sometimes you just read wretched stuff ~

[lookingland]

~ and you can't really help it. it has that sort of car-wreck fascination from which you just can't tear your eyes away. this has been my fodder for the last few nights. in the realms of the truly abhorrent.

for the 50bookchallenge:

no. 8. ~ Christmas with Robert E. Lee by Helen Topping Miller. i can't begin to imagine what compelled this author to pen such a wretched text. i was hoping for some treacle, but instead got a full-on helping of pathetic privation and disgrace (and endless pages of expository dialogue during which General Lee's children go on endlessly about stuff they all already know). man, this was a doozy: bad writing, a depressing, bad story, and some bizarre characterizationss. worse still, i have the sinking suspicion that everything in this slim volume was documented, right down to the Arlington carpets curled under against the wall because they were too big to fit at the shack at Washington College. i honestly couldn't tell if this was written to illicit sympathy for the Lees or in the spirit of some wicked schadenfreude. someone just spork my eyes out, please.

no. 9 ~ Madame Surratt: a drama in five acts by James Webb Rogers. oh. my. word. i'm not even sure i can begin to decribe this meta-theatrical pantheon of bad taste. the plot is inscrutable, the parade of random historical personages (including ~ oh wow ~ George Washington!) is bizarre (francis scott key and powhaten and patrick henry also make appearances ~ there is also an allegorical fantasy sequence, not quite but almost a ballet, in which actors representing the dissenting states comes back to the Union). honestly, i have no idea what to make of this mangled apologetic of southern honor that simultaneously damns the assassination and begs sympathy for its perpetrators. the dialogue is truly, pricelessly, dreadful: warbling Shakespearean monologues full of bombastic overbloated metaphors. this is my favorite exchange:

BOOTH: Richard the Third is on the boards to-night, and you shall learn the lesson while I play.

POWEL: Impossible, for I return to-night.

BOOTH: Whither?

POWEL: To my command.

BOOTH: Then wherefore did you come?

it is, in fact, so absolutely dreadful, i feel i must make use of it. immediately! i'm soooo working this in to my book somehow. if you would like to see for yourself this horror in all of its glory, feel free to read it online! (i love openlibrary.org).

and because we need an accompanying picture, here's something pretty and also slightly educational:



this carte-de-visite played a big role in the conspiracy trial.
it was found in the Surratt house with John Wilkes Booth's photograph
placed behind it. the prosecution kept trotting it out as
if it were some profound piece of evidence. it becomes an interesting
fixation during the course of the testimony.
anyway: it's Thursday and you know what that means? Update Day for Reconstruction. hopefully it's palate cleanser for inflicting bad books on you!

: D

Comments

[romanticizing.livejournal.com]

Wait, so why did they keep bringing up that cdv?

there is also an allegorical fantasy sequence, not quite but almost a ballet, in which actors representing the dissenting states comes back to the Union

Hahahaha. That is amazing.

And the first one reminds me of this BBC drama I saw about Nijinsky. I think every word to come out of his mouth was something he wrote in his diary (which he wrote way later than the year the show took place!), or some obscure ~foreshadowing~ to what would come later. I was left with the impression the writer just skimmed a biography of him rather than, you know, doing research.

(I've also read a few bizarre plays about Nijinsky, incidentally..)

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

re: the cdv ~ good question! it's sorta boggling! they call witness after witness to testify about the Surratts' southern sympathies and try to impress on the commission that they were obvious rabid secessionists because they had a picture of Booth in the house, along with some others of confederate generals (even though there were all sorts of pictures of all sorts of famous people, including Union generals, etc.). it would be like someone trotting out a book about Hitler from your library and saying: see ~ you are obviously a nazi!

so silly.

re Nijinsky: that's hilarious! sometimes those biopics are soooo superficial and embarrassing.

: D

[romanticizing.livejournal.com]

Weird. I wonder if people believed it. It looks like such a charming scene--the little girl and the dog especially. Haha, if they'd arrested everyone who had a picture of Booth, I think they'd have a lot of fangirls on their hands. I didn't even know they had pictures of Union generals! Is there a list somewhere of all the pictures they had?

I feel like I have to see every biopic made of someone I'm interested in. Like now I feel like I have to track down all those horrible Lincoln assassination movies. Especially if they're TV movies. I was watching this History channel thing about it and their Lewis Powell looked like 35 or something. And nothing like him. (Which was unfortunate because I was really looking forward to seeing how they portrayed him and all.)

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

no kidding about the arrests. in fact, even though a lot of people burned his picture or tore it out of their albums out of fear of having it around, it was still selling like hotcakes after the assassination (25¢ to Lincoln's 10¢ ~ and outstripping the dead president easily). the district police tried to put a stop to the sales, but couldn't. ha!

do you mean a list of the pictures that the Surratts had? i think they name a bunch back and forth during the trial, but i would have to double-check.

p.s. was that movie the one with Titus Welliver playing Powell? because yeah, he's about 20 years older and doesn't really resemble him in the slightest ~ hahahaha

: D

[romanticizing.livejournal.com]

25¢ to Lincoln's 10¢ ~ and outstripping the dead president easily

Hahahaha, wow. People are so weird :D That's great that they tried to stop sales of JWB's photos--like that would ever work! Or like they couldn't have been doing more important things, ha. I do wonder how many women burned letters or whatever from him. Kudos (understatement) to Isabel Sumner for keeping hers.

Oh, yeah, I meant a list of pictures the Surratts had--I'll just look at the trial transcript sometime.

Haha, the movie was actually this (http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=Minisite_Generic&content_type_id=57330&display_order=2&mini_id=1074). It was based on Kauffman's book (yay!) and had some ridiculously cheesy historic reenactments (my favorite). Their JWB was sadly unattractive. Their Atzerodt looked kinda like him, though. And their Willie Jett was kind of adorable.

I think I might have to check out that TV movie Titus Welliver was in, though--have you seen it? How was it?

We should have a movie review day on jwb1865 :D

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

wow ~ that history channel site has some really bizarre videos on there. the cheesy factor is off the charts, and what's with the whole: Powell misfiring on Seward and then bludgeoning him with the pistol ~ hahahahahaha. that's wretched! and they call themselves a "history" channel? yikes!

: D

pretty much all of the assassination movies thus far have been laughably bad. i fear for Manhunt. in fact, the reason i started working on an assassination project of my own was because i was so fed up with how bad it's been portrayed in most fictional adaptations.

[romanticizing.livejournal.com]

Haha, I know, right? The Powell misfiring on Seward thing was extremely weird. In the program, they say in a voiceover that Powell went down the stairs and then turned and went back up them, but on screen we just see him messing around upstairs. And I was SO MAD they didn't show his weird hat when he entered Mrs. Surratt's :( (No pickaxe, either!)

Maybe I will take screencaps later and post them because it was so amusingly bad.

I think I have to see that movie you mentioned because Jeremy Sisto plays Frederick Seward. That is a good enough reason for me.

Is Manhunt really happening? I wonder. After I read it, and found out they were making it into a film, I was confused for a while and then started daydreaming into if I were making it, how I would do it. Then I read American Brutus and realized making a movie of that would be like 100000x harder than making a movie of Manhunt and gave up because of all of Swanson's weirdness I had issues with.

I read somewhere they were considering Will Kemp for JWB and I love him. He's primarily a dancer but he's doing mostly acting now. He could so look like JWB, too. (I fear of a Manhunt with an ugly JWB.)

And it's awesome of you to do your own -- I'd certainly love to see it more than some random stupid Hollywood version.