MUTABILITY

by

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I

The flower that smiles to-day

To-morrow dies;

All that we wish to stay

Tempts and then flies.

What is this world’s delight?

Lightning that mocks the night,

Brief even as bright.

II

Virtue, how frail it is!

Friendship how rare!

Love, how it sells poor bliss

For proud despair!

But we, though soon they fall,

Survive their joy, and all

Which ours we call.

III

Whilst skies are blue and bright,

Whilst flowers are gay,

Whilst eyes that change ere night

Make glad the day;

Whilst yet the calm hours creep,

Dream thou–and from thy sleep

Then wake to weep.

1821 (1824)

Step one: post a poem from a Romantic Poet who has been dead for almost 200 years.Step two: post another poem from that same Poet.Life May Change, But It May Fly NotbyPercy Bysshe ShelleyLife may change, but it may fly not;Hope may vanish, but can die not;Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;Love repulsed,–but it returneth!Yet were life a charnel whereHope lay coffined with Despair;Yet were truth a sacred lie,Love were lust—If LibertyLent not life its soul of light,Hope its iris of delight,Truth its prophet’s robe to wear,Love its power to give and bear.In a way, I think this poem works as a very good bookend to the one posted before. Interestingly it was written the same year as the previous one I put up. As I said about the first, I thought there was more to it than just an overwhelming sense of depression; that there existed something a bit complex underneath it all. And here we see a generally optimistic piece about the everlasting quality of hope. But the last stanza seems to linger a bit on that same drepressive sentiment in the other poem.

You’d think…I mean, really, you’d think that the literary executor for Norman Mailer wouldn’t be A) a moron, or B) a total asshat. But when you make a statement like, “Vonnegut was the American Mark Twain,” there are very few ways to adequately describe what a complete and total retard you are.

Of course, he might have really said that “Vonnegut was the modern Mark Twain,” and he was merely misquoted. But then that means that the Washington Post is employing reporters who are so lacking in mental faculties that they will type out a statement like that above and not think that, possibly, it was a misquote…

Mostly the article is a discussion of reasons for Vonnegut’s greater sales record, particularly in the near past, than Mailer or William Styron. And the reasoning is fairly valid; Vonnegut was always seen as a little more “counter” than the other two (he never did win a Pulitzer), his books were by and large much smaller in length, and the general tone of his writing was more conversational.

Let me say that, on some level, I agree with those claims.

But by making them in the way he did, the writer is also saying that Vonnegut’s greater sales couldn’t be that he was, you know, the best writer of the bunch. God forbid a science fiction writer actually be better at the craft than a “literary” type.

God damnit! I’m getting more upset the more I type…fuck you Washington Post!

But even worse than the Washington Post and their backhanded dig at Vonnegut is Dana Gioia’s (head of the National Endowment for the Arts, a group that is simultaneously very important and also full of its own shit( comment…

“First of all, Vonnegut’s funny, and humor has a broad appeal,” Gioia says. “Secondly, he worked in genres like science fiction and political satire that have an enormous appeal to boys, and boys are the ones usually reading Mailer and Vonnegut and those authors. … Vonnegut was a very open and inviting author, less conspicuously literary than Mailer or Styron, although clearly a fine writer in his own way.”

Clearly a fine writer in his own way…

What the hell is that? Obviously, if a writer uses humor, science fiction, satire, and actually tries to connect with his readers (as opposed to, say, condescend to them) then he can’t be taken as seriously as someone like Norman Mailer.

Re-imaginings are nothing new, especially in the world of Sci-fi and Fantasy…a world in which I toil most happily. Case in point, the last book I attempted to read for pleasure was one such re-imagining…

And if one were to grade a re-imagining solely on, say, inventiveness the The Looking Glass Wars would definitely deserve an A. I tend to judge books on actual writing ability, though, and this one probably rates a C- where that’s concerned. The idea is great, and I was very spirited in my reading for 100 pages or so…at a certain point, regardless of how much I wanted to ignore it, the plain fact that the book is not written well just became too much of a hurdle, and I put it down about 2/3 of the way in. Thanks to work, school, the kid, the website, and my own attempts to scratch out what fiction I may, my time for reading is limited and I just can’t devote energy to something that isn’t enthralling. I’ll likely finish it at some point, since I’ve never left a book unfinished indefinitely, but that time is not now.

Besides which, there is a wholly amazing re-imagining taking place right now on the Sci-fi channel, Tin Man.

While the special effects aren’t quite what I’d like…granted, it is a Sci-fi original, I understand that the budget probably wasn’t great…the writing is very good. I think for a re-imagining to be successful, it needs both a fresh take on the original content, and the writer (or writer’s) needs to be committed to actually creating something wholly new. In this way, the source material becomes a framework on which the actual (new) story is constructed. Broadly speaking, this is how Shakespeare worked.

And I think that Tin Man is a very good representation of this. By the end of the first episode, we had already seen nearly all of the “source” material used up and evolved, and the series was moving into its own creative territory. Plus the line by line writing is very, very good. This, in my mind, is the ultimate lynch pin. It is where The Looking Glass Wars fell short, in fact. All the imagination in the world cannot save a writer who is unable to construct a compelling sentence.

And it doesn’t hurt Tin Man that both Zooey Deschanel and Kathleen Robertson play the heroine and villain respectively…

There’s a couple of women that would definitely be on my stalking list if I still did that sort of thing…which I totally DO NOT…seriously, I’m completely cured…

Today marks the release of a movie I’ve been waiting several years for, The Golden Compass. The initial response, ala the Tomato Meter isn’t so great; a 44% as I am writing these words. Now I don’t have time to examine all 120+ reviews that Rotten Tomato is referencing here, but I am in the habit of reading the full reviews from those reviewers I’ve come to trust over the years. In this case, Roger Ebert and Kenneth Turan. Normally I’d check A.O. Scott’s review as well, but the only review up on the NY Times right now is from Manohla Dargis (who did write a favorable review, nonetheless). Here I think, is one of the more notable excerpts from Ebert’s review:

As a visual experience, it is superb. As an escapist fantasy, it is challenging. Teenagers may be absorbed and younger children may be captivated; some kids in between may be a little conflicted, because its implications are murky.

They weren’t murky in the original 1995 novel, part of the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, a best seller in Britain, less so here.

The “murkiness” that Ebert talks about comes from the fairly well known fact that, instead of portraying the Magisterium (the large, not so nice, group at the heart of all the badness going on) as part of The Church (yes, those caps are intentional), it is represented as a governmental agency, akin to Big Brother.

But as Turan points out, this change is of particular importance to this story:

…though the Magisterium’s representatives dress like religious functionaries, all references to church connections have been removed.

Still, though it takes some doing, “The Golden Compass” retains enough tastes and traces of the original to fascinate and involve viewers. This is especially important because, as opposed to, for instance, “The Lord of the Rings” or even the Harry Potter books, this is a noticeably cool story, one whose most memorable connections are intellectual rather than emotional.

What I noticed, too, about both of these reviews is that it appears both Ebert and Turan had actually read the books. I generally try and judge an adaptation apart from its source material. Books and movies just work in different ways. A good example, I think, is another seminal fantasy series, The Lord of the Rings. The movies work so well because they focus on the action of the books, but anyone whose read them will tell you that the fights and battles (even the really BIG ones) are treated as secondary by Tolkien, almost as if they were mere plot devices required by the narrative, but not necessarily important. In the film, for instance, it takes Frodo about 2 minutes to decide to leave the Shire, in the book it takes, literally, months. That just wouldn’t play on the big screen. In regards to this film, though, I think that there must be some implicit connection the two versions.

So does this change work for the film?

That’s the major question, for me, as I anticipate seeing it. As I said, it appears that both Turan and Ebert read the books, and give glowing reviews to the movie, even with this much ballyhooed change. What seems interesting to me, from my brief perusal of the various reviews, is that those who give the movie a negative review seem to have not read the books. I could certainly be mis-categorizing things here. Surely there are bad reviews written by people who read (and, no doubt, even loved) the books.

Stephanie Zacharek at Salon seems to have read the books, though I’m not sure how well. Her main contention is that the movie is stilted, episodic and too grand for director Paul Weitz to handle. She says that the characters are always “trekking here and back again” though the audience hardly knows why, and that “nothing that happens in “The Golden Compass” is particularly well dramatized, and because Weitz has tried to cram in so many details and plot machinations, there’s never any time for relationships to develop between characters.” Well, unfortunately, that’s just how the book works too. At a few points in her review Zacharek bemoans the loss of the “magic” of the book. But the first book is just the first act of a longer work. People (especially Lyra) really are just running from here to there as the narrative unfolds and the characters are trying to make sense of it. In that regard, then, it seems that Weitz has been faithful to the source material (of course, I haven’t seen the movie yet so I could be wrong).

More importantly, though, even I who whole heartedly endorse the books on every level, can admit that Lyra, as a character, has no growth until the last book. She works as more of a device in this first installment. The most important device, no doubt, but one used mainly so that Pullman can get to the philosophical ideas he’s working towards. It’s not until the final act of the story do the character’s actually engage with these intellectual ideas in very real ways, and that’s precisely when the characters begin to come alive.

When it comes down to it. I’m pretty excited to see the film. The initial news that the Magisterium would be so completely changed in the film, obviously, made me dubious. And the so-so reviews I think can be understood more as a (still to this day) lack of appreciation for fantasy work than a real disregard for the film itself. Say what you will about Rings or Narnia or Potter, there still exists a definite resistance against fantasy as a viable form of entertainment, let alone art. More than anything, the Ebert and Turan reviews give me hope that I, who also read and loved the books, will connect with the film.