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sparing you as much as possible....
Mar. 18th, 2007 08:10 amI have been mulling over three potentially tedious posts and rather than burden my Friends' pages unnecessarily I shall summarize in one post and get them out of the way. (A sure-fire grabber of a lede for a blog post, I must say.)
1) Those few who are curious about my home turf of Decatur will find it masquerading as a New England town in a new show apparently destined to disappear after its first few episodes (if the critics are to be believed, that is). But October Road was shot at Agnes Scott College a mile or so away (its Gothic architecture having the right feel) plus shops and the town square in Madison, Georgia, and a few other nearby locations. We apparently have sufficient autumn leaf color, and the weather here stays better longer.
2) Utterly unrelated: While fact-checking an Art Papers review of a Minneapolis show of paintings in which high school football games under a stormy sky appear to be metaphors for the current conditions of national discontent, I was reminded of James Wright's Vietnam poem, "A Mad Fight Song for William S. Carpenter, 1966." Looking up the poem, I was startled to see its effortless references to Cornelius Nepos and Catullus in a poem put in the voice of a lieutenant who called in napalm on his own position rather than surrender the territory. Forty years ago even West Point felt compelled to mention the Roman classics in its coursework; not so now, I imagine.
3) I realize more than ever how blogs have put all of us in the position of the angels in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire: able to know the innermost thoughts of those who could use some life-changing circumstances, but unable to do anything about it other than take note. I was also reminded of the dialectic of that other powerless journal-keeper, Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously; but when he met his long-expected Unmet Friend, he was able to set the guy up with career enhancement and exactly the right woman, sure signs that we are reading a novel. Obviously, life rarely fits so prettily, though sometimes it aligns far more than we would ever expect. But I still like C. J. Koch's book, which always reminds me of my discovery that childhood in Florida paralleled the isolations and alienations of Asian ex-colonies.
There, three of my habitual obsessions gotten out of the way quickly. Explications on request, which I do not expect to get.
1) Those few who are curious about my home turf of Decatur will find it masquerading as a New England town in a new show apparently destined to disappear after its first few episodes (if the critics are to be believed, that is). But October Road was shot at Agnes Scott College a mile or so away (its Gothic architecture having the right feel) plus shops and the town square in Madison, Georgia, and a few other nearby locations. We apparently have sufficient autumn leaf color, and the weather here stays better longer.
2) Utterly unrelated: While fact-checking an Art Papers review of a Minneapolis show of paintings in which high school football games under a stormy sky appear to be metaphors for the current conditions of national discontent, I was reminded of James Wright's Vietnam poem, "A Mad Fight Song for William S. Carpenter, 1966." Looking up the poem, I was startled to see its effortless references to Cornelius Nepos and Catullus in a poem put in the voice of a lieutenant who called in napalm on his own position rather than surrender the territory. Forty years ago even West Point felt compelled to mention the Roman classics in its coursework; not so now, I imagine.
3) I realize more than ever how blogs have put all of us in the position of the angels in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire: able to know the innermost thoughts of those who could use some life-changing circumstances, but unable to do anything about it other than take note. I was also reminded of the dialectic of that other powerless journal-keeper, Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously; but when he met his long-expected Unmet Friend, he was able to set the guy up with career enhancement and exactly the right woman, sure signs that we are reading a novel. Obviously, life rarely fits so prettily, though sometimes it aligns far more than we would ever expect. But I still like C. J. Koch's book, which always reminds me of my discovery that childhood in Florida paralleled the isolations and alienations of Asian ex-colonies.
There, three of my habitual obsessions gotten out of the way quickly. Explications on request, which I do not expect to get.
