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May. 5th, 2012 01:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoception8. The Big Sleep
9. Goodbye, Columbus (3rd)
10. Bishop's Complete Poems 1927-1979 (3rd)
11. No Country for Old Men (2nd)
12. Beloved
Beloved takes some amazing risks with its title conceit, ones that I'm not sure completely pay off on an idea level. All Lost-watchers know that an indeterminate floor helps your story go all the way down, though - while control is endangered, those aspects of occurrence, personality and feeling that really do go all the way down, even in books, emerge to sight. Clarifying obscurity, like in Rembrandt? This is especially great for Morrison's purpose of bringing life back to history, restoring dimensions of experience people didn't talk about - though it affected how they talked, is frozen into the words of (e.g.) Jacobs and Douglass like the polarities etched in stones at their crystallizings, subtly affecting how they'll skip. A fantastic novel, using Sound and the Fury and Dalloway but not shadowed by them (whereas The English Patient is trapped completely in this book's shadow, I now see). I avoided it in Ohio in the '90s because of its oppressive ubiquity, which I can't defend but also don't regret, as it saved something pretty wonderful for here and now.
The Big Sleep I liked almost as much, though it took some work to un-see the movie while reading it. The movie misses the wonderful set pieces, as good even as the similes, or rather is unable to capture them despite some really inspired attempts. In this respect, Chinatown may be the best adaptation of the book, followed closely by vatious Coen moments, just like Kurosawa's samurai movies have the best grasp of Chandler's Marlowe. The altered Big Sleep movie ending is interesting but smudges the clarity of the character. Wasn't really thrilled with the politics of it - I'm as much a child of the '90s as my highly offendable sister, finally - but noir is probably written out of one's reactionary streak, or anyway the part of the mind ready to see everyone in the worst light. The recoil from which by both author and reader over the course of the book being maybe the point of noir.
9. Goodbye, Columbus (3rd)
10. Bishop's Complete Poems 1927-1979 (3rd)
11. No Country for Old Men (2nd)
12. Beloved
Beloved takes some amazing risks with its title conceit, ones that I'm not sure completely pay off on an idea level. All Lost-watchers know that an indeterminate floor helps your story go all the way down, though - while control is endangered, those aspects of occurrence, personality and feeling that really do go all the way down, even in books, emerge to sight. Clarifying obscurity, like in Rembrandt? This is especially great for Morrison's purpose of bringing life back to history, restoring dimensions of experience people didn't talk about - though it affected how they talked, is frozen into the words of (e.g.) Jacobs and Douglass like the polarities etched in stones at their crystallizings, subtly affecting how they'll skip. A fantastic novel, using Sound and the Fury and Dalloway but not shadowed by them (whereas The English Patient is trapped completely in this book's shadow, I now see). I avoided it in Ohio in the '90s because of its oppressive ubiquity, which I can't defend but also don't regret, as it saved something pretty wonderful for here and now.
The Big Sleep I liked almost as much, though it took some work to un-see the movie while reading it. The movie misses the wonderful set pieces, as good even as the similes, or rather is unable to capture them despite some really inspired attempts. In this respect, Chinatown may be the best adaptation of the book, followed closely by vatious Coen moments, just like Kurosawa's samurai movies have the best grasp of Chandler's Marlowe. The altered Big Sleep movie ending is interesting but smudges the clarity of the character. Wasn't really thrilled with the politics of it - I'm as much a child of the '90s as my highly offendable sister, finally - but noir is probably written out of one's reactionary streak, or anyway the part of the mind ready to see everyone in the worst light. The recoil from which by both author and reader over the course of the book being maybe the point of noir.
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