J-Fly has a cool concept she lifted from a film teacher.
Step One: Name your five favorite films off the top of your head and write brief summary.
1. O Lucky Man!: Guy hopes to make money as coffee salesman, engages in debauchery, wanders around English countryside, gets set up and booked, tries to proselytize, eventually smiles.
2. After Hours: Go nowhere word processor sees cute girl, starts talking, goes to Soho, gets involved in deranged New York universe, can’t get home, but is forced by unseen god to take charge.
3. The Wizard of Oz: Dislocated girl arrives in fantasy world, has adventures, meets friends, goes on quest, finds self, concludes “there’s no place like home.”
4. The General (1927): Go nowhere engineer can’t enlist, has his train stolen, pursues it like crazy, has adventures, proves himself hero, gets girl, finds inner self.
5. Brazil: Man stuck in drab bureaucratic job in totalitarian state dreams of girls, gets caught in plot, and finds escape in his own mind.
Step Two: “Chances are, those films will tell essentially the same story. And chances are, your films will tell that story too. Because that is your story.”
Yup. Common theme here is a passive human stuck in routine who goes through a series of incredible adventures and eventually finds self.
[UPDATE: This may have been accidentally pilfered from Cinetrix. Whatever the case, send some sugar her way.]
Magic Hours by Tom Bissell: This marvelous collection of essays chronicles everything from film shoots to novelists rescued from oblivion. (The essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, with its portrait of raucous factions, unexpectedly reveals how soft today's literary world has become.) But if you peer between the cracks of these smart pieces, you may very well see how cultural lives are formed from the most unexpected life choices. And as we follow Bissell's development as a writer over the years, that goes for Bissell as well. (
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway: Harkaway's latest novel greatly improves on his previous book, The Gone-Away World, which I'm already on record as praising. Angelmaker adopts genre elements without ever feeling like a genre book, and it leads me to believe that Harkaway is well on his way to a narrative grace close to China Miéville's. Yet inexplicably this very fun book, which includes an eightysomething badass named Edie Banister, a mysterious mechanical object that may destroy the world, farcical scenarios involving lawyers and the police, and some unexpectedly moving moments about fatherhood, doesn't appear to be getting much attention in American newspapers. Nothing from the snobs at The New York Times Book Review, nothing from The Washington Post. And since I can't get Harkaway on Bat Segundo, I hope this Jump Up and Down mention gets you hopping as well.
The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel: Unless you're really pressed for time, forget Jonah Lehrer. If you want to understand creativity and its relationship to neuroscience, then the bowtie-wearing Nobel laureate is your man. In addition to being a physically beautiful book (you will drool over many of the paintings), there are helpful overviews on optical illusions, science, biographical backgrounds, and many vital figures from the Vienna Secession. Kandel's enthusiasm (and his call for greater unity between the humanities and science) is contagious.
J-Fly is a she, and could I get a little sugar on this one, too?