READIN

Wednesday, September 7th, 2005

🦋 Fun

We've been on a real Moomintroll kick around here! We were just getting to the end of Comet in Moominland as we left for Italy; Sylvia said she wanted me to bring the next Moomin book as well. (Technically the next book in the series is Finn Family Moomintroll but I picked out Moominsummer Madness instead.) So on vacation we finished both of those -- she ate up Moominsummer Madness voraciously, multiple chapters at a sitting, and when we got to the end we spent our reading time going back and rereading favorite bits. Now that we are home we have started (and nearly finished) Finn Family Moomintroll, and Sylvia is saying she wants to hear Moominpappa at Sea next.

Tonight's reading was Chapter 6 of Finn Family, which has a special place in our relationship with the Moomins -- it is the first Moomin story I read to Sylvia and we read it together many times over the past year. When we started reading she said she had been waiting for this chapter to come. Also that she thought (correctly) that Thingumy and Bob's suitcase had the ruby in it that the Hobgoblin was after -- she knew this from looking ahead at a picture in Chapter 7 that shows the ruby, and also I guess from remembering when we read Chapter 7 -- we must have read it twice or so, but not in several months' time.

The other major reading I did on vacation was The Ancestor's Tale, which I loved and am meaning to post about soon.

posted evening of September 7th, 2005: Respond
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Saturday, August 20th, 2005

🦋 Two new books!

When we go to Italy (on Tuesday) I will bring with me two books. One is a bilingual edition of Pinsky's translation of the Inferno (not that I can read Italian -- but it seemed like nice to have available for understanding how the poetry should sound); and the other is Dawkins' "The Ancestor's Tale". I got that on an impulse at Coliseum Books yesterday afternoon and have been reading it with enthusiasm ever since. Dawkins is such a great, engaging writer -- the one thing that puts me off about this book is how frequently he feels compelled to point out that evolution is a fact and creationism a bizarre fraud; but I recognize the necessity of his doing so.

posted afternoon of August 20th, 2005: Respond
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Wednesday, August 17th, 2005

(Sniff also was the one to talk to the astronomer in Chapter VI, in an impressively grown-up way. I had not remembered him growing up at all. -- And in the next book, he will again be babyish.)

posted evening of August 17th, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about Tove Jansson

Tuesday, August 16th, 2005

For bedtime stories now, we are reading Comet in Moominland, by Tove Jansson. Sylvia is really loving it, which does my heart good as the Moomin books are some of my favorites. (Previously we have read together chapters here and there from a few of the books, but this is the first one we are taking on as a complete story.)

Tonight while we were reading Chapter IV, we came across one of my favorite moments involving the small animal Sniff, immediately after he escapes from the dragon whose garnets he was trying to steal:

Sniff was sobbing on the ground.

"It's all over now," said Snufkin. "Don't cry anymore, Sniff."

"The garnets," Sniff moaned. "I didn't get a single one."

Snufkin sat down beside him and said kindly, "I know. But that's how it is when you start wanting to have things. Now, I just look at them, and when I go away I carry them in my head. Then my hands are always free, because I don't have to carry a suitcase."

"The garnets would have gone in the rucksack," said Sniff miserably. "You don't need hands for that. It's not the same thing at all just looking at them. I want to touch them and know they're mine."

This exchange is kind of a set piece in children's stories, I can't give an example but you see it quite a bit. But I think nowhere else is it done as neatly and touchingly. It reads to my ear as if Jansson knows it is a set piece and is playing with it a bit, but she is also sincerely getting her point across.

What Jansson does particularly well (and what I think authors who present this exchange often fail in) is show how miserable Sniff is about not having gotten the garnets. His line, "the garnets would have gone in the rucksack -- you don't need hands for that", is just perfect. He's heard the line Snufkin is passing him before, and he's not buying it.

posted evening of August 16th, 2005: Respond

🦋 Hooked

At 32nd St. this morning I walked past a woman wearing a black t-shirt with a large colorful cross and the legend, "I'm Hooked on Jesus" -- as I walked to work, I thought variously of a little kid wearing a t-shirt with appropriate graphic that says "I'm Hooked on Phonics" (presumably included with the instructional kit his parents bought); a clueless 20-year-old hipster wearing a t-shirt that says "I'm Hooked on Junk"... then William Burroughs wandering around Hell's Kitchen 50 years ago with an anachronistic t-shirt that just says "HORSE" in big black letters...

(The clueles hipster was not supposed to actually use heroin, he was trying to make some kind of ironic statement.) (Did I mention I'm not too fond of message t-shirts?)

Did Burroughs call heroin "Horse"? I mainly remember him just calling it "Junk" but he used other names too. I was also thinking of an image of 80-year-old Burroughs in his bedroom in Kansas, visited by a visionary pegasus.

posted afternoon of August 16th, 2005: Respond
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Tuesday, August 9th, 2005

🦋 Further thought on Melville's

The story "Benito Cereno" would make a really excellent movie, and I would cast Johnny Depp as Captain Cereno, and John Cleese as Captain Delano. (Note -- I have never seen "Pirates of the Caribbean" and don't really wish to; but I think Depp's alienated persona would be a perfect match here.)

Update, several days later: Come to think of it, why not check in IMDB and see if it's already been done? Benito Cereno was filmed in 1968, before Depp had embarked on his acting career and before Cleese had broken out of absurd comedy; so neither one of them stars in it. Oh well. Indeed no one I've ever heard of; and it is in a foreign language, too. Would like to see it sometime though.

posted afternoon of August 9th, 2005: Respond

Tuesday, August second, 2005

While we were in Hillsdale a few weeks ago I bought a collection of Melville's short stories, called "The Piazza Tales". -- I bought it principally because it contains "Bartleby", which I've always been interested in reading. So I read that story immediately. (I read it sitting on the grounds of Olana while Ellen toured the residence.) Good, funny,... This morning I picked the book up and read the title story, "The Piazza", on my way in to work. I am wondering if these stories were originally published as a collection, and if the narrator's journey from his piazza to the mountain and back is meant as a metaphor for telling a story.

posted evening of August second, 2005: Respond

Wednesday, July 27th, 2005

Something interesting about seeing the bad movie of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was seeing how closely Sylvia has been paying attention to the plot of the book. We were 3 chapters away from the end, when we saw the movie; and all through the movie Sylvia was pointing out details that were different from the book. (Fortunately the matinee was sparsely attended and she could talk without annoying anybody.) And then when we went back to the book, she spent the last three chapters pointing out things that were different from the movie -- especially the last chapter, where the movie diverges widely -- she got really excited at the notion that it was essentially a different story.

posted evening of July 27th, 2005: Respond
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🦋 A lousy movie

We watched Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Friday night and it left me flat. Now "it left me flat" is certainly not a recommendation; but it took until last night, when I was talking about the movie with Mark, for me to realize how much I actively disliked the movie. I had been too distracted by the pretty colors and animation, and the fabulous acting of two of the leads, to really get how lame it was.

Let's think about three things: the book; the old Wilder movie; and the new movie. These are three quite distinct things with not all that much really in common, besides the skeleton of the plot and some similarities in characterization. The book is masterful. The Wilder movie is fun and superficial. The Burton movie stinks.

Both the Wilder movie and the Burton movie have one major deviation from the book's plot plus many little ones. The Wilder movie has the part with Charlie and his Grandpa drinking the soda that makes you float, and Mr. Wonka getting mad at them for it; made up from whole cloth, nothing like it in the book; and whatever -- it's kind of funny though it does not really add much to the story. (Well actually I really like Grandpa Joe's speech after Wonka gets mad. But as I said whatever.) You can fit it in reasonably with the characters as they're presented.

The Burton movie deviates hugely from the plot of the book at the end of the movie; I am not going to go into detail about how because that would be a spoiler, but it's about the lamest ending I can imagine. Seriously -- I was relating it to Mark last night (who is not planning to see the movie) -- and with each clause of my summary he was gasping with incredulity at the total cheesiness/kitschiness of it. And also, there is the little matter of Johnny Depp's performance -- it seemed to me like he was in a totally separate movie from the rest of the actors. And this is not at all true to the book -- Wonka is eccentric, but he is extremely connected to what is going on around him.

So there you have it -- a pan from Jeremy, who is usually quite easy to please when it comes to movies.

Update: A similar reaction to the new movie from Timothy Burke, who expresses himself better than I.

posted evening of July 27th, 2005: Respond
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Sunday, July 24th, 2005

It might be interesting to compare the characters of Ireneo Funes and Oskar Matzerath.

posted evening of July 24th, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about Jorge Luis Borges

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