| Author | Message | ||
     Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.249.146 |
Recently I've found myself becoming increasingly difficult to impress when it comes to literature (everything I read seems familiar in some way), but I've seen a few films lately - L' Atalante (thanks for the recommendation, Ramsey!), Rec, Inland Empire, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's amazing gangster films - that, for different reasons, have had a pretty profound effect on me. Last Year in Marienbed is one of these films. I watched it last night and found myself transported by both its utter beauty and the weird dreamlike quality of the scenes unfolding before me. I can't even begin to name the emotions the film evoked, but afterwards I felt like I'd been allowed a glimpse into another world. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.190.33 |
I loved Last Year in Marienbad. Have you seen L'Avventura, Gary? If not, it's well worth seeing. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
>>everything I read seems familiar in some way. That means you've become an authority. Welcome to your graduation. Philip K Dick's short stories are still fresh to me. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
Albie What do you make of Joseph Conrad's work? | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.39.175 |
Anyone else seen Last Year in Marienbad? | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.208.48.97 |
I picked it up very cheap when Virgin were having a clearout & it's on the shelf so I'll dig it out. For years I worked with an anaesthetist whose favourite film it was. Our conversations veered between art house cinema and the musical structure of S Club 7 songs | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Never read Conrad. You are going to make me, aren't you? That sentence didn't even need a question mark. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
I think it did, it's a tag question isn't it? | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
I think it did. It's a tag question, isn't it? | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
? What Conrad do you suggest? Or is there only one obvious choice? Keep in mind, that fiction that takes place solely in the real world is not likely to gel with me. Unless you are extolling his writing style alone? | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
The Malaysian Triology is good. Particularly the cheapo Everyman editions - they've a lot of extra information in the back. Stay away from Heart of Darkness. The only good thing about it is the title. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
The way he narrates events is mind boggling. Key events aren't described directly. It's a very strange strange structure to convey the story. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.163.48.60 |
Stay away from Heart of Darkness. The only good thing about it is the title. This was the first Conrad I read - I thought it was wonderful, and it led me on to reading most of the rest of his work. | ||
| Laird Barron (Laird) Username: Laird Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 71.212.54.93 |
"Stay away from Heart of Darkness. The only good thing about it is the title." Surely you joust. It's an essential read. | ||
| Laird Barron (Laird) Username: Laird Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 71.212.54.93 |
Gary: "Recently I've found myself becoming increasingly difficult to impress when it comes to literature (everything I read seems familiar in some way).... I've never had this problem with literature, although I've suffered it with music and film. Does your temporary disaffection with literature adversely impact your perception of your own writing? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Hi Laird, To answer your question: yes. Currently I feel that everything I produce is rubbish; every sentence is laboured and unworthy (some would say I'm correct in this opinion). I'm on the verge of another period of writer's block, I fear. | ||
| Laird Barron (Laird) Username: Laird Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 71.212.54.93 |
Gary: I doubt the negative opinions are correct, but I understand. It takes me so long to write a story I may as well be chiseling it into a tablet. By the time I'm done, listening to my own internal voice makes me want to vomit. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.156.110.243 |
Lots of good writers don't like their own work and hate producing it. Don't be discouraged by those side-effects. It's when you feel 'This is easy' and 'Man, isn't that nice?' that you need to worry. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.36.220 |
I also think that Heart of Darkness is a great book, and I like many of his other novels and short stories as well. For a non-native speaker, Conrad had a quite exceptional ability to express himself in English. | ||
| Laird Barron (Laird) Username: Laird Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 71.212.54.93 |
"It's when you feel 'This is easy' and 'Man, isn't that nice?' that you need to worry." Yeah, I think so too. The better I became at racing dogs, lifting weights, training in martial arts, the more my deficiencies became clear. Dissatisfaction is the mother of striving. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
Last Year in Marienbad left me awed and speechless the first time I saw it, in my mid-teens. I had a go in "Concussion" at using some of its techniques in prose form. I reviewed the British DVD thus: "Optimum follow up their release of two essential Alain Resnais films, NUIT ET BROUILLARD and HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, with his most famous, L’ANNÉE DERNIÈRE À MARIENBAD. If I can indulge in nostalgia, I first saw this when I was fifteen years old, more than four decades ago at the Scala cinema. I was deeply impressed then, and I still am, not least with Optimum’s splendid transfer, which does full justice to Sacha Vierny’s black and white Cinemascope. An introduction and a documentary, both very stimulating, offer various interpretations of this greatest of cinematic enigmas. Let me add my own: is it a version of the Orpheus myth? Or could Death be the unnamed man who tries to seduce a possibly unmarried woman with memories, real or otherwise? Or might the film be a riff on Caligari? One comparison made by the documentary is to NORTH BY NORTHWEST, but surely the Hitchcock film it most resembles is VERTIGO. The comparison to THE SHINING is certainly apt, and the increasingly ghostly ballroom scenes accompanied only by an organ find an eerie echo in CARNIVAL OF SOULS. The disc also includes TOUTE LA MEMOIRE DU MONDE, the director’s film about another kind of labyrinth, the giant brain that is the Bibliothèque Nationale. It’s a choice extra on a disc that anyone who takes the cinema seriously should own. I’d call the DVD unmissable." I should have said far more, about the director as well. Maybe an All Hallows column in due course... | ||
| marksamuels (Marksamuels) Username: Marksamuels Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 80.177.104.153 |
Ninety-nine percent of the time I'd rather do anything than write fiction. I'd have a nervous breakdown if I had to turn out two or three books a year. | ||
| Laird Barron (Laird) Username: Laird Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 71.212.54.93 |
Hahaha! You're scaring me with the very suggestion. I think it would be more rewarding equally productive for me to just slam my testicles in a door every so often | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.3.246 |
It's the initial editing that I dislike sometimes. Only by reading a story aloud can I catch almost everything. | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
I've just been going through a whole pile of proofs of my stuff and experiencing that weird feeling that there is no way I wrote what is on the pages I'm holding. In fact if I didn't have my original manuscripts I wpould assume some kindly editor threw away what I wrote and put new material in instead. So I suffer from a strange kind of detachment from my work that can make it all the harder to start again because I have this odd feeling that I'm not really writing what comes out at all. [This posting started off by comparing writing to sex but it quickly became too rude and there were far too many opportunities for Joel to indulge in creative innuendo, so I changed it to the above. But the essence was too much all the time and it becomes dull & uninspired, too little and life becomes too frustrating for words. The key is to find the balance, which with my slightly obsessive nature I have still yet to do, and probably I never will. And perhaps that in itself results in what I create] | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.3.246 |
Can we have a little bit of smut and then Joel's innuendo please? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.156.110.243 |
John, I never indulge in innuendo. I make perfectly innocent comments and people just take it the wrong way. Or however they can get it. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.3.246 |
And why - oh why, when you think you have finished editing a story you read it again and find that you have missed something else? Or you want to improve upon it more. I remember Ramsey saying he could go back constantly to stories and have another go a them. Sometimes I can go over a story around half a dozen times and then you give it to a second reader/editor and there are some more changes. No doubt I'll do more - the ed will do more and then hopefully it will be okay. Then as John said you get the proofs. Are you finding that there are many corrections at that stage John or do you leave it as how you wrote it a year ago? | ||
| marksamuels (Marksamuels) Username: Marksamuels Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 80.177.104.153 |
It's funny, but proofing is something I quite enjoy. I get a kick out of spotting typos and mistakes (alas, never quite all), weeks or months after I've made them. It's the original act of literary creation that fills me with dread. I really don't think I'm psychologically suited to be a writer. I suspect that it would be amusing if I ever presided over a writers's workshop. I'd provide the worst of career advice. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.129.20.239 |
Barbara hates asking me to give my stories the once over before publication. she's says it's like getting a new story subbed. I hate my stuff. Right now I'm reading the Dark Descents and thinking I absolutely suck, and should give up.  | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.3.246 |
It might fill you with dread but when you actually get started then you are right in the game. Sometimes I feel like I'm deliberately stopping myself from writing either to build up what is going on in my subconscious or to punish myself on some level. Any doctors in the house? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.129.20.239 |
Yes, Ally! That's it! I keep stories in my head fermenting too. Only the sucky ones fall by the wayside, it feels like. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.156.110.243 |
"Right now I'm reading the Dark Descents and thinking I absolutely suck, and should give up." That's OK as long as you can move on to write something more ambitious than you would have done otherwise! Too many writers, especially fan writers, only read work they think they can outshine. It's always good to be reminded just how powerful and brilliant writing can be. There's nothing sadder than a self-satisfied writer. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
I was blocked for almost the whole of last year, and it was horrible. I love writing, but when it's not happening, it's like half of me is missing. Got back on track now, though. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
You checked out that stuff I sent you, Gary? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.249.146 |
Yeah, whenever I get blocked I seem to come back with a new view on things, another string to my literary bow. Hopefully that will continue this time. Joel, I agree that as writers we should read the good stuff and hope that it helps us stretch as artists. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
But comaring ourselves to the very best will probably end in misery. If I read Shakepeare too much, I'd just take up gardening or something. Griff, just got back from fieldwork - will reply asap. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.249.146 |
Fieldwork? Were you picking spuds? ;-) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Shovelling shit. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.249.146 |
Ah... get yerself to that thread abiut the semi-nude girl, then. ;-) | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.3.246 |
Zed - scamp! Why didn't you say all that earlier? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.129.20.239 |
Funny, but I read an AS Byatt short this year and realised I wrote a little like her. It was a simplish story so I didn't feel too smug - happy, yes, but not smug. But like I was saying, these Dark Descents - in particular a short as smart and awe-inspiring as the Wolfe - just make me realise my language is so limited, my knowledge of the world so narrow. It's almost as if I can't speak English ... I'm halfway through Joyce Carol Oates' tale now; it's making me feel even worse!  | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.129.20.239 |
I've read 'An Outcast of the Islands'. I found it oddly like David Lynch. An odd, dreamlike book about real life (Albie). | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
Ok no one here must pick up gardening instead of writing! This reader enjoys the fiction produced by members of this board way too much! No gardening- where would I find the signed spades, the limited shovels... | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
>>I've read 'An Outcast of the Islands'. I found it oddly like David Lynch. An odd, dreamlike book about real life (Albie). But that's cheating. All the while I'll be reading it I'll be expecting fantasy to take over. I suppose there's no reason why the aura (the feeling) of fantasy taking over reality cannot be as thought provoking as a more physical manifestation. But ultimately you are just left in reality, like so many potatos in a shopping bag. 'An Outcast of the Islands' sounds like a tease! | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=ConOutc.sgm&images=images/modeng &data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all Online text. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
I think you'll like Wodehouse, Albie. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.23.225.121 |
Yeah - sometimes suggesting/describing a tone can be a sort of spoiler. Sorry Albie. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Is this some attempt to unchav me, again?  | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
We like your retro addidas tracky replete with holey woolen jumper, cheap plastic trainers and gold chain, Albie. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
>>Yeah - sometimes suggesting/describing a tone can be a sort of spoiler. Sorry Albie. I didn't mean that. You weirdo. Unless I DID and didn't know it. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
You alright, Robert? | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
I have some left, too. Of what I don't know. But it is sinister. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
You alright, Rob? | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Do what, Tel? | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
You want me to sum up an emotional algebraic conundrum? | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
You're amazin'! | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Are you being paid by Gary Fry to boost my ego? GAAAAARRRYYY!  | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.129.20.239 |
He is GF, only with his clothes off and not caring whether or not he leaves a pooey mark on the sofa. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.129.20.239 |
Sorry; that was horrible. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
HAHHA(Wouldn't it be nice to visit a necropolis)HAHHAHHA! | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.129.20.239 |
Yeah, a big America turned into one. A cemetery planet that looks like that place in that Jean Rollin film about um, a cemetery. Cemeteries feel so calm, don't they? Or they did till people atarted putting toys and pictures and little tellies in them, and people pooed on them and stuff. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Well, I was thinking of a nice little one, but I do have these nuclear weapons at my disposal. There. That's that job done. Does seasick look different to carsick? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.129.20.239 |
Tiny dying fish in it as opposed to Hot Wheels? I once found a tiny one in Bradford, I think it was. A tiny graveyard stuffed with graves too close to one another - you couldn't walk between them. They were grown over with grass and ivy and stuff, and loads of them were crumbly and leaning. It actually didn't feel calm at all; it had a weird sort of energy to it, like the power of wrongness. There was a vastly tall chimney/tower nearby, too, with a boarded up door, and the two felt weirdly connected. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Were the graves crisscrossed like people's writing in secret rooms hiding from Nazis? Imagine if we just hung up our dead in our chimneys and smoked them to preserve them and you would get little Tommy to look up and wave at old Grandma Tommy right at the top hanging from the top hook. Dozens of bodies, dessicating and sooty. The richer you were the bigger the house and the chimney, the more of your lineage you could have hung up. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
I see that Alain Robbe-Grillet did the screenplay. That's obvious enough given TOPLOGY OF A PHANTOM CITY sounds just like it. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
That's TOPOLOGY. ""I am alone. Walking at random. Wandering, as if at random, among the unrecognizable fragments of what were palatial homes, public buildings, private residences, gaming houses and houses of prostitution, theatres, temples, and fountains. I am looking for something." " | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Nowt to do with me, guv. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
It only took me four hours to figure that out. A belated HAHA. Grill? Fry? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
? | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
Get off your arse and comment on the doc I sent you! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.163.48.60 |
"doc"? Documentary? Doctor? Doc Martens? Department of Commerce? Deoxycorticosterone? "Doctors opposing Circumcision"? That last one does exist, btw... | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
'"Doctors opposing Circumcision"? That last one does exist, btw...' I'm beginning to get a feel for the type of websites you take a peek at, mush!  | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.163.48.60 |
That's me! Weird to the bone! |