Out of Egypt:

Denise Levertov is my new best friend (plus Garden State stuff)

Got yet more textbooks in the mail today, yay. If the first few poems I've read of Levertov are any indication of the quality of the book as a whole, she's everything I want in a poet and more. I really am contemporary lit at heart; "classics" just seem so stiff. "Essay on Man," anyone?

I just wish that I had a guide to the world of contemporary lit - Percy, O'Connor, Paz, Neruda...these figures I have come across in various ways but I never know when another one will come along. But for now, here's a bit of Levertov for you. Hope the poem's short enough that I'm not violating fair use:

Soutine (Two Paintings)

As if the forks themselves
were avid for the fish,
dead scrawny fish
on dead-white plate.
As if the red steps
were clutching the hill,
famished,
crawling toward the summit.
O desperate things,
living lives unheeded,
disbelieved
by those who made them!
O grey void, usurping
the abandoned cup's
parched hollow!

And houses lean, wavering,
to watch if the steps will ever
arrive, and what could there be,
up there,
to fulfill desire?

O, and I saw "Garden State" today finally. More details to come. For now, all I'll say is that it was beautiful, perceptive, and funny, but the ending was rushed and a bit facile. That last speech was out of some kind of Hollywood romance movie dialogue book, which was not the feel of the rest of the movie at all.

O, and I love the use of music in the movie. Simon & Garfunkel even make it in - it really is our generation's "Graduate," as the Times, I think it was, suggested. An interesting piece could be written comparing those two films, particularly since both are good yet flawed, and the flaws are in vastly different areas. To throw a preliminary thesis out there, though, I'd say that "The Graduate" is the introvert of the two, giving the impression of more depth than perhaps actually is there, whereas "Garden State" is the extrovert, perhaps more telling than its comic veneer would suggest. But as a first film, wow. Expect good things from Bratt, or Braff, or whatever his name is.

Another comparison I just might develop: "Garden State" and "Eternal Sunshine." Both romantic comedy-dramas (is that even a genre?) with a repressed male - manic female dynamic; both beautifully composed and shot, relying heavily on visual imagery to convey mood and theme; both sympathetic treatments of mental illness (a subject I should know fairly well).

Of the two, it's hard to say which one I like better. From the pure wish-fulfillment fantasy standpoint, "Garden State" wins hands down. From the movie-as-a-whole standpoint, perhaps "Eternal Sunshine." The difference (other than Natalie Portman)? "Garden State," with its essential coming-of-age story character, speaks to me more directly than "Eternal Sunshine," which is about unmarried people, yes, but at a significantly later time in life. (How old is Carrey by now, anyway?)

Scenes that I could relate to in "Garden State": many. Not the family dynamic, though, thankfully. But the scene where he sits on the couch at the party while all the "fun" goes on around him - I know that feeling well. Could anything be more soul-destroying than the party life? I suppose some things could, like a life of prostitution, but those people sometimes are forced into it for economic reasons. Copious drug use and promiscuity out of simple boredom: it doesn't get much worse than that.

To end on a lighter note, the Issue 1 Bagpipe layout is finished. Now if only they can open the file at the printer's. O, and I was listening to Interpol last night in the Cave. That CD must directly stimulate my pleasure center or something, it's so good. Those punchy ringing guitar lines get me every time.

It seems to me that "repressed male - manic female" is common archetype of this generation. I see it overtly and subtley all over the place. Belle and Sebastian, Amelie (well, that might not fit the formula: both are repressed in their own way), Eternal Sunshine, Adaptation, and Magnolia's story about the cop spring immediately to mind. All of these fit, for lack of a better word, a "sensitive shy-boy aesthetic." Ah, if only I could claim credit for that; I read it in a Belle and Sebastian review somewhere.

Or maybe this is more of a subculture than anything else. Then again, it seems to me lately that everything is a subculture...but that's another ramble entirely.

Posted by: nougatmachine at September 1, 2004 11:43 PM

"Everything is a subculture." That's the postmodern world right there - at the risk of being cliched.

Maybe it's because they realized there's a lot of us sensitive shy-boys out there in the scene.

Posted by: Evan Donovan at September 2, 2004 1:33 AM

*refraining from making untrue generalizations about the state of women's liberation movements and the abandonment of a heterosexal masculine awareness in contemporary culture*

Having not said that, yahoo, Evan. I'm going to see the film tonight. You did a good job whetting my appetite for it without giving much if anything away. Also, if you find a guide to contemporary literature, share the love!

Which makes me think of something else: is anyone doing Writer's Box this semester, or has that good idea of Shelly Brown's petered out entirely?

Posted by: bob at September 2, 2004 8:36 AM

John-Michael Dietz (know him?) from Catacombs is in charge - Tuesdays at 9 pm in the room opposite the psych commons.

Posted by: Evan Donovan at September 2, 2004 10:21 AM

You probably would have liked Essay on Man if you'd lived in the 18th century. You like the contemporary stuff 'cause you speak the contemporary lingo. Not that I'm knocking our century; I just don't want you to knock the past.

From one slogging through Vanity Fair with great enjoyment...

By the way, Bob, Shelly Plumly, not Brown.

Posted by: funkefreak at September 4, 2004 11:15 PM

Welcome lurker to my comments box!

But being a generational bigot is so much fun... :)

Posted by: Evan Donovan at September 6, 2004 1:22 AM