funny strut of a film.
II.
Riggan Thomson (Keaton) used to play "Birdman" in a popular superhero film franchise. But that was long ago. Now, he is acting, directing, and become heavily invested in a contemporary Broadway version of a Raymond Carver short story. Things aren't going as he might wish.
We have been introduced to the voice of Birdman, still in Riggan's head all these years later. In a gravelly tone, it mocks Thomson as a failure, fallen from his Birdman heights. It derides everyone and everything around Thomson too, and the vituperation is often obscene and hilarious.
Riggan himself is contemptuous of the actor playing Ralph (Jeremy Shamos) in his play. An injury from a falling light fixture soon removes the man from the production. Thomson won't accept it as a chance accident, however. He believes that he caused the light to fall where it did by the use of his old Birdman superpowers.
In steps Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), as replacement in the play. Shiner is an accomplished method actor, given to arrogant riffs of improvisation. His loose-cannon riffing seems to uncork the speecher in others. Speeches are delivered offstage by the two female leads, Laura (Andrea Riseborough) and Lesley (Naomi Watts); by Riggan's daughter Samantha (Emma Stone); and with quiet venom, by the theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan).
All this holding forth by a bunch of high-strung self-dramatizers could easily become tiresome. But the talent of these actors, led by an excellent Michael Keaton, allows them to chew their scenery and have it too.
III.
Inarritu's film is brash satire, punctuated now and again with a surreal image or turn of events. Birdman has its serious thoughtful moments too, but ultimately remains comic, even or especially when it gets harder to keep laughing.
II.
Riggan Thomson (Keaton) used to play "Birdman" in a popular superhero film franchise. But that was long ago. Now, he is acting, directing, and become heavily invested in a contemporary Broadway version of a Raymond Carver short story. Things aren't going as he might wish.
We have been introduced to the voice of Birdman, still in Riggan's head all these years later. In a gravelly tone, it mocks Thomson as a failure, fallen from his Birdman heights. It derides everyone and everything around Thomson too, and the vituperation is often obscene and hilarious.
Riggan himself is contemptuous of the actor playing Ralph (Jeremy Shamos) in his play. An injury from a falling light fixture soon removes the man from the production. Thomson won't accept it as a chance accident, however. He believes that he caused the light to fall where it did by the use of his old Birdman superpowers.
In steps Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), as replacement in the play. Shiner is an accomplished method actor, given to arrogant riffs of improvisation. His loose-cannon riffing seems to uncork the speecher in others. Speeches are delivered offstage by the two female leads, Laura (Andrea Riseborough) and Lesley (Naomi Watts); by Riggan's daughter Samantha (Emma Stone); and with quiet venom, by the theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan).
All this holding forth by a bunch of high-strung self-dramatizers could easily become tiresome. But the talent of these actors, led by an excellent Michael Keaton, allows them to chew their scenery and have it too.
III.
Inarritu's film is brash satire, punctuated now and again with a surreal image or turn of events. Birdman has its serious thoughtful moments too, but ultimately remains comic, even or especially when it gets harder to keep laughing.
Saturday, August 1, 2015
The Wildfire Season
The Wildfire Season is Andrew Pyper's fourth book. Pyper followed Wildfire with four more literary thrillers, the latest The Damned having been published just this year.
II.
Miles meets Alex while both are university students in Montreal. They fall in love, and begin to plan their life together. After undergraduate studies, Miles McEwan is accepted into medical school in Toronto. "Three months separated them from their futures. For this final summer before...true adulthood, of marriage, Miles headed west one last time to work the wildfire season."<1>
West is British Columbia, where Miles works summers on a forest firefighting crew. Responding to a routine call one day, Miles and his team are suddenly caught in a deadly fire whirl. All the team can do is try to outrun the flames - uphill. "The whirl opened up and new air rushing in to fill the space in a metallic screech, a subway train grinding the rails as it goes too fast around a bend."
Realizing that it's too late for him and another firefighter nicknamed "the kid" to reach safety, Miles decides on a risky Escape Fire manoeuvre. But he cannot convince the kid to join him within the circle of fire he has made with a fusee. "He can only watch as the boy runs on...the kid is consumed by the rushing curtain of fire."
Miles's manoeuvre saves his life. At a price. He has serious, scarring burns, the right side of his face become a "Halloween mask, all hardened latex". Released from hospital, there follow other trials for Miles, of rage, sorrow, guilt and a profound self-loathing. When Alex reveals that she is pregnant with their child, he abandons her, not even leaving the note he had composed, which couldn't "help referring to the kid, the gluttonous melodrama of his own self-pity... in the end he does nothing more than slide his keys under the door after pulling it shut."
III.
Alex won't be abandoned so easily, however. With their young daughter at her side, Alex spends several years tracking Miles. She finally finds him, in the remote town of Ross River in the Yukon, where Miles has again taken up firefighting with a local crew. The remainder of the novel concerns arson, a fire that threatens all of Ross River, and of course, the resolution between Miles and Alex. Andrew Pyper relates this story as he has all along in The Wildfire Season, with much gripping narrative and evocative prose.
__________
<1>Pyper, Andrew. The Wildfire Season. HarperCollins, 2005.
II.
Miles meets Alex while both are university students in Montreal. They fall in love, and begin to plan their life together. After undergraduate studies, Miles McEwan is accepted into medical school in Toronto. "Three months separated them from their futures. For this final summer before...true adulthood, of marriage, Miles headed west one last time to work the wildfire season."<1>
West is British Columbia, where Miles works summers on a forest firefighting crew. Responding to a routine call one day, Miles and his team are suddenly caught in a deadly fire whirl. All the team can do is try to outrun the flames - uphill. "The whirl opened up and new air rushing in to fill the space in a metallic screech, a subway train grinding the rails as it goes too fast around a bend."
Realizing that it's too late for him and another firefighter nicknamed "the kid" to reach safety, Miles decides on a risky Escape Fire manoeuvre. But he cannot convince the kid to join him within the circle of fire he has made with a fusee. "He can only watch as the boy runs on...the kid is consumed by the rushing curtain of fire."
Miles's manoeuvre saves his life. At a price. He has serious, scarring burns, the right side of his face become a "Halloween mask, all hardened latex". Released from hospital, there follow other trials for Miles, of rage, sorrow, guilt and a profound self-loathing. When Alex reveals that she is pregnant with their child, he abandons her, not even leaving the note he had composed, which couldn't "help referring to the kid, the gluttonous melodrama of his own self-pity... in the end he does nothing more than slide his keys under the door after pulling it shut."
III.
Alex won't be abandoned so easily, however. With their young daughter at her side, Alex spends several years tracking Miles. She finally finds him, in the remote town of Ross River in the Yukon, where Miles has again taken up firefighting with a local crew. The remainder of the novel concerns arson, a fire that threatens all of Ross River, and of course, the resolution between Miles and Alex. Andrew Pyper relates this story as he has all along in The Wildfire Season, with much gripping narrative and evocative prose.
__________
<1>Pyper, Andrew. The Wildfire Season. HarperCollins, 2005.
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Princes & Others
Summer weekends are going to settle in. They may well get you thinking about a nice drive from the city, to take in a bit of the country. It's out here that you might come across a road crew, like the fictional pair leading Prince Avalanche (David Gordon Green, 2013).
II.
Alvin (Paul Rudd) is the boss in the pair, and you do get the feeling that Alvin would right your error quickly were you to assume him the subordinate. He does his job, projects correctness, and models good nature survival skills.
Lance (Emile Hirsch) is all loose where Alvin's uptight. He's mostly preoccupied with partaying, and the pursuit of the opposite sex. As Lance is out there on the road without actual contact to partying and women, Alvin becomes the lone audience for his ruminations on these subjects.
Together, Alvin and Lance have the job of doing minor repairs on a road running through a Texas state park. They do their work, camp, and Alvin writes letters (the year is 1988) to his fiancee, a woman who also happens to be Lance's older sister.
The pair's solitude is broken by encountering an elderly couple (who may or may not be a couple; who just may not want to admit being a couple). The man (Lance LeGault) is a truck driver, and brash in a genial way. Very amusing is the scene, for example, where he abruptly swats Lance's portable stereo aside like an annoying insect, to clear a seat for himself.
III.
Prince Avalanche has the various designs of a minimalist indie comedy. But in its treatment of themes like love and understanding, the film suggests the possibility of a broader, maximal resolution. The viewer will have to decide what to make of that missing resolution, or even if they register such an absence.
II.
Alvin (Paul Rudd) is the boss in the pair, and you do get the feeling that Alvin would right your error quickly were you to assume him the subordinate. He does his job, projects correctness, and models good nature survival skills.
Lance (Emile Hirsch) is all loose where Alvin's uptight. He's mostly preoccupied with partaying, and the pursuit of the opposite sex. As Lance is out there on the road without actual contact to partying and women, Alvin becomes the lone audience for his ruminations on these subjects.
Together, Alvin and Lance have the job of doing minor repairs on a road running through a Texas state park. They do their work, camp, and Alvin writes letters (the year is 1988) to his fiancee, a woman who also happens to be Lance's older sister.
The pair's solitude is broken by encountering an elderly couple (who may or may not be a couple; who just may not want to admit being a couple). The man (Lance LeGault) is a truck driver, and brash in a genial way. Very amusing is the scene, for example, where he abruptly swats Lance's portable stereo aside like an annoying insect, to clear a seat for himself.
III.
Prince Avalanche has the various designs of a minimalist indie comedy. But in its treatment of themes like love and understanding, the film suggests the possibility of a broader, maximal resolution. The viewer will have to decide what to make of that missing resolution, or even if they register such an absence.
Monday, June 1, 2015
Batter My Heart
Lynn Coady won the 2013 Giller Prize for Hellgoing, a collection of short stories. "Batter My Heart" <1> is from an earlier collection, Play The Monster Blind (2000).
II.
Coady was born and raised in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. In "Batter My Heart", Coady's Katherine Leary has three different Island men to deal with, and at times, try her patience.
Katherine's boyfriend has a drinking problem that he's trying to kick, in a monastery that now also serves as a detox facility. The cloistered setting has him advising prayer and piety to Katey. "'You just have to learn to pray. I mean really pray. What that means is accepting God'. Well, you are certainly too much of a hardened and worldly wise seventeen-year-old to go for that." <2>
Katey perceives her father at contradictory angles. Mr. Leary is a "good man", a "honest man", even a "saint", Katey tells us. She then adds that he is also "stark raving mad", and "one mean son of a bitch". It's in relation to one of Leary's neighbourly qualities, the ability to "do anything for you", that we meet Martin Carlyle.
Martin is the town drunk. Carlyle has been set on a bruising, not to say battering, course. He comes to Katey's attention by her father's efforts to help the man. Mr. Leary personally drives Martin to AA meetings; Martin uses the trip into town to visit a bar, and a liquor store. Leary convinces social services to increase Carlyle's allowance, so as to help him land a job; Carlyle takes the money, and doesn't bother to show up for the job Leary helped him get. Instead, Martin's drinking buddy, Alistair, tells Leary that he and Carlyle have been having "a regular ceilidh" with Martin's "extra welfare".
We sympathize with Mr. Leary when he loses his patience with Martin Carlyle.
III.
But Coady won't have us draw only the easiest conclusions. Consider that she also relates Martin Carlyle's regular Sunday attendance at church, "singing in the choir, his voice even more off-note than the ladies". It is just another detail of her Cape Breton, that Lynn Coady presents with such understanding, in "Batter My Heart".
__________
<1>Donne's Holy Sonnet 14 (1633).
<2>Coady, Lynn. "Batter My Heart". Play The Monster Blind. Doubleday Canada, 2000.
II.
Coady was born and raised in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. In "Batter My Heart", Coady's Katherine Leary has three different Island men to deal with, and at times, try her patience.
Katherine's boyfriend has a drinking problem that he's trying to kick, in a monastery that now also serves as a detox facility. The cloistered setting has him advising prayer and piety to Katey. "'You just have to learn to pray. I mean really pray. What that means is accepting God'. Well, you are certainly too much of a hardened and worldly wise seventeen-year-old to go for that." <2>
Katey perceives her father at contradictory angles. Mr. Leary is a "good man", a "honest man", even a "saint", Katey tells us. She then adds that he is also "stark raving mad", and "one mean son of a bitch". It's in relation to one of Leary's neighbourly qualities, the ability to "do anything for you", that we meet Martin Carlyle.
Martin is the town drunk. Carlyle has been set on a bruising, not to say battering, course. He comes to Katey's attention by her father's efforts to help the man. Mr. Leary personally drives Martin to AA meetings; Martin uses the trip into town to visit a bar, and a liquor store. Leary convinces social services to increase Carlyle's allowance, so as to help him land a job; Carlyle takes the money, and doesn't bother to show up for the job Leary helped him get. Instead, Martin's drinking buddy, Alistair, tells Leary that he and Carlyle have been having "a regular ceilidh" with Martin's "extra welfare".
We sympathize with Mr. Leary when he loses his patience with Martin Carlyle.
III.
But Coady won't have us draw only the easiest conclusions. Consider that she also relates Martin Carlyle's regular Sunday attendance at church, "singing in the choir, his voice even more off-note than the ladies". It is just another detail of her Cape Breton, that Lynn Coady presents with such understanding, in "Batter My Heart".
__________
<1>Donne's Holy Sonnet 14 (1633).
<2>Coady, Lynn. "Batter My Heart". Play The Monster Blind. Doubleday Canada, 2000.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Aria - D
There is plenty of teen opera in the movies. Richard Kelly's debut was a teen opera, the coming of age kind. The thing with Kelly, though, is that his teen hero may never come to age.
II.
October 1988 - Middlesex, Virginia. Donnie Darko (2001) <1> begins early morning, with teen Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) cycling home after a sleepwalking incident. A song from the era plays background to this brilliant sequence, as it steadily builds in affirmative detail and energy. <2> The sequence will also take on a more moving quality, once Kelly has told us all that he means to in his film.
It develops that sleepwalking may not be the only disorder that Donnie has to cope with. Donnie has taken to chatting with an imaginary rabbit, a bad bunny with prominent choppers. Frank (the rabbit) counsels Donnie to commit various bits of mischief, building to the more serious acts of vandalism and arson.
Donnie's therapist (Katharine Ross) informs his parents (Mary McDonnell and Holmes Osborne) that their son might be experiencing the onset of schizophrenia. Donnie's hallucinations continue to increase, until his therapist has to consider the possibility that Donnie might become a danger to himself, or others.
Meanwhile, writer-director Kelly has been constructing a different explanation for Donnie's doings than a therapeutic one. This narrative is speculative, and takes the film in the sci-fi direction of time travel and alternate universes.
III.
The surrealism, the humour, and the hypnotic tone of Kelly's picture does bring David Lynch to mind. But the echoes of Lynch never distract from Richard Kelly's original talent and promise with Donnie Darko.
__________
<1>I saw the 2004 Director's Cut, which adds twenty minutes to the film.
<2>The song is an INXS track, "Never Tear Us Apart". Later, towards film conclusion, the soundtrack will play Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart".
II.
October 1988 - Middlesex, Virginia. Donnie Darko (2001) <1> begins early morning, with teen Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) cycling home after a sleepwalking incident. A song from the era plays background to this brilliant sequence, as it steadily builds in affirmative detail and energy. <2> The sequence will also take on a more moving quality, once Kelly has told us all that he means to in his film.
It develops that sleepwalking may not be the only disorder that Donnie has to cope with. Donnie has taken to chatting with an imaginary rabbit, a bad bunny with prominent choppers. Frank (the rabbit) counsels Donnie to commit various bits of mischief, building to the more serious acts of vandalism and arson.
Donnie's therapist (Katharine Ross) informs his parents (Mary McDonnell and Holmes Osborne) that their son might be experiencing the onset of schizophrenia. Donnie's hallucinations continue to increase, until his therapist has to consider the possibility that Donnie might become a danger to himself, or others.
Meanwhile, writer-director Kelly has been constructing a different explanation for Donnie's doings than a therapeutic one. This narrative is speculative, and takes the film in the sci-fi direction of time travel and alternate universes.
III.
The surrealism, the humour, and the hypnotic tone of Kelly's picture does bring David Lynch to mind. But the echoes of Lynch never distract from Richard Kelly's original talent and promise with Donnie Darko.
__________
<1>I saw the 2004 Director's Cut, which adds twenty minutes to the film.
<2>The song is an INXS track, "Never Tear Us Apart". Later, towards film conclusion, the soundtrack will play Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart".
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Millar than Macdonald
Ross Macdonald was born Kenneth Millar (1915-1983), in California. His parents were originally Canadians, and they returned to Canada while Kenneth was still a child. Millar completed his undergraduate studies at the University Of Western Ontario (1938). He next studied at the University of Michigan, receiving a MA in English in 1943. Millar then began PHD work at Michigan, which culminated in a doctoral thesis on Coleridge (1951).
It was during his time as a graduate student that Millar began to write and publish crime novels. The pseudonyms John Macdonald, John Ross Macdonald, and finally Ross Macdonald, would come later. Millar's career as a novelist began under his given name, with The Dark Tunnel in 1944. Blue City belongs to this grouping, published in 1947.
II.
Johnny Weather returns from the war to his home town an angry young man. "I hadn't had a fight for a long time, and I was spoiling for one." <1> It doesn't take long for Johnny to get his wish. He gets to dance the very first bar he wanders into. "'Shut up or I'll hit you again! With both hands.' My left split his upper lip and my right closed his left eye. 'See what I mean?' [Johnny said]".
Johnny next gets the news that his father's been murdered. When he starts poking around into the unsolved crime, he finds corruption everywhere he turns. There is drug-dealing, prostitution and blackmail. The police and the city government have been bought by criminals and gangsters. Even more troubling for Johnny, though, is the realization that his father J.D. Weather had been complicit in the town's venality. "I had always thought my father was the straightest man in the Middle West."
III.
Scenes of pulpish violence accumulate as Johnny goes looking for his father's killer, in a town that now reminds him of the "suburbs of hell". Millar's use of the noir style brings both Hammett and Chandler to mind. But perhaps also owing to Millar's academia background, we get passages as the following.
People "moved and regrouped in a slow enormous Bacchic dance." There is a photo of "Friedrich Engels, surveying with a cold eye the chaotic symbols of the civilization he had criticized." The noise of cars below a window is a "muffled obbligato of impermanence." A personal bookshelf carries the titles of James's Psychology and Malraux's La Condition Humaine. Other writers are characterized, as "the lubricity of Rabelais, the immorality of Flaubert, the viciousness of Hemingway".
IV.
The Macdonald Lew Archer series would follow soon after this novel, to Millar's much greater fame. But Blue City bears interest, on its own.
__________
<1>Millar, Kenneth. Blue City. 1996 Chivers Press Edition.
It was during his time as a graduate student that Millar began to write and publish crime novels. The pseudonyms John Macdonald, John Ross Macdonald, and finally Ross Macdonald, would come later. Millar's career as a novelist began under his given name, with The Dark Tunnel in 1944. Blue City belongs to this grouping, published in 1947.
II.
Johnny Weather returns from the war to his home town an angry young man. "I hadn't had a fight for a long time, and I was spoiling for one." <1> It doesn't take long for Johnny to get his wish. He gets to dance the very first bar he wanders into. "'Shut up or I'll hit you again! With both hands.' My left split his upper lip and my right closed his left eye. 'See what I mean?' [Johnny said]".
Johnny next gets the news that his father's been murdered. When he starts poking around into the unsolved crime, he finds corruption everywhere he turns. There is drug-dealing, prostitution and blackmail. The police and the city government have been bought by criminals and gangsters. Even more troubling for Johnny, though, is the realization that his father J.D. Weather had been complicit in the town's venality. "I had always thought my father was the straightest man in the Middle West."
III.
Scenes of pulpish violence accumulate as Johnny goes looking for his father's killer, in a town that now reminds him of the "suburbs of hell". Millar's use of the noir style brings both Hammett and Chandler to mind. But perhaps also owing to Millar's academia background, we get passages as the following.
People "moved and regrouped in a slow enormous Bacchic dance." There is a photo of "Friedrich Engels, surveying with a cold eye the chaotic symbols of the civilization he had criticized." The noise of cars below a window is a "muffled obbligato of impermanence." A personal bookshelf carries the titles of James's Psychology and Malraux's La Condition Humaine. Other writers are characterized, as "the lubricity of Rabelais, the immorality of Flaubert, the viciousness of Hemingway".
IV.
The Macdonald Lew Archer series would follow soon after this novel, to Millar's much greater fame. But Blue City bears interest, on its own.
__________
<1>Millar, Kenneth. Blue City. 1996 Chivers Press Edition.
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Win Some
We are sometimes presented with circumstances that strike us as mutually beneficial. If only.
II.
If only Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) can convince a judge that Mike has his client Leo Poplar's best interests in mind, then he might be appointed Poplar's legal guardian. And collect the $1500 monthly guardianship fee. Mike and his family need this $1500 badly, as Flaherty's small New Jersey law practice is in lousy financial shape.
Leo Poplar (Burt Young) is an elderly man struggling with the first stages of dementia. As it seems Poplar has no family or friends to turn to, the judge is persuaded that Mike become his guardian. Mike then promptly moves Poplar into a seniors' residence, despite Poplar's strong objections to leaving his own home.
But Mike has the authority now to put his plan into action. Effectively washing his hands of Poplar, Mike is set to collect his monthly cheque. Poplar gets the residential care he needs; Mike gets the money he needs. A win-win deal for everyone, Mike has convinced himself.
III.
Win Win (Thomas McCarthy, 2011) also features another storyline about Mike's part-time work as the coach of a high school wrestling team. The two narrative ends are joined by the introduction of Leo's teen grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer) into the plot. Storytelling drives this movie, as character and situation inform and resolve each other. The story turns are engrossing, and moments of comic relief are well-placed.
As to Mike Flaherty's tidy little deal for himself, it continues to splash around, down there in the film's undertow. Until Win Win comes to an end.
II.
If only Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) can convince a judge that Mike has his client Leo Poplar's best interests in mind, then he might be appointed Poplar's legal guardian. And collect the $1500 monthly guardianship fee. Mike and his family need this $1500 badly, as Flaherty's small New Jersey law practice is in lousy financial shape.
Leo Poplar (Burt Young) is an elderly man struggling with the first stages of dementia. As it seems Poplar has no family or friends to turn to, the judge is persuaded that Mike become his guardian. Mike then promptly moves Poplar into a seniors' residence, despite Poplar's strong objections to leaving his own home.
But Mike has the authority now to put his plan into action. Effectively washing his hands of Poplar, Mike is set to collect his monthly cheque. Poplar gets the residential care he needs; Mike gets the money he needs. A win-win deal for everyone, Mike has convinced himself.
III.
Win Win (Thomas McCarthy, 2011) also features another storyline about Mike's part-time work as the coach of a high school wrestling team. The two narrative ends are joined by the introduction of Leo's teen grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer) into the plot. Storytelling drives this movie, as character and situation inform and resolve each other. The story turns are engrossing, and moments of comic relief are well-placed.
As to Mike Flaherty's tidy little deal for himself, it continues to splash around, down there in the film's undertow. Until Win Win comes to an end.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
By Any Other Name
The narrator in William Faulkner's "A Rose For Emily" reflects the views the story's community holds of a town spinster. Emily Grierson was raised a member of Southern gentility. The Civil War damaged the family fortunes, however, so that the Grierson house is left to "stubborn and coquettish decay...an eyesore among eyesores". <1> Their fortunes may have declined, but the old Grierson pride still won't allow Emily, or her father, to accept marriage proposals for Emily they consider beneath them.
Thus, Emily is still without a husband at thirty. Then her father dies. The town that already felt that the Griersons "held themselves a little too high for what they really were", now savours a little schadenfreude. "When her father died...in a way, people were glad. Being left alone, and a pauper she too would know...of a penny more or less".
II.
Without her father to wield a horsewhip (literally) to keep unmarital male advances in check, Emily develops an "interest" in a local labourer, Homer Barron. The town is taken aback by Emily's actions, but really does not take them too seriously. "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer".
Homer's not been taking his relations with Emily too seriously, either. The town hears him remark "that he was not a marrying man". Emily buys some poison, for "rats". And the town chorus is, "She will kill herself; and we said it would be the best thing". But Emily does not kill herself. Homer Barron disappears.
III.
Emily Grierson is first bound by the strictures of her upbringing, through the authority of her father. After her father's death, a binding in an other name follows, from a town community that considers her a "hereditary obligation", a "duty, and a care". As Emily's been raised to internalize certain codes of conduct, so also she is held to standards the community has set for a member of her class. There is shrewd insight, and much artistry in Faulkner's treatment of this kind of double bind, as elsewhere, in "A Rose For Emily".
__________
<1>Faulkner, William. "A Rose For Emily". The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction (1986).
Thus, Emily is still without a husband at thirty. Then her father dies. The town that already felt that the Griersons "held themselves a little too high for what they really were", now savours a little schadenfreude. "When her father died...in a way, people were glad. Being left alone, and a pauper she too would know...of a penny more or less".
II.
Without her father to wield a horsewhip (literally) to keep unmarital male advances in check, Emily develops an "interest" in a local labourer, Homer Barron. The town is taken aback by Emily's actions, but really does not take them too seriously. "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer".
Homer's not been taking his relations with Emily too seriously, either. The town hears him remark "that he was not a marrying man". Emily buys some poison, for "rats". And the town chorus is, "She will kill herself; and we said it would be the best thing". But Emily does not kill herself. Homer Barron disappears.
III.
Emily Grierson is first bound by the strictures of her upbringing, through the authority of her father. After her father's death, a binding in an other name follows, from a town community that considers her a "hereditary obligation", a "duty, and a care". As Emily's been raised to internalize certain codes of conduct, so also she is held to standards the community has set for a member of her class. There is shrewd insight, and much artistry in Faulkner's treatment of this kind of double bind, as elsewhere, in "A Rose For Emily".
__________
<1>Faulkner, William. "A Rose For Emily". The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction (1986).
Thursday, January 1, 2015
Way Cool
January in Canada, and Winter is on. This is swell if you like the season. Otherwise, you might be daydreaming about an escape from the cold. The Way Way Back (Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, 2013) is a dramedy set during a summer holiday, and for its running time, fits the bill of a sunny escape nicely.
II.
Way Back had me cheering for its success by an early scene, where 14-year old Duncan (Liam James) is crooning along to REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore". Then the camera widens our gaze, to reveal that the person who has caught Duncan in full singing feeling is the girl next-door, Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb). Susanna makes no comment, but she doesn't have to. Duncan's amusing embarrassment speaks for itself.
The child of a broken marriage, Duncan has been obliged to travel for summer vacation to a town near Cape Cod with his mother Pam (Toni Collette), her boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell) and Trent's daughter, Steph (Zoe Levin). Arriving at the house they'll be staying at for the duration, they meet the neighbours. Betty (Allison Janney) is an amiable boozer, a loose-talking single mom to Susanna and Peter (River Alexander). A married couple, Kip (Rob Corddry) and Joan (Amanda Peet) completes the group.
Duncan next meets the one other adult significant to his stay in town. But before we get to him, the film attends to the man who has already been seeking to be significant in Duncan's life - Pam's boyfriend. Trent proves himself a bully, in an uptight, petty sort of way. Later, he will put the cherry on his cake of virtues by displaying a cheating eye for the ladies.
Along comes the charismatic Owen (Sam Rockwell), who it would be polite to describe as an apprentice-adult. Owen works, sort of, at the town water park. With his lazy patter of quips he seems to be auditioning, badly as not, for a standup slot at a comedy club.
III.
That Owen is so obviously the hip slacker, who so obviously becomes a genial father-figure (who Duncan so obviously needs), demonstrates a larger point about how this film treats cinematic cliche. The coming of age summer movie: we know this story. But what Way Back does so well is to present familiar sights, sounds and situations just long enough to register with us, and then lets them fade away. This allows for a sense of space in the film, suffusing with a sweet nostalgia. It is a beguiling thing to watch build, even if it's only as real as The Way Way Back.
II.
Way Back had me cheering for its success by an early scene, where 14-year old Duncan (Liam James) is crooning along to REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore". Then the camera widens our gaze, to reveal that the person who has caught Duncan in full singing feeling is the girl next-door, Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb). Susanna makes no comment, but she doesn't have to. Duncan's amusing embarrassment speaks for itself.
The child of a broken marriage, Duncan has been obliged to travel for summer vacation to a town near Cape Cod with his mother Pam (Toni Collette), her boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell) and Trent's daughter, Steph (Zoe Levin). Arriving at the house they'll be staying at for the duration, they meet the neighbours. Betty (Allison Janney) is an amiable boozer, a loose-talking single mom to Susanna and Peter (River Alexander). A married couple, Kip (Rob Corddry) and Joan (Amanda Peet) completes the group.
Duncan next meets the one other adult significant to his stay in town. But before we get to him, the film attends to the man who has already been seeking to be significant in Duncan's life - Pam's boyfriend. Trent proves himself a bully, in an uptight, petty sort of way. Later, he will put the cherry on his cake of virtues by displaying a cheating eye for the ladies.
Along comes the charismatic Owen (Sam Rockwell), who it would be polite to describe as an apprentice-adult. Owen works, sort of, at the town water park. With his lazy patter of quips he seems to be auditioning, badly as not, for a standup slot at a comedy club.
III.
That Owen is so obviously the hip slacker, who so obviously becomes a genial father-figure (who Duncan so obviously needs), demonstrates a larger point about how this film treats cinematic cliche. The coming of age summer movie: we know this story. But what Way Back does so well is to present familiar sights, sounds and situations just long enough to register with us, and then lets them fade away. This allows for a sense of space in the film, suffusing with a sweet nostalgia. It is a beguiling thing to watch build, even if it's only as real as The Way Way Back.
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