Reading from this weekend

Dec 12, 2011 15:33

I enjoyed this interview with Alan Moore. I agree with his assessment of Frank Miller’s work (although I know nothing about either man’s politics nor feel the need to, so can’t speak to that angle on things): “Frank Miller is someone whose work I’ve barely looked at for the past twenty years. I thought the Sin City stuff was unreconstructed misogyny, 300 appeared to be wildly ahistoric, homophobic and just completely misguided. I think that there has probably been a rather unpleasant sensibility apparent in Frank Miller’s work for quite a long time.”

This reminds me of two things: The Help and The Social Animal. I was on a plane recently and watched the film version of The Help (it was a long flight and I was bored). It was pretty much what I thought it was - a recapitulation of a particular manifestation of the Jim Crow South, right before it began to be dismantled. The acting was effective, the writing was good - but I’m at a loss as to why so many people had an affectionate emotional reaction to it. A well-told story, especially when it illuminates historical experience, is always worthwhile, but is is fun? Is it laugh-out-loud funny, like the trailers for the movie were suggesting?

More recently, I read The Social Animal by David Brooks, which was such a *weird* book, but similar in the same way that politics imposed itself awkwardly on prose. After I finished it, I went to Amazon to read the reviews (surely I’m not the only one who does it in that order?). Everyone seemed to either love it or hate it. Me, I found it flawed but interesting. It reminded me so much of a premodern work, of the work of a Greek philosopher or a Medieval priest, one of those books about the human condition and how to function in the world, with everything except the kitchen sink thrown in - morals, science, theories on psychology, jokes, fictional case studies…. This entry was originally posted at http://bonspiel.dreamwidth.org/19687.html.
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