Sailbourne

Got this one because someone thinks I’m a literary geek.  As I go through the questions, I’m beginning to wonder about that, I’m afraid … I’m only tagging folks I think might want to see my answers.  No one’s on the hook here — this took me forever to answer, so I won’t subject anyone else to the time sink. The original also said not to bother with italics … so I’m not.

1. What author do you own the most books by?
Strangely, I’m going to say Terrance Dicks.  We have a ton of Doctor Who novelizations.  Not counting that, probably Harlan Ellison.

2. What book do you own the most copies of?
As far as I know we only have multiple copies of one book at the moment: Conservatives Without Conscience by John W. Dean.

3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Not in the least bit.  (Hearing Douglas Rain’s voice there.)

4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
At least three but none of them have been widely published as yet.

5. What book have you read the most times in your life?
Probably The Lord of the Rings.  With The Hot Zone a close second.

6. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
The Enormous Egg, by Oliver Butterworth.

7. What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
I haven’t read any books I’d consider genuinely bad in the past year, so I’ll take a pass on this question.

8. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
Don’t know if it’s the best, but Against All Enemies by Richard A. Clarke is probably the most important. And I definitely enjoyed reading it.

9. If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
I wouldn’t want to force anyone (because who would enjoy the book then?) but I think if you read either The Wild Trees by Richard Preston or Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson, you would not be disappointed.

10. Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
I have no freaking clue.  Honestly I don’t read much of the literature that gets one awarded a Nobel Prize.

11. What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
The Wild Trees, by Richard Preston — but only if done as a documentary, not fictionalized.

12. What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
The Prisoner: Shattered Visage, by Dean Motter & Mark Askwith. This story does just fine in its original form, and some “franchises” should just be left alone.

13. Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I’ve had a couple where the point of view shifted between myself playing an RPG and the actions of the characters in that game as it was being played. Pretty wild stuff.

14. What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?
I have read a handful of Harlequin romance novels. For research. Seriously.

15. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
The Seidensticker translation of The Tale of Genji. Still working my way through it.

16. What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?
The ones I’ve seen are considered the most well-known ones.

17. Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
I haven’t read enough of either to fairly judge.

18. Roth or Updike?
Don’t think I’ve read any of either.

19. David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
I’ve had some Sedaris read to me, which I enjoyed a lot.

20. Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare all the way. (Not that I’ve read a lot of Milton or Chaucer.)

21. Austen or Eliot?
I’ve read “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” … oh, I bet you meant George Eliot.  Haven’t read either.

22. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
See answers to questions 17 – 21, above.

23. What is your favorite novel?
I can’t decide the answer to this. I’ve tried. I just can’t.

24. Play?
The Zoo Story, by Edward Albee. Stumbled on it by chance in high school, didn’t understand it at all then, but was blown away anyway. After having seen it performed once, and having read it a few dozen more times, I think I’m finally beginning to get my head around it.

25. Poem?
I think there would have to be at least ten of these. So for today let’s say: Grass, by Carl Sandburg.

26. Essay?
You, Too Can Speak Gaelic, by Isaac Asimov. Everything I know about pronouncing long scientific names comes from there. First runner-up: The chapter about Hillsborough in Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby.

27. Short story?
A Quantum of Solace, by Ian Fleming. A James Bond story in which Bond is nothing more than the listener of a tale related by someone else — this story makes some very insightful points about human relationships.

28. Work of nonfiction?
The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston.  It’s approaching LOTR for the book I’ve read the most times, and it still manages to scare the snot outta me.

29. Who is your favorite writer?
Joe Medina.

30. Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
J.K. Rowling.

31. What is your desert island book?
Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy.

32. And… what are you reading right now?
Thank You, Mr. Moto by John P. Marquand; The Secret Life of Houdini: the Making of America’s First Superhero, by William Kalush and Larry Sloman; Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower; several RPG rulebooks

This was one of the three quotations on Google’s Quote of the Day gadget today:

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
- Flannery O’Connor

Never were more apt words spoken in the age of Twilight.

I am not a violent person, but if I hear one more gush about the books or the movie, I’ll break something.  If I see one more clip from the movie with dialogue that would make Ed Wood say, “Uhm, not so sure that’s gonna fly,” I am going to scream.

No, I haven’t read the books.  No, I won’t.  I’ve seen enough reviews from a wide enough variety of people, and seen enough passages from the book excerpted in those reviews, to know that I’d be wasting my time and raising my blood pressure for no good reason.  The only reason I can see for bothering would be to know how not to write bad romance.  And I have read enough other bad romance to already know what to avoid.

My advice to the Twilight junkies: Go read Chelsea Quinn Yarbro‘s Saint-Germain books.  You’ll get vampires that can walk in daylight (without sparkling!), amazingly researched and historically accurate settings, romance that is rooted in the way people really relate to each other, and horror that has a lot more to do with what human beings are capable of doing to one another than anything else.

Please.

You will no doubt have read the sad news in many other places by the time you read it here, but if you haven’t seen it yet, go take a look at Sydney Pollack’s obituary. 

I’m hardly qualified to comment much on Pollack’s career, having seen few of the movies he directed, and even fewer of those which he acted in, but I can comment on one of them.  Since it’s one of the movies which ends up in the “other stuff” list in his obituary, maybe the contribution is worth making — lots of people will talk about Out of Africa or Tootsie or Michael Clayton, but not so many, I guess, will talk about The Yakuza.

Sydney Pollack directed The Yakuza in 1974.  Like Shogun five years later, it was an American/Japanese co-production, and most of it was actually shot in Japan.  I first saw it on video in 1985 or early 1986.  On the shelf, it looked like just another action movie, but I was particularly curious about the Japanese element (having just recently become fascinated with Japanese history and culture). 

I wasn’t expecting all that I found — the carefully layered plot full of double-crosses and genuinely unexpected twists, the depth of the characters, the explanations of and real respect paid to the Japanese culture and traditions which underlie the story.   One of its themes — a fall from grace and the effort to achieve redemption — is one of my favorite kinds of story.

And so many of the elements of the film just plain work, even if on the surface you might not expect them to:  casting Robert Mitchum in the lead, Brian Keith as a bad guy, a triple clash of culture (American vs. old Japan vs. new Japan), a score by Dave Grusin.  Under Pollack’s guiding hand, it all works.  The Yakuza became one of my favorite movies, though I rarely had a chance to see it again, until last year when it (finally!) came out on DVD.

The film further fueled my interest in Japanese culture and was a direct influence in quite a bit of my writing, particularly my work in the Chamber of Mystery game and my original and principal character in the ISA Phoenix game, Yoshino Marina.  It led me to Zatoichi, Lone Wolf & Cub (the movies and the manga), and Musashi.  A novel still only in my head, about a cursed katana, probably owes its conception to The Yakuza.  And there will no doubt be more, as the years go by.

Many of the people involved with the movie are gone now, sadly — Pollack, writer Leonard Schrader, Mitchum, Keith, Richard Jordan — but some are still around, including the Japanese leads Takakura Ken and Kishi Keiko, writers Paul Schrader and Robert Towne, and composer Grusin.

When looking up The Yakuza on the Internet Movie Database, I learned that there is a remake in the works; with all respect to those working on that movie, I hope it’s never finished.  Sydney Pollack’s The Yakuzais an oft-overlooked masterpiece — better that it stay such, and be left to stand on its own.  If you haven’t seen it, at least go rent The Yakuza — even if you aren’t normally one for action movies, this one will be more than worth your time.

Joe and I went to see The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy last night. I think this is the first time we’ve been to the theater this year — the first movie to come out this year that we’ve actually wanted to see in the theater, as far as I can remember. (Joe, please feel free to step in and correct me if my memory’s off on this one.)

So the movie was quite good — not perfect, but very, very good indeed. Three and a half stars, or a B+ grade, in my book.

But I think we’re going to have to see it again. It was really, really hard to concentrate with the people sitting two rows back, yacking constantly.
FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, PEOPLE, YOU ARE NOT AT HOME WATCHING A DVD!! YOU ARE IN A THEATER! There may only be ten other people in here with you but they all PAID MONEY to watch the movie and they have the right to watch it in PEACE without you yapping every few seconds, “Oooh, there’s the Vogons!” and echoing EVERY THIRD LINE like a three-year-old. One of you looked like a teenager, and the other looked like she was my age. NEITHER OF YOU HAVE ANY EXCUSE FOR ACTING LIKE THIS!

The theater management has seen fit to tell people at least three times to shut off cell phones before the movie starts. I think they need to remind people a little more firmly to shut their mouths too. Yeesh.

Oh, by the way … you missed another joke, a classic excerpt from the Guide, by not staying to watch the credits.

I’ve just learned that Leo McKern has died. It might be ironic that the role he’s most famous for — Rumpole of the Bailey — is the one I knew the least about. I only saw that show a few times. But I loved his work on The Prisoner, and the movie Ladyhawke. I think after the writers’ group meeting tonight I’m going to put our DVD of “The Chimes of Big Ben” on for a spin in tribute.