Thursday, December 18, 2003
Yesterday, I did another 1,230 words on "The Dry Salvages." That brings the total word count to 17,184. Bill Schafer called while I was working yesterday and we talked about who we might get to do the cover and agreed that we probably didn't want interior art for this book.
Last night, of course, I went we went to see The Return of the King. I'm not sure that I have the words to do the film justice. It was, I believe, as close to perfect as a film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings can be. It was beautiful, in all ways, and terrible, and glorious, and heart-breaking. It was right. And it was the fulfillment of a wish I've been wishing since elementary school, to see those three books, beyond my mind's eye. In high school, I was cruelly tricked into thinking I'd get my wish when that atrocious Ralph Bakshi thing was released, but almost immediately I saw it for the ridiculous failure that it was. But now I have seen the Shire, and Gondor, and Mordor, and it's hard to imagine a film doing it better. I read somewhere that "studies have shown" (free-floating appeals to authority) that people tend to be of the opinion that the authors of negative reviews are more intelligent than the authors of positive reviews, that praise signals only an inability to see what was wrong. Fuck that. If you want to think me a dullard for finding no significant fault in these three films, you have my blessings. I have my wish. I think I got the better end of the deal. Oh, and that wonderful Annie Lennox song.
It occurred to me yesterday afternoon that maybe this journal has strayed too far from its original charter. I spend too much time talking about that which has nothing to do with writing. I discuss politics. I offer the minutiae of my dull life. In short, the last year or so, I fear this journal has drifted nearer all those things that make me hate the practice of "blogging" in general. The elevation of the mundane and the commonplace, the bully pulpit, the soapbox that no one can kick out from under you, etc. & etc. So, perhaps I shall endeavor to stay closer to the subject of my writing. That's why I began this. I will not become another voice in the tiresome storm of opinion and pathos. Or, if I have already allowed myself to become that, I shall reverse myself.
The cold weather makes writing no easier. But then neither does the heat...
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