Dylan Thomas in Interstellar

There's been a spike in interest about Dylan Thomas recently because his most famous poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" was featured heavily in the film Interstellar. The movie was pretty good, though the use of the poem was a bit ham-handed. (Michael Caine repeated it melodramatically about 10 times.) In any case, the poem is about raging "against the dying of the light" probably in terms of getting old and dying. The film used it on a more profound level: humans colonizing other planets as an act of "raging" against an existential threat.

Interestingly enough, Michael Caine says he KNEW Dylan Thomas irl:

In Interstellar, you recite Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” which sounds a lot harder to nail than math talk.
As an actor, you just read the reality of what is going on. I love that poem. I also knew Dylan Thomas quite well. I knew him, but he didn’t know me. He was always drunk when you met him. I know he’s dead, but I’m sure if you said, “Did you ever meet Michael Caine,” he’d say, “I don’t know.” He was a fabulous poet. He was just around in the bars and clubs in London. He was a very bright Welshman who drank too much.

See the full interview on Vulture: http://www.vulture.com/2014/11/michael-caine-interstellar-interview.html

Thomas on Thomas

Thomas describes his technique in a letter: “I make one image—though ‘make’ is not the right word; I let, perhaps, an image be ‘made’ emotionally in me and then apply to it what intellectual & critical forces I possess—let it breed another, let that image contradict the first, make, of the third image bred out of the other two together, a fourth contradictory image, and let them all, within my imposed formal limits, conflict.”

Selection for Jan/Feb 2015

Dylan Thomas: Selected Poems

O, kingdom of neighbors, finned

Felled and quilted, flash to my patch

Work ark and the moonshine

Drinking Noah of the bay

---

My ark sings in the sun

At God speeded summer's end

And the flood flowers now.

I see you.

"If we accept that we can see that hill over there, we propose that from that hill we can be seen."

Ways of seeing Ways of Seeing

Spoiler Alert: "Ways of Seeing" is actually based on a TV series from the 1970s and you can watch the episodes for free online. Here is episode 1:

You should still read the book though. It's very short. You could probably read it in less time than it would take to watch the videos.

Selection for Oct/Nov 2014

Great Last Sentence

Despite all my complaining about Speedboat, the last sentence is really good:

"It could be that sort of sentence one wants right here is the kind that runs, and laughs, and slides, and stops right on a dime."

It's the kind of sentence you write on a scrap of paper and say to yourself "This'll be the last sentence of a book someday."

Ice Cold

Happy summer everyone. I assure you I am reading Speedboat, but I do not like it! And so I can't think of much to say about it. It's just ice cold, man. Too cool for school. It's hard core New York city, stone cold, blank faced, bump-into-you-on-the-street-and-not-look-up-from-the-sidewalk stuff. Step-over-a-drunk-on-the-sidewalk stuff. Intellectualizing-sadness stuff. I mean to say - it's boring.

I understand what Adler was aiming at. She's obviously very very smart. And she's trying to capture the whip smart, independent, single youth of NYC. Fine. But it's leaving me cold. Maybe it's just me.

I think I'm looking for the hard on the outside, soft on the inside reality of 99% of people but she's writing characters that are hard on the outside and blank on the inside.

From a review on Slate:  "Speedboat belongs to a genre of '70s women’s fiction, in which a damaged, smart woman floats passively yet stylishly through the world." [...] "In all of these Smart Woman Adrift novels, there is a radical fragmentedness, a supremely controlled tone, a shrewd and jaded observation of small things, a comic or wry apprehension of life’s absurdities, and pretty yet melancholy vignettes of the state of being lost."

Yes, I know. That's the whole point. I think I'm looking for love in the wrong book. The real fear: I would have loved this book when I was 19. It's got that disaffected youth vibe, like Catcher in the Rye for girls with good jobs.

Also, Speedboat feels like an object of the 70s. It was trying to be cool, reflecting the culture as a whole. Now, it's cool to be candid. Irony is out. Sincerity is in. Emotional honesty is all the rage. The importance of the honest individual. You can see it on TV with shows like Parks and Recreation or in all the raw, cathartic memoirs like Wild, Life After Death, et. al.

Sorry, I'll keep reading it. Maybe I'll change my mind.

Selection for Aug/Sept 2014

It is better to destroy than to create what is meaningless

Williams opens the last section of Book III of Paterson with the following passage -

It is dangerous to leave written that which is badly written. A chance word, upon paper, may destroy the world. Watch carefully and erase, while the power is still yours, I say to myself, for all that is put down, once it escapes, may rot its way into a thousand minds.

The passage is reminiscent of a killer line in a song called "Immigration is the Sincerest form of Battery" by the band Every Time I Die: "It is better to destroy than to create what is meaningless."



Williams warns us to destroy all sub-standard work - erase it while you can still control it - before it does any damage. The song makes a similar point.

The song itself, I think, is a reference to a great film called 8 1/2 by Federico Fellini. The film is about a young director struggling to make a film that never gets made. It's basically a film about a film that can't be filmed. Guido, the filmmaker says: "It's better to destroy than create what's unnecessary."

Paterson came first, in 1958. 8 1/2 was made in 1963, and the song was recorded in the 2000s.

It's heady stuff:
The artist as perfectionist / struggling with lack of control
Bad ideas as dangerous / poisonous
The responsibilities of creators
Creator's shame of juvenilia