Comments | leondacter: READING MATERIALS: Dereliction of Duty

leondacter

READING MATERIALS: Dereliction of Duty

Jul 22, 2006 11:39

I am remiss; I have not one copy of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

This may seem like a non-issue, another risible fact of my bookishness (of my tendency to use obfuscating words like “risible” when I might just as easily write comic, hilarious, laughable, or even goofy), but Invisible Man holds a sacred place in my mind, embodied by strong ( Read more... )

Comments 4

anonymous August 10 2006, 15:02:16 UTC

i'm a big fan of lnklater, however, i agree with your assessment: he dropped the figurative ball. but i think that's less due to either the world of film's pressure to be cute rather than unsettling and complex or inpetitude on linklater's part. linklater, i think, genuinely likes the addled mental obliquity and the inconsequential existentialism of stoner slacker culture (to me, this is demosntrated in how he directed the "impostor" discussion). simply put, what causes dick paranoia and angst is to linklater just the material for great cafe chatter. i don't think linklater is much of a dystopian critic of society. i think he's a nostalgic champion of playfully groundless speculation. in dick, characters are allegories or avatars of painful, enforced psychological conditions. in linklater, they are either people whom he knew or avatars of youthful states/phases of nascent philosophical inquiry. in this sole respect, he's very academic. where dick finds tremendous cause for alarm, linklater finds what he enjoyed most about being in ( ... )

Lo! the enigma! leondacter August 22 2006, 05:04:09 UTC

You wrote this long, thoughtful comment, but you're like a wraith. blainerunner does not exist, so who am I to respond to? I fear I've waited too long, but I wanted to respond in earnest, and I was occupied when I first read the line you dropped.

Do you check back to see if people have responded?

Have I missed the discussion boat?

Re: Lo! the enigma! anonymous August 24 2006, 01:12:29 UTC

i check, periodically.

you comment on a friend's blog. that's how i found you.

i replied to your post mostly because i think that you and i overlap in certain ways. two years ago, at age 34, i bailed (halway through my diss) on a ph.d in english (with streaks of analytic phil). now, i'm finishing up two screenplays (think linklater, kaufman, w. allen, and hitchcock) and two novels. my dream, however, is to write for 'veronica mars', or whatever joss whedon and the terrific jane espenson happen to be working on.

my vision may bring me to los angeles (a long way from waltham, but not so far from williamsburg). if i do, i'll drop you a note. maybe over some knob creek we can discuss stanley cavell and how one goes about bringing playful intellect to the screen.

- br

Stanley Cavell leondacter August 24 2006, 18:33:53 UTC

Absolutely, and with him Terrence Malick, and surely Linklater and Kaufman.

What kind of novels are you writing? I don't mean to make you constrict your ideas into a genre definition, but how would you describe your writing? I wonder, especially since you speak of Joss Whedon and "Veronica Mars". I think of those shows (including "Buffy..." and "Angel") as serial fairytales, done with skill but in a manner that is much more playful and cartoonish than anything I would attempt writing. Anyway, I'm fairly young (23) and brand new to Los Angeles, but if you make it out here I'd be glad to meet up with you sometime. As to the Knob Creek, though, (like uberdionysus) I don't drink at all ( ... )