Mark Fuller Dillon's Blog, page 51
July 10, 2014
You've Been a Long Way Away.
Brief Encounter.
It was not an ending I expected, and I'll confess, it shook me up. That entire final sequence was presented so starkly and so eloquently in purely visual terms, that all of the dialogue could have been removed -- yes, even the final words -- and every viewer would have understood.
Cathartic? Oh, yeah!
But above all, it showed me why David Lean is famous.
It was not an ending I expected, and I'll confess, it shook me up. That entire final sequence was presented so starkly and so eloquently in purely visual terms, that all of the dialogue could have been removed -- yes, even the final words -- and every viewer would have understood.
Cathartic? Oh, yeah!
But above all, it showed me why David Lean is famous.
July 3, 2014
J'aime les images qui me font rêver
Georges Franju:
Je suis très proche de ce qui est insolite, de l'image insolite qui est dans la vie quotidienne....
Le fantastique se crée, l'insolite se révèle....
J'aime les images qui me font rêver, mais je n'aime pas qu'on rêve pour moi.
"I am very close to that which is unusual, to the unusual image that can be found in everyday life.... The fantastic is created, but the unusual is revealed.... I love images that make me dream, but I don't like someone to dream for me."
-- From CINE-PARADE: "Le Fantastique," directed by Michel Hermant. May 20, 1982.
Je suis très proche de ce qui est insolite, de l'image insolite qui est dans la vie quotidienne....
Le fantastique se crée, l'insolite se révèle....
J'aime les images qui me font rêver, mais je n'aime pas qu'on rêve pour moi.
"I am very close to that which is unusual, to the unusual image that can be found in everyday life.... The fantastic is created, but the unusual is revealed.... I love images that make me dream, but I don't like someone to dream for me."
-- From CINE-PARADE: "Le Fantastique," directed by Michel Hermant. May 20, 1982.
July 2, 2014
The Whirlpool Effect and the Maze of Mirrors
I've been trying to squeeze out the essence of a certain trend in 21st Century fiction that makes reading a story hard for me. So far, I've been able to extract two elements: the whirlpool effect, and the maze of mirrors.
The whirlpool effect is a refusal or inability to tell what is, at heart, a simple story in appropriately simple terms. Instead, the writing circles around events, and pours out a gush of extraneous detail. In short, because the writer does not emphasize the more important details over the lesser ones, everything feeds the whirlpool, and the water spills out all over the place.
This lack of emphasis might be the source of another trend. Instead of interacting with events directly, in a physical way, the characters reflect upon events, then reflect upon reflections, until the flow of the story is replaced by a stop-and-start fumbling through a maze of mirrors.
Nobody would say that non-linear narratives and constant introspection are invalid methods. But to me (and I'm likely wrong about this), the 21st Century maze and whirlpool seem less a conscious aesthetic choice than a refusal to discriminate between what matters to a story, and what can be cast aside. And what's more, it seems to imply a hesitation to let the story stand on its own uncomplicated, uncomplexified feet.
Any thoughts about this?
The whirlpool effect is a refusal or inability to tell what is, at heart, a simple story in appropriately simple terms. Instead, the writing circles around events, and pours out a gush of extraneous detail. In short, because the writer does not emphasize the more important details over the lesser ones, everything feeds the whirlpool, and the water spills out all over the place.
This lack of emphasis might be the source of another trend. Instead of interacting with events directly, in a physical way, the characters reflect upon events, then reflect upon reflections, until the flow of the story is replaced by a stop-and-start fumbling through a maze of mirrors.
Nobody would say that non-linear narratives and constant introspection are invalid methods. But to me (and I'm likely wrong about this), the 21st Century maze and whirlpool seem less a conscious aesthetic choice than a refusal to discriminate between what matters to a story, and what can be cast aside. And what's more, it seems to imply a hesitation to let the story stand on its own uncomplicated, uncomplexified feet.
Any thoughts about this?
Murder Your Darlings
The most famous advice from Arthur Quiller-Couch is, I think, often misunderstood. What he has in mind, I believe, is not any writing essential to ideas or moods or narratives, but "extraneous Ornament":
"Style... is not -- can never be -- extraneous Ornament. You remember, may be, the Persian lover whom I quoted to you out of Newman: how to convey his passion he sought a professional letter-writer and purchased a vocabulary charged with ornament, wherewith to attract the fair one as with a basket of jewels. Well, in this extraneous, professional, purchased ornamentation, you have something which Style is not: and if you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: 'Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it -- whole-heartedly -- and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.'"
-- From On The Art Of Writing (1916).
"Style... is not -- can never be -- extraneous Ornament. You remember, may be, the Persian lover whom I quoted to you out of Newman: how to convey his passion he sought a professional letter-writer and purchased a vocabulary charged with ornament, wherewith to attract the fair one as with a basket of jewels. Well, in this extraneous, professional, purchased ornamentation, you have something which Style is not: and if you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: 'Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it -- whole-heartedly -- and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.'"
-- From On The Art Of Writing (1916).
Oh, That Modern Style!
Our Tires Redeem the Asphalt Glories of Creation
A lyrical story in the modern style
by Ran Screaming.
CHAPTER MMMMCMXCV
He'd know'd it'd be hard for him to hide the drugs he'd haggled over in Tucson in the hotel highlands of Vanishing Point, but he'd kept his eyes on the road, his hands gripping the wheel, his foot tapping and bouncing and hovering and aching near that clutch thing down there by the vinyl floor covering he'd picked up in Wormley, where it'd been a sale item, a steal, at 95 cents, yeah, keep the change, how 'bout that weather, huh, not like useta be.
"Thar's a Buick."
"Nope."
"Is too."
"Nope."
Matty'd always be hampering his style. She'd be sitting beside him, guzzling Cokes, fumbling with the silver talisman of her jacket zipper, crushing mayflies between her teeth, casting aspersions on his naked dreams and glories.
"You sure that ain't a Buick?"
"Yep."
He'd picked her up in a bar near Wattahollowstump, where she'd be'd singing a torch song, tossing her feet along with the honky-tonk stomping rhythms, bellowing each couplet like a monsoon in apple season.
"It had that kinda Buick roof, ya know?"
"Nope."
Was there any point to life, he'd asked. Was there any. Her song'd touched him, but not in a good way, not in a way that'd have met with parental approval. He'd see'd right through her, right in that first primeval moment, that trilobitic caesura of cigarette clarity.
"Any more Cokes?"
"Nope."
"Fine. I'll just keep watchin' them Buicks."
* * * * *
THE CRITICS RAVE!
"Ran Screaming is the lyrical genius of our geological epoch."
"His sentences gloat and chortle, pounce and retreat, sigh and bellow, wobble and sparkle."
"No one can match his clarity of vision, his precision, his concision, his incisions into the heart of literary ambience."
"I have heard the future of the approaching, imminent American literary renaissance, and it sounds like Screaming."
A lyrical story in the modern style
by Ran Screaming.
CHAPTER MMMMCMXCV
He'd know'd it'd be hard for him to hide the drugs he'd haggled over in Tucson in the hotel highlands of Vanishing Point, but he'd kept his eyes on the road, his hands gripping the wheel, his foot tapping and bouncing and hovering and aching near that clutch thing down there by the vinyl floor covering he'd picked up in Wormley, where it'd been a sale item, a steal, at 95 cents, yeah, keep the change, how 'bout that weather, huh, not like useta be.
"Thar's a Buick."
"Nope."
"Is too."
"Nope."
Matty'd always be hampering his style. She'd be sitting beside him, guzzling Cokes, fumbling with the silver talisman of her jacket zipper, crushing mayflies between her teeth, casting aspersions on his naked dreams and glories.
"You sure that ain't a Buick?"
"Yep."
He'd picked her up in a bar near Wattahollowstump, where she'd be'd singing a torch song, tossing her feet along with the honky-tonk stomping rhythms, bellowing each couplet like a monsoon in apple season.
"It had that kinda Buick roof, ya know?"
"Nope."
Was there any point to life, he'd asked. Was there any. Her song'd touched him, but not in a good way, not in a way that'd have met with parental approval. He'd see'd right through her, right in that first primeval moment, that trilobitic caesura of cigarette clarity.
"Any more Cokes?"
"Nope."
"Fine. I'll just keep watchin' them Buicks."
* * * * *
THE CRITICS RAVE!
"Ran Screaming is the lyrical genius of our geological epoch."
"His sentences gloat and chortle, pounce and retreat, sigh and bellow, wobble and sparkle."
"No one can match his clarity of vision, his precision, his concision, his incisions into the heart of literary ambience."
"I have heard the future of the approaching, imminent American literary renaissance, and it sounds like Screaming."
June 21, 2014
Saturday, June 21, 2014
The women of the summer, spun
Before my eyes at evening's run
Were magical; yet all the while
Not one of them was you, not one
Could fade your moment in the sun
Or ease my mood of exile.
Before my eyes at evening's run
Were magical; yet all the while
Not one of them was you, not one
Could fade your moment in the sun
Or ease my mood of exile.
June 6, 2014
Dactyl Unpractical
Keep it in
Mind that your
Pain is not
Sellable.
Nobody
Cares if your
Tears are un-
Tellable.
Writhing and
Ranting and
Broodery
(Yellable)
Benefit
Nobody
If they're not
Quellable.
-- Friday, June 6, 2014.
Mind that your
Pain is not
Sellable.
Nobody
Cares if your
Tears are un-
Tellable.
Writhing and
Ranting and
Broodery
(Yellable)
Benefit
Nobody
If they're not
Quellable.
-- Friday, June 6, 2014.
June 5, 2014
There it is, behind your eyes
Within the loving cradle of my hands,
The roundness of your head seems all entire:
One gentle shape, and all you might require
To house the inner skies and hidden lands,
The river lights, the pebbled autumn strands,
The contemplative snow, the winter fire,
The rising, fading clouds of your desire --
All held within, as nature understands.
Yet there it is, behind your eyes: the scream
Of crowds that overwhelm the level shore,
The claws that snap the pleasant frame and pull
Apart the shutters of the One you seem
To show themselves, the wounded, as they pour
The blood of their own pain into your skull.
-- Thursday, June 5, 2014.
The roundness of your head seems all entire:
One gentle shape, and all you might require
To house the inner skies and hidden lands,
The river lights, the pebbled autumn strands,
The contemplative snow, the winter fire,
The rising, fading clouds of your desire --
All held within, as nature understands.
Yet there it is, behind your eyes: the scream
Of crowds that overwhelm the level shore,
The claws that snap the pleasant frame and pull
Apart the shutters of the One you seem
To show themselves, the wounded, as they pour
The blood of their own pain into your skull.
-- Thursday, June 5, 2014.
