I get my family—I get a rest
Today's primary events: doctor's appointment in the early afternoon and on either side taking Autolycus to and from the vet with the invaluable assistance of ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rushthatspeaks (and later Fox). This process began at five-thirty in the morning and concluded at five in the evening. At one point a taxi was involved. I have slept half an hour since yesterday. I immensely appreciate spatch ordering dinner.
(Autolycus is home safe, fed and washed, and now being hissed at by his sister who if she follows the usual pattern will tell him he smells funny for about the next four days, then groom his ears violently and forget all about it.)
It appears to be an unforeseen side effect of Cleopatra (1963) that I have had the entire score of Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum rotating through my head for the last forty-eight hours; Carry On Cleo (1964) is probably the missing link. As a person who grew up on the original 1963 London cast of Forum with Frankie Howerd rather than the original 1962 Broadway cast with Zero Mostel, I will never cease to be delighted by the existence of Up Pompeii! (1969–70), but I am disappointed that all the episodes currently available on YouTube are the cropped-and-zoomed kind in hopes of evading official notice. So much for staring at that any time soon.
On a different note entirely, it was only last night that I realized Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) contains the earliest instance I have personally seen in fiction of that seasonally appropriate horror trope, the carnival of the dead. That novel is seriously underrated as a work of the uncanny.
That's it for mental capacity around here. I am going to lie on a couch until the pizza arrives.
rushthatspeaks (and later Fox). This process began at five-thirty in the morning and concluded at five in the evening. At one point a taxi was involved. I have slept half an hour since yesterday. I immensely appreciate spatch ordering dinner.(Autolycus is home safe, fed and washed, and now being hissed at by his sister who if she follows the usual pattern will tell him he smells funny for about the next four days, then groom his ears violently and forget all about it.)
It appears to be an unforeseen side effect of Cleopatra (1963) that I have had the entire score of Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum rotating through my head for the last forty-eight hours; Carry On Cleo (1964) is probably the missing link. As a person who grew up on the original 1963 London cast of Forum with Frankie Howerd rather than the original 1962 Broadway cast with Zero Mostel, I will never cease to be delighted by the existence of Up Pompeii! (1969–70), but I am disappointed that all the episodes currently available on YouTube are the cropped-and-zoomed kind in hopes of evading official notice. So much for staring at that any time soon.
On a different note entirely, it was only last night that I realized Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) contains the earliest instance I have personally seen in fiction of that seasonally appropriate horror trope, the carnival of the dead. That novel is seriously underrated as a work of the uncanny.
That's it for mental capacity around here. I am going to lie on a couch until the pizza arrives.
no subject
So much this. I've owned two copies and read it at least thrice and I've not seen that as a carnival before. Though I've often thought that the dead and the fey could be the same thing. And wondered whether it might have been an influence on The Shire. The first reading I almost saw it as a fey-tinged detective novel. I love Nathaniel.It's a bittersweet book, the other side of the coin of "Goblin Market", and I wish Mirrlees had written just a little more fantasy. And wonder if just one bite of the fruit would hurt...
no subject
I think very much so. As far as I can tell, she's the major exponent of this idea in fiction until Susanna Clarke.
And wondered whether it might have been an influence on The Shire. The first reading I almost saw it as a fey-tinged detective novel. I love Nathaniel. It's a bittersweet book, the other side of the coin of "Goblin Market", and I wish Mirrlees had written just a little more fantasy. And wonder if just one bite of the fruit would hurt...
Yes on all of this. Nathaniel is one of the rare protagonists I love. The book is a mystery and a Mystery and I would have loved to see what more Mirrlees wrote beyond the fields we know. I still need to track down her long modernist Paris: A Poem (1919).