That and this
Still catching up with the internet. I see that The Waters of Mars has won the Hugo, which pleases me. It definitely was the best of the year-of-interruption specials, and not just because of the last ten minutes. (Though I still think the DW endeavour by RTD that should have won for best short form was the episode Midnight in season 4, but that
( Read more... )
And yes, if as a writer I had to choose whom to write, I'd go for Bill and Hillary, too. (Though I did read American Wife, which was a very interesting novel except in the last third when the Bush equivalent becomes President, because then you can tell the writer has a problem of reconciling the Laura character as he imagines her continuing to support her husband unconditionally.)
The paraphrase was irresistable, given that Tony B. offers material like "When I first got to know Bill, he was - as he remains - the most formidable politician I have ever encountered. And yet his very expertise and extraordinary capacity at the business of politics obscured the fact that he was also a brilliant thinker. (...) He has an endless ability for rapport with ordinary people (...) Bill has inimitable resilience" and so on and so forth, and then "I have come to admire the simplicity, the directness, almost the boldness of George, finding it it strength and integrity. Sometimes, in the very process of reasoning, we lose sight of the need for a destination". How else to paraphrase that, I ask you.
Reply
I have long had a theory that the obsession of US liberals with Laura Bush comes from the fact that there's so little of depth that can be done, character-wise, with her husband, whereas she can be conveniently be projected on (especially as a figure of liberalism that fails to put up enough of a fight against conservatism). I haven't read Sittenfeld (she's a young woman, btw, despite the usually male first name), but that's the impression I got from a lot of the people who bought and read the book because they were already interested in Laura, not to mention Tony Kushner's Only We Who Guard The Mystery Shall Be Unhappy.
Re Blair: Wow. Aside from asking what, exactly, Bush's destination was and how we can get away from it, I'd love to inquire if he has written badfic.
Reply
I have long had a theory that the obsession of US liberals with Laura Bush comes from the fact that there's so little of depth that can be done, character-wise, with her husband, whereas she can be conveniently be projected on (especially as a figure of liberalism that fails to put up enough of a fight against conservatism).
Hm, possible. (I mean, with Nixon it was Nixon himself US liberals were obsessed with, and not his wife, but then Nixon was interesting.) Sittenfeld - thanks for correcting me about the gender, this is so tricky for foreigners to guess! - does a great job of portraying her narrator becoming corrupted without realising it, going along with more and more; it's just when the presidency is reached that Sittenfeld can't resist going for wish fulfillment. (The Laura character meets her late grandmother's lesbian life partner, who is dying, and naturally expects this to be a sad but gentle final encounter given that she had always liked the woman, but the the dying partner lays into her fiercely. Various other events also happen and then there's the big marital confrontation we've been waiting for. Like I said, blatant wish fulfillment, and quite different from the far more subtle writing in the previous sections where you can actually see why she falls in love with him to begin with and how she's giving up bit for bit of her own world views while kidding herself she doesn't.)
Good point about Tony Kushner going there first.
Blair: I told you I was only slightly paraphrasing. *g* Clearly, either his ghost writer or Blair himself is secretly writing sparkly hearts fanfic on the internet.
Reply
Leave a comment