Matthew > Recent Status Updates

That chapter on Danjuro IX and other kabuki stars was intermittently interesting, but... not exactly easy to get through.

I was coming home from a screening of Ichi the Killer when I happened upon Tanizaki's memories of his favorite childhood kagura group, who reenacted onstage the sensational murders of the day. Some things never change.

Lively, earthy memories of childhood told from the perspective of a dirty old man. Ranges from the idyllic (eating bean paste and shaved ice in your father's house) to the seedy (being momentarily abducted by a drunk soldier on a parade day). Above all, you get a sense of life in the old world for an especially imaginative child-- all the simple pleasures, all the imagined nasties, and some real ones too.

Brown's company capturing George Washington's great-grand-nephew and seizing Lafayette's sword during the Harpers Ferry raid casts American history in shades more mythically ancestral than I'm used to...

Slowly... slowly...

Black History Month gave me the last motivation I needed to finally read this book, but my progress was thwarted on February 16th by a production of Julius Caesar. I had hoped to balance the book and the play together, seeking that Brown's righteous anger might influence my depiction of Brutus. But the book and the play proved poor bedfellows. Caesar was demanding, and Brown was shelved. But now the show's over.

Playing Brutus in Manhattan this March. This book will be by my side until then.

A little slow, but pretty disturbing.

The quality of the stories has been gradually decreasing. Needless to say, I wasn't super thrilled when I saw that the rest of the book was Solicitine stories...

I expected more of the splendor and poetry native to classical Athuriana, but what I got isn't bad either.

Still good. Weird.

If I'm going to read a movie novelization I guess it may as well be this one, renowned as it is for elevating the source material with a more focused, psychological point of view and a fine prose style. Where else would I find a better, more delicately expressed description of Christopher Lee's hands being cut off than "Anakin's heart sings for the fall of that red blade"?

"O world, thou wast the forest to this hart,
And this, indeed, O world, the heart of thee."

Folks, what should I read next: Julius Caesar, Frankenstein, or The Once and Future King?

Can't wait to see which of these guys is the real Jesus Christ!

Just discovered that my copy is missing 100 pages. Put a fork in this one.

Constantly being a couple steps ahead of the characters (Yueh's treachery, the assassination attempt on Paul) is tiring. I don't know if I'll stick with this for much longer.

"It's yours, a tooth of shai-hulud, for as long as you live."

A vivid portrait of 1980s teenagerdom is being painted here: Michael Whelan posters, tales of gunshots to the head, Satanic backmasking, underage longhairs drinking beer in parking lots. And when you finally get to the end of part one, with that long, mysterious, faintly creepy description of the titular wolf-- chills.

Quite enjoyable so far-- one part meditation on drugstore fantasy paperbacks and sci-fi videotapes (Fritz Lieber, Gor, Krull, etc.) one part salacious true crime story, like one you might see on Dr. Phil or Maury. Infused with the tenderness and keen observation that made Darnielle famous.