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7908. wonkers2 - 10/13/2005 4:25:22 PM I wasn't aware of Pinter's activism on Iraq and other international issues until I googled him just now. But I've seen a couple of his plays and movies. There's is never a shortage of something to talk about after seeing a Pinter play. I think of Pinter's work as being similar to Ionesco and Edward Albee. But it's been a long time since I've seen anything by any of them. 7909. Ms. No - 10/13/2005 6:09:21 PM I remember a college professor of mine trying to teach Pinter in an acting class. She never told anyone that they got it right, but the problem was a bit more complicated than that. No, no one got it right, but that's because she couldn't explain it properly.
I never really "got" Pinter until I saw the film The Comfort of Strangers. It was a huge "Ah-HA!" moment and I couldn't gush over the man enough. 7910. PelleNilsson - 10/13/2005 6:58:12 PM Many Swedes, including myself, had hoped that the poet Tomas Tranströmer, a perennial candidate, would get it. I don't read much poetry because I don't have the sensibility for it, but these lines, read many years ago, stuck in my mind.
One day in mid-life,
Death will pay you a visit,
And take your measure.
You will not notice,
But the costume will be made,
And when your day comes,
It will fit, perfectly.
(Culled from memory and in my free translation) 7911. wonkers2 - 10/13/2005 7:53:28 PM Nice poem. 7912. judithathome - 10/13/2005 10:58:12 PM never really "got" Pinter until I saw the film The Comfort of Strangers. It was a huge "Ah-HA!" moment and I couldn't gush over the man enough
I got Pinter long ago, but I have affection for anyone who even SAW Comfort of Strangers much less liked it! ;-) 7913. ScottLoar - 10/14/2005 12:58:10 AM Pelle,
I take that poem as a gift, thanks. 7914. alistairconnor - 10/14/2005 9:48:57 AM Pinter sort of oppressed my adolescence. A bit.
Not that I'm blaming him. Just that I "got" him way too early, or thought I did. I found him intensely depressing. Until an English lecturer from England explained the extremely dry, Cockney humour that underlies a lot of it. 7915. alistairconnor - 10/14/2005 9:50:39 AM I remember a film, probably Godard, where some 1968ard cultural revolutionaries write the names of every modern dramatist they can think of, then cross them off one by one until they are left with Brecht and Pinter. 7916. wonkers2 - 10/14/2005 3:37:41 PM Fear and Miscommunication in Pinterland Here. 7917. Ms. No - 10/14/2005 5:19:53 PM Jude,
Ah, I think we've bonded on this before! ;->
Comfort of Strangers was the first time I saw Pinter performed by other than students in an acting class. Oddly enough I'd never read any of his work previously which now just boggles my mind. I'd have been happier with a hell of a lot less O'Neill and much more Pinter.
7918. wabbit - 10/14/2005 5:42:21 PM Maybe now Turtle Diary will be released on DVD. 7919. jayackroyd - 10/31/2005 7:29:12 PM None of you are gonna care, and it's really impolite to say I told you so, so I'm gonna get my satisfaction here:
PW:
A report in the Independent suggests the publisher should have foregone reprints of 2.7 million copies on THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE as Scholastic chairman Dick Robinson "admits bookshops have been left with 2.5 million unsold copies."
Harry finally maxed out.
7920. alistairConnor - 10/31/2005 7:55:05 PM Simple, really. The book isn't as good as the previous ones. Word of mouth works. Just like the movies: you can't get a million people to see your film unless you've got a huge promotion budget, but if the film stinks, nobody will want to see it anyway. 7921. Ms. No - 10/31/2005 9:19:45 PM Yeah, I was disappointed in the latest book....but I'm looking forward to the new film! I hope it's as good as the last one. 7922. PelleNilsson - 11/2/2005 7:10:21 PM As Macnas informed us a while ago this year's Booker price was awarded to John Banville for his novel The Sea.
NYT book critic Michiko Katunami is totally pissed off. Excerpts:
The judges last month awarded the prize to John Banville's novel "The Sea" - a stilted, claustrophobic and numbingly pretentious tale about an aging widower revisting his past.
Max talks like someone with a thesaurus permanently implanted in his brain: his monologue is studded with words like "leporine," "strangury," "perpetuance," "finical," "flocculent," "anthropic," "avrilaceous," "anaglypta" and "assegais." Perhaps Max's grandiose language is meant to signify some sort of psychic defense mechanism on his part, but it's uncannily similar to the language employed by characters in Banville's earlier books.
Equally irritating is Max's penchant for describing and redescribing everyone in his life and everything he sees in minute physical detail that radiates a prissy disgust for the human body. He describes his daughter's "upper gums, glistening and whitely pink." He describes Mrs. Grace's "haunches quivering under the light stuff of her summer dresses." And he describes Chloe's teeth as possessing a "delicate damp grey-green" tinge "like the damp light under trees after rain." Of his own appearance, he observes: "This morning it was the state of my eyes that struck me most forcibly, the whites all craquelured over with those tiny bright-red veins and the moist lower lids inflamed and hanging a little way loose of the eyeballs."
'The Sea' washes ashore, lifeless 7923. jayackroyd - 11/2/2005 7:38:25 PM Kakutani.
Her father is the guy who came up with the Kakutani fixed point theorem.
On Harry, I haven't found a copy lying around yet, so I haven't read it. But it's not surprising that it got to be hard to sustain the story. Series almost always decline. It's surprising that it kept building. My biggest disappointment was the third volume of the Pullman trilogy.
Although not Kai Meyer's Dark Reflections series. I've read the second one in manuscript, and it's better than The Water Mirror. Gene Wolfe get better, too.
But if I see another one of those Orson Scott Card Ender books, I'll scream.
7924. Magoseph - 11/2/2005 7:49:22 PM His Love of Words Rivals His Contempt for Critics
Excerpt: Not everyone was thrilled by the decision last month to give the Man Booker Prize, Britain's most influential literary award, to "The Sea" by the Irish novelist John Banville. To begin with, two of the five Booker judges vehemently preferred another book, Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go."
Meanwhile, booksellers at the prize dinner grumbled that the novel was the least commercial of the six finalists (only 3,721 hardback copies had been sold before Booker night on Oct. 10; the total has since risen to just over 9,100). Mr. Banville subsequently appeared on a radio arts program with three critics, who all, he said, hated his book.
But all this is grist for the mill to the author himself, who seems to relish a good literary dust-up, or at least not to mind being at the center of one.
"Frankly, I am gratified to see myself vilified, and the jury being vilified," he said happily over lunch recently. "It cheers me up. I must have done something right to annoy so many people." 7925. PelleNilsson - 11/2/2005 8:08:11 PM Thus, convex-valuedness is instrumental.
I'm sure we all agree with that crucial insight. 7926. Ms. No - 11/2/2005 8:24:18 PM Jay,
I've read several of OSC's books but did not begin the Enders' series. I actually meant to, it seemed to be quite popular, but I became a bit disenchanted with Card before I got to it and so never picked it up. Now maybe I'm glad. ;-> 7927. jayackroyd - 11/2/2005 8:46:09 PM Thus, convex-valuedness is instrumental.
The Sea washes ashore, lifeless.
I'd say the apple didn't fall too far from the tree.
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