YOU CAN'T TRIPLE-STAMP A DOUBLE STAMP!

When people ask me who my favourite author is, I usually say Patrick O'Brian, because it's an impossible question, and because it's basically true. I recently read his 1953 pre-Aubrey-Maturin book Richard Temple, which is excellent -- if typically abrupt at the end -- a really contemplative and dissociative portrait of the life of a young painter. It has plenty of those delightful O'Brian surprises where really important stuff happens between words in the most overlookable places (for instance, the surprise gay: He and Gay had always got along well together, but it was only in the last year that they had been such close friends, drawn together, it must be admitted, by the abominable vice of sodomy.).

Towards the end, and after several periods of greater and lesser moral and financial dissolution, Richard has an encounter with some of his older work.

( Let's read it now. )
I love O'Brian's writing for its ineffable intimacy, this kind of rhythmic stepping through characters' psyches. His writing seems so clinical -- and indeed the above passage is probably the most clinical of the whole book -- but that objectivity, that commonsensical mundanity, is such a lie. His books are entirely bent around his protagonists (slipping sweetly between them, in the case of Aubrey and Maturin). He is such a generous writer, so evidently delighting in their passions and joys, from which he draws terrific humour and pathos.

There is less joy and humour in Richard Temple, perhaps because Richard is extraordinarily, and unknowingly, lonely, despite the intense attachments he forms with a succession of men and women. He is recounting his life to himself while he is interred in a POW camp, trying to hang on to his identity in the face of torture, but this backward-looking sets up an essential foreignness, a distance, a search that meanders and loses its way. The Richards of school, of France, of London, of Churleigh, even of Germany, are both strangers and particular friends, connected more by a happenstance of space-time, and less by any concrete Richardness. There is something really curiously hollow at the centre of this book and character, a space in which buzzes about the sneaking fear that connection is impossible, that will is empty, that encounters with people and art are never transformative because there is nothing to transform; a terror with which I empathise keenly as I get older, uglier, and boringer. So I love the above passage for how vivid and visual it is and how forgiving about the past, for how Richard is able to pull a kind of shocking, beautiful unity into being, to sit contentedly with himself if only for a moment.

Certainly Richard Temple is not about any such fucking pablum as "how passive resistance can be a form of courage and what it truly means to be a hero", as the blurb suggests.* It's an excellent book though, if not as comforting as our dear old friends Aubrey and Maturin.

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* True heroes, Channel 9 and Telstra have taught me over the last couple of days, are people that can swim really fast, or perhaps do other things fast. Our great nation is currently undergoing the developmental anxiety and trauma of realising that there are other people, who also have heroes, and that our heroes sometimes do not swim as fast as those other heroes. Thus indicating that we have turned five.

my primary take away from The Avengers is being impressed. Impressed at the quickness and cleverness of the extremely efficient script: Avengers would not have been the a hardest movie of the last year to write, but it would have been one of the hardest to write well, and it is written very well. Star Trek, the other recent ensemble-of-icons adaptation/reborquel, did a great job introducing characters with flair and giving everyone a hell yeah moment, with humour. Avengers does all this, but think of everything else it has to manage. It needs to generate equalities and equivalencies in status and power between 4 superheroes, some of whose set-up films were seen less than others, some of whom have less obvious roles and purposes in the oncoming conflict than others. It needs to (did it? I don't know Hawkeye and Black Widow from Adam but I assume they're important to the comics) incorporate two lesser, more human powers, who had seconds of honestly forgettable screentime in previous films, as major characters who can carry arcs. It needs to locate a strong organisational pivot around a character, Nick Fury, has the built-in coll of an eyepatched SLJ, but who was really just previously just some guy that you saw if you were also interested in reading copyright and humane society disclaimers. The only place it really struggled structurally I'll put under the spoiler cut along with more general discussion.

Joss threw in a couple of neat camera tricks, mostly playing with reflections, which is not really thematically relevant but oh well, but mostly kept things pretty neutral, generally avoiding the standard chaos of present-day blockbuster action. Certainly other action directors could learn from the gorgeous Serenityesque floating shot that tracked the action of the major players in the climactic confrontation. Beautiful clarity!

I loved the way it moved the pieces around on the board, often delaying maximum superhero deployment. Robert Downey Jr was always genius casting for Iron Man, but imagine how distracting, how completely beamed-in-from-another-movie, that scenery-chewing, dominating, obnoxious charisma could have been. Instead they turned it into a plot point! In fact, a character arc! Instead of trying to force these characters together they split them off into interesting pairs, giving just about everyone at least two major relationships.

( slightly spoilery for characterisation, minor plot points )

Mostly though, very impressed, with its visual and verbal wit, its care and efficiency, its devotion to examining interpersonal and group relationships, and its cameo appearance of Enver Gjokaj. Never change Joss.

via china_shop: Google's privacy policy changes are pretty exhaustive as well as tacky and gross about individualising your shit across devices and sites; arduinna has a good run-down and some recommendations.

If you are within a foot of James Dean you will turn gay.

EVIDENCE.
East of Eden screentests with Newman and Richard Davolas.

So are those Llynn Flewelling novels worth it? I feel like some published gay, but the first few pages were actively bad. Reading The Lies of Locke Lamora at the moment which at 12% in holds interest, but the contemporary feel of it gives me hope for canon queerness which I can only assume will be disappointed. Any recs?

You guys, Game of Thrones is starting to happen.

Can it possibly manage the vast scope and violence of the books? Probably, at least for the first season.

Can it overcome the self-imposed deadly seriousness of trying-to-not-be-cheesy fantasy? It will definitely be pretty enough and should contain plenty of balls-out cray cray.

Will you like it? FOOL IT HAS SEAN BEAN AND GAYS

So I think you need to watch. Cheat sheet to keep track of the characters/map. Trailer and other video.

otoh SOME things that go fast are simply soothing balm to a grumpy soul: Basset Hounds Running.