Movies and Books

The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, "I love you madly," because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, "As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly."
-- Umberto Eco

Sunday, March 29, 1998

If you haven't read Saturday's entry (and I know many folks just read the most recent) I recommend you do so. Content includes: strange costumes, me being called a bitch, and the obligatory South Park reference.

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I successfully slept late this morning. After waking up at around seven AM, I dozed back to sleep while listening to NPR. A bed is so much more comfortable when I wake up in it than when I go to sleep! I spent the first part of the day writing up yesterday's entry.

I decided to go see a movie about fifteen minutes before the showtime, so since I wanted to walk there I needed to hustle. It was a pleasant walk down the hill to Broadway, and I made it just in time.

The Gingerbread Man is a Southern Noir thriller starring the chameleonlike Kenneth Branagh. It held my interest pretty well, and I didn't guess all of the twists and turns of the plot. It was directed by Robert Altman, and I liked the style and cinematography. Darryl Hannah seems to be turning into a character actress; I almost didn't recognize her!

After the movie, I did some shopping for CDs and stockings at Fred Meyer, then walked back up the hill.

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I was determined to finish my bookclub book, Umberto Eco's novel The Island of the Day Before, this evening! Our meeting is tomorrow night, and I've not had a good record this past year of actually getting our bookclub books read. I can see the evidence by looking back in this journal!

I really don't like the book as much as the reviewer linked above did, although I see the skill (and skilled translation!) that went into the book. It just didn't hold my attention; I had to force myself through it as a task, and if it hadn't been for the discussion to come I wouldn't have bothered. There are so many layers of indirection that I couldn't care about the story as a story, and the issues of narratization or post-modern hoo-ha that are of interest to the author as a philosopher didn't thrill me either. Maybe the discussion tomorrow evening will bring out aspects that I missed in the reading; one of the supposed benefits of a book club!

I did enjoy the multi-lingual virtuosity of the prose. I think I need to go back and reread The Name of the Rose, to see if I really did like it! I swear I'm not just drooling over Sean Connery in the movie version in my memory.

There is a web-based discussion board for Eco, if you've read him and want to post your opinions.

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