Get Smart, and other stories
I think the makers of Get Smart intended Steve Carrell to seem charmingly awkward rather than totally obnoxious, but, uh, they missed. And why are he and Anne Hathaway together at the end? Were the moviemakers under the impression that they had sparkling banter, in which animosity only thinly covers an undercurrent of attraction? Because I see no undercurrent. I only see animosity.
On the other hand, Anne Hathaway kicking badguys in the head is amusing - wow, she's super flexible.
***
Read Charlotte Bronte's The Professor, which is like Villette except without qualities that give Villette its own strange genius: the intricate character studies (and, connected, the subtle character interactions), the wrestling with religious concepts, the despair.
It's not that The Professor is a bad book; it's perfectly competent; but no one would be reading it today were it not Charlotte Bronte's.
***
So far, the grad schools do not like me. This is their loss.
***
I have 65,000 words. I'm thinking that I need to start wrapping things up soon or else this is going to be an unpublishable monstrosity of a YA novel.
Although really, the length is the last thing that's going to make this unpublishable. It's about four girls and their friendship in their senior year of high school. Only one of them has a boyfriend. None of the others are going to acquire one.
And the boyfriend, in the preceding 65,000 words, hasn't managed to show up on-page. Because he is unimportant.
On the other hand, Anne Hathaway kicking badguys in the head is amusing - wow, she's super flexible.
***
Read Charlotte Bronte's The Professor, which is like Villette except without qualities that give Villette its own strange genius: the intricate character studies (and, connected, the subtle character interactions), the wrestling with religious concepts, the despair.
It's not that The Professor is a bad book; it's perfectly competent; but no one would be reading it today were it not Charlotte Bronte's.
***
So far, the grad schools do not like me. This is their loss.
***
I have 65,000 words. I'm thinking that I need to start wrapping things up soon or else this is going to be an unpublishable monstrosity of a YA novel.
Although really, the length is the last thing that's going to make this unpublishable. It's about four girls and their friendship in their senior year of high school. Only one of them has a boyfriend. None of the others are going to acquire one.
And the boyfriend, in the preceding 65,000 words, hasn't managed to show up on-page. Because he is unimportant.