Foster Dickson's Blog, page 13

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 199

Ultimately, reprioritizing work as a social good puts the “political” back in “political economy.” Rather than allowing purely commercial indices to dictate our economic policies – whatever maximizes a company’s profits, whatever keeps prices low for consumers – we can deliberate together how we want to produce and distribute the goods we need. Our role as a producers is not incidental for these deliberations; it is a fundamental component of our individual lives and communities.

Another way of putting this in [American political philosopher Michael] Sandel’s terms: the market can’t solve problems or answer questions that belong in the realm of democratic deliberation. Deciding what will contribute to the common good “cannot be achieved through economic activity alone . . . It requires deliberating with our fellow citizens about how to bring a just and good society, one that cultivates civic virtue and enables us to reason together about the purposes worthy of our political community.” Insisting, as corporations, lobbyists, and many of our politicians do, that the best policy is always whatever is best for consumers is a simplification that preempts true democratic deliberation. It reduces all social goods to one: the efficient satisfaction of appetites. It treats citizens as units, not agents.

— from “Let Them Eat TVs” by Regina Munch, published in Commonweal in June 2023. 

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The Fitzgerald Museum’s sixth annual Literary Contest and the Zelda Award

The Fitzgerald Museum’s sixth annual Literary Contest for high school and college students opens its submissions period on September 1, 2023. This year’s theme for the general contest, which accepts submissions from anywhere in the world, is “The Best Postman in the World.” This theme celebrates the centennial of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1923 stage play The Vegetable. Also, this is the fourth year for the Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald Young Writers Award, which is open to Alabama high school students. Submissions for this award are not governed by a theme, but should be comprised of a portfolio of writings.

The Fitzgerald Museum’s sixth annual Literary Contest:
The Best Postman in the World

F. Scott and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald were daring and revolutionary in their lives and in their art and writing. More than one hundred years after they met in Montgomery, Alabama, the Fitzgeralds’ literary and artistic works from the 1920s and 1930s are still regarded as groundbreaking, and The Fitzgerald Museum is seeking to identify and honor the daring and revolutionary young writers and artists of this generation.

Categories: Grades 9–10, Grades 11–12, Undergraduate

General Guidelines for 2023 – 2024:

The Fitzgerald Museum’s sixth annual Literary Contest is accepting submissions of short fiction, poetry, ten-minute plays, film scripts, and multi-genre works that exhibit the theme “The Best Postman in the World,” which comes from lines in Act III of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1923 stage play The Vegetable. This theme implies works about ambition, the pursuit of a goal, or excellence in one’s work. Works with traditional forms and styles will be accepted for judging, yet writers are encouraged to send works that utilize innovative forms and techniques. Literary works may include artwork, illustrations, font variations, and other graphic elements, with the caveat that these elements should enhance the work, not simply decorate the page.
 
The submissions period is open from September 1 until December 31, 2023. Works will be judged within three separate age categories, not by genre, so please be clear about the age category. Submissions should not exceed ten pages (with font sizes no smaller than 11 point). Each student may only enter once. Awards will be announced by March 15, 2024. Each age/grade category will have a single winner and possibly an honorable mention.
 

Works should be submitted through the web form available on the Fitzgerald Museum’s website. Due to issues of compatibility, works should be submitted as PDF to ensure that they appear as the author intends. Files should be named with the author’s first initial [dot] last name [underscore] title. For example, J.Smith_InnovativeStory.pdf. Questions about the contest or the entry process may be sent to contest coordinator Foster Dickson at fitzgeraldliterarycontest@gmail.com, with “Literary Contest Question” in the subject line.

This year’s judges are Zestlan Simmons for the undergraduate category and Jim Hilgartner for the high school categories. Zestlan Simmons is an alumni of the Carver Creative and Performing Arts Center’s creative writing component and has been a high school English teacher for more than twenty years. She was the 2018 Alabama Teacher of the Year. Jim Hilgartner is a fiction writer and teacher who has published work in ACM: Another Chicago Magazine, Greensboro Review, Mid-American Review, New Orleans Review, Vermont Literary Review, Xavier Review, and elsewhere. He has also served as fiction editor at Black Warrior Review, THAT Literary Review, and (currently) Thirteen Bridges Review. Hilgartner retired as Professor of English at Huntingdon College in 2023.  

The Literary Contest’s annual themes honor and reflect upon the Fitzgeralds’ literary legacy. The inaugural contest had as its theme “What’s Old is New,” which encouraged students to look to tradition for inspiration. For the second year, the theme “Love + Marriage” celebrated the centennial of the couple’s courtship and marriage. In year three, “The Education of a Personage” centered on themes of growth and maturing aligned with the centennial of Scott’s debut novel This Side of Paradise. Year four harkened back to 1921’s The Beautiful and the Damned with the theme “The Radiant Hour.” Last year’s theme, “Unclassified Masterpieces,” honored the anniversary of the 1922 story collection Tales from the Jazz Age. While these themes do parallel the Fitzgerald’s literary and personal history, they are intended to guide students to consider and examine the present and the future as Scott and Zelda did in their day.

The fourth annual Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald Young Writers Award
(for high school students in Alabama only)

 Montgomery, Alabama native Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was daring and revolutionary in her life, art, and writing, and The Fitzgerald Museum’s Young Writers Award that bears her name seeks to identify and honor Alabama’s high school students who share her talent and spirit. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame in spring 2020. This award, which was first given the following year, celebrates her life and legacy by recognizing the talents and abilities of young Alabama writers.

General Guidelines:

The Fitzgerald Museum’s third annual Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald Young Writers Award is accepting submissions of portfolios from young writers who are currently attending high school (grades 9 – 12) in Alabama. Portfolios should contain literary works (stories, poems, plays or film scripts, multi-genre works) totaling 5 to 15 pages with font sizes no smaller than 11 point. Writers are encouraged to include works that are innovative in style, content, form, and/or technique. Literary works may include artwork, illustrations, font variations, and other graphic elements, but these elements should enhance the work, not simply decorate the page.

The submissions period is open from September 1 until December 31, 2023. Each student may only enter once. 

Portfolios will be judged holistically, and only one award will be given each year. The recipient will be announced by March 15, 2024.

Portfolios should be submitted through the web form on the Fitzgerald Museum’s website. Due to issues of compatibility, works should be collected into one PDF named with the author’s first initial [dot] last name [underscore] ZeldaPortfolio (for example, J.Smith_ZeldaPortfolio.pdf). Questions about the award or the entry process may be sent to contest coordinator Foster Dickson at fitzgeraldliterarycontest@gmail.com, with “Zelda Fitzgerald Award Question” in the subject line.

This year’s judge for the award is Lenore Vickrey. Since 2012, Vickrey has been the editor of Alabama Living magazine, which is the largest circulation magazine in the state. She has been a journalist since high school and has more than forty-five years of experience as a newspaper reporter, editor, and corporate communicator.

The three previous winners of the Zelda Award are Colby Meeks from Lee High School in Huntsville, Kathleen Doyle from LAMP High School in Montgomery, and Skye Anderson from Lee High School in Huntsville.

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 198

Sometimes, he thought, you just wander around not feeling very smart and your clothes aren’t sharp and your car is a loser and you know you haven’t done a thing you’ll be remembered for and you haven’t got no more than a curbstone nor brains enough to come in out of the rain or quit playing the dumb gags that only lead from one atrocity to the next. And you just feel dumb.

— from the novel Ninety-Two in the Shade (1973) by Thomas McGuane

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Reading: “Ninety-Two in the Shade” by Thomas McGuane

Ninety-Two in the Shade
by Thomas McGuane

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Published fifty years ago, in 1973, the novel Ninety-Two in the Shade tells a quirky story about Thomas Skelton, a young man from a prominent Key West family who is trying to be a fishing guide there. However, this is no Old Man and the Sea, as he is surrounded by an array of odd characters. Perhaps the least odd of them is his girlfriend Miranda, a schoolteacher with a freewheelin’ attitude about sex and relationships. Although he lives in an abandoned airplane fuselage, Tom still goes home regularly to visit his elderly grandfather Goldsboro Skelton, who is something of grifter-lawyer-politician, and his father, who has spent seven months in bed after his blimp factory and his whorehouse both failed. His mother, meanwhile, just tries to cook meals and tolerate the two men’s bickering. At the docks, there are Nichol Dance and Faron Carter, two older men who are also fishing guides, as well as Myron, the stuffy accountant. In the beginning, everything is rocking along fine for the laidback Tom until his friends a the dock play an elaborate practical joke on him, which leads him to set Nichol’s boat on fire as retaliation. This act prompts Nichol to proclaim that, if Tom ever tries to be a fishing guide, he will kill him. (This is more than an idle threat, since it is known that Nichol shot and skilled a man before he came to Key West.)

The novel was nominated for the National Book Award in its day, and I can see where it deserved the honor. The style is excellent and unique, the dark humor is well-wrought, the short vignette-like chapters structure the multifaceted story well, and the characters are off-kilter without being forced. There are also subplots that make the weirdness even more enjoyable, like Goldsboro’s ongoing affair with his middle-aged secretary and Faron Carter’s wife Jeannie having an obsession with baton-twirling and making unnecessary purchases. As I was reading, the novel reminded me of John Nichols’ The Milagro Beanfield War and also of Tom Robbin’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, both of which were published around the same time. I always know when a novel is really good, because I’m sorry when it ends. And I felt that way about this one.

As a side note, Ninety-Two in the Shade was also made into a film in 1975, with McGuane writing the script and directing, but it pales in comparison to the book. While the basic story is there, the underpinning that makes the plot interesting is absent. For example, the backstory of why Nichol Dance shot and killed the exercise boy in the moth costume is almost completely omitted, and is instead reduced to a brief jailhouse conversation after he “kills” the dock master— it just doesn’t work. As another example, Jeannie Carter’s sexual fetish about being a baton-twirler is so under-explained that it makes her behavior seem random and irrelevant. What is a shame is that the cast is great: Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Burgess Meredith, Margot Kidder, Harry Dean Stanton. And with the writer himself leading the production, the movie should have been so much better than it is. (If you start looking for the movie, its title uses the numeral “92” not the words “Ninety-Two.”)

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 197

What, am I poor of late?
‘Tis certain, greatness, once fall’n out with fortune,
Must fall out with men too: what the declined is
He shall as soon read in the eyes of others
Show not their mealy wings but to the summer,
And not a man, for being simply man,
Hath any honour, but honour for those honours
That are without him, as place, riches, favour,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit:
Which when they fall, as being slippery standers,
The love that lean’d on them as slippery too,
Do one pluck down another and together
Die in the fall. But ’tis not so with me:
Fortune and I are friends: I do enjoy
At ample point all that I did possess,
Save these men’s looks; who do, methinks, find out
Something not worth in me such rich beholding
As they have often given.

— spoken by Achilles to Ulysses in Act 3, scene 3 of Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare

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A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 196

Influenced by the movement’s media savviness and its careful staging of protests – and, of course, by many whites’ overt racial antipathy and violence – journalists typically presented white southerners as inimitably racist and correspondingly outside of the US mainstream. Americans saw moving and still pictures of white southerners assaulting black and white protestors. News media frequently contrasted these ferocious whites with images of dignified, peaceful black civil rights protestors. For nonsoutherners, the message was clear: the South and its white inhabitants were abnormal and hostile to American ideals of equality.

— from the section “Reporting the Vicious South” in the chapter “The Many Faces of the South” in The South of the Mind: American Imaginings of White Southerners, 1960 – 1980 by Zachary J. Lechner

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The Great Watchlist Purges: The Finally Final of All Final Reports

Back in 2020, I took on the idea of emptying out my overfilled IMDb watchlist as a way to keep my mind occupied during the stagnation of the COVID-19 quarantine. And the task did that— it kept my mind occupied searching for and watching the films I had stored there. The criteria for the watchlist is pretty un-scientific: if I run across a movie that I’d like to watch but either didn’t have the time or the access to watch it, then it gets added. So, if I see something I want to watch and actually watch it, then it never makes it into the list. But lots of movies do . . . These films span a pretty broad cross-section of subjects, styles, and places, so the watchlist has long had an eclectic quality to it, and delving into it sent me down a rabbit hole. During that awful year of cultural anxiety and collective isolation, I watched a whole bunch of movies . . . and added a whole bunch, too— starting with seventy-six and ending up with seventy!

Realizing the interminable nature of what I was doing, I decided to be more systematic about this long-term effort. The following year, I began with seventy-two movies, and by September had watched fifty-three, cut twenty-one, and ended up with twenty remaining. (If you do a little math, you’ll see that movies were still added along the way.) By May 2022, I had reduced that twenty down to seventeen, but had added so many that my list was full once again— fifty-seven! So, we were basically done with COVID quarantine, but another Great Watchlist Purge was in order. By the end of that one, I had watched twenty-three and cut five, but added a few and had thirty-four movies at year’s end. Of course, those thirty-four films quickly grew to thirty-nine, as I watched December news segments featuring critics who were lauding their favorites of the year.

As 2023 began, I decided that this semi-maniacal pursuit should be finished up. The good part is that I have reinvigorated my love of movies in a way that I haven’t enjoyed since the 1990s, in the days of video rental stores. (Believe me, I’ve watched many more movies than I’ve written about in these purges, but those have been haphazard selections that had nothing to do with emptying the watchlist.) The main goal for this final purge has been to find and watch the eight films that have remained in the list since the beginning in January 2021. (Those are noted with asterisk.) Then, there are others, too. Meanwhile I also added back eighteen of the films from the first purges that I cut because I couldn’t find them.

What makes my watchlist particularly difficult is the fact that I like older and obscure movies.  The good news is that I got started early . . . The streaming service Tubi circulates movies in and out regularly, and as I scrolling through the Recommended list in January, there was already one I’d been looking for: Wrong Turn.

Wrong Turn (2003)
This horror movie made it onto the watchlist from a documentary called The 50 Best Horror Movies You’ve Never Seen. Also featured were Burnt Offerings, which I watched, and Session 9, which I cut after not being able to find it. I’d seen more than half of fifty they featured, but these I had not. Though I’m generally not interested in movies where good-looking twenty-somethings go to the woods and get chased by psychos who live out there, I took the recommendation in stride and gave it a try. I will give this movie one thing: the scene when they find the house and are snooping around in it is genuinely anxiety-inducing. The rest of it is pretty predictable. The attractive young adults get picked off one by one, starting with the ones who have sex, and in the end, these Appalachian in-bred killers are like so many horror movie villains— they survive what would kill any normal person and keep coming. It’s a pretty solid contribution to the rural-people-are-scary subgenre.

Cat People (1982)
I noticed this movie because it featured Natassja Kinski a few years before Paris, Texas. This one is early ’80s horror/suspense, and I was hoping that its redemption would come in its cast: Malcolm McDowell, Ed Begley, Jr., Ruby Dee, John Heard, John Larroquette— a whole host of ’80s regulars. And David Bowie did the music. A remake of the 1942 film of the same name, our story is set in New Orleans. While Kinski is the focus, the good-guy hero is a zookeeper/curator, played by John Heard (who was the jerky corporate antagonist in Big), and MacDowell plays the weird shape-shifting brother whose attempts at an incestuous sexual affair with his sister is just as creepy as you’d think. This movie is very 1980s, and reminded me a little bit of After Dark in its feel.

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)
Before finding this film, I had never heard of director Panos Cosmatos, but the visuals in the trailer were bold and enticing. However, this one suffered from the problem that I’ve seen in quite a few films— characters: yes . . . setting: visually interesting but not clearly explained . . . plot: clear what is happening but not why . . . and theme: well, no? In mainstream films, we usually understand what’s happening within the first ten minutes. In some art films, we never really understand what the story is. This film is one of those, like 1990’s Begotten or Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain, where the imagery is unique, but what the hell am I watching? In this case, a viewer has to stick with it for the visuals, or for the promise of a payoff, which in this film comes in a very sudden and thoroughly unsatisfying form. Beyond the Black Rainbow is visually interesting, artistic, and I’m glad I watched it, but for those who expect a story to connect with . . . choose another film.

3 Women (1977)
I ran across this film on a movie-themed Twitter account I used to follow, then looked it up on IMDb. The description said, “Two roommates/physical therapists, one a vain woman and the other an awkward teenager, share an increasingly bizarre relationship.” Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall star, and to call their characters’ relationship “bizarre” is accurate. The story is slow-paced, but it’s really about the characters who devolve in this strange situation that centers on a tryst with a married middle-aged man. He owns their apartment complex and the near-deserted club where they all hang out. It was a good movie, also odd in a creepy way. One description of it that I read called it a black comedy, but it doesn’t really end well.

Rockin’ at the Red Dog (1996)
This documentary came up as a suggestion after I watched the documentary JR Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius. This was a cool story to know about— how the earliest hippies in San Francisco coalesced within this bar in Virginia City, Nevada, how their style came from a mixture of Victorian and Old West, and how the outlaw ethos pulled it all together. Like any documentary, watching this meant listen to a bunch of older folks waxing nostalgic about their heyday, but back in the mid-1990s, this was fairly recent history. I enjoyed this one!

The Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay (1971)
This movie is French and could be easily classified as exploitation. I usually find European film adaptations of classic literature from the 1960s and ’70s interesting because the directors put a then-modern hippie/artsy spin on the story. The fusion of those two particular cultural styles then forms its own style, which can be seen in a lot of these movies. But there’s something else to say about this one: it is boring and inane. If it was possible to focus on the most mundane and uninteresting aspects of each scene, this director found a way. But if you like listening to a half-dozen attractive young women in pastel-color nighties spout cheap dialogue, this one could be for you.

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
After watching In Bruges, I would watch just about anything starring both Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell. This movie was just as cerebral as that one, and of course it lacked the action sequences— because this one didn’t involve two hit men. The story is built on the odd premise that, of two old friends in a tiny Irish island community, one decides that the other is so dull that their friendship isn’t worth continuing. Here, we see two dueling character studies, in which one man (Farrell’s character) sees day-to-day pleasantness and camaraderie as best, while the other (Gleeson’s) looks to the end of life and wants something more than “aimless chatter.” The problem is that the story has no arc, and the ending resolves nothing. However, the characters, the acting, and the premise were good enough to hold my attention for two hours.

Widespread Panic: Live from the Georgia Theatre (1991)
For the longest time, I had been looking for a separate video – like, it’s own thing – then I realized that this is just thirty-five minutes of bonus footage from Panic in the Streets. It did seemed a little odd to me that the band would have had two live-show releases in one year— so I guess I just never made the connection. Anyway, I found it, and it’s vintage Widespread Panic. Exactly what I hoped it would be.

*Little Fauss and Big Halsey (1970)
Movies from the late ’60s and early ’70s are among my all-time favorites. This one came out about the same time as Sometimes A Great Notion and Easy Rider. Despite having seen so many movies from that time frame, I’d never heard of this movie until a few years ago. It stars Robert Redford and Michael J. Pollard as a pair of dirt track motorcycle racers. The story didn’t have much substance, but I liked the style and tone of the film and the characterization was solid. The biggest compliment I can pay is to the acting. Robert Redford’s character is such a jerk, and it is obvious that Pollock’s character is so hurt by him.

The Decameron (1971)
About ten years ago, I read The Decameron – a Penguin Classics translation into English – over the course of about a year, reading a story or segue each night. (Every year, I make a New Years resolution to read another one of the Western classics that I haven’t read, and this book was part of that annual tradition.) Before watching this film, I had already seen Pasolini’s Canterbury Tales and his Arabian Knights, so I knew what to expect. There was no way he was going to pack one hundred tales into a film, but he did cover more than a dozen. While the humor and joi-de-vivre of Boccaccio’s book are there, so are the problems with Pasolini’s adaptations of the classics: the randomness of some aspects and poor transitions.

Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971)
I actually watched this movie and the one above in the same day— two from 1971, coincidentally. I like ’70s horror movies, and this one is very British. For those who don’t watch many classic horror films, think of Christopher Lee’s films from the late 1960s, and you’ll know the feel of this one. Valerie Leon was an actress I had not known outside of this movie, but I read into her a little bit and she was in some James Bond films. This movie wasn’t great, but for its genre and time period, it holds up.

*Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)
Three in a row from 1971. This Italian horror-thriller came up as a suggestion after I watched another Italian thriller Deep Red and also two more-recent horror films: the disturbing Hagazussa and the less-heavy but still creepy Make-Out with Violence. This film was everything I expected, from the acting to the music, from the groovy fashion to the clicking of footsteps in the audio. Films in this genre work like the mystery genre, and the title usually makes no sense until the end. I was a little disappointed in who the crazy killer was, but I won’t spoil it here.

A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud (2017)
I love Carson McCullers, but we don’t see much attention paid to her anymore. Two of her novels, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and Reflections in a Golden Eye, were made into successful feature films in the late 1960s, then Ballad of the Sad Cafe was adapted into film in 1991. Then nothing. This adaption of one of her stranger short stories was directed by Karen Allen, who is most recognizable as Marion in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. Only a half-hour long, this black-and-white short does a good job of capturing the strangeness and tension. A lone man is drinking beer at breakfast time, then he accosts a boy, who has stopped by the cafe at the end of his paper route. The man tells him a peculiar story about searching for an unfaithful wife, getting lost in that search, and finding peace of mind. Some adaptations of literary works lose what was wonderful about the stories they seek to recreate but this one does a good job.

Badlands (1973)
I was with my family on a short trip in summer 2021, when this movie came on one of the channels on the hotel-room TV. At first, I thought it was 3 Women, since Sissy Spacek was in it, but then I realized that it wasn’t. Pretty soon, my kids said the movie was boring, and asked if we could watch something else. So, here’s this movie that I’ve watched about fifteen minutes of . . . then it came on TCM in summer 2023! Badlands is a character study of Kit, the male lead played by Martin Sheen, with Sissy Spacek’s teenage character as something between a sidekick and a foil. There’s not much plot, with most things rambling along and happening for no particular reason, but its violence also serves as a forerunner for a film like True Romance in the 1990s.

After the Sun Fell (2016)
This movie came up as a search result when I was searching IMDb for the film After Sun. It looked interesting, so I added it. The synopsis said, “When Adam arrives at Brandon’s childhood home for the weekend, he uncovers a hole in the roof and a dark family secret: the death of a troubled brother nobody wants to talk about.” Who could pass that up? Well, I apparently could . . . after about a half-hour. After the Sun Fell is an adaptation of a stage play, and though I’m sorry to be so blunt and ugly about it: the acting was terrible, the characters were not interesting, and the dialogue was annoying. Also, trying to watch this on Pluto TV, there six commercial breaks in the first thirty minutes, which didn’t allow me to really tune in to the story. Frustrated both by too many commercials and by the annoying rants of the mother character, I opted to cut bait and relegate this one to the chum bucket.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)
Based on the Tom Robbins novel, this film was one I remember watching when I was in my twenties. But I hadn’t seen it in a long time, and now, it’s hard to find. Sadly, the movie gets low ratings on sites like IMDb, but I remembered Uma Thurman being good in it. However, right after this, she was in Pulp Fiction then Beautiful Girls, which were easily better movies. This movie is very quirky – it’s definitely not for general audiences – and borders on magical realism. John Hurt plays a transsexual named The Countess, who owns an all-female dude ranch and is obsessed with making stinky pussies smell better. Uma Thurman’s character is one of his favorite models, and he sends her to his ranch to shoot a new commercial for douche among rare and nearly extinct whooping cranes, and it is at the ranch that she meets Bonanza Jellybean, a an ultra-independent lesbian feminist who uses the whooping cranes to draw attention to the political plight of cowgirls. It is all very ’90s. I watched it with nostalgia, but also recognized its weaknesses.

*The River Rat (1984)
I found this film when I was trying to figure out what Martha Plimpton had been in. I tend to think of Plimpton as the nerdy friend she played in Goonies, but this one is set in bayou Louisiana and has Tommy Lee Jones playing her dad, who just got out of prison. This is a pretty good movie, but a bit dated in its styling and storytelling, probably due to the time when it was made. The story involves a girl who has never met her father because he went to prison for a robbery-turned-murder before she was born. As the title implies, they live on the river, and the conflict centers on whether the money he and his pal stole was buried or burned up in a fiery car crash. Brian Dennehy plays the villain, a doctor from the prison who signed for the dad’s release but who has done so in order to get the buried money. In the end though, the doc reveals his true nature and can no longer hide it because he gets a poison ivy infection all over his face, which reveals his dirty dealings within the plot. Good movie overall.

*The Mephisto Waltz (1971)
As a far of 1970s horror films, I had read about this one but never seen it. The title is great, and it doesn’t hurt that Jacqueline Bisset is beautiful. I always remembered Alan Alda as Hawkeye Pierce in TV’s M*A*S*H but he played a very different kind of character here. This movie reminded me a bit of Christopher Lee’s movies from the same period (late 1960s, early 1970s), though with a more American and less British feel to it. I was disappointed to see that Mephisto Waltz only rated about a 6 on IMDb; I thought it was a better film than that, but I will say that it used quite few of the tropes and cinematic tricks of horror movies from this time: hazy cinematography in the dream sequences, a swooning camera to denote dizziness, a hidden cult with members who otherwise seem like normal people, etc.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
This one was made by Peter Weir, who later made Gallipoli, Witness, and Dead Poets Society— all good movies. The description says, “During a rural summer picnic, a few students and a teacher from an Australian girls’ school vanish without a trace. Their absence frustrates and haunts the people left behind.” That was just too tantalizing to turn down. But this one of the dullest movies I’ve ever seen, the sound levels (volume) were so off-kilter that I couldn’t hear much of what was being said, though the music blasted. The core problem is: there was no way to tell who or what this movie was about. There was no main character, and nothing was resolved. I’ll give it to the filmmaker that he has great sets, great costumes, good acting, and the lead actress was beautiful . . . but my goodness, have something that we can follow as a story! Was this movie about the school’s cold-hearted director or about the young men who searched for the girls, or about the orphan girl who is withheld from the picnic then later kills herself, or about the French mademoiselle who is upset by losing the girls she loved and cared for . . . ? I don’t know, and if you watch it, you won’t either.

Session 9 (2001)
This one, along with Burnt Offerings and Wrong Turn, made it onto the watchlist from a documentary called The 50 Best Horror Movies You’ve Never Seen. I’d seen more than half of the films that were featured, but this one I had not. It was number 39. I put it in my Netflix DVD queue but it went to Saved status, so I guess that’s why the show was about the horror movies . . . You’ve Never Seen! But I did eventually get it . . . and it was great! The plot is complex, the few characters are utilized effectively, the storytelling is full of tension and anxiety— everything you want in a good horror film. What I loved most about the movie was that I couldn’t tell until the very end who the killer would be.

The Double Life of Veronique (1991)
This film is French and Polish, and follows two women leading parallel lives. Though the film was nothing like it, the premise reminded me of Sliding Doors, which it preceded by seven years. This one got high marks in IMDb but . . . it was incredibly dull. Now, the lead actress is beautiful, charming, and easy to watch. However, the story is very cerebral, relying on vague claims of a psychic connection that the main characters make, although why it matters is not clear. I’m glad I watched this film, but I can’t say that I agree with other reviewers’ strong praise.

The Dreamers (2003)
Another Bertolucci film, this one set in 1968 in Paris during the time of student riots. The star here, Michael Pitt, I recognized from supporting roles in Finding Forrester in the mid-1990s and The Village in the early 2000s. Pitt was good here, too, as an American student who is a cinephile, and as a result makes friends with a brother and sister amid the turbulent goings-on. The dialogue is excellent, the characters are interesting, the homage to old films is wonderful. The creepy part is that the brother and sister are kind of into incest. Which is not OK with our main character, and wasn’t OK with me either. All in all, I’m not sure whether to say this was a good movie or not . . . because it was kind of about a love of movies and kind of about a group of young friends but also kind of about incest.

Tár (2022)
This movie was one of a few films suggested in a PBS NewsHour segment that featured critics talking about their favorite movies of 2022. Some of the suggestions didn’t look interesting to me, but this one and another – After Sun, below –  did. Tár has Cate Blanchett playing an artistically brilliant but personally flawed female orchestra conductor. It is dramatic, very heavy, and perhaps a bit too long . . . but still a darn good film. I respect movies that take a main character who starts out having our sympathy, then slowly turns them into someone we can’t sympathize with, while making hard to know exactly how and when that happens. (To me, the best example of this is 1993’s Falling Down.)  Tár actually came to our local independent theater but I missed it. I watched in on Amazon Prime. Glad I did.

While those are the films that I found and watched, of course there are the ones that I have decided to give up on. For a variety of reasons, mind you. Since I like more obscure and esoteric films, some of the ones that I throw in the watchlist are too hard to find. The Amorous Adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza and Tanya, both from 1976, fall into that category. The former film is Spanish and might just be a Don Quixote-themed softcore porno, but my interest in it was sparked by having Hy Pyke in the cast. The latter is a sex comedy based on basic plot line of Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army. This movie is probably terrible, and the fact that director Nate Rogers gave himself the pseudonym Duncan Fingersnarl is both creepy and gross. But it’s that kind of off-kilter weirdness that makes me want to ask, What’s that all about?

Three that I gave up on due to the language barrier are: Jean Cocteau’s bohemian classic The Blood of a Poet (1932), the Greek film Landscape in the Mist (1988), and the Italian adaptation Mondo Candido (1975). About the first, I’m just not as interested in European bohemians as I once was. I did find the original French-language film on archive.org, but I only know a scant amount of French. About Landscape in the Mist (1988), I also found it on archive.org, but I don’t speak Greek at all. In truth, this film about two orphans won high praise, but I have no idea what it is about really. Finally, there is Mondo Candido. I read the novel Candide in graduate school and liked it, and even taught it every once in a while in my twelfth-grade English classes. It’s a pretty wild story, and my interest in this Italian film adaptation arose from having watched other Italian classic-literature adaptations like Pasolini’s Canterbury Tales and Fellini’s Satyricon. I did find the original Italian film on YouTube, but English subtitles are not available there.

On a completely different note, I have removed 1983’s Eddie and the Cruisers, 1971’s Billy Jack, and 1998’s The Slums of Beverly Hills because I’ve already seen them. These three were only in the watchlist because I felt kind of nostalgic about them and thought I’d rewatch them. I remember Eddie and the Cruisers being a good movie. I like early-1980s Michael Paré generally – mainly Streets of Fire – and the Springsteen-esque main song from the soundtrack was really good: “On the Dark Side” by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band. But this movie is virtually absent from streaming services. One movie guy I know suggested that someone associated with either the movie production or the music is being a jerk about rights and royalties. That’s possible. As for Billy Jack, if you grew up in the South and had cable TV, then you know that there were certain movies that TBS (out of Atlanta) showed regularly on weekend afternoons. Billy Jack was one of them. I remember wondering as a boy why this movie was so serious and dark. Back in the days of cable TV, if you tuned in late, you just missed part of the show, so I’ve seen parts of Billy Jack numerous times. And I remember seeing The Slums of Beverly Hills when it was new but I couldn’t tell you much about it. I do recall it being funny in kind of an off-color way. In short, I’d like to watch it again and probably will since it is available for rent on Amazon Prime.

Finally, there is The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), directed by Peter Greenaway, who was one of my favorites in the 1990s. After seeing The Pillow Book at our local community theater, I found Prospero’s Books on VHS, then became aware of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. Other than liking the director’s previous work, I know little about this movie.

That leaves these thirteen films still in the watchlist. One is from 1929, then there are one from the 1960s, four from the 1970s, two from the 1980s, one from the 1990s, one from the 2000s, none from the. 2010s, and three from the 2020s. A few have been in the list for a long time because they are harder to access, again for various reasons, but several are available though Apple TV, one of the streaming services I don’t have. All the Colors of the Dark is probably not offered because of its content. Deadlock, Personal Problems, Prince Achmed, and The Burning Moon have all been impossible to find, but I’m interested enough in them to leave them in the list. So, what began in the summer of 2020 ends in the summer of 2023. Here’s the current watchlist:

*The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1929)
I had never heard of this animated movie before seeing a reference to it on Twitter from an account that was disputing Fantasia‘s designation as the first full-length animated feature film. The clip attached to the tweet was interesting, and I want to see the whole film. It will stay in the watchlist.

*Born in Flames (1983)
This early ’80s dystopian film about life after a massive revolution looks cool but is obscure. Apple TV has it, but I don’t subscribe to Apple TV. I was surprised to see a story on NPR about it a year or more ago, then I thought maybe it would show up on other streaming services. But nope. I will likely watch this one eventually.

*Personal Problems (1980)
This one is also pretty obscure – complicated African-American lives in the early ’80s – and came up as a suggestion since I liked Ganja and Hess. The script was written by Ishmael Reed – whose From Totems to Hip-Hop anthology I’ve used in my classroom – and the description says “partly improvised,” which means that the characters probably ramble a bit. Other than Ganja and Hess and this film, there is only one other film that Bill Gunn made: Stop!, which was never released. (His other work mainly involves the Man from UNCLE television series.) I still hope to find this movie, maybe it will find its way onto one of the streaming services eventually.

*All the Colors of the Dark (1972)
I have memories of seeing this movie in the late 1980s when USA Network used to have a program called Saturday Nightmares, but every list that appears on the internet doesn’t include this movie as having been shown on that program. That weird old program turned me on 1960s and ’70s European horror movies, like Vampire Circus and The Devil’s Nightmare, and I could have sworn this one was on that show— but maybe not. But then I can’t imagine where I did see it. No matter, I haven’t seen this movie in a long time and would like to re-watch it. However, the full movie with English subtitles has been virtually impossible to find, which is strange considering that The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh is widely available. One streaming service had it but said it was not available in my area, and one YouTuber has shared the original Italian-language movie . . . but I don’t speak Italian. The DVD is also available for purchase from a few sources.

Deadlock (1970)
This western came up as a suggestion at the same time as Zachariah. It’s a German western that looks very cool, visually and in terms of story. Generally, it has been hard to find, with only the trailer appearing on most sites. Once again, Apple TV has it. At one point Mubi must have had it, because it comes up in their listings, but it isn’t available to watch there anymore.

Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
I can’t tell what to make of this movie: Phantom of the Opera but with rock n roll in the mid-’70s? I’ve gathered from the previews that the star is Paul Williams, who later played Little Enos in Smokey and the Bandit, and it looks similar in style to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This one is not as hard to find, but it’s availability mostly through rentals on streaming services.

Valérie (1969)
Not to be confused with Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, this film is a Quebecois hippie film about a naive girl who comes to the city to get involved in the modern goings-on. This one came up as related to Rabid, but only has 5.1 stars on IMDb— it may be a clunker, we’ll see . . . It’s also available on Apple TV.

The Burning Moon (1992)
What fan of strange horror films could resist this description of a German film made in the 1990s: “A young drug addict reads his little sister two macabre bedtime stories, one about a serial killer on a blind date, the other about a psychotic priest terrorizing his village.” The information on it says that it is really gory, which doesn’t interest me as much as tension and suspense do, but I’d like to see this for the same reason that I wanted to see House before.

Lamb (2021)
This came up as a suggestion on Prime, then it went to Rent or Buy status, and I should’ve watched it when it was available. I thought that I might bite the bullet and rent it sometime, then it came up as available on Netflix’s DVD option. I put it in the queue, and it went to Saved status. Eventually Netflix stopped its DVD option, so I’d regard this film as “the one that got away.”

Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
Two of the most unique actors around, John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe, star in this story about the filming of 1922’s Nosferatu.

The Conformist (1970)
I like Bertolucci, but am not really into movies about Nazis, so I had ignored this movie previously. Then it came up in a show I was watching that referenced Nazi movies like The Damned, and the critics they interviewed kept saying that this is a great movie.

After Sun (2022)
This was also one of the movies suggested in that December 2022 PBS NewsHour segment. (See Tár, above) After Sun tells the story of a woman looking back at her father and trying to reconcile the man she knew with aspects of his life that didn’t know about.

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
I don’t usually watch action films and have little interest in fast-paced Asian action films, which seem be a genre in and of themselves, but this one came highly recommended in another end-of-year news segment about best films. It looks visually interesting, and the critic who discussed it said it is the main actress Michelle Yeoh’s best performance ever.

I had also been keeping an eye out for these fourteen movies that I had previously cut from the watchlist in 2021 and 2022. Of the original eighteen, I actually found and watched four. But most of them remained in the discard pile.

The Panic in Needle Park and Dusty and Sweets McGee were both from the 1971 and are about hardcore drug users. I generally liked movies from the early 1970s, but didn’t put much effort into finding these two after watching Born to Win, which was not a good movie. The Panic in Needle Park has Al Pacino in it, so it might actually be pretty good.

The inclusion of Mountain Cry (2015) was kind of a fluke. It came up when I searched the term ‘haiku’ on IMDb once. It appears to be a beautifully filmed Chinese drama about a family in a small village, but getting an American version doesn’t seem possible.

Two by director Carlos Mayolo, The Vampires of Poverty (1978) and La mansion du Araucaima (1986)— both look intriguing. Vampires of Poverty is fictional but made to look a documentary about the poor. The latter is about an actress who wanders off a film set and into a weird castle. I did find an original Portuguese-language version of the latter online, but that didn’t help me much.

The title of 1985’s Alabama lured me in— because it’s not about Alabama, the state where I live. The film is Polish, and one of the posters says “love story” on it, so I’m guessing that it’s a love story. I was mainly curious why it’s titled Alabama, but I’ll probably never find out.

The Night They Robbed Big Bertha’s (1975) has been hard to find, and from the previews, it looks awful. This one made it into the list because, along with Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws, it seems like a great example of 1970s Southern kitsch, that goofy comedy sub-genre that spawned Smokey and the Bandit and The Dukes of Hazzard.

The Girl Behind the White Picket Fence (2013) was one that I found in a search for Udo Kier, who I’ve liked since seeing Andy Warhol’s versions of Frankenstein and Dracula when I was in high school. The cinematic style of this one looks pretty cool, as does the story. Unfortunately, the only way that to get his film is by buying it.

Endless Poetry (2016) was actually in my Netflix DVD queue when they stopped sending movies them. Alejandro Jodorowsky is hit-or-miss for me. I liked The Holy Mountain and Santa Sangre but not El Topo. This movie about him is supposed to be done in his very strange style.

Three that were disappointing not to find were: Beginner’s Luck (2001), Tykho Moon (1996), and White Star (1983). The first two star Julia Delpy, who was one of my 1990s celebrity crushes after I saw Killing Zoe and Before Sunrise. (The other was Hope Sandoval, singer for Mazzy Star.) These movies look very different from each other, and Delpy is the common element. This third is a biopic, directed by Roland Klick, and it has Dennis Hopper playing Westbrook. As a fan of rock journalism, I wanted to see it but just like Klick’s Deadlock, I can’t seem to find it.

Last but not least, there is The Earth Will Swallow You (2002). How has a guy who loves Widespread Panic never seen this early concert film? Ridiculous. It’s partially my fault, since you can buy a DVD on Amazon for under $20. However, clips are easy to find, but not the whole thing. I think I’ll just be satisfied with the clips.

Movies from All of the Purges:Persona (1966)Francesco (1989)Born to Win (1971)Bruges-Le-Morte (1978)So, Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? (2013)Hi, Mom! (1970)The Borrower (1991)Quiet Days in Clichy (1970)Fantastic Planet (1973)The Baby (1973)Under Milk Wood (1971)Heavy Traffic (1973)Six Pack (1982)The Sky is Gray (1980)The Black Cat (1989)The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds (1970)Boxcar Bertha (1972)Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)Pink Motel (1982)The Rebel Rousers (1970)Ride in the Whirlwind (1968)Psych Out (1968)Mood Indigo (2013)Lucky (2017)Big Sur (2013)Factotum (2005)The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971)Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Minnesota (2017)Belladonna of Sadness (1973)The Wicker Man (1973)Paris, Texas (1984)Meridian (1990)My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)American Splendor (2003)Pierrot le Fou (1965)Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws (1978)The Spider Labyrinth (1988)House (1977)Don’t Look Now (1973)In Bruges (2008)The Devil Rides Out (1968)Thomasine & Bushrod (1974)Fox Style (1973)Zachariah (1971)The Tenant (1976)Abby (1974)It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (1988)The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart (1970)Alone in the Dark (1982)The Unnamable (1988)Wendy and Lucy (2008)Lilith’s Awakening (2016)Frances Ferguson (2019)The Hunger (1983) A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) Messiah of Evil (1973)Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)Torso (1973)Pieces (1982)Vivarium (2019)The Damned (1969)Begotten (1989)Satan’s Slave (1976)Venus in Furs (1969)1900 (1976)Haiku Tunnel (2001)Images (1972)Forty Years on the Farm (2012)Fascination (1979)Zabriskie Point (1970)Ravagers (1979)The Beautiful Troublemaker (1991)Simple Men (1992)Rabid (1977)What the Peeper Saw (1971)Chronopolis (1982)Booksmart (2019)The Psychedelic Priest (1971)The Downing of a Flag (2021)Spirit of the Beehive (1973)Cronos (1993)Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014)The Little Hours (2017)The Lobster (2015)All the Right Noises (1970)The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (2013).Brother on the Run (1973)Wrong Turn (2001)Cat People (1982)Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)3 Women (1977)Rockin’ at the Red Dog (1996)The Girl Slaves of Morgana le Fay (1971)The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)Widespread Panic: Live at the Georgia Theatre (1999)Little Fauss and Big Halsey (1970)The Decameron (1971)Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971)Four Flies on Gray Velvet (1971)A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud. (2017)Badlands (1973)After the Sun Fell (2016)Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)The River Rat (1983)The Mephisto Waltz (1971)Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)Session 9 (2001)The Double Life of Veronique (1991)The Dreamers (2003)Tár (2022)

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 195

What they meant when they said it was up to you was don’t be the one to keep your own self down. Find out whatever and whoever it is you want to be and do your level best and you can count on somebody backing you up the best we can even when it’s something ain’t nobody ever heard tell of before. Because folks don’t necessarily have to be able to use all them big dictionary words to understand life. You just go on ahead and let them see you trying and they’ll understand more than you might think. And anytime you don’t believe it all you got to do is get up somewhere and mess up and see if they won’t know it.

— from “Tuskegee” in South to a Very Old Place by Albert Murray

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A Deep Southern Throwback Thursday: The Destruction of the Georgia Guidestones, 2022

It was one year ago today that someone (or some group) destroyed the controversial Georgia Guidestones, a monolithic granite monument in Elberton, Georgia that was constructed, placed, and unveiled in 1979 and 1980. Just as the identity of the Guidestones’ creator was obscured from public knowledge, so was the identity of the monument’s destructor. The site had long been a source of controversy, some believing it to be a beacon for witchcraft, others taking exception with the content of its carved text. 

News of the monument’s destruction came in this Georgia Public Broadcasting story, which explained:

The Georgia Guidestones have been a roadside oddity for more than four decades in Elberton, about two hours northeast of Atlanta. The monument stood close to 20 feet tall and has been a testament to the region’s granite industry — and a vector for conspiracies.

While most locals, passersby, and visitors would regard the Guidestones as just a “roadside oddity,” others have taken deep offense at the style of the monument, the content of the messaging, or both. With its four nineteen-foot-tall granite uprights and a large piece of granite placed roof-like on the top, the monument resembled Stonehenge and other early or prehistoric/pagan constructs, which has led some people to believe that its purpose had to do with animism, nature worship, or even satanism. Others disliked the ten “guides” that the monument offered. Chief among them was the instruction to keep the human population below five-hundred million. What has offended some people about that was: to achieve this, a majority of the world’s billions of people would have to die. Which begs the question: who gets sacrificed to achieve this vision of a sustainable future for humanity? Number two lent itself to this purpose: “Guide reproduction wisely.” Was that an endorsement of abortion or infanticide, or did it foresee something like The Handmaid’s Tale? Where guide number one gave a hard and fast number to adhere to, number two could be open to a vast number of interpretations, some kind of scary. But in its favor, it did add “improving fitness and diversity.” 

The remaining eight seemed like a mixture of common sense rules, overly idealistic dreams, and ill-defined notions. Among those that might not invite argument were number five (“Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.”) and number seven (“Avoid petty laws and useless officials.”) A few might incite significant debate about what form they would take in real life, like number three (“Unite humanity with a living new language.”) or number eight (“Balance personal rights with social duties.”). Globally and politically speaking, number six would be a hard sell, since the United Nations kind of tries to do this: “Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.” Numbers four and nine deal with abstract concepts: “Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason,” and “Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.” Finally, number ten is a darn good idea, but would still get real blowback: “Be not a cancer on the Earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.” 

In general, I see no good reason to destroy the Georgia Guidestones, even if someone was bothered by the ideas they expressed. It had been over forty years since they were unveiled in a public ceremony, and these somewhat apocryphal stones had not achieved notoriety nor gravity beyond being a “roadside oddity” in a small Southern town. Furthermore, I doubt that anyone on a serious quest for the secret to a good life and hope for humanity would go looking in a field in eastern Georgia. Unfortunately, though, the Guidestones had found a place among current conspiracy theories, including the fringe belief that COVID-19 was a government effort to reduce the world’s population to five-hundred million. 

If you ask me, the tenets expressed and the way they are presented are not witchy or pagan, but seem vaguely Masonic and generally classical. Considering that Freemasonry in America hits its peak in the late 1950s and was prevalent throughout the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, a lot of Americans – including Southern men – were involved in Masonic organizations. My guess is that whoever had them created and erected was probably a relatively well-educated, well-read, wealthy white man with conservative social ideals, a solid knowledge of the Bible and classical literature, and personal experience with Freemasonry, the combination of which led him (and possibly a group of friends) to believe that they had things figured out. The Guidestones look to me like an attempt at a new Ten Commandments by a couple of old white dudes from the lodge. 

Obviously, others – possibly these conspiracy theorists – must not have seen the Guidestones as being so harmless. Video surveillance footage showed a person placing the bomb at the foot of the monument, but no one was ever identified or arrested. In July 2022, a month after the destruction, the local DA was still expressing his intention to find and prosecute the offender, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was helping, too. But nothing ever came of it. Ultimately, the decision was made not to rebuild the Georgia Guidestones, and the remaining portion was brought down as a safety hazard.

For those interested in knowing more, the 2015 documentary Darks Clouds over Elberton tells a version of the story of the Guidestones. It even makes a pretty good case for the identity of RC Christian, the pseudonymous person who arranged for the Guidestones to be built.

 

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 194

“Yes, but what about the firemen, then?” asked Montag.

“Ah.” Beatty leaned forward in the faint mist of smoke from his pipe. “What more easily explained and natural? With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers, instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word ‘intellectual,’ of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ‘bright,’ did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and torture after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but made equal. Each man the image of every other; for there are no mountains to make to them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won’t stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors. That’s you, Montag, and that’s me.”

— from section one,” The Hearth and the Salamander” in  Fahrenheit 451, 60th Anniversary Edition, by Ray Bradbury

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