Sustained Criticism

Disgrace was a disappointment. I realised that so much of what disgusts, and enthralls me, is Lurie's thoughts. Coetzee leaves us with an understated sense of his themes, we feel we know nothing. Steve Jacobs, director, his screenplay-writing wife (Oh, god, I'm reducing a woman to a wife, again) made to much of the physical side of things. And they forgot the madness of his opera - the ridicule of him playing a child's instrument for the clubfooted dog. It must be tremendously difficult work, transfering a book to film. Disgrace in particular, because it is so very character driven. And so much of an interior monologue. Bah, I prefer the book.
Malkovich and Heines were divine. As was Petrus. I'll re-view it on DVD when I get it, and perhaps I'll enjoy it more. Certain scenes were even more powerful on-screen.

But the heavy fog from last night has fallen, and continues to fall. Everything is sheethed in white, and golden class shards glitter outside our windows. These are the times I love winter, and having to walk doggie. And then I have to mend my dress (the skirt' sown up, to create a dishevelled, sculpted effect), and find the buttons for my coat. Figure out what I'm going to do with the hair, re-growth is such a curse. I love, love, love my current colour - but I need to schedule a new appointment with my hair-dresser when I go to dye it next time. Once every six weeks. I can't take these roots. Pin-curls or a braided chignon-y mess? And make-up. I want it heavy, and I want to use my glitter eyeliner. Why didn't I buy false lashes?

Each winter, I re-discover why I enjoy it. I remember that I love wading through snow with doggie in tow. "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" (Vonnegut), or Nothing Places, "in which one could temporarily cease to exist" (Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close). Did you know birds can actually walk up trees, diagonally? Until I saw one do it earlier, I had no idea.

(Tangent: "We're also asked to believe that Oskar's grandfather, who lost his fiancée, Anna, during the firebombing of Dresden, was so traumatized by his experiences that he stopped speaking and took to writing down everything instead: "If something made me want to laugh, I'd write 'Ha ha ha!' and instead of singing in the shower I would write out the lyrics of my favorite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs."" NY Times' review of Extremely Loud .... Belief is not a factor of literature. Just as reliable narrators are not. What transpires in fictional discourse is neither true nor false, because it is fiction. No good piece of fiction is ever reliable. It isn't the reliability of it, but the implicity; all that is not said, images, ideas, thoughts. The idea of theme as a direct product of the author is also faulty. Theme is a product of the reader. The rammifications of which I will not deal with now.)

Wouldn't this make for a beautifully structured film or novel? A story of some sort, perhaps several – no, on second thought, not several; it would be too cluttered –, with entirely unrelated tangents thrown in. If I could only put my visions to paper. Which, of course, makes me the overly predictable middle-class child. Expensively educated, moderately intelligent, too-high ideas of self, and a wish to write. Had I only liked Plath as well. Perhaps I should write manifestos? Like Pound did. Imagism, vorticism.

If you read Norwegian Morgenbladet published an interesting article on Gender Theory. With the conclusion that it must be hard work, being conscerned about gender in all aspects of society. Being a highly devoted anything must be fatiguing. But theories are such fun.



Disclaimer: this was all induced by a high dosage of English Grammar, and wine. Neither to be taken in abundance without supervision, and absolutely not together. Now I'm off to bed to indulge my sinful pleasure: Cornwell. It's bland writing, but I enjoy the characters and what she does with them.