Meta: Capslock Harry Goes to Narnia and Guilty Vicarage
A couple of months ago, I read Lev Grossman's "The Magicians" at about the same time as I Netflixed "Angels in America". So of course I crossed them over...Grossman's book is skillful, but I can't say I enjoyed it, because it seems to subvert the entire *idea* of enjoyment. It's about a decidedly unheroic protagonist who, I think, is intended to be just as unlikeable as he is. He goes to a secret (USian) high school for young magicians, and ends up entering the world of his favorite childhood fantasy world, which turns out to suck. (cut for length)
At not just one but two points, the protagonist does something stupid that has terrible consequences. Which made me realize that, as often as I grumble about too-neat fictional resolutions, it's believable but not very satisfying for things to work out badly. And, in another way, it's not satisfying for them not to work out at all, for the episode/show/story to trail off without a resolution.
In "The Guilty Vicarage" Auden says that he only liked detective stories where civilized order was restored by finding out the culprit who had breached it. Again, I know that it's pretty unlikely that a real-life crime of any kind will be solved, even though more resources will be devoted to an irreparable crime like murder than one that can be semi-resolved by getting the fence to give you back your stolen stuff.
So when I write something, I try to give it a shape, and a resolution (sometimes though not necessarily a happy ending, even if I have to do a fix-it) and I'm often dissatisfied with things I watch or read that just sort of trail off. (However, I'll cheerfully classify an orgasm as a resolution, and I am by no means opposed to PWPs.)
I delayed a long time before seeing Angels in America, because I thought it would be too depressing. I had read the play, and I don't think the filmed version captured the knocking-on-the-gate leavening of humor. But the depressing part is not so much that it's about a disease that caused unfathomable amounts of suffering and loss, but because it's about *failure*--political failure and Roy Cohn's failure to be even vaguely recognizable as a human being, of course, and Louis' and Joe's failures as spouses, most clearly. But hey, they give you medals for being a hero mostly because of the recognition that heroism is unusual behavior. The army has the power to shoot you for desertion, which they exercise at times like WWI when otherwise everybody would do it.
But I yelled at Prior the same way I yelled at John Crichton: failure to appreciate the amazingness and wonderfulness accompanying a legitimately terrible experience. I mean, if you're talking to ghosts, especially at a time when you not unreasonably think you're going to die very soon, get some helpful 411 Baedeker about Death! And if you're talking to angels, find out what they want from you before you say No.
Robertson Davies liked to allude to Merlin's Laugh--the reactions, that seem inappropriate in the short-range, that result from a long-term perspective. I *still* haven't seen Breaking Bad S3, but S2 was about the casting of long shadows and how the hell you can figure out who's responsible for anything anyway. So you could say that in Angels in America, Belize Saves the Day, but the AZT wouldn't be there to steal if Roy Cohn hadn't been, well, Roy Cohn.
At not just one but two points, the protagonist does something stupid that has terrible consequences. Which made me realize that, as often as I grumble about too-neat fictional resolutions, it's believable but not very satisfying for things to work out badly. And, in another way, it's not satisfying for them not to work out at all, for the episode/show/story to trail off without a resolution.
In "The Guilty Vicarage" Auden says that he only liked detective stories where civilized order was restored by finding out the culprit who had breached it. Again, I know that it's pretty unlikely that a real-life crime of any kind will be solved, even though more resources will be devoted to an irreparable crime like murder than one that can be semi-resolved by getting the fence to give you back your stolen stuff.
So when I write something, I try to give it a shape, and a resolution (sometimes though not necessarily a happy ending, even if I have to do a fix-it) and I'm often dissatisfied with things I watch or read that just sort of trail off. (However, I'll cheerfully classify an orgasm as a resolution, and I am by no means opposed to PWPs.)
I delayed a long time before seeing Angels in America, because I thought it would be too depressing. I had read the play, and I don't think the filmed version captured the knocking-on-the-gate leavening of humor. But the depressing part is not so much that it's about a disease that caused unfathomable amounts of suffering and loss, but because it's about *failure*--political failure and Roy Cohn's failure to be even vaguely recognizable as a human being, of course, and Louis' and Joe's failures as spouses, most clearly. But hey, they give you medals for being a hero mostly because of the recognition that heroism is unusual behavior. The army has the power to shoot you for desertion, which they exercise at times like WWI when otherwise everybody would do it.
But I yelled at Prior the same way I yelled at John Crichton: failure to appreciate the amazingness and wonderfulness accompanying a legitimately terrible experience. I mean, if you're talking to ghosts, especially at a time when you not unreasonably think you're going to die very soon, get some helpful 411 Baedeker about Death! And if you're talking to angels, find out what they want from you before you say No.
Robertson Davies liked to allude to Merlin's Laugh--the reactions, that seem inappropriate in the short-range, that result from a long-term perspective. I *still* haven't seen Breaking Bad S3, but S2 was about the casting of long shadows and how the hell you can figure out who's responsible for anything anyway. So you could say that in Angels in America, Belize Saves the Day, but the AZT wouldn't be there to steal if Roy Cohn hadn't been, well, Roy Cohn.