Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 40
March 26, 2012
Coriolanus (2011)
I saw the Ralph Fiennes-directed movie of "Coriolanus" several weeks ago, in one of our local art-movie theaters. I had never seen the play performed, and had never read it, though I did read a detailed summary ahead of time.
As you can tell from the still, Fiennes chose to use a contemporary setting, and that, I feel, made the movie. The film was shot in eastern Europe, in Belgrade, and all of the soldiers, and the warfare that's shown, could easily have come from a news report. They ...
March 25, 2012
"Wache," August Stramm
Wache
Das Turmkreuz schrickt ein Stern
Der Gaul schnappt Rauch
Eisen klirrt verschlafen
Nebel streichen
Schauer
Starren Frösteln
Frösteln
Streicheln
Raunen
Du!
–August Stramm
March 23, 2012
Yes, I saw "John Carter"
…and it wasn't bad at all.
A friend of mine really wanted to see "John Carter" (which really ought to have been titled "A Princess of Mars"), and she talked me and another friend into going with her. I was the only one of us who'd read any of the Barsoom series, though C. had read all of the Tarzan books. My memory of the five or six Barsoom books I read back in high school was vague as to plot, though I did remember loving Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of the Tharks. I remember he seemed to...
March 21, 2012
Analyzing Antryg
I recently re-read one of my favorite trilogies by Barbara Hambly, the Windrose Chronicles. Partly I did so for enjoyment, partly because I intended to blog about the experience (My Heroes & Heartbreakers post). This read, I also wanted to take particular note of one aspect of the books: the characterization of Antryg Windrose.
I first read these books when I was in college, and I absolutely loved Antryg. He's not your typical fantasy hero because he's, well, insane. Though some of h...
March 19, 2012
The Gorgeousness of Cat (in The Windflower)
I recently wrote about classic romance novel The Windflower by Laura London for Heroes & Heartbreakers. In that post, I didn't have a chance to talk about one of the most notable secondary characters, Cat, whose surname we eventually learn is (probably) Cathcart – it isn't clear whether he uses it or not.
After I'd finished reading the book, at least five people told me Cat was their favorite character in the book, and they'd wished there had been a sequel featuring him. My thought on t...
March 18, 2012
"Antwerp," Ford Madox Hueffer
Antwerp
I
Gloom!
An October like November;
August a hundred thousand hours,
And all September,
A hundred thousand, dragging sunlit days,
And half October like a thousand years …
And doom!
That then was Antwerp …
In the name of God,
How could they do it?
Those souls that usually dived
Into the dirty caverns of mines;
Who usually hived
In whitened hovels; under ragged poplars;
Who dragged muddy shovels, over the grassy mud,
Lumbering to work over the greasy sods …
Those men there, with the appearance of c...
March 16, 2012
"'Ello, I wish to register a complaint." – Vintage Erotica Cover
This cover proves that the Paranormal Romance subgenre started earlier than we thought it did. Behold the Parrot Shifter.
March 14, 2012
Sime-Gen and Slashiness
My previous post on House of Zeor (1974) by Jacqueline Lichtenberg is about .
If you will recall, in my last post I noted that though the author of House of Zeor explicitly excluded sexuality from the vampiric feeding relationship between Sime and Gen, her descriptive language for the act of feeding was often reminiscient of that used in contemporaneous romance novels. In this post, I want to look at how vigorously she avoided hints of male/male sexuality in...
March 12, 2012
Sime-Gen and Romance Novels
A shorthand description of the Sime-Gen series is "Science Fictional Vampires," but the stories are far from being that simple. The Simes, human mutants with tentacles housed in their arms, can only live through drawing life force from the Gens, who have the appearance of normal humans but are also mutants. The series explores, very deeply, a range of issues raised by one portion of humanity requiring another portion of humanity as food, the strengths and weaknesses of both sides, and...
March 11, 2012
"The Jewish Conscript," Florence Kiper Frank
The Jewish Conscript
There are nearly a quarter of a million Jews in the Czar's army alone. –Newspaper clipping.
They have dressed me up in a soldier's dress,
With a rifle in my hand,
And have sent me bravely forth to shoot
My own in a foreign land.
Oh, many shall die for the fields of their homes,
And many in conquest wild;
But I shall die for the fatherland
That murdered my little child.
How many hundreds of years ago–
The nations wax and cease!–
Did the God of our fathers...
