Thursday Theater

Since the 2011 film version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy never did come to a theater near me, I finally rented the 1979 television mini-series starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley. Now, I’m probably not the person with whom you would want to watch a film based on something I’ve read. I constantly compare the film to the book, often out loud, and I’m always disappointed. Well, almost always.

The Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy mini-series is the most satisfying adaptation of a novel that I have encountered. It captures the essence of the “heartburn thriller,” not with mood music or fancy film techniques, but with supreme acting by well-cast actors. These guys (especially Alec Guinness, of course) manage to convey their heartburn to their tense, anticipating audience with a mere wiggle of an eyebrow or twitch of the lip. Of course, any filmmakers that respect the story they are telling enough to cast Patrick Stewart as a guy who says absolutely nothing can be trusted to put good, strong, well-played characters on the screen.

I believe, however, that the real advantage of this, or possibly any mini-series adaptation of a novel, is that of time. Most novels, at least most good novels, cannot be given justice in a feature-length film simply because there is too much story to tell. The Tinker Tailor mini-series takes 290 minutes to represent John Le Carre’s complex (though relatively short with regard to words and pages) novel, and that is time much needed and very well spent. I fully intend to watch the 2011 feature-length film when I can get a hold of it (hopefully in April) and it will be interesting to see how well this story really can be represented in 127 minutes.

It’ll also be interesting to see how well Gary Oldman represents George Smiley compared to Alec Guinness. It is, literally, a tough act to follow, but Oldman’s Oscar nomination gives me some hope for a good show.

Not that I needed another thing to be comparing and contrasting while I try to enjoy a film. You definitely do not want to watch this movie with me. Someday, I hope to learn from some of my favorite movie people: “Repeat to yourself it’s just a show/You should really just relax.”


Coming next: thoughts on Sign of the Unicorn, the third Amber novel by Roger Zelazny

Her Little Majesty by Carolly Erickson

The Life of Queen Victoria

I had read other biographies of British monarchs by Carolly Erickson, so I had high expectations for the quality of the research and the writing in Her Little Majesty. I was not the least bit disappointed. What I was also expecting, however, was to finish reading this book with a clear understanding of what made Queen Victoria great: how she balanced marriage and motherhood with the demands of politics and statecraft; how she managed, as such a physically small woman, to rule such a large empire for such a long time; how she endured so much criticism and ridicule to end her reign with such public popularity and endearment. I these areas, I’m still a little confused.

On the surface, the life of Queen Victoria seems like one of opulent privilege and indulgence. She seemed to lack nothing, but still had a great deal to complain about and much to lose her temper over. She did, however, manage to earn the respect of many statesmen with her knowledge of the situation of Europe and her grasp of politics. It was somewhat difficult for me to tell from this particular account, however, exactly how she did earn that respect.

Victoria’s childhood was really pretty nightmarish, with her mother and her mother’s financial advisor (probably really a con man) selfishly manipulating her life for their own personal gains. She was only eighteen years old when she became queen. Most of her life after that seems to be characterized by obsessive, and often unwise, attachment to one person or another, dramatic displays of temper, and constant struggles against various emotional burdens. She absolutely hated not getting her own way and couldn’t stand it when anyone, especially one of her nine children, did not do everything exactly how she wanted them to.

Something that completely baffled me, and disappointed me as well, was that Queen Victoria agreed with the sentiment of her time that characterized women as inferior to men. She seemed to believe that she was not cut out for her inherited job, not because it was extremely complicated, or because she had nine children, or because she was kind of a drama queen, but because a man would be better for it than a woman. I was hoping that she had had more strength, perhaps even more of a chip on her shoulder, trying to prove that she could do what no one thought women could do.

So, I was mostly through the book and I still didn’t understand why Queen Victoria was “great.” Then, I came to a particularly informative passage about the celebration of her Diamond Jubilee (sixty years of rule). This is not only a great example of Erickson’s high-quality, engaging prose, but also a demonstration of the most positive answer to the question, “But, what have you done for me lately?” that I have ever seen.


The frail, child-sized figure in her carriage was the focus of all eyes, the tender object of all hearts. No one in the crowd now thought of the dark years when the queen had been criticized for hiding herself away, or ridiculed for clinging to John Brown, or scoffed at as a quaint, naïve relic of the past in an increasingly sophisticated world. Instead the overwhelming feeling was a desire to cherish the precious sovereign who represented tradition, stability, worldwide authority. Victoria was the crown. Victoria was the empire. Victoria was the royal family. Victoria was Britain, her glory Britain’s glory, her endurance Britain’s triumphant durability in a world of change.


Huh. Well, in this era of too many people who are famous simply for being famous, I suppose I’m pretty content that Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, has been remembered well for something of more significant substance, at least on a sentimental level. She represented the end of an age, whether anyone likes to admit it or not. Nothing has been quite the same since she’s been gone.


A Year of Books I Should Have Read By Now

Wednesday Word

Rama (rä' mə) any of three of the incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu, esp. the seventh


In Rendezvous with Rama and again in Rama II, the alien object entering our solar system was named Rama by the people who get to decide these things. They delved into the Hindu deity names because they were all out of Greek and Roman ones.

Rama, however, just sounds cool.  It's easy to say and finds a good place in the alliterative phrase "rendezvous with Rama." I find myself wondering if the sound of that phrase alone could have sparked the idea for this science fiction series.



Coming soon: Her Little Majesty by Carolly Erickson

Rama II by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee

I really enjoyed Rendezvous with Rama and was hoping for the same kind of intensity and excitement in Rama II. I had a hard time getting through Rama II, however, though it is a good science fiction story.

As was foreshadowed in Rendezvous, there is indeed a second Rama spacecraft visiting the solar system. This time, the people of earth are somewhat more prepared, and a second rendezvous is carefully planned with a well-trained crew. The first part of the novel is spent getting to know the characters that make up this crew, which includes military, engineering and medical specialists. I think what threw the novel out of balance for me, however, was the inclusion of journalists, who really ended up dominating the priorities of the mission. In fact, I hated Francesca Sabatini, the rude, manipulating, self-absorbed model-turned-journalist so much that she nearly ruined the book for me.

Once the crew gets into the second Rama ship, there’s a whole new and fascinating story of technology and mystery. They’re starting with the knowledge gained from the exploration of the first Rama craft, and must face many of the same challenges as well as plenty of new ones. Unfortunately, the greatest challenges involve the people in the crew themselves. They don’t get along so well together, and aggressive, self-serving personal agendas drive the plot and the conflicts.

There are quite likeable characters, however, which saved the book for me. It wasn’t so much that I could relate to them (they’re all much, much smarter than me and have lived more interesting lives even before going into space), but I could understand how their lives and attitudes affected their motives and decisions. Also, for a “hard” science fiction novel, this one contains an especially kind and sympathetic treatment of the most devoutly religious character. Michael O’Toole, a Catholic, really is a good, wise, and fair guy, and does not behave as the unkind, stereotypically misguided and intolerant religious fanatics in many other science fiction stories. His actions are in contrast to those of the more fearful or financially driven characters and give us something to think about.

Overall, this is more a book about what drives people to particular actions and the way they work together, or don’t as the case may be, than it is about space travel or contact with sophisticated alien beings. As Nicole de Jardins, the character we probably get to know best in the novel, muses, “It’s a shame that we humans are never able to pull in the same direction. Not even when confronted by infinity.” Now, I loved Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre, which are also about the less positive aspects of human nature. Rama II, however, just didn’t seem to work as well as this kind of character study for me. It needed to be different than Rendezvous with Rama, I suppose, but I did not like it nearly as much.

As I said, it is a pretty good science fiction story, and I’m looking forward to reading the next sequel, The Garden of Rama….some day.


You might also like: Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke


A Year of Books I Should Have Read By Now

Favorite Lines Friday

I am cheating for this Favorite Lines post. I simply refer you to this fabulous list of the 100 Best First Lines from Novels from American Book Review:

100 Best First Lines From Novels

There are all the old familiar lines, like "Call me Ishmael," "It was a dark and stormy night...", and "Happy families are all alike..." but there are, of course many with which I was not familiar. I particularly like the short, punchy lines that not only make me desire to read what is next, but are also particularly wise. Like:


"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board." from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston(1937)

and

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." from The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley (1953)

And here's one that I'm a little afraid might apply directly to me all too soon:

"Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature." from The Debut by Anita Brookner (1981)


Of course, I was a little disappointed that "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." did not make the list, since, concise and wonderful as it is, that line not only launched an epic tale, but also an epic appreciation for well-done fantasy literature.

So far, my favorite first line from the novels I have written about on The Distractible Reader is from Summer Knight by Jim Butcher:

"It rained toads the day the White Council came to town."


How about you? Any favorite first lines from novels that you'd like to share? Please "Comment" below if you do. I'd love to read them.

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin

The Earthsea Trilogy: Volume 2

The Tombs of Atuan is another tale of Sparrowhawk, the wizard in A Wizard of Earthsea. Sparrowhawk doesn’t appear until late in the story, however, since it is really about Arha, priestess of the Nameless Ones. She becomes Arha, the Eaten One, at a very young age when she is dedicated to the Nameless Ones, and knows no other life but her ritual existence in the Place of the Tombs of Atuan.

The dark underground Tombs and Labyrinth with which Arha becomes so familiar as she grows up are a fascinating place. The reader sees very little inside them, since light is forbidden by the Nameless Ones, but Arha learns to navigate them with by touch and with her well-trained memory of the correct turnings. I found myself truly amazed by the detail LeGuin managed to convey about a place that is almost entirely governed by darkness.

The Tombs hold a treasure, important to the outside world and jealously guarded by the Nameless Ones, and that is where Sparrowhawk enters the story. He and Arha, who serves the Nameless Ones unconditionally, are working at cross-purposes, of course, but he’s a pretty special guy, and Arha finds herself disinclined to do away with him as she should. She faces important decisions about who she is and who she would choose to be, decisions with more riding on them than just Sparrowhawk’s life.

This story is short but still manages to be large in scope, detail and feeling. Most of it takes place in the Place of the Tombs, but the details of the underground labyrinth, the themes of power and the nature of who one really is, and the connections to the fate of the rest of Earthsea (including connections to something small in A Wizard of Earthsea that turns out to be important) make it seem to take up more space. It also gracefully carries on themes and stories from the first volume of the trilogy and doesn’t fall short the way sequels too often do.

The Tombs of Atuan is a beautiful story with rich, evocative descriptions that are somehow still concise, though neither crammed-in nor truncated. I not only feel like it was so much longer than it is, but also that it was so much more real than it is. LeGuin manages to take me into her created places and make me believe in them and the characters that inhabit them even if just for a little while.


You might also like: A Wizard of Earthsea


A Year of Books I Should Have Read By Now

Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster

I had read both Howards End and A Room with a View by E. M. Forster, but Where Angels Fear to Tread, perhaps a less famous novel, remained lingering unread in the same volume. It is a short book, which took me just a few long sittings to read, but I found it just as thought-provoking and darkly humorous as those other two novels. I was drawn in to the setting and the story so well as to nearly gasp aloud at its wicked twists.

The story begins with Lilia, the disappointing widow of the eldest son of the Herriton family, catching a train to begin a tour of Italy with Caroline Abbott, a friend of the family. A little later, when the family is informed that Lilia is engaged to be married in the town of Monteriano, Philip Herriton, a great lover of the charms and wonders of Italy, is sent to make things right. Unfortunately, as Phillip later reflects, “nothing ever did go right in Monteriano.”

So many aspects of Where Angels Fear to Tread lead me to believe that the story could just as easily be named Pride and Prejudice as the Jane Austen novel. The characters and the story are driven largely by those two concepts, but also by more juxtaposed concepts, such as convention and unconventionality, obedience and disobedience, vanity and vulgarity, virtue and violence.

As a result, the reader is often whipped back and forth between humor and heartbreak, and Forster was wonderfully skilled at invoking both. He pokes a great deal of wicked fun at English “society,” and the characters tramp in and out of the continent of Europe with an almost farcical incompetence, such as when Phillip is sent back to Monteriano yet again, along with his sister Harriet.

On the second day, the heat struck them, like a hand laid over the mouth, just as they were walking to see the tomb of Juliet. From that moment everything went wrong. They fled from Verona. Harriet’s sketchbook was stolen, and the bottle of ammonia in her trunk burst over her prayerbook, so that purple patches appeared on all her clothes. Then, as she was going through Mantua at four in the morning, Philip made her look out of the window because it was Virgil’s birthplace, and a smut flew in her eye, and Harriet with a smut in her eye was notorious.

Later, in Bologna, “The hotel smelled, two puppies were asleep on her bed, and her bedroom window looked into a belfry, which saluted her slumbering form every quarter of an hour.”

Of course, this story is not all laughing at unlucky travelers or the ironic silliness of English snobbery. There is also tragedy and sorrow, often coming as direct results of snobbery, but also of the desire to rebel against convention. There is death of the innocent and profound callousness of the guilty, really quite jarring heartbreak after all the jokes about convention and vulgarity.

The town of Monteriano is almost a character itself in this story. It not only sets a beautiful and enchanting backdrop for often very ugly events, but also affects the characters as much as they affect each other. In addition, Monteriano provides a contrast to Sawston, the English town where the Harringtons and Caroline Abbott live, a contrast that both drives the characters to act against convention and robs them of the convictions that drove them upon leaving Sawston. While most of the characters undergo great changes by the end of the novel, Monteriano will always stay the same. Even if “nothing ever did go right in Monteriano” for the Herritons and Miss Abbott, Monteriano will go right on without them, and may be better off for their continued absence.


A Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now

Favorite Lines Friday

Here is a wise piece of advice that Sparrowhawk received from one of his teachers in A Wizard of Earthsea:

Go to bed; tired is stupid.

Ah, if only I would have understood that just a bit earlier in my own life...