Roundup: My Reading and Viewing
Roundup: Personal Reflections (not Reviews) on Reading and Viewing I've Managed to Do:
* Memory and Dream (Charles de Lint)
* V for Vendetta (graphic novel)
* Blade of the Immortal, vol. 23
* Rango (movie)
Memory and Dream is an interesting test case for my responses as a reader. It's a thoroughly good book. It has well-developed characters; a tight, page-turning plot, good handling of the English language. I read it all, which is more than I can say for most books these days. I enjoyed it; there were moments I was truly engaged. But it never gave me a cathartic hit. It just didn't move me as a narrative.
Memory and Dream is an urban fantasy set in the 1970s and '80s that concerns a group of artsy college friends and their interactions with magical beings summoned from another realm via the paintings of the protagonist, Isabelle. The main interpersonal conflicts concern Isabelle's difficulty in coping with the death of her best friend, fantasy author, Kathy (yes, the two main female characters have Wuthering Heights names. Coincidence?) and Isabelle's abusive relationship with her mentor, the brilliant and bizarre painter, Rushkin.
Why oh why doesn't this story move me? The characters and their relationships are not stereotyped or annoying. I felt quite sympathetic toward Kathy's unrequited and unconfessed love for Isabelle. The love of this group of friends for each other is palpable. These ought to be the characteristics I'm drawn to: well-drawn characters in compelling relationships. Yet the relationships aren't compelling to me, and the characters, while very believable, fall flat--except for Rushkin, who is a creepy standout as a brilliant, sometimes caring, very believably abusive (and human) man, until he gets transformed into one-dimensional "villain" near the end.
I think my connection to Rushkin is the key, like my love for Dostoevsky. I like my characters to have something of insanity. I don't mean psychological problems, clinical depression, etc., which the characters here have. I mean an awareness of the true bizarreness of living, the quality that leads Ivan Karamazov to conjure up a petty devil (not even a major devil) out of his delirium. I feel that in Rushkin, and only Rushkin, in this story. If character depth were a lake, the others only go halfway down, deep enough to have personalities, backstories, complexities--not deep enough to feel truly human.
V for Vendetta is a near-future (as of the 1980s) graphic novel about the rise of a totalitarian regime in Britain, following a nuclear war, and the Guy Fawkes fan who decides to overthrow it.
I saw the movie first, which colors my view. I prefer the movie. As for the graphic novel, I agree with louderandlouder that it is not particularly compelling, though if I had read it before seeing the movie, I probably would have felt more impact from the interesting concept.
The reason I wasn't more affected is easy to identify. There are few compelling characters and no compelling relationships. I found the government lackeys almost impossible to differentiate. They had amusing names like Almond, Creedy, and Susan, and seemed to all be very nearly the same person. The vast majority of the characters are not likable: villains or petty/paltry victims of the system, perhaps a necessary effect of the story's setting.
Evey manages to be somewhat less compelling than in the movie, where her character was not a total success. In the movie, they made a decent attempt to present her as some sort of active agent. In the book, her major active agency is confined to the last few pages, where she does get some good scenes. The majority of her function seems to be to play admiring girl/Everywoman, even after her Holocaust-like prison experience.
V is genuinely interesting, yet we never get beneath his surface. His past is so shrouded in mystery that there's no way to figure out who he is or why he is, beyond his very recent past experience as a lab subject. Again, this is clearly part of the point of the story: he represents everyone. He is a walking representation, which is fair enough, but the tradeoff is human interest.
I liked Finch, but he's not enough to carry the rest of the story.
Blade of the Immortal, however, is back in good form. I had skimmed this volume online, but there's no substitute for sitting down and thoroughly reading it. Highlights include the end of Rin and Anotsu's conversation, which I feel like we've waited two years for; significant development for Anotsu and Makie; and a brief but very nice Hyakurin and Giichi scene. I'm also enjoying Ryo as the new, talented but untempered super warrior. Her relationship with Habaki is quite touching. And that's it really: here is a story that trades in compelling relationships among interesting characters. It's so easy to please me when that happens.
(I remain baffled by Makie's poem/song (?), which we get over her romantic DPS with Anotsu. I don't know how to interpret it as other than a song by Makie, but it's darn hard to make heads or tails of, in either translation I've seen.)
I went to see Rango with the girl I'm mentoring. It was her suggestion and a good one. I was very pleasantly surprised. This CGI movie is about a chameleon's journey toward self-discovery, heroism, and getting a social life. It was 100% predictable but well handled. Three things carried it for me: 1) the protagonist is a well-developed character. His strengths as a hero (creativity, flexibility, communication skills, fast action) are present from moment one; they just need testing and refining. 2) The romance is really downplayed (thank God); it's actually barely there at all. 3) The "bad guys" are complex. All but one are at least semi-redeemed, and even that one has a backstory and goals that make sense of his actions. Highly recommended if you like the children's film of the hero's journey genre.
* Memory and Dream (Charles de Lint)
* V for Vendetta (graphic novel)
* Blade of the Immortal, vol. 23
* Rango (movie)
Memory and Dream is an interesting test case for my responses as a reader. It's a thoroughly good book. It has well-developed characters; a tight, page-turning plot, good handling of the English language. I read it all, which is more than I can say for most books these days. I enjoyed it; there were moments I was truly engaged. But it never gave me a cathartic hit. It just didn't move me as a narrative.
Memory and Dream is an urban fantasy set in the 1970s and '80s that concerns a group of artsy college friends and their interactions with magical beings summoned from another realm via the paintings of the protagonist, Isabelle. The main interpersonal conflicts concern Isabelle's difficulty in coping with the death of her best friend, fantasy author, Kathy (yes, the two main female characters have Wuthering Heights names. Coincidence?) and Isabelle's abusive relationship with her mentor, the brilliant and bizarre painter, Rushkin.
Why oh why doesn't this story move me? The characters and their relationships are not stereotyped or annoying. I felt quite sympathetic toward Kathy's unrequited and unconfessed love for Isabelle. The love of this group of friends for each other is palpable. These ought to be the characteristics I'm drawn to: well-drawn characters in compelling relationships. Yet the relationships aren't compelling to me, and the characters, while very believable, fall flat--except for Rushkin, who is a creepy standout as a brilliant, sometimes caring, very believably abusive (and human) man, until he gets transformed into one-dimensional "villain" near the end.
I think my connection to Rushkin is the key, like my love for Dostoevsky. I like my characters to have something of insanity. I don't mean psychological problems, clinical depression, etc., which the characters here have. I mean an awareness of the true bizarreness of living, the quality that leads Ivan Karamazov to conjure up a petty devil (not even a major devil) out of his delirium. I feel that in Rushkin, and only Rushkin, in this story. If character depth were a lake, the others only go halfway down, deep enough to have personalities, backstories, complexities--not deep enough to feel truly human.
V for Vendetta is a near-future (as of the 1980s) graphic novel about the rise of a totalitarian regime in Britain, following a nuclear war, and the Guy Fawkes fan who decides to overthrow it.
I saw the movie first, which colors my view. I prefer the movie. As for the graphic novel, I agree with louderandlouder that it is not particularly compelling, though if I had read it before seeing the movie, I probably would have felt more impact from the interesting concept.
The reason I wasn't more affected is easy to identify. There are few compelling characters and no compelling relationships. I found the government lackeys almost impossible to differentiate. They had amusing names like Almond, Creedy, and Susan, and seemed to all be very nearly the same person. The vast majority of the characters are not likable: villains or petty/paltry victims of the system, perhaps a necessary effect of the story's setting.
Evey manages to be somewhat less compelling than in the movie, where her character was not a total success. In the movie, they made a decent attempt to present her as some sort of active agent. In the book, her major active agency is confined to the last few pages, where she does get some good scenes. The majority of her function seems to be to play admiring girl/Everywoman, even after her Holocaust-like prison experience.
V is genuinely interesting, yet we never get beneath his surface. His past is so shrouded in mystery that there's no way to figure out who he is or why he is, beyond his very recent past experience as a lab subject. Again, this is clearly part of the point of the story: he represents everyone. He is a walking representation, which is fair enough, but the tradeoff is human interest.
I liked Finch, but he's not enough to carry the rest of the story.
Blade of the Immortal, however, is back in good form. I had skimmed this volume online, but there's no substitute for sitting down and thoroughly reading it. Highlights include the end of Rin and Anotsu's conversation, which I feel like we've waited two years for; significant development for Anotsu and Makie; and a brief but very nice Hyakurin and Giichi scene. I'm also enjoying Ryo as the new, talented but untempered super warrior. Her relationship with Habaki is quite touching. And that's it really: here is a story that trades in compelling relationships among interesting characters. It's so easy to please me when that happens.
(I remain baffled by Makie's poem/song (?), which we get over her romantic DPS with Anotsu. I don't know how to interpret it as other than a song by Makie, but it's darn hard to make heads or tails of, in either translation I've seen.)
I went to see Rango with the girl I'm mentoring. It was her suggestion and a good one. I was very pleasantly surprised. This CGI movie is about a chameleon's journey toward self-discovery, heroism, and getting a social life. It was 100% predictable but well handled. Three things carried it for me: 1) the protagonist is a well-developed character. His strengths as a hero (creativity, flexibility, communication skills, fast action) are present from moment one; they just need testing and refining. 2) The romance is really downplayed (thank God); it's actually barely there at all. 3) The "bad guys" are complex. All but one are at least semi-redeemed, and even that one has a backstory and goals that make sense of his actions. Highly recommended if you like the children's film of the hero's journey genre.