Sunday, August 24, 2014
In the 15 minutes I have before a tv special on the Tower of London's history, let me put Juliet Binoche atop Marlon Brando, so to speak, and of course mention Ecuador.
Last night's tv showing of A Streetcar Named Desire sent me to my last blank video tape, but the film I saw today made me glad that last night's taping ended before the immortal last lines of Vivian Leigh and Kim Hunter, however sad I was when the tape ended before the film last night. The tape reached its end before it could record Leigh saying, "I've always appreciated the kindness of strangers" and Hunter saying, "I'll never go back there." Today's superior film stopped my lament for those lost lines.
I'd have been wiser to record Binoche's film Certified Copy, better scripted, acted, set, and directed than the Elia Kazan USian film of Tennessee Williams' play about dissolute Southern USians and brutish immigrant conditions in New Orleans. Kazan did betray progressive people to a 1950s US government committee intent on purging leftists. What quality from such a compromised artist?
Happily, France and Italy had no such purge, then or since. Artists could produce art without looking over their shoulders for official approval. Binoche and co-star William Shimell, an opera singer, far more deeply and sensitively and realistically probe the depths of human relationships than howling Marlon Brando, his earnest wife, and her nutty sister do.
So see it, even if you move to Ecuador, as someone I met today plans to do. A retired ironworker, single with dog, told me today that he planned to pension himself in that equatorial clime. I told him of a person I know who recently moved to Europe and I commended him for bravery and open-mindedness similar to that person's.
Now to the Tower of London's history on tv, which, had tv existed when the Tower was doing its bloody work for England, might have reduced the level of injustice of that work. That's something to put your head around. Also, rejoice that you have a head.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Sunday, August 3, 2014
"The Red Path" Novel Corrections
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Have embarrassingly-many
corrections, page by page, to The Red
Path, which I finally got by mail, and wish I had proofread before
CreateSpace published it. Underlined
bits should be added to the text. Novel writing is harder than it looks.
2. RCMP were
2. on his heels
2. who had parlayed
7. our daughter
8. he had been listening
13. “She...
tonight.”
13. Frank the
maintenance man
17. It was
18. on the heels
18. it had given
20. (The supreme court
decision, after the book was published, in fact recognized Chilcotin land
title, not just the right to land use.)
22. had recommended
22. system?
22. “Click” had intended
22. blindfold on (Good grief, so many mistakes on one page!)
24. less violent (no
hyphen)
30. whites
37. Williams Lake branch
39. (Odious debt is that
because it is incurred for anti-social purposes, not because because of social
cuts to repay it. Indeed, repayment is
unethical.)
40. to Russia
42. closer to Great
Grandpa
43. century earlier
43. had invented
44. fewer than
44. knowing how
rare
44. entitled them
45. she had reached
45. His decline was
48. princess were
48. Amelia Knight (not Brown)
50. (Chris began with that name, but I changed it
to Leon, but given the reference to namesake Christopher Wren, I should have
retained “Chris.” There’s no Leon Wren,
Elizabethan architect. In future I’ll
edit by reading, not by relying on word-searching and replacing. See “Leon” and read “Chris” throughout,
please. Or if you prefer “Leon,” which I
do, then make Christopher Wren a philosophical, not philological namesake. Hell, I didn’t even proofread this novel
before printing. Sorry, readers.)
50. was Piele, (The
whole name, originally “Tudud,” got deleted in a word processor word
substitution, with no substitute of a man’s name. The mistaken “was,” is absurd, makes James
Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake look as plain as Hemingway. Tudud is a woman’s name, I learned after I
made it Chris/Leon’s middle name.
Oops. My bad.)
51. and to be quick
51. with that
handsome
53. (That’s not Henry’s Crossing. It’s the Davidson, or Taseko River Bridge)
54. and putting
sculptures
59. eighth generation (this misprint
recurs)
59. (The Fish Lake mine
was turned down by two federal governments, the second rejection coming after
publication of the book, in which the second government approved the mine.)
60. courts have
64. on our island
66. Peter Posnan,
not Peter Wajda. (Both are Polish
names, the first a place, I think, the second the last name of a famous Polish
filmmaker. Posnan recurs. Use it.)
70. sisters
70. Alfred Wallace
70. peaceful world
71. (No “ Can....”)
73. in India
77. and returned to
the socialism
79. Chilcotin people (no
“s” on Chilcotin)
81. boreal forest
84. and had
self-destructed
85. would now build
86. well-heeled recently
tripped up by bankruptcy
90. is in over his
head (mistake twice on page)
92. “ I find myself
93. “These
people...live in!”
94. presumed not
96. “Should the
United States....country.” (“,
not ‘)
96. “Not a bit,”
96. she herself
could keep up
97. so, to cover
97. People judge a
person
98. many places
102. had derailed oil
106. the referenda
106. about Joe Hills,
safe not shot
109. more importantly
110. soon defaulting itself
112. the eighth
generation (error twice on page)
112. smallpox. What
113. eighth
generation (error twice on page)
114. on which everyone’s
food (remove “that”)
115. he had lost his
job when his mining company
115. That friend was
Albert, less full of himself
117. Its mail, shipping,
118, is becoming
121. backdropped
122. as well as provincial
124. Anchor Larsson
125. Archie , not Paul Ittaq
126. Leon, not
Chris (error twice on page)
127. is it that,
not “is is that”
127. “Leon/Chris” problem
again
128. “Leon/Chris” again
129. some charity
131. (remove “however;
but”)
133. across the world
133. Bengalis’ discussions
134. covered by
construction
136. Alberta was
now
138. “Preserved”
was the right word.
140. greedy bygone era?
141. Leon/Chris problem again
142. dismantle roads and use
142. more Leon/Chris
confusion
145. (That analogy about
the tree should start with the icy blasts of winter against the tree, not the
tree enduring the blasts, to make better parallelism with the Chilcotins.)
145. healed of much
of the harm
146. Chris again
147. starkly-beautiful
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