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the_door_in_the_floor
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Not a lot of films end perfectly.
This one did.
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050816
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Strideo
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the door in the floor opens mainly for the _____.
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050817
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u24
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... whore,
the whore in the door opens mainly for the ____.
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050817
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Doar
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shore
the shore in the door opens mainly for the ___________.
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050817
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unhinged
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i didn't see the complete movie, but i'm sure the book is better. they always manage to slaughter the weird greatness of john irving when they make movies out of his books. simon birch was only a fraction of the plot of a prayer for owen meany. it was the twisty turny patchy chronology of the plot of that book that made it so great. bah on hollywood. bah on them.
the book was called 'a widow for one year'
other great john irving books:
a prayer for owen meany
the world according to garp
when i was a freshman in college my first writing professor made us do that cheesy introduction thing but we interviewed another person and the girl that interviewed me asked me who my favorite author was. i said john irving and my prof was like 'i went to college with him.' i have way too many weird overlapping circles in my life. or maybe i create way too many weird overlapping circles in my life. i have a brain for pattern.
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050817
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oldephebe
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yeah i mean did anyone see hotel new hampshire back in the day?
garp was actually not that baaaad, i still think the book was well...the movie didn't quite capture irvings manic creative brilliance...or rather robin williams did but the rest..? anyone notice that a lot of irvings stories are rife with unsanctioned sexuality? i mean when does it stop being an emblem or echo of anti-establishmentism or just middle aged libidinous and vicarious exploration--when does it become a flaccid rhetorical device that is little more than a cliche in this morally depleted or at in an age when traditional judeo-christian morality is seen as obsolescent and a patriarchical implement of conscription and control.
can i just say that i haven't read anything by john irving since '99? and why do i increasingly sound like a graying bibliophile expressing his dismay over the impiety of a writer who is at least a generation and a half older than i?
still though, i appear to be in my early 30's, so i've been told.
so so much for my rusty wheels screeching thier recalcitrance in improbable and unmappable vectors into the cold (autumnal) night air.
Damnit i just keep thinking that there will come a time that some of us will be challenged and it will require more than just cunning or street smarts or deception or charisma or postures of intimidation, it will require something HUMAN of us and we will reach for its echo and it will be GONE!!
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okay so that was sloppy and categorical or at least a facile swipe at what probably aspired to be a nice and tidy categorical repudiation of some of irvings trademark stylized scatology.
sure it's sensual and vivid and oh so titllitating but when does it start sounding like penthouse forum or a screenplay to the skinimax friday night movie?
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i haven't really read the book or seen the movie so you can pretty much disregard what i'e written.
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050817
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unhinged
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i haven't read 'a widow for one year' either; i stopped reading new irving after he wrote the cider house rules specifically for someone to make a movie about it. maybe he didn't, but it seemed like he did.
if you haven't read 'a prayer for owen meany' do it. it's the best irving i've ever read.
now that you mention it, there IS always weird sex stuff in irving stories. and it's almost always central to the plot. dirty old man. which is funny cause my english prof in my undergrad that knew him was a dirty old man too. heh.
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050817
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oldephebe
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i think i'll check it out.
i think at some deep level irving is responding to or out of a sexually repressed generation that had its morals and theology brutally enforced by
sadistic nuns who under the burden of celibabcy and lonliness brutally enforced doctrine and conduct. i guess they thought they could contain the untamed and questing and intoxicating sensuality of adolescence and its attendant impulses toward opposition and the hormonal and generational tides and rifts that predisposed them to be alienated, distrusting of authority. so perhaps having to subsume the violence of his passions in that kind of an environment created this sort of latent preoccupation with sex. A sexuality that throws off its centrifugal energy like the space time wrending spasms of a dying star. but yeah, i gotta admit some of his stuff is damn entertaining.
in one of his novels he explores the staid, repressed dusty enclave of The Hamptons. I forget the title but there were sections of that book that were reminiscent of a writer still at the hieght/peak of his powers. irving like many of us are equisitely actuated by our sexuality. irving is emphatically male in that regard. His writing, his being becomes galvanized by his engorged and violent passions. For some male writers nearing the autumn of thier lives, cheever, updike, baldwin, mailer et al whose words can create worlds as well as shatter them--thier prodigies of image creation and the terror that throttles thier bones conspire to create this kind of defiant literary construction and exporation and immortalization of ones virility. i mean this is what i believe...i could be way off here. but like i said having an old soul drew me to writers of my fathers generation even as a wry, dislocated, ambivelant kid.
to command that kind of power must be heady, to write a passage, to speak a line and cause the stones to fall from the sky is something the throes of old age can never divest them of. i mean, you know when they were at the pinnacle of their creative powers. to sit in this ravaged rotting living corpse and feel passion so acutely and yet be unable to articulate it, to have lost the sexual athleticism and to be nothing but this flaccid aching echo of the conquistador of bygone years has got to produce a kind of wrath, a kind of rage akind of bottomless depravity of desire that inpsires this kind of writing.
what must be it be like to want to summon those bestial violent prodigies of sexual physically, to reanimate simply what is so much a wilted and dried dying on the vine remnant of a former timber of magnificance? To somehow make a faustian bargain to swim once more in the ejacualtory essence of the "gold of the Universe." GOd to just peer up from the depths of your pain and touch transcendancy one again, this perfect immaculate transcendance of body spirit soul mind whatever...//
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soooo by the way how was florida?
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050818
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unhinged
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i really don't understand the male preoccupation with sex. but i have had some painful experiences in my life in that area, most of them actually, so i cannot see how people need it to complete their lives or relationships. but i have found that it is good stress relief and coming from someone who is a huge ball of stress most of the time....sad that the only person i ever felt completely comfortable in_bed with was more than unavailable to me on a regular basis. not much to do with irving i know, but only slightly unrelated. i suppose it's just the gender difference that makes most men obsessed with the physical and most women obsessed with the emotional.
another old man writer i enjoy is a.r. ammons of saying_saying_away fame. his book glare is one of my most favorite books of all time. the structure of his poetry can be repetitive and redundant but i'm willing to overlook that because of what he says in that redundant form. he originally became well_known for his 'naturalist' poetry but as he got older i would say he became more of a humanist. glare is a good example of his wise old man ramblings. my writing was much affected by him when i was younger. and to think i only accidentally stumbled over him in a discount bookstore because his book garbage had a cool cover.
florida was relaxing and it made my parents back off my case a little bit which is good. it was REALLY hot down there though. blah; florida in the summer is definitely not my kind of climate. *shrugs* i also tried fondue for the first time. it was a good time. me and my cousin todd have grown up to be more similar than i would have thought. it was nice to get to hang with him like that since i obviously don't see him much. and i finally learned how to work a digital cable remote. hahaha. so yeah, florida was a good time which is completely unrelated but you know me *shrugs* and anyways, you asked. :-P
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050818
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andru235
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"...a stone chamber which reminded me of my old neighbors. Of course, that was a long time ago, but would you believe their descendants are still telling stories about me and my family to their children?
"Even if most of the stories are lies and exaggerations, it is an immortality of a sort.
"As I passed in front of an open doorway a figure, crossing the hall outside, saw me and immediately ran off.
" 'Who was that?' they asked.
" 'Another visitor, to be sure.'
" 'Why did he run away?'
" 'You probably scared him,' I said, and they apparently believed me.
"With few regrets on my part we left for..."
--attributed to someone who obviously used a pseudonym for publication
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050818
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oldephebe
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well, no i gotta ay i don't know you but i wish i could unhinged..you are a fathomlessly interesting person..but if you mean the tendency so sprint off on an estuary of contemplation that occupies it's own vector of expression and inquiry--i'd say "yeah i can so relate"
i really dig that kind of writing
"dig?"
what am i seven years and watching the "Mod Squad" or something?
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050822
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unhinged
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you do know me pheb; anyone that knows me here knows me better than 95% of the people i 'know.' you get to see every part of me here. most people only get to see the smiles in person.
check your email.
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050822
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oldephebe
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unhinged - beautiful smile by the way
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051022
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