Some young god tore the canvas into shreds

[sovay]

I don't think I'm actually running a fever, but I feel like it: skin-ache, bone-ache, overall sensation of recent collision with a cement truck. It is very distracting. I couldn't fall back asleep, so I made notes on the internet.

1. I wish Free State of Jones (2016) were getting better reviews; the real history of Newt Knight and Jones County is fascinating. To my knowledge, the only other movie to draw on the story of the Free State of Jones is the very loosely inspired Tap Roots (1948), which is where I first heard of it. I can't speak to the 1942 source novel by James H. Street, but I bailed on the film despite its glancing brush with history and the novelty of Van Heflin and Boris Karloff in the same movie (and Arthur Shields in a bit part, speaking of character actors). Heflin has a mustache, proving that Universal learned no lessons from MGM's Green Dolphin Street (1947), and Karloff is playing a Choctaw character, albeit one who gets to show off his beautifully modulated British accent, and there was too much antebellum melodrama and then when we got to the bellum the melodrama didn't let up and I had better things to do with my time, like brushing the cat. Possibly I am just setting myself up for more of the same if I try out Free State of Jones for the sake of Matthew McConaughey and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, but I'm still considering it.

2. Three poems I'd been meaning to link for some time: Eloise Klein Healy's "The Lyric in a Time of War," Chris Emslie's "Prayer for Anything but Prayer," and Harry Giles' "Piercings." I found this one yesterday, but I was right that I'd want the collection it came from: Owen Sheers' "Mametz Wood." It's very strange to read someone whose way of thinking about the war dead of the Western Front is so close in language to mine, even if we did different things with the imagery; I want to look for the common ancestor. I wonder if I can blame David Jones. He's not mentioned in the notes for "Last Letters," but he is the nameless poet with the terrible arcana: "praise for the action proper to chemicals . . . candle-light, fire-light, Cups, Wands and Swords, to choose at random."

3. Internet, I wasn't looking for a photo of Elisha Cook, Jr. at the time of his military service, but I'll take it. The weird thing is, from that angle he looks like someone I knew in college. The obituary photo of Harry Rabinowitz really looks like someone I knew in college, give or take fifteen years and a pinstriped suit. It is extremely jarring to see that sort of thing in a sidebar.

Back to bed.

Comments

[davidgillon]

That Free State of Jones article is fascinating, for the contemporary people as much as the Civil War history. The open racism of some is depressing, but the others give hope. Thanks for the link.

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

I thought Friday's NYT review of the "Free State of Jones" was pretty positive, but maybe I read reviews with a a different eye. I have over time turned into one of those people who wants movies to be cheerful, more or less, and that really won't be. I definitely plan to dive into the background information site, though.
http://freestateofjones.info/
I don't think I'll be able to get myself to the forthcoming "Birth of a Nation," either.

Do you mean schreibergasse? I keep meaning to tell him that I follow you on LJ, but never have. I think he'd be entirely plausible in a pin-striped suit.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about going to see "Free State of Jones." Thank you for linking to that Smithsonian article; I devoured it with eager eyes. The interviewer met a lot of Confederate "historians," as distinguished from Confederate historians.

Almost everything about the Confederate-held South interests me, and so does everything about resistance against slavery. On the other hand, most of the movies/media I've seen about it just annoy me, either because they depict black people being helpless until white people sort things out for them ("Twelve Years A Slave" seemed like that to me) or because they're "Gone With The Wind." I suspect "Free State of Jones" of being in the first camp. If I do go see it, I'll report back.

I think Boris Karloff got stereotyped as a generically "ethnic guy" because he was half- or one-quarter Indian (as in, from India). He's always playing sinister Native characters in early silent films. He downplayed this once he started getting big roles (and would attribute his dark complexion to "a tight collar and too much gin"). I also seem to recall young Leonard Nimoy played Native American heavies in Westerns. Maybe the directors wanted imposing men with craggy faces, or maybe they wanted someone they thought of as vaguely "ethnic" and didn't want to bother finding actual Native actors.

[gwynnega]

Eloise Klein Healy is such a wonderful poet. (A wonderful person, too...she was in charge of my MFA program when I was in grad school.)

I haven't seen Tap Roots, but several months ago TCM showed a block of Karloff films I'd never seen before, some of which featured Karloff in Chinese roles. I was torn between the sheer wrongness of it all and Karloff's engaging performances.

[libris-leonis.livejournal.com]

D'you mind if I send a link to this to Chris? I know they've had some pushback against the poem from some awful people so I think they'd like to hear it connected with you.