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proximoception) wrote2007-06-07 12:08 am
proximoception) wrote2007-06-07 12:08 am
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Ads after The Colbert Report for Hostel, Part 2 leave me furious. Does anyone watch this disgustingness except on a dare? Is this ever actually liked, even by 19-year-olds whose puberty, parents' divorce and first mistouching by clergy occurred exactly simultaneously? I watched the first one on a couples outing, the show we'd come for was sold out and my fervent Cassandrings were ignored by the girls of the group, who somehow had the idea it would be a "psychological thriller". Regrets were enjoyed by all; comparing notes, we found that each wanted to leave through the last most of it, but assumed someone else in the party was somehow being entertained. It was much, much worse than even I had expected. I checked the imdb reviews a few months later, amazed at the lack of public outrage I'd expected. The three or four people who expressed that had all had my exact experience, seen it with friends who chose it at random. Most others were disappointed that it was not in fact the goriest film imaginable, as had apparently been promised. Hence the sequel, I guess. Being this offended is rather confusing to me, with my small rep as Phlegmato-Man; I don't think this is coming from my growing older, though. The ageing of horror movies is the culprit: the random slashing up of teenagers was undreamtof in the '30s because less specialized shocks were still feelable. Likewise with Hostel compared with those c. 1980 movies, the necessary exponents having been applied. Tolerance for this, interest in this, can only have been built up by seeing the wrong ten thousand horrible movies in the right order. It has to be that, though even that way the "taste" defies my imagination. I can only think back to my friend Ben, whose ideal movie might be 90 minutes of a pair of breasts firing guns at one another, who didn't think Saving Private Ryan was violent at all. Whatever Spielberg invented there was picked up by horror movies c. the Dawn of the Dead remake, stomach-churning enough in itself but still several Darwinian switchtracks from Hostel. Inhuman slime. Boycott Quentin Tarantino's movies just for his association.
Now that my blood's down I'm thinking about sequels in general. Seems like, in Cap-L literature, movie-style repeat-nearly-everything sequels don't exist but there's a few major followup types, such as: 1) mere recurrences of characters (Twain's Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn books, Lawrence's Brangwen books), 2) revisitings of a popular book years and years later by an author of mostly less popular ones (Brave New World, Erewhon, Catch-22--sometimes this goes little past the title, e.g. Paradise Regained), 3) a direct, planned-feeling continuation of the prior book or books, though somehow still short of 'multivolume' unity (the relation of the last Border Trilogy book to the first two), 4) continuations the earlier text didn't realize it needed, treating it like the fragment it was never intended to be then completing it--self-applied version of Bloom's tessera, I think it was.
Multivolumes: Remembrance of Things Past, The Man Without Qualities, Aegypt, War and Peace I believe, Joseph and His Brothers. Were Trollope's two series planned or accreted? Even such nonsequels enter sequel-ish territory when the end seems to remember as much about the concerns of the beginning as the end's oldish author does about the less-oldish beginning's one.
What to make of Roth's Zuckerman books? I guess all the above bonds apply to some of the transitions. The thinness of the lines separating them from the Kepesh, Portnoy, "Roth", "Everyman" and even Sabbath books complicates their relations even further, probably to the point of discussion-defying simplicity. How many has he done so far:
1. My Life as a Man (kind of; name applied to two versions of a fictional precursor figure--of entirely different parentage etc.)
2.-5. Zuckerman Bound series: The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound, The Anatomy Lesson, The Prague Orgy
6. The Counterlife (more parallel 'versions', but this time of the ZB Zuckerman; presumably the final section's is more or less official)
7. The Facts (kind of; Zuckerman responds to Roth's life story in a thirty page epilogue)
8. Deception (kind of; Roth and a lover dream up some new adventures for Zuckerman, including his death I think?)
9.-11. The American Trilogy: American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, The Human Stain (Zuckerman narrates the life stories of some people he's met, somewhat in the manner of Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, being mostly present in the stories as on-site listener)
12. This October's Exit Ghost
Exit Ghost is apparently the first straight, actually-definitely-happening, actually-about-Z. book since the Bound tetralogy, which is helpfully being released as a Library of America volume in October (a 700-pager; those things are getting shorter and more expensive at the same time, aren't they?). Seems to hark back to Ghost Writer in its plot, too, making it ambiguously, impossibly type 1), 2), 3) (since Roth may have intended to kill him for real from the start--assuming he does kill him) AND 4), all at once.
Now that my blood's down I'm thinking about sequels in general. Seems like, in Cap-L literature, movie-style repeat-nearly-everything sequels don't exist but there's a few major followup types, such as: 1) mere recurrences of characters (Twain's Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn books, Lawrence's Brangwen books), 2) revisitings of a popular book years and years later by an author of mostly less popular ones (Brave New World, Erewhon, Catch-22--sometimes this goes little past the title, e.g. Paradise Regained), 3) a direct, planned-feeling continuation of the prior book or books, though somehow still short of 'multivolume' unity (the relation of the last Border Trilogy book to the first two), 4) continuations the earlier text didn't realize it needed, treating it like the fragment it was never intended to be then completing it--self-applied version of Bloom's tessera, I think it was.
Multivolumes: Remembrance of Things Past, The Man Without Qualities, Aegypt, War and Peace I believe, Joseph and His Brothers. Were Trollope's two series planned or accreted? Even such nonsequels enter sequel-ish territory when the end seems to remember as much about the concerns of the beginning as the end's oldish author does about the less-oldish beginning's one.
What to make of Roth's Zuckerman books? I guess all the above bonds apply to some of the transitions. The thinness of the lines separating them from the Kepesh, Portnoy, "Roth", "Everyman" and even Sabbath books complicates their relations even further, probably to the point of discussion-defying simplicity. How many has he done so far:
1. My Life as a Man (kind of; name applied to two versions of a fictional precursor figure--of entirely different parentage etc.)
2.-5. Zuckerman Bound series: The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound, The Anatomy Lesson, The Prague Orgy
6. The Counterlife (more parallel 'versions', but this time of the ZB Zuckerman; presumably the final section's is more or less official)
7. The Facts (kind of; Zuckerman responds to Roth's life story in a thirty page epilogue)
8. Deception (kind of; Roth and a lover dream up some new adventures for Zuckerman, including his death I think?)
9.-11. The American Trilogy: American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, The Human Stain (Zuckerman narrates the life stories of some people he's met, somewhat in the manner of Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, being mostly present in the stories as on-site listener)
12. This October's Exit Ghost
Exit Ghost is apparently the first straight, actually-definitely-happening, actually-about-Z. book since the Bound tetralogy, which is helpfully being released as a Library of America volume in October (a 700-pager; those things are getting shorter and more expensive at the same time, aren't they?). Seems to hark back to Ghost Writer in its plot, too, making it ambiguously, impossibly type 1), 2), 3) (since Roth may have intended to kill him for real from the start--assuming he does kill him) AND 4), all at once.
Henry Rollins wants you on IFC
(Anonymous) 2007-06-07 05:41 am (UTC)(link)Henry will choose someone who does a commentary on one of 11 controversial topics he's chosen and make them the host of an upcoming “Rollins Show” Marathon on IFC.
THE HOST OF THE ON-AIR IFC MARATHON!
Go to ziddio.com/myrollinsrant and record and upload a video "rant" on one of the topics that Henry has selected (including abortion rights, has the Iraq war made us safer? Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina, is America a dumb country? global warming, etc.) The person he chooses will be flown to Los Angeles, meet Henry, and serve as host of the upcoming "Rollins Show" Marathon on IFC. All entries will be watched by, and the winner chosen solely by, Henry. He encourages anyone to enter, no matter their political persuasion. His only requirement: have “passion and attitude!”
Check it out: ziddio.com/myrollinsrant