Everything blended when she rode the trains, it was all torn away

[sovay]

I am tired enough that each sentence I write wants to turn into another. The soundtrack in my head is Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man," but what I am actually hearing is Powell and Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), which I am taping downstairs.

It has been made quite plain by reviews, interviews, and the filmmakers themselves that I'm Not There (2007), which I saw tonight with ericmvan and bobcolby, is not a biography of Bob Dylan. If anything, it's a biography of the mythologies, anecdotes, and apocrypha about Dylan, probably as scripted by Bertolt Brecht. Cate Blanchett is an eerie, irritable dead ringer for Dylan on tour in the U.K. in 1966, but if the wild-haired Jude Quinn's interviews are word for word, the character also manifests out of a cloud of smoke with the Beatles; an earlier incarnation, a rail-riding eleven-year-old who styles himself Woody Guthrie and doesn't seem to have caught up with the fact that it's 1959, carries his guitar in a case labeled THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS, but the instruments that come out for "Maggie's Farm" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival are tommy guns. The soundtrack is impeccable; I had never heard the title song, but I need a recording now. I do not think it's a conscious intertext that Christian Bale looks a lot more like Phil Ochs.

My favorite novel of 2007 arrived in my mailbox yesterday: Simon Logan's Pretty Little Things To Fill Up The Void. I first read this book in draft form two years ago and I cannot recommended the finished version highly enough; its components include Camille Claudel, suicide bombers, punk and videocassettes and Sylvia Plath, and the sideways retro-future of Logan's industrial world. Seriously, pick up a copy. It's beautifully written, intensely interested in patterns of behavior, unlike the inside of anyone else's head. I can't wait for his next.

Comments

[samhenderson.livejournal.com]

I love Roger Livesey with a great passion.

(Sorry, ignored the rest of your post!) : )

[sovay]

(Sorry, ignored the rest of your post!)

Hee. Is perfectly acceptable. He came to my attention earlier this year with "I Know Where I'm Going!" where he is quite awesome; although Eric Portman in A Canterbury Tale has my heart.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

So the movie is okay? Conceptually it seemed interesting enough, but when I heard a clip w/Cate Blanchett on Fresh Air, it just sounded like Cate Blanchett doing a bad Dylan imitation (but this was just radio, no visuals...) and I was cringing and wondering if Terry Gross was trying to make an oblique criticism by picking that quote.

But no, huh? It works?

[fetishpunk.livejournal.com]

"I can't wait for his next."

Hah, well you might have to I'm afraid! There is stuff on the horizon but it'll be a few years before they make an appearance. Prime did agree to published the short n*vel KATJA FROM THE PUNK BAND next year (isH) but i think you've read that already?

[clarionj.livejournal.com]

Oh, I really can't afford to add anything else to my reading list, but now I'm feeling like I want/have to. All I've read of Simon Logan's is i-o and that was a few years ago. I liked that and now you're saying this is your favorite novel of 2007? How can I pass this up?

[sovay]

But no, huh? It works?

It works. It's a mosaic, some of whose pieces align across characters, some of which are refractions of the same time through a different character, many of which are commentaries or takes on others; none of it is perfectly contiguous or chronological. I suspect the more you know about Dylan's life—or at least the stories about his life—the more the movie holds together, but I have a relatively superficial knowledge of the actual events and a much greater familiarity with the songs, and I did not find myself bewildered or uninterested; quite the opposite. And because the storylines are tied so closely to the music, the effect is a little as though the songs are taken as translations of his life, which have now been translated back into images, words, and actions, with all the variation that implies. There's only one song, the aforementioned "Ballad of a Thin Man," which is treated in any way like a standard musical number. And it is terrific.

[sovay]

I liked that and now you're saying this is your favorite novel of 2007? How can I pass this up?

It really is. I hope you enjoy it!

[sovay]

Hah, well you might have to I'm afraid!

Dammit!

Prime did agree to published the short n*vel KATJA FROM THE PUNK BAND next year (isH) but i think you've read that already?

Yes, I think also in draft form. Congratulations!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

the effect is a little as though the songs are taken as translations of his life, which have now been translated back into images, words, and actions, with all the variation that implies.

What a fantastic notion! Love it.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I'm going to have to see that film. It's been rec'd to me twice today, by you and by another person whose taste I trust.

I just hope I can get someone to go with me.

[sovay]

I just hope I can get someone to go with me.

Good luck! It's worth seeing.