Hello Darkness, my old friend
Soon you’ll start at 5 p.m. …
###
Switching food seems to have resolved Molly Cat’s barfing issues.
And the venison was absolutely delicious, some of the best red meat I have ever eaten. (Though, admittedly, I’m not a big fan of red meat & hardly ever eat it, so what do I know?)
Iggy sauteed the medallions with garlic & white wine, & the three of us—Iggy, Gus, me—nibbled at the dining room table while Iggy & I did a comedy routine: If roadkill is this good, maybe we should go out gunning for it, seize every opportunity to run those critters down—
“Gus, do you drive yet? No? Then you’ll have take the ATV. Iggy, what a pity you let that racoon get away—”
Iggy laughed so hard at that one, he choked, and I thought, Right. You still have a bit of a crush on him.
Other than that, I mostly watched television & read.
Watched the very last episode of the TV adaptation of My Brilliant Friend. On the whole, the series is good, accomplishing what, when I first read the books, I imagined might be an impossible feat, namely the translation of approximately 2,000 pages of dense interior monologue into a visual medium.
But that last conversation between Lila & Lenu!
In the TV series, it’s all gooey & sentimental: I am moving to Turin, but I will love you forever! Blah, blah, blah.
My memory of the novel is that Lila & Lenu’s last conversation is caustic. Lila insults Lenu. This is why Lenu never reaches out to Lila again after she moves north. I’m too lazy to actually check the book, of course.
The final scene in which Lenu receives the two lost dolls in an anonymous package didn’t work for me, either. The dolls look too new! After 50 years, the dolls would be disgusting. Beloved, but old, filthy, stuffing coming loose. A fitting metaphore for the Lenu/Lila relationship.
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smokingboot let me know that The Mirror & the Light—last novel in Hilary Mantell’s Wolf Hall trilogy—has made it to the screen, so I tracked the first episode of that one down, too.
Really, really well done.
Wolf Hall’s Thomas Cromwell is one version of the Man I Love—hard as nails, flinty even, but with a sardonic sense of humor & a deep appreciation for beauty & human motive. Mark Rylance is superb in the role even though he looks nothing like the historical Thomas Cromwell—who lives these days in the Morgan Library:
Also, Damien Lewis deserves some sort of acting prize for his portrayal of Henry VIII. Lewis is not a fat man. But he does an amazing job conveying corpulence.
###
Finished The Easter Parade; started Revolutionary Road. Both by Richard Yates.
Who’s Richard Yates?
Think Thomas Hardy if Hardy been a chain-smoking alcoholic in Manhattan during the 1960s.
In other words, masterful but bleak prose technician. And also a realist in the tradition of Zola—which may be one reason why he was a relatively obscure writer even in his own lifetime—a writer’s writer, as they say—and why today, his books have dropped off the shelves entirely: The period of 1960 through 1980 when Yates was writing coincided with the flowering of literary postmodernism here in the States; the celebrated writers were Pynchon, DeLillo, Rushdie, Vonnegut. However perfect his prose, Richard Yates just wasn’t fashionable.
###
Surviving has its own rhythm. Yates gets every beat perfectly.
One thing about survivors—I am one, so I know—is that we are disinclined to whine or complain or over-analyze. Whining, complaining, and introspection are only helpful once you’re safe.
Emily Grimes, the protagonist of The Easter Parade, is never safe. So, she never reflects on her own experiences. And until the last explosive, heart-breaking scene of the novel, she never complains.
April Wheeler, the borderline-personality protagonist of Revolutionary Road complains! But she doesn't survive.
(I’ve seen the film—brilliant but immensely disturbing—so I already know how this one ends. But I’m interested in watching Yates apply the fine dabs of paint.)
Soon you’ll start at 5 p.m. …
###
Switching food seems to have resolved Molly Cat’s barfing issues.
And the venison was absolutely delicious, some of the best red meat I have ever eaten. (Though, admittedly, I’m not a big fan of red meat & hardly ever eat it, so what do I know?)
Iggy sauteed the medallions with garlic & white wine, & the three of us—Iggy, Gus, me—nibbled at the dining room table while Iggy & I did a comedy routine: If roadkill is this good, maybe we should go out gunning for it, seize every opportunity to run those critters down—
“Gus, do you drive yet? No? Then you’ll have take the ATV. Iggy, what a pity you let that racoon get away—”
Iggy laughed so hard at that one, he choked, and I thought, Right. You still have a bit of a crush on him.
Other than that, I mostly watched television & read.
Watched the very last episode of the TV adaptation of My Brilliant Friend. On the whole, the series is good, accomplishing what, when I first read the books, I imagined might be an impossible feat, namely the translation of approximately 2,000 pages of dense interior monologue into a visual medium.
But that last conversation between Lila & Lenu!
In the TV series, it’s all gooey & sentimental: I am moving to Turin, but I will love you forever! Blah, blah, blah.
My memory of the novel is that Lila & Lenu’s last conversation is caustic. Lila insults Lenu. This is why Lenu never reaches out to Lila again after she moves north. I’m too lazy to actually check the book, of course.
The final scene in which Lenu receives the two lost dolls in an anonymous package didn’t work for me, either. The dolls look too new! After 50 years, the dolls would be disgusting. Beloved, but old, filthy, stuffing coming loose. A fitting metaphore for the Lenu/Lila relationship.
smokingboot let me know that The Mirror & the Light—last novel in Hilary Mantell’s Wolf Hall trilogy—has made it to the screen, so I tracked the first episode of that one down, too. Really, really well done.
Wolf Hall’s Thomas Cromwell is one version of the Man I Love—hard as nails, flinty even, but with a sardonic sense of humor & a deep appreciation for beauty & human motive. Mark Rylance is superb in the role even though he looks nothing like the historical Thomas Cromwell—who lives these days in the Morgan Library:
Also, Damien Lewis deserves some sort of acting prize for his portrayal of Henry VIII. Lewis is not a fat man. But he does an amazing job conveying corpulence.
###
Finished The Easter Parade; started Revolutionary Road. Both by Richard Yates.
Who’s Richard Yates?
Think Thomas Hardy if Hardy been a chain-smoking alcoholic in Manhattan during the 1960s.
In other words, masterful but bleak prose technician. And also a realist in the tradition of Zola—which may be one reason why he was a relatively obscure writer even in his own lifetime—a writer’s writer, as they say—and why today, his books have dropped off the shelves entirely: The period of 1960 through 1980 when Yates was writing coincided with the flowering of literary postmodernism here in the States; the celebrated writers were Pynchon, DeLillo, Rushdie, Vonnegut. However perfect his prose, Richard Yates just wasn’t fashionable.
###
Surviving has its own rhythm. Yates gets every beat perfectly.
One thing about survivors—I am one, so I know—is that we are disinclined to whine or complain or over-analyze. Whining, complaining, and introspection are only helpful once you’re safe.
Emily Grimes, the protagonist of The Easter Parade, is never safe. So, she never reflects on her own experiences. And until the last explosive, heart-breaking scene of the novel, she never complains.
April Wheeler, the borderline-personality protagonist of Revolutionary Road complains! But she doesn't survive.
(I’ve seen the film—brilliant but immensely disturbing—so I already know how this one ends. But I’m interested in watching Yates apply the fine dabs of paint.)
