Sweetsalty Kate Interviews Me About Books & Movies
In the title, I called this an interview because it makes me sound important. But it's really a meme from Kate's author site. I could win a free book, The Dread Crew, and you could too, so do it.
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1) You are facing an epic journey. You may choose one companion, one tool and one vehicle from any book or film to accompany you. Or just one of the three. It's up to you. What do you choose?
Easy. A light saber. All epic journeys would be greatly improved by light sabers. Just think if those fucking hobbits had light sabers. They wouldn't have needed 3 movies, that's for sure. Also, Gandalf. I would want Gandalf and a light saber.
2) You can escape to the insides of any book. Where do you go, and why?
Notes From Underground. I think the Underground Man just needed some good company, someone to talk to. Would he have been so sick and wicked if he had a good buddy to rent videos with? Probably not.
3) You can bring one literary character into your current life. Who do you choose, and why?
Mephistopheles. I bet he'd be pretty fun at parties.
4) Ecce Homo is my go-to book. I could read that book fifty-seven times in a row without a break for food or a pee and not be remotely bored. In fact I’ve already done that but it wasn’t fifty-seven times. It was sixty-four.
5) Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most enviable?
Ahab. Ahab was tenacious.
6) Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most frightening?
The Biblical God. Too vengeful.
7) Every time I read Walden, I see something in it that I haven’t seen before.
8) It is imperative that A Confederacy of Dunces be made into a movie. Now. I am already picketing Hollywood for this—but if they cast Seth Rogen as Ignatious Reilly, I will not be happy. I will, however, be appeased if they cast Jack Black.
9) Crime and Punishment is a book that should never be made (or should have never been made) into a film. Total disaster every time. Leave Dostoevsky alone, Hollywood.
10) After all these years, the Twins in the hotel hallway scene in the book/movie The Shining still manages to give me the queebs. Those were some freaky ass twins. They fractured my soul.
11) After all these years, the Gandalf/Pippin death conversation scene in the book/movie Return of the King still manages to give me a thrill.
12) If I could corner the author Jorge Luis Borges, here’s what I’d say to them one minute or less about their book, Fictions: "Remember that part where you got all, like, infinite and junk? Remember? The infinity. That was awesome."
13) The coolest non-fiction book I’ve ever read is Re-Visioning Psychology. Every time I flip through it, it makes me want to Dream better dreams and save the world.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Reader Comments (10)
Jack Black as Ignatious Reilly--brilliant casting!
I could see Jack Black as Ignatious Reilly. Sure. But still, I fear Hollywood getting a hold of such a book and ultimately ruining it. You have far more faith than I do.
*A Confederacy of Dunces* as a movie? YES.
I think I am the only person who does not get the queebs from the twins in the hallway in The Shining. But I do freak out at a spider no bigger than my thumbnail...
That is the best answer to question number six that has ever been given in the history of all sixth questions.
I read this short story a while back, a scary one ("Free Radicals", by Alice Munro). The main character's relationship with books is described. She has favorites and sometimes, she "would pick one up, planning to read that one special passage, and find herself unable to stop until the whole thing was redigested. She read modern fiction, too. Always fiction. She hated to hear the word 'escape' used about fiction. She once might have argued, not just playfully, that it was real life that was the escape. But real life had become too important to argue about."
That paragraph has gotten in, somewhere underneath my skin. I have spent a lot of my life reading. Whole days. Entire weekends. What are these literary characters doing in my head? Can they, ghostlike, guide me? Or, are they luring me into thinking of the world inaccurately, as a thing that follows literary rules, in terms of onomatopoeia, irony, and false symbolism?
I wonder. Is one of real life or literature an escape? If these books offer us escape, should we take it? Is escape avoidable? Can we escape escape?
I had a dream last night about hugging this laughing guy. When I woke up, my wooden floors creaked and got my feet cold.
And, irony: reading fiction gave me the idea to have doubts about fiction. Then, I /wrote/ about my doubts.
The only solution I see is to become illiterate. I'm on it.
I want to go for a beer with Lucy.
Um, i'm in for beers with Lucy too. And BHJ, I'd like to pick your brain some more about Notes From Underground. I read it for the first time a couple of months ago and I still think, hey, that could be me, if my family and friends disappeared and I became completely incapable of making new friends or all the people on the planet except me simultaneously disappeared or something like that.
\You had me at "light saber".