lookingland

i love Gary Oldman. so i had to watch Ronsencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead even though i find Stoppard merely clever and not all that entertaining. the film was about as bad as the reviews said: horrifically paced and makes a poor transition to the screen from the stage play ~ much of it simply didn't work and despite excellent performances the comedic timing was just really swallowed up in the scenery. Richard Dreyfess as the "player" was excellent (i love him too) and the costumes were fun, but the script was a dead fish and i mostly finished it just because i can watch Oldman read a phone book and still be entertained.

oldman and roth play a shakesperean Bill & Ted

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no. 7 for the

50bookchallenge:

i finished Collingwood's Andersonville Violets ~ i could write a dissertation on how "bad" this book is. because it was written in 1889, i gave it far more consideration than i would have had it been "new". this book was an exercise in sentimentality, negative stereotypes about the south and black people (who are consistently called "niggers" by everybody, north and south), and some of the most horrific purple prose in a victorian novel (and that's saying something).

the basic premise is interesting: john rockwell (union man imprisoned at andersonville) risks his life to procure for a dying friend a clutch of violets growing on the wrong side of the deadline. jack foster (confederate soldier), in a moment of pity, permits him to get away with it. jack is subsequently dishonorably discharged (something i doubt would have actually happened in 1864, but that's beside the point).

anyway, the story follows the two characters and how their lives are irrevocably altered because of this incident. 10-15 years later, john rockwell, now a carpetbagger (though of course never referred to as such), settles in (conveniently) jack foster's hometown.

i'm making this all sound much more interesting that it was ~ hahahahaha!

mostly this book is a racist indictment of "white trash" southerners that doesn't even have the conviction to take a firm side on the "negro question" ~ having john rockwell both advocating for their education while simultaneously "employing" them at his farm in pretty much the same manner any southerner would have taken.

the story gets more ludicrous toward the end with a tidy deus ex machina to somehow even the score between john and jack (since jack has basically suffered nothing but shame and hardship since the war on account of saving john's life ~ but that's all right, he gets his girl in the end).

: o p

i could go on and on (and probably will), but i will say at least this ~ i'm glad i read it. it's an interesting perspective from the era of the yankee attitude toward the post-war south (among my favorite conceits in the book is that yankee john rockwell has to teach the white trash southerners how to farm ~ oy vey!). jack foster makes an argument late in the book that john rockwell would not have a black man at this table and john replies that he would ~ if he deserved to be there. contingencies like this were the regular fare. everyone is broad-brushed: from the jews to the mammies to the fat lazy southerners (everyone in the north is thin and hard-working of course ~ except a few other carpetbaggers who gloat too much).

and just on a technical writing note: john and jack? come on! worst case of two characters with the same name ~ later on people call jack by john and i spent a lot of time having to reread so i could figure out which character was which ~ blarg! same with nellie (john's wife) and little nellie (his daughter).

this book was recently reprinted (in 2000), though i can't imagine for what purpose unless it was academic: as a survey of post-war literature perhaps (it's certainly useful on that level). later on i'll type up the opening paragraph of this book ~ it's so deliciously bad it's worth saving.

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yesterday i wrote a good pile of pages, but nothing really worth sharing, i don't think. i'll try to write some more today.

: D