Where does our shadow go while we're dancing in place?
Last night I dreamed of a three-person crime repeating through time in a Chinese restaurant. The actions differed each time, but the body count was the same. The night before that was a nightmare unpleasantly resembling both a poem I wrote in college and my present relationship with my orthodontics: I had agreed to some kind of experimental procedure which would have given me moss and leaves in my skin and hair for reasons that resembled alien first contact but might have had supernatural overtones, but it had proliferated unexpectedly through my body and my mouth was full of tiny green-and-white seedlings growing from my tongue and the insides of my cheeks; I had to keep tearing them out and it hurt constantly and I was always choking for air and my mouth was always full of blood. I suppose it's good that I'm dreaming on the amount of sleep I get these days, but the subject material could use some work. When I woke this morning, the very first thing I had to do was clean up a glass smashed by a cat in the kitchen. Fortunately, I have this vacuum cleaner. Still.
1. Talking in two different places about the life expectancy of queer characters in fiction reminded me that for about two years I have been wanting to repost a comment I made in conversation with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skygiants:
The Moon-Spinners (1962) is not Mary Stewart's best novel, but I bear it a disproportionate debt of gratitude for the character of Tony Gamble, because he is coded gay about as strongly as Stewart could get away with and nothing bad happens to him, even though he's a jewel thief and one of the novel's antagonists. He's graceful and humorous, he has faintly camp manners and the heroine thinks he moves like a dancer, but he's the jack-of-all-trades at a new hotel in Crete; it's not clear that he has any more scruples than the rest of his gang, especially when it comes to double-crossing them, but he's the one the author allows to get away, facetiously promising to send the heroine "a picture postcard from the Kara Bugaz." Her cousin thinks he never will, but I like to think that someday a postcard from somewhere arrived. I took him for granted as a child and then, as an adult re-reader, was really impressed that he's just a person.
(As an adult re-reader I really want to have seen him played by Roddy McDowall, but only in a universe where Disney did not adapt the novel into a vehicle for Hayley Mills.)
2. I don't know if I'll get to see any of it, but I really hope Moving Day at MIT will be as strange and interesting as the Boston Globe hopes. Oliver Smoot as grand marshal of the parade feels metaphysically right.
3. Speaking of universities and interesting people, Justus Rosenberg was not one of my mother's professors at Bard, but she knew who he was. I always like seeing people get this kind of writeup while they're alive.
4. The Daughter of Dawn (1920) will be available on DVD come this summer. I read about the discovery and restoration of this formerly lost film in 2012, but if it played anywhere in the Boston area, I missed it. I'd still like to see it on a big screen, but I think it's more important that it be available to people regardless of their proximity to arthouse theaters or university archives. A cast of all-Native characters played by all-Native actors, with nary a white lead in sight? "I would say this film proves that Indians have been acting since day one."
5. As a child I thought often about Elizabeth Goudge's Green Dolphin Street (1944) because it had one of the most evocative titles on its bookshelf. I tried it sometime in adolescence, during my foray into Goudge novels that were not The Valley of Song (1951), and bounced with such ferocity that I can remember absolutely nothing about the plot except a disappointing lack of dolphins. Yesterday I discovered there's a film version from 1947. It co-stars Van Heflin. With Lana Turner. And a title theme that became a jazz standard. It's probably terrible. I can't imagine how Goudge's Christianity would translate to the screen or what any novel of hers would look like without it. I am obviously going to have to undertake some kind of read-watch. Why is this my life?
I am off to meet Dean at the Fogg Museum. I want to write about The Uninvited (1944), which was as weird and complex and full of undercurrents as I would expect a seminal ghost story to be, but I might need to get some real rest first.
1. Talking in two different places about the life expectancy of queer characters in fiction reminded me that for about two years I have been wanting to repost a comment I made in conversation with
skygiants:The Moon-Spinners (1962) is not Mary Stewart's best novel, but I bear it a disproportionate debt of gratitude for the character of Tony Gamble, because he is coded gay about as strongly as Stewart could get away with and nothing bad happens to him, even though he's a jewel thief and one of the novel's antagonists. He's graceful and humorous, he has faintly camp manners and the heroine thinks he moves like a dancer, but he's the jack-of-all-trades at a new hotel in Crete; it's not clear that he has any more scruples than the rest of his gang, especially when it comes to double-crossing them, but he's the one the author allows to get away, facetiously promising to send the heroine "a picture postcard from the Kara Bugaz." Her cousin thinks he never will, but I like to think that someday a postcard from somewhere arrived. I took him for granted as a child and then, as an adult re-reader, was really impressed that he's just a person.
(As an adult re-reader I really want to have seen him played by Roddy McDowall, but only in a universe where Disney did not adapt the novel into a vehicle for Hayley Mills.)
2. I don't know if I'll get to see any of it, but I really hope Moving Day at MIT will be as strange and interesting as the Boston Globe hopes. Oliver Smoot as grand marshal of the parade feels metaphysically right.
3. Speaking of universities and interesting people, Justus Rosenberg was not one of my mother's professors at Bard, but she knew who he was. I always like seeing people get this kind of writeup while they're alive.
4. The Daughter of Dawn (1920) will be available on DVD come this summer. I read about the discovery and restoration of this formerly lost film in 2012, but if it played anywhere in the Boston area, I missed it. I'd still like to see it on a big screen, but I think it's more important that it be available to people regardless of their proximity to arthouse theaters or university archives. A cast of all-Native characters played by all-Native actors, with nary a white lead in sight? "I would say this film proves that Indians have been acting since day one."
5. As a child I thought often about Elizabeth Goudge's Green Dolphin Street (1944) because it had one of the most evocative titles on its bookshelf. I tried it sometime in adolescence, during my foray into Goudge novels that were not The Valley of Song (1951), and bounced with such ferocity that I can remember absolutely nothing about the plot except a disappointing lack of dolphins. Yesterday I discovered there's a film version from 1947. It co-stars Van Heflin. With Lana Turner. And a title theme that became a jazz standard. It's probably terrible. I can't imagine how Goudge's Christianity would translate to the screen or what any novel of hers would look like without it. I am obviously going to have to undertake some kind of read-watch. Why is this my life?
I am off to meet Dean at the Fogg Museum. I want to write about The Uninvited (1944), which was as weird and complex and full of undercurrents as I would expect a seminal ghost story to be, but I might need to get some real rest first.
no subject
no subject
I would actually like to write something noir at this point, but I haven't completed any prose since last September, so there's the general fear that I have forgotten how to write entirely on top of the more specific worry of it just turning out pastiche.
no subject
no subject
Elizabeth Goudge does planetary romance?
no subject
no subject
It was entered for the same MGM prize that Mary Renault won with Return to Night and presumably at the point when they got round to filming it decided it was at least manageable.
no subject
That's wonderful.
It was entered for the same MGM prize that Mary Renault won with Return to Night and presumably at the point when they got round to filming it decided it was at least manageable.
I didn't know that! I continue to regret the nonexistence of the film of Return to Night just because I want to see what it would have looked like, even though I recognize it would almost certainly have looked like something that I shouted at a lot.
I did in fact undertake that read-watch of Green Dolphin Street and, well, that happened.
no subject
Nine
no subject
Did you go?
no subject
In March 1980, the barrier to the Caspian was blocked, due to concerns evaporation was accelerating a fall in Caspian Sea level, reducing water levels [in Kara Bugaz]. The resulting "salt bowl" caused widespread problems of blowing salt,] reportedly poisoning the soil and causing health problems for hundreds of kilometers downwind to the east. In 1984 the lake was completely dry. In June 1992, when Caspian Sea levels were rising again, the barrier was breached, allowing Caspian water to again refill [the lake].
no subject
Well, that's terrifying science fiction that happened in my lifetime! (I'm glad it's better now.)
no subject
no subject
I am afraid I have read only King and Joker. Do you like the sequel?
no subject
no subject
I am probably more in a mood for comparatively hopeful endings at the moment, but I will keep this assessment in mind for later. Thanks.
postcard from Kara Bugaz has been delivered
Re: postcard from Kara Bugaz has been delivered
It's wonderful. Thank you. I've wanted Tony to get around to it for years.
no subject
no subject
Thanks for letting me know! Enjoy!
no subject
no subject
I bounced so totally off The Gabriel Hounds that I didn't even remember it had a TE Lawrence impersonator. Does it have anything else to recommend it?
no subject
Mostly it reminds me for some reason of Buchan's The Dancing Floor.
no subject