February 18, 2001
Weekend Sidetrips
Nice, quiet, peaceful Sunday -- regardless of what my horoscope said this morning. I woke up fairly early, finished reading Gut Symmetries (more on that in a moment), watched a movie (more on that in a moment), and did my laundry. I enjoy days like this. For me, free time is not a matter of having time to go out running around shopping or to bars or to go hang out, it's time to use my head the way I want to use it, if that makes any sense. My body can be perfectly still (and is, largely), but my mind is off exploring the little sidetrips it wants to explore.I love Jeanette Winterson. Gut Symmetries is really like nothing I've ever read before. It is not a linear story. She breaks most every "rule" I've ever heard or read about fiction writing. She plays with verb tense. She uses first person narrative and switches between narrators with every chapter, never quite telling you who's speaking. She meanders through her words, following tangents. She makes me want to write, to see if I can construct such amazingly poetic prose.
I hate Jeanette Winterson. Because in the space of a second, I become quite certain that I will never manage to construct something so intricate and involved. I was reminded, while I was reading earlier today, of John D. MacDonald's introduction to Stephen King's Night Shift, which I haven't looked at in years. MacDonald talks about writing, comparing it to brain surgery in a way. He offers advice to would-be writers, including, "You have to have a taste for words. Gluttony. You have to want to roll in them. You have to read millions of them written by other people. You read everything with grinding envy or a weary contempt." I don't know about everything, but I do read many things that way now. With Winterson, it was all grinding envy. Like the best of writers, she makes it look so damned easy.
And then I watched The Postman. I had hoped to watch several post-apocalyptic movies this weekend, but the video store near here was decidedly short on the genre. They didn't even have Road Warrior, for crying out loud! Anyway, The Postman wasn't too bad. Not nearly as bad as I'd expected. Better than Waterworld, which I'd actually enjoyed -- what is it about Kevin Costner and post-apocalyptic stuff? So here's what I learned:
In a post-apocalyptic world, everybody, but everybody will wear fingerless gloves.
No one will have learned how to sew, so everyone will wear torn cast-offs of the old world.
Kevin Costner has diarrhea of the camera and makes really fucking LONG movies. This one was three hours long.
Kevin Costner likes the idea of casting himself as the reluctant hero. A lot. No, really. A lot. (I can think of four of his movies where he plays said reluctant hero without even trying.)
The man oughta be shamed, casting himself opposite someone so much younger than him.
But believe it or not, I did like it. It just needed to be about half an hour shorter. That's been my weekend. Well, except for working yesterday, but let's not talk about that, shall we?
From today's horoscope:Just when you
From today's horoscope:
Just when you think that the sweet bird of youth has flown south forever, it returns with the whole flock. Your inner child is having a noisy slumber party. Regression may or may not work to your advantage.Hee. I wonder if I'll be able to study today through all that noise?
