Category Archives: fiction

Notice the words love and hate …

The Night of the Hunter (1955) – Charles Laughton
Notice the words love and hate have been tattooed across his knuckles.

The Night of the Hunter is a 1953 novel by American author Davis Grubb. The book was a national bestseller and was voted a finalist for the 1955 National Book Award. In 1955 the book was adapted by Charles Laughton and James Agee as the film The Night of the Hunter.

The story concerns an ex-convict who, acting on a story told him by his now-dead cellmate, cons the cellmate’s widow into marrying him in hopes that her children will tell him where their father hid the money from his last robbery. After killing their mother, he embarks on a hunt for the children, who have sensed his evil and are running from him.

The plot was based on the true story of Harry Powers, who was hanged in 1932 for the murders of two widows and three children in Clarksburg, West Virginia. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night of the Hunter [Sept 2006]

See also: serial killer – American cinema – 1955

In the beginning there was the Word

In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God

In den beginne was het Woord en het Woord was bij God en het Woord was God.

Au commencement était la Parole, et la Parole était avec Dieu, et la Parole était Dieu.

Im Anfang war das Wort, und das Wort war bei Gott, und das Wort war Gott.

EN el principio era el Verbo, y el Verbo era con Dios, y el Verbo era Dios.

—Gospel of John (KJV) 1:1-4

Animals are divided into:

Photo of Borges, credit unidentified

Animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies. —The Analytical Language of John Wilkins

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List of animals (Borges) [Sept 2006]

Published in:

Other Inquisitions: 1937-1952 (1952) – Jorge Luis Borges
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

See also: taxonomy – Borges

Karel Thole (1914 – 2000)

Illustration of German pulp fiction novel by Karel Thole

Carolus Adrianus Maria Thole (1914, Netherland – 2000, Italy) is a Dutch painter. He is one of the best-known european illustrators of science fiction and the fantastique. Influenced by painters like Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí or René Magritte his style is instantly recognizable.

Via The Groovy Age of Horror.

See also: le fantastique

The Black Dahlia (1987) – James Ellroy

The Black Dahlia is a neo-noir novel by James Ellroy based on true events. It is considered the book that elevated Ellroy out of typical genre writer status and with which he started to garner critical attention as a serious writer of literature. One of the first essays to come to the defense of crime fiction as a serious form of literature was Leslie Fiedler’s 1969 Cross the Border — Close the Gap.

Foreign answers to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time

The two novels listed are supposed to be the foreign equivalents to Proust’s epic . (source: 1001 Books)

Can anyone think of other epic novels from different countries that are considered ‘foreign’ answers to In Search of Lost Time? Criteria are length, level of introspection and lack of plot. Would Robert Musil‘s The Man Without Qualities (1921-1942) count?

See also: modernist literature

The Comfort of Strangers (1990) – Paul Schrader

The Comfort of Strangers (1990) – Paul Schrader
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Saw The Comfort of Strangers (1990) on VHS; at the same time I went to the Fnac and read bits of this 100-page novella. With a runtime of 107 minutes it is probably a better idea (quicker and better) to read this story than see it.

Nevertheless: What will you miss when you read instead of see:

  • Music by Angelo Badalamenti
  • Armani’s 1980s chic clothing
  • Sumptuous interiors of Venetian villa and views Venice itself (armchair travelling)
  • Saint George slaying the dragon painted by Paolo Uccello
  • Christopher Walken
  • Screenplay by Harold Pinter

Notes:

  • Paul Schrader is probably the most ‘European’ of American directors
  • Compare the throat slashing in Comfort with the one in Haneke’s Caché.
  • What was the drug that Everett’s wife was given: it left her conscious but unable to move?

Most memorable moments:

  • “Robert started to hurt me when we made love … Though it took a lot of time, … I liked it.”
  • Walken striking Everett in the stomach

Rating (film): Psychological realism 4/10, feelgood factor: 3/10, Oddity value 5/10.

Ballardian psychogeography

K punk has an analysis of an interview with Iain Sinclair by Tim Chapman which touches upon psychogeography, the art of the 20th century flâneur.

Of all the intriguing moments in Tim Chapman’s fascinating interview with Iain Sinclair over at the ever-excellent Ballardian (Sinclair so much more arresting and engaging as a commentator and critic than as a novelist, where writerly obsurantism fogs over all his insights and sharpness), this is one of the most telling: —k punk

He opened his eyes at 4am and his last day began

Via Bookslut:

You know, thank god we have privileged old white men like John Updike and Martin Amis to help us really get inside the minds of poor Muslim young men drawn to martyrdom. Perhaps the war on terror can finally come to an end now that we truly understand where they’re coming from with books like The Terrorist and Amis’s new short story at the Guardian, following the last days of Muhammad Atta. –Jessa Crispin

On 11 September 2001, he opened his eyes at 4am, in Portland, Maine; and Muhammad Atta’s last day began. –Martin Amis via the Guardian.

Ian McEwan (1948 – )

I’m still reading 1001 Books and when one arrives in the 1970s one finds Ian McEwan and he looks just like my kind of writer. I knew of the film The Cement Garden (starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg) but did not know it was written by Mc Ewan. I’ll probably start by seeing the filmed version of The Comfort of Strangers (Christopher Walken, Helen Mirren) directed by Paul Schrader who is also a purveyor of dark culture and who likes Bresson (so do Michael Haneke, Girish Shambu and Dennis Cooper). Below are some pointers to Ian Mc Ewan, definitely an artist of the grotesque.

The Cement Garden (1978) – Ian McEwan
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

In The Cement Garden, the father of four children dies. His death is followed by the death of the children’s mother. In order to avoid being taken into custody, the children hide their mother’s death from the outside world by encasing her corpse in cement in their basement. Two of the siblings, a teenage boy and girl, descend into an incestuous relationship, while the younger son starts to experiment with transvestism. [Sept 2006]

The Comfort of Strangers (1981) – Ian McEwan
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

A story of sexual predation and entrapment set in Venice (like Daphne du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now) featuring Colin and Mary (an innocent couple that reminds of Bitter Moon’s innocent couple) and Robert and the invalid Caroline (the evil couple). Caroline’s invalidity is the result of Robert’s sadistic sexual violence. The theme of male dominance and brutality toward women is re-examined when it is revealed that the object of Robert’s desire is Colin.

The Comfort of Strangers (1990) – Paul Schrader
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Like many of Paul Schrader’s films, The Comfort of Strangers is a mournful examination of decaying innocence and sexual transgression.

Based on a creepy Ian McEwan novel, this Paul Schrader film stars Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett as a married couple who find their marriage sliding into a morass of tedium. To reignite it, they visit Venice, where they fall under the spell of an urbane older couple, played by Christopher Walken (in one of his most chillingly insinuating roles) and Helen Mirren (who seems to be more his crippled acolyte than his wife). British reserve forces the younger couple to be polite to these strange birds, but increased exposure to them through coincidental meetings gradually pulls them into their deadly orbit. Adapted by Harold Pinter, it’s a slightly arid but still goose-fleshy film in which nothing is what it seems to be and, what’s worse, nothing familiar looks familiar anymore. –Marshall Fine for Amazon.com

Ian McEwan CBE, (born June 21, 1948), is a British novelist (sometimes nicknamed “Ian Macabre” because of the nature of his early work).–http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian McEwan

See also: 1948 – British literature – macabre