From the (mostly) wonderful Kim Fabricius:
There are some churches that, for their παρρησία, [frankness] should have crash helmets in the pews – and others, for their bullshit, Wellington boots.
And from the equally wonderful Dave Pell:
There is no tantrum like a Put-Down-the-iPad Tantrum.
First I need to prepare. I put on my hazmat suit, helmet, and thick, dark goggles to make it less likely that I too will be pulled into the light. Any parent of an iPad-era child will be familiar with the other tools in my arsenal: Ear plugs, body padding, iron manacles, shock paddles, a straight jacket, an inflatable kayak (speaking in tongues while the head spins exorcist-like 360s can release a significant amount of saliva), WiFi jammers, tear gas, tasers; and for re-entry, candles, classical music, smelling salts, and several black and white paper printouts of familiar places and loved ones.
And even with all that, I give myself about a 50% shot of bringing my son’s attention back to the terrestrial world before the iPad battery runs out.
From my book, Grimhilda! - when I picked up on this paragraph I realised it had a typo in it! Now fixed...
The Sergeant Major marched out accompanied by two of his corporals. His uniform was a resplendent red, with gold braiding - unlike the drab combat kit of his Yankee counterparts. He wore a shiny gold helmet shaped rather like an old-fashioned policeman’s hat, except this one had a spike on top, with a white plume. Under his arm, he carried a pace-stick, which he used to prod people when necessary.
From an essay by Andre Dubus:
Because he and his father could not really talk to each other, this test of manual labour passes between them as a kind of spiritual gift from father to son. The gift is the opportunity to attain manhood, and the older Dubus reflects that "it is time to thank my father for wanting me to work and telling me I had to work and getting the job for me and buying me lunch and a pith helmet instead of taking me home to my mother and sister." If he had quit, Dubus writes, "he would have spent the summer at home, nestled in the love of two women, peering at my father's face, and yearning to be someone I respected, a varsity second baseman, a halfback . . . yearning to be a man among men, and that is where my father sent me with a helmet on my head." "Going home" to the women would have been to settle for passivity, to consign oneself to a world of yearning instead of a world of action.
And lastly, and most recently, a paragraph from an article on the Skully P-1, an upgraded motorcycle helmet that incorporates a digital head-up display, projecting a live feed from a 180-degree rear-facing camera, which eliminates the blind spots that affect other enclosing helmets. The system can also broadcast turn-by-turn directions and pair with a smartphone to read back text messages, so the rider’s eyes can stay glued to the road. It could get to be the driver's own cosy little world inside there.
Showing posts with label son. Show all posts
Showing posts with label son. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Friday, October 18, 2013
About Time
We flew in from Auckland on Wednesday, arriving about 4.30 and after about five minutes at home and absolute craziness from the dog, found ourselves going out again, to the movies. Our daughter had won a couple of seats, courtesy of More FM, to a preview of About Time. Written and directed by the New Zealand-born Richard Curtis (Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral) this is a wacky romantic comedy that, for the most part, holds its peculiar time travel idea together without losing credibility (at least while you're watching the movie, which is all that's important). Curtis is supported by a wonderful cast, with one of Brendan Gleeson's sons, Domhnall, in the main role, and Rachel McAdams as his girlfriend. Bill Nighy plays the hero's father, with that wonderful dryness and seeming vagueness that he's so good at. And a great deal of warmth, because this isn't just a romantic movie, but one about fathers and sons, and their relationships, and about what happens when death begins to knock. There are a host of other excellent actors, including Tom Hollander as a bitter and foul-mouthed playwright, and brief and uncredited performances by Richard E Grant and Richard Griffiths as two actors in Hollander's play.The script is a little loose in structure, but this may in part be the result of its telling the story of a man as he grows from his late school years into married adulthood, where he becomes a father himself. There are times when the time travel aspect seems to be put aside while other things move on, but just when you think Curtis has forgotten about it, he drops it into the story again and reshuffles the plot. At times it seems as though Curtis has given himself too many characters to play around with, but he seems to manage to juggle most of them pretty well. Only Harry Hadden-Paton, as one of Gleeson's slightly dopey friends, and Richard Cordery, as an uncle given to seemingly Alzheimer's laden non sequiturs, seem never quite to fit into the whole scheme of things. Nevertheless, t
here are plenty of witty lines, lots of adept comedy playing, and some unexpectedly emotional moments.
Sunday, September 08, 2013
Gripping and gritty movies
Taking a punt on movie choices can mean that often you wind up seeing something that's a bit of a dud. I usually prefer to have some idea about a movie before I watch it, even if it only costs me a couple of dollars from the Public Library. However, last week I picked up three movies (we haven't watched the third) and the first two turned out to be crackers.
One was Nothing but the Truth, which apparently didn't get much of a theatrical distribution for reasons that are beyond my understanding, in spite of having a top-notch cast: Kate Beckingsale, Alan Alda, Matt Dillon, Noah Wylie, Angela Bassett and Vera Farmiga, an actress who plays her roles with such intensity that the television screen threatens to go on fire. The film is based on a true-life case about a political reporter who refused to reveal the source of her story, and wound up in gaol for months. However, the scriptwriter and director, Rod Lurie, has rewritten the thing from the ground up, changing all the details and the background, so that the film is presented as a proper drama, not as a piece trying to fit around a real-life episode. It's all the stronger for this, and allows Lurie to write excellent roles for his cast, none of whom let him down.
Beckingsale's character is given the chance to write a piece for her major newspaper that will expose a female CIA agent, but refuses to name her source. This refusal gets her into deep trouble with the Government, and she is thrown into jail by a heavy-handed judge (the actor, in real life, was an attorney in the original case). This causes havoc to the CIA agent and her family, to the reporter's own family and doesn't, in the end, let her off the hook. It's a tough film made tougher by the insistence on principles that the reporter clings to, and which she finally brings her lawyer around to. You may guess the surprise ending - my wife did, but I didn't; it neatly rounds the film off.
The other film was originally played over four nights on British television. It's called Father & Son, and stars Dougray Scott, Sophie Okonedo, Ian Hart and Stephen Rea. It's a gripping piece that doesn't turn out the way you might expect; it's violent and dark, but it's about integrity and the idea that eventually the choices you make in life have to be for the sake of others or else you die from the inside out.
The story concerns a career criminal, Michael O'Connor, who wants to put all his bad behaviour behind him. Unfortunately things aren't as easy as that, and he's forced to decide whether he will amend things he's done wrong properly, or only partially. His teenage son, Sean, (Reece Noi), the child of a mixed marriage, is accused of a gang retaliation murder, though we know from the beginning that he's innocent. O'Connor hasn't seen his son in a while after his wife was murdered about five years back and there's considerable bitterness in the boy. But behind the bitterness, we eventually learn, there's a great deal more going on than we first suspect, and part of the story is about the reconciliation required between O'Connor and his son, a reconciliation that needs to take place before things can be healed. There are father and son connections throughout the story, none of them very satisfactory at the start, and a host of brilliantly drawn and played characters. Part of the story is also the truth about the murder that took place some years before, and how it fits into all the other elements.
Scott plays a tough man who seems at first to have matured; but we learn that his seeming vulnerability towards his new wife and unborn child is only skin-deep. It takes far more to bring his true self to the surface. He's surrounded by duplicitous characters - the links between different people turns out to be nastier than we expect - and it takes a good deal of sorting out. The writer was Frank Deasy - he died about the same time the series aired. He had written the last episode in the Prime Suspect series, and the same grittiness is apparent here.
One was Nothing but the Truth, which apparently didn't get much of a theatrical distribution for reasons that are beyond my understanding, in spite of having a top-notch cast: Kate Beckingsale, Alan Alda, Matt Dillon, Noah Wylie, Angela Bassett and Vera Farmiga, an actress who plays her roles with such intensity that the television screen threatens to go on fire. The film is based on a true-life case about a political reporter who refused to reveal the source of her story, and wound up in gaol for months. However, the scriptwriter and director, Rod Lurie, has rewritten the thing from the ground up, changing all the details and the background, so that the film is presented as a proper drama, not as a piece trying to fit around a real-life episode. It's all the stronger for this, and allows Lurie to write excellent roles for his cast, none of whom let him down.
Beckingsale's character is given the chance to write a piece for her major newspaper that will expose a female CIA agent, but refuses to name her source. This refusal gets her into deep trouble with the Government, and she is thrown into jail by a heavy-handed judge (the actor, in real life, was an attorney in the original case). This causes havoc to the CIA agent and her family, to the reporter's own family and doesn't, in the end, let her off the hook. It's a tough film made tougher by the insistence on principles that the reporter clings to, and which she finally brings her lawyer around to. You may guess the surprise ending - my wife did, but I didn't; it neatly rounds the film off.
The other film was originally played over four nights on British television. It's called Father & Son, and stars Dougray Scott, Sophie Okonedo, Ian Hart and Stephen Rea. It's a gripping piece that doesn't turn out the way you might expect; it's violent and dark, but it's about integrity and the idea that eventually the choices you make in life have to be for the sake of others or else you die from the inside out.
The story concerns a career criminal, Michael O'Connor, who wants to put all his bad behaviour behind him. Unfortunately things aren't as easy as that, and he's forced to decide whether he will amend things he's done wrong properly, or only partially. His teenage son, Sean, (Reece Noi), the child of a mixed marriage, is accused of a gang retaliation murder, though we know from the beginning that he's innocent. O'Connor hasn't seen his son in a while after his wife was murdered about five years back and there's considerable bitterness in the boy. But behind the bitterness, we eventually learn, there's a great deal more going on than we first suspect, and part of the story is about the reconciliation required between O'Connor and his son, a reconciliation that needs to take place before things can be healed. There are father and son connections throughout the story, none of them very satisfactory at the start, and a host of brilliantly drawn and played characters. Part of the story is also the truth about the murder that took place some years before, and how it fits into all the other elements.
Scott plays a tough man who seems at first to have matured; but we learn that his seeming vulnerability towards his new wife and unborn child is only skin-deep. It takes far more to bring his true self to the surface. He's surrounded by duplicitous characters - the links between different people turns out to be nastier than we expect - and it takes a good deal of sorting out. The writer was Frank Deasy - he died about the same time the series aired. He had written the last episode in the Prime Suspect series, and the same grittiness is apparent here.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Being random, as the blog's title implies
1. My wife and I were outside this morning in the sun chopping down the upper half of the holly hedge that separates our house from our neighbours' place. It was a beautiful morning. We then spent nearly an hour around 1pm talking to my son and his wife in the States, on Google's equivalent of Skype, went to go outside and found it was pouring with rain. Since then the temperature's dropped considerably and we're now trying to get the house warm. After all the fine weather we've had any cold day comes as a bit of a shock.
2. A friend lent me a copy of Edmund Gosse's book, Father and Son, a couple of weeks or so ago. I'd heard of this book over the years, but never got round to reading it, even though it has some status amongst the English classics. What an odd book! Gosse was the sun of Philip Henry Gosse, who was a famous zoologist in the 19th century, around the time of Darwin. He was also a Puritan Christian, as was his wife - the mother of Edmund: she died of breast cancer when Edmund was still under ten years old. Philip married again, a few years later.
The book is supposedly the factual memoirs of Gosse as a child, and of his relationship with his father, who, according to the book, was virtually a recluse, and a very rigid Christian. (Gosse's mother was as puritanical as her husband, according to Gosse junior.) The book claims to be fact, but later biographers of both father and son have found a good deal of fiction in the writing. It's very much the view of a man who has cast his parents aside along with his religion, but in writing about it he colours the characters of his parents - his father in particular - in such a way as to make the reader recoil from them. Knowing that Gosse's writing is more biased than not is quite helpful in reading the book: you see how he shows himself as the one treated somewhat unjustly, when in fact this was apparently less than the truth. He also, perhaps unwittingly, shows himself as rather pompous and quite class conscious. Those who are lower than him in the social scale are written about in such a way as to show that Gosse despises them - it's not just what they do, it's how the author describes them. For example, in describing John Brooks, a poor man who doesn't do the right thing according to Gosse's lights: John Brooks was a heavy dirty man, with a pock-marked face and two left legs... I'm not sure how Brooks manages to have two left legs, but doesn't it immediately make you feel he's something of a monster?
I'd got to a point with the book where I thought I wouldn't finish it, but I will. However, Gosse has lost my sympathy quite some time ago!
3. I'm currently learning lines for the play, The Sunshine Boy, in which I'm playing Al. He has a substantial enough part, but it's nothing like as long as that of the main character, Willie. There's a great deal of humour in the play, and it'll go across well with an audience. The line-learning has kind of interrupted my latest attempt to learn Psalm 119 (the longest in the Psalmody). It's a tough psalm to learn, but I'm making slow progress on it. I'm also singing with the Sunny Side Up group tonight, at one of the retirement villages, and I'm revising words and music for that as well. So the brain is getting quite a work out at present!
2. A friend lent me a copy of Edmund Gosse's book, Father and Son, a couple of weeks or so ago. I'd heard of this book over the years, but never got round to reading it, even though it has some status amongst the English classics. What an odd book! Gosse was the sun of Philip Henry Gosse, who was a famous zoologist in the 19th century, around the time of Darwin. He was also a Puritan Christian, as was his wife - the mother of Edmund: she died of breast cancer when Edmund was still under ten years old. Philip married again, a few years later.
The book is supposedly the factual memoirs of Gosse as a child, and of his relationship with his father, who, according to the book, was virtually a recluse, and a very rigid Christian. (Gosse's mother was as puritanical as her husband, according to Gosse junior.) The book claims to be fact, but later biographers of both father and son have found a good deal of fiction in the writing. It's very much the view of a man who has cast his parents aside along with his religion, but in writing about it he colours the characters of his parents - his father in particular - in such a way as to make the reader recoil from them. Knowing that Gosse's writing is more biased than not is quite helpful in reading the book: you see how he shows himself as the one treated somewhat unjustly, when in fact this was apparently less than the truth. He also, perhaps unwittingly, shows himself as rather pompous and quite class conscious. Those who are lower than him in the social scale are written about in such a way as to show that Gosse despises them - it's not just what they do, it's how the author describes them. For example, in describing John Brooks, a poor man who doesn't do the right thing according to Gosse's lights: John Brooks was a heavy dirty man, with a pock-marked face and two left legs... I'm not sure how Brooks manages to have two left legs, but doesn't it immediately make you feel he's something of a monster?
I'd got to a point with the book where I thought I wouldn't finish it, but I will. However, Gosse has lost my sympathy quite some time ago!
3. I'm currently learning lines for the play, The Sunshine Boy, in which I'm playing Al. He has a substantial enough part, but it's nothing like as long as that of the main character, Willie. There's a great deal of humour in the play, and it'll go across well with an audience. The line-learning has kind of interrupted my latest attempt to learn Psalm 119 (the longest in the Psalmody). It's a tough psalm to learn, but I'm making slow progress on it. I'm also singing with the Sunny Side Up group tonight, at one of the retirement villages, and I'm revising words and music for that as well. So the brain is getting quite a work out at present!
Saturday, October 06, 2012
Men's Group - Movie
I hadn't been able to see it at that point, although there was a brief trailer available online, but it was getting rave reviews wherever it was shown - which, unfortunately, wasn't in as many places as it should have been.
However, it's now available on DVD, and I caught up with it last night. In spite of the group hug that they're having in the picture in the poster, this isn't a movie about men getting soft with each other or even communicating very well with each other (I don't think they actually hug at any point in the movie itself). It's about Paul, a facilitator who offers a small group of men the chance to come together weekly and talk, in his own home. (His wife and family always spend Tuesday nights with his wife's sister - wisely.) Five men attend regularly, even though all of them admit at times that they don't quite know why they're there. A sixth participant comes for one highly emotional evening in the middle of the movie.
The men are: Alex, who doesn't think there's anything wrong with him, and can't see why his son doesn't fall into line; Freddy, who's separated from his wife and little daughter and is desperate for things to be right in his marriage again; Lucas, a dour, good-looking man who barely contributes, but whose private life (which we, the audience, are party to) is aggressive and violent; Moses, a man who wears a beany and a long black beard, both of which enable him to hide to a great extent; and Cecil, the oldest member, who gives away very little and seems okay on the surface.
Of course all of them give away a great deal more than they intend. The audience knows more about them - but not much more - and sees them in a slightly different light to Paul, whose relationship with them is restricted to the Tuesday nights.
There is some resolution in the story - one man manages to make headway in his life - but the rest are still either struggling, or unable to move, or perhaps on the cusp of change when the movie ends. However, the filmmakers wisely haven't allowed their characters to have easy ways out, and we're left wondering how some of them will fare.
The film is intensely emotional, and will leave viewers - male and female - with many thoughts and responses. Men definitely need to see it, but women do too - and their reactions will be different. Christian viewers may want to ask about forgiveness and change in regard to the men in the story, but these guys haven't got to that point yet; the need for some level of self-understanding has to come before they can think of turning their lives around completely.
This is a brilliant movie that deserves a very wide audience, including those who wouldn't normally go to see it.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Boy
Waititi [Taika Waititi, director of the movie, Boy] has been described as “worryingly” multi-talented. “Ha! I’m going to burn out? I think my friends are worried that I’m going to have a meltdown.” He has worried about this himself. “I used to be freaked out about being interested in so many things. I always thought, when I was in my youth, that I’d have to choose one thing and just stick with it and try and be good at that,” he says. “But there are so many creative ideas that come into your head that don’t necessarily suit a painting. They could be a story or a film. They could just be a cake. If you have lots of different mediums at your disposal, ways of expressing yourself – the more the merrier, I think.”
The quote above comes from an article in the NZ Listener, written by Diana Wichtel. The article is entitled 'Our Boy in Hollywood.'
Which reminds me that I haven't mentioned the movie, Boy, in this blog as yet. My wife and I went to see this a few weeks back, and I was pleasantly surprised. Not sure what I was expecting, but I had a note in the back of my mind that some reviewer hadn't been too impressed with it. Foolish reviewer. This is a marvellous movie that manages to be both funny and serious at the same time - often within the same shot.
Futhermore it's wonderfully cast: James Rolleston (he of the completely Pakeha name) plays the Maori boy of the title, a bit of a runt at that awful age (he's around eleven) where girls have suddenly become interesting. Unfortunately he has not a clue as to what to say to the one he's smitten with, and comes out with some adult rubbish that naturally puts her right off. But if Boy is clueless in this area, he's smart in other ways: he runs the household while his grandmother is away at a funeral - apart from his six-year-old brother, there's a girl cousin and a couple of little kids who don't seem to belong to anyone in particular. And when his father turns up after a jail term, Boy, initially under the delusion that his father is as special as he claims, soon discovers that he's no more than a boy himself - a man who's never really grown up in any way apart from physically. Boy tackles this problem with gumption and mana. And manages to get his father to begin to face some of what's wrong with him.
That makes it sound like a serious movie; underneath, it is. On the surface, it's full of delights, has subtle humour (and outrageous humour), and not a few quirky surprises in the storytelling. Equally it has spiritual depth (different to that of The Whale Rider but equally valid, and a moral viewpoint.
Apart from Rolleston, the other joy in this movie is Te Aho Aho Eketone-Whitu, who plays Boy's younger brother. He gives a performance as honest and alive as any you'll see on the screen this year. No doubt, like many child actors, in part he was just living the role. Nevertheless, not every child actor manages to convey their inner self so readily. Waititi plays the father himself, and is exuberant, foolish, extravagant, outrageous, endearing, violent and pathetic by turns. As annoying as the character is, Waititi still allows us to empathise with some of his difficulties.
The movie is shot through with a wonderful New Zealand feel - it could be nowhere else in the world.
In relation to that, I watched a video of Bridge to Terabithia recently. Who in their right mind thought that a New Zealand school could possibly look like an American one? Yet that's just one of the many peculiarities of this odd movie. The houses the characters live in are American in style, but the countryside around is decidedly New Zealand. The cars drive on the American side of the road, but it's a New Zealand road. The school bus is a cousin to the school bus in Forrest Gump, but it's full of New Zealand children, as is the classroom. A strange movie.
The quote above comes from an article in the NZ Listener, written by Diana Wichtel. The article is entitled 'Our Boy in Hollywood.'
Which reminds me that I haven't mentioned the movie, Boy, in this blog as yet. My wife and I went to see this a few weeks back, and I was pleasantly surprised. Not sure what I was expecting, but I had a note in the back of my mind that some reviewer hadn't been too impressed with it. Foolish reviewer. This is a marvellous movie that manages to be both funny and serious at the same time - often within the same shot.
Futhermore it's wonderfully cast: James Rolleston (he of the completely Pakeha name) plays the Maori boy of the title, a bit of a runt at that awful age (he's around eleven) where girls have suddenly become interesting. Unfortunately he has not a clue as to what to say to the one he's smitten with, and comes out with some adult rubbish that naturally puts her right off. But if Boy is clueless in this area, he's smart in other ways: he runs the household while his grandmother is away at a funeral - apart from his six-year-old brother, there's a girl cousin and a couple of little kids who don't seem to belong to anyone in particular. And when his father turns up after a jail term, Boy, initially under the delusion that his father is as special as he claims, soon discovers that he's no more than a boy himself - a man who's never really grown up in any way apart from physically. Boy tackles this problem with gumption and mana. And manages to get his father to begin to face some of what's wrong with him.
That makes it sound like a serious movie; underneath, it is. On the surface, it's full of delights, has subtle humour (and outrageous humour), and not a few quirky surprises in the storytelling. Equally it has spiritual depth (different to that of The Whale Rider but equally valid, and a moral viewpoint.
Apart from Rolleston, the other joy in this movie is Te Aho Aho Eketone-Whitu, who plays Boy's younger brother. He gives a performance as honest and alive as any you'll see on the screen this year. No doubt, like many child actors, in part he was just living the role. Nevertheless, not every child actor manages to convey their inner self so readily. Waititi plays the father himself, and is exuberant, foolish, extravagant, outrageous, endearing, violent and pathetic by turns. As annoying as the character is, Waititi still allows us to empathise with some of his difficulties.
The movie is shot through with a wonderful New Zealand feel - it could be nowhere else in the world.
In relation to that, I watched a video of Bridge to Terabithia recently. Who in their right mind thought that a New Zealand school could possibly look like an American one? Yet that's just one of the many peculiarities of this odd movie. The houses the characters live in are American in style, but the countryside around is decidedly New Zealand. The cars drive on the American side of the road, but it's a New Zealand road. The school bus is a cousin to the school bus in Forrest Gump, but it's full of New Zealand children, as is the classroom. A strange movie.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Gilead - again
I'm reading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead again. I keep wanting to mark something on virtually every page; the book just seems full of quotable material. And it's not the clever laying out of words so much as wisdom. This is one of the few novels I've ever read that is wise.
Don't ask me how she does it; probably Robinson is no wiser a writer than many other great writers. But something in this book has brought out the wisdom in her, and it shows time and time again.
Probably quoting from it wouldn't work that well, because you need to have read what's gone before and to have felt the tone of the thing. The apparent meandering, conversational tone of the writing (an old man writing to his very young son) seems almost as if Robinson had sat down, from day to day, and just let the thing pour out. But I suspect it's far better constructed, and structured, than that. And the writing is frequently vivid. There's nothing 'casual' about the way this book is put together, even though on the surface that may seem to be the case.
I'm about half way through it again (I first read it in 2006, I think, when it was relatively new) and it moves me as much as it did the first time; maybe even more. I've just been reading it at a cafe and kept feeling emotional about one thing or another in it.
Perhaps it's the whole father/son thing that appeals to me particularly. Because of my own history I've always been a sucker for books that deal with that subject. Perhaps it's the fact that the main character is a good man; there are very few really good characters in fiction - or in life, if it comes to that. Perhaps it's the fact that in the last couple of months or so I've had more concerns about death and ill-health than I've needed to have in a long time. The main character in the book knows he's going to die fairly soon, which is why he's trying to lay out his life and history for his son. But he doesn't dwell on the dying; he's constantly talking about life, and creation, and joy and celebration and the extraordinary things that make up the day to day. Death comes into it, of course, but it isn't the focus.
As he says in a page (126 in my edition) I've just read again today:
I have not been writing to you for a day or two. I have passed some fairly difficult nights. Discomfort, a little trouble breathing. I have decided the two choices open to me are (1) to torment myself or (2) to trust the Lord. There is no earhtly solution to the problems that confront me. But I can add to my problems, as I believe I had done, by dwelling on them.
This speaks very strongly to me at the moment, when the discomfort I'm dealing with day to day tends either to get right in the way of things or be put to one side as something I will endure without great anxiety. Trusting in the Lord is an element of it, but not necessarily the easiest path to take.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll write more about this wonderful book as I go on.
Don't ask me how she does it; probably Robinson is no wiser a writer than many other great writers. But something in this book has brought out the wisdom in her, and it shows time and time again.
Probably quoting from it wouldn't work that well, because you need to have read what's gone before and to have felt the tone of the thing. The apparent meandering, conversational tone of the writing (an old man writing to his very young son) seems almost as if Robinson had sat down, from day to day, and just let the thing pour out. But I suspect it's far better constructed, and structured, than that. And the writing is frequently vivid. There's nothing 'casual' about the way this book is put together, even though on the surface that may seem to be the case.
I'm about half way through it again (I first read it in 2006, I think, when it was relatively new) and it moves me as much as it did the first time; maybe even more. I've just been reading it at a cafe and kept feeling emotional about one thing or another in it.
Perhaps it's the whole father/son thing that appeals to me particularly. Because of my own history I've always been a sucker for books that deal with that subject. Perhaps it's the fact that the main character is a good man; there are very few really good characters in fiction - or in life, if it comes to that. Perhaps it's the fact that in the last couple of months or so I've had more concerns about death and ill-health than I've needed to have in a long time. The main character in the book knows he's going to die fairly soon, which is why he's trying to lay out his life and history for his son. But he doesn't dwell on the dying; he's constantly talking about life, and creation, and joy and celebration and the extraordinary things that make up the day to day. Death comes into it, of course, but it isn't the focus.
As he says in a page (126 in my edition) I've just read again today:
I have not been writing to you for a day or two. I have passed some fairly difficult nights. Discomfort, a little trouble breathing. I have decided the two choices open to me are (1) to torment myself or (2) to trust the Lord. There is no earhtly solution to the problems that confront me. But I can add to my problems, as I believe I had done, by dwelling on them.
This speaks very strongly to me at the moment, when the discomfort I'm dealing with day to day tends either to get right in the way of things or be put to one side as something I will endure without great anxiety. Trusting in the Lord is an element of it, but not necessarily the easiest path to take.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll write more about this wonderful book as I go on.
Monday, May 14, 2007
A bit of belated blogtipping
Like me, one of my sons has written stuff since he was a kid. He and one of his great mates wrote, drew and acted throughout their childhood/teenage/youth. They're still writing, I've just discovered, and now it's blogs. Worse, they've even inveigled their old friend Doogle Sherlock to start up a blog.
I quote from my son's blog: The doctor I got was really kudos and she prescribed me with a drug which was apparently one of the ingredients used to make P. I tried not to act suspicious.
I quote from his friend's blog, Procrastination Opportunist: I have spent the last four months procrastinating (true to form). Actually, scratch that; it was three months procrastinating, the rest was procrastination recuperation.
I quote from Doogle's Blog - appropriately called My Blog Log: butt this tym i rote a book! it waz in my hand and syned doogl! i kno i wud hav syned it 'doogel' if i waz awake but slepe doogl probly dusnt kno this. i showd shirlee and she rolld her i's so i went to sebastyans plce (in tha sekure lokdown wing of tha prizzon, hez doing grand larsinny tym for diak at tha momint) and he thort it wus the koolest book eva! 'tha grate butt piratikal bumbustificayshin' is just wat id call a book too - slepe doogl has sum gr8 ideas!
Doogle has a considerable history, and it's interesting to see he's still alive and kicking. He's got rather crude over the years, which makes me wonder about his creator. Can it really be the person I think it is?
I quote from my son's blog: The doctor I got was really kudos and she prescribed me with a drug which was apparently one of the ingredients used to make P. I tried not to act suspicious.
I quote from his friend's blog, Procrastination Opportunist: I have spent the last four months procrastinating (true to form). Actually, scratch that; it was three months procrastinating, the rest was procrastination recuperation.
I quote from Doogle's Blog - appropriately called My Blog Log: butt this tym i rote a book! it waz in my hand and syned doogl! i kno i wud hav syned it 'doogel' if i waz awake but slepe doogl probly dusnt kno this. i showd shirlee and she rolld her i's so i went to sebastyans plce (in tha sekure lokdown wing of tha prizzon, hez doing grand larsinny tym for diak at tha momint) and he thort it wus the koolest book eva! 'tha grate butt piratikal bumbustificayshin' is just wat id call a book too - slepe doogl has sum gr8 ideas!
Doogle has a considerable history, and it's interesting to see he's still alive and kicking. He's got rather crude over the years, which makes me wonder about his creator. Can it really be the person I think it is?
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