recent books + movie
Dec. 27th, 2009 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksWilliam Morris: A Life For Our Time, Fiona MacCarthy. I saw this at random while walking through the library recently, and said to myself, oh, I loved her Eric Gill bio and I find Morris interesting, and I picked it up. It is of course beautifully written, definitive, and about seven million pages long. Also of course quite firmly packed, so that I had to read it at about half my normal rate; the full horror of this did not dawn on me until I started to pack for Christmas, at which point I said to myself, my God, you fool, you've put yourself in the position of carrying a Fiona MacCarthy biography through an airport. Dear Ms. MacCarthy: I blame you for at least a third of my current wrist pain, on account of how the book is not put-down-able. Anyhow: yes, this is a really impressive biography of William Morris. I have some quibbles with it, as one does-- heaven only knows what the subtitle means, 'a life for our time', really, what?-- and I am maybe a bit unpersuaded by MacCarthy's insistence that William Morris's relationships with Georgiana Burne-Jones and Aglaia Coronio must have been entirely platonic whereas Janey Morris's relationships with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt must have been decidedly sexual. I am not arguing with the Janey bits, as Rossetti and Blunt were both talkative enough sorts; I am arguing with the assumption of not only platonic practice but intent in William's relationships and the opportunity I think MacCarthy takes because of this to be unkind to Janey Morris. Well, not so much unkind as rather blaming. One gets the sense of the author bending over backwards to be sympathetic, as she believes the Morris's marriage failed on account of Janey; I can't actually see evidence that the marriage failed, as such. Or at least such evidence was not included in this book. It is difficult to argue with MacCarthy as she has clearly read every remaining scrap of Morris's prose and verse with attentive care. And I cannot and do not care to argue with her over her main thesis, which is that William Morris's Socialist political involvement in his last twenty years of life has been taken for far too long as a phase, a passing whim with no particular effect, when in fact it was a dearly and deeply held and contested conviction which founded a tradition of radical-leftist folk-art, fiction, and lyric which has persisted to this day. Highly recommended.
In Great Waters, Kit Whitfield. This is a serious novel about mermaids. Not only that, it's a good one. This is set in an alternate England in which the existence and actions of the deepsmen have produced a Europe vastly politically and socially different yet very recognizable. It's one of the most beautifully worked out alternate histories I've seen in a long while, consequence to consequence to consequence, details like dominoes clicking down into place. It's a political fantasy, and a meditation on what it means to be human, and a novel seen very largely through the viewpoints of people who aren't quite human and believably not-quite. It is also absolutely the least sentimentalized book on the subject of mermaids you can think of, and downright bitter with that, but a bitter that's bracing, a clearing touch of frost. If I have any problem with the book, and that's a large if, I could wish for a dash of black humor among the harsh reality, but even the blackest humor might not have fit into the structure. I haven't seen much buzz about this book, and I really think that's a shame; this is one of the best novels I've read this year. Very highly recommended.
Oishinbo A La Carte, Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki, various volumes on various topics. The way this series works is that it has run for more than a hundred volumes, so they've excerpted highlight issues and put together themed collections. Each collection is chronological within itself, but not in relation to the other ones, and you can pick up the ones you find interesting. I read I think Rice, Ramen and Gyoza, Vegetables, and Sushi, Sashimi and Fish. Thrud had left Sake somewhere or other so I didn't get to it. The entire point is food geekery. There are characters-- a young journalist who has an arbitrary rivalry/feud with his father-- there are stupid plot devices to get them to have food-related showdowns, there's a romance. But really all of that is window-dressing for issue after issue of food-related techno-babble about every possible gourmet fixation you could imagine, from what kind of food the fish you make into tempura ought to be eating to why women make better rice balls than men. And that's accompanied by philosophical ruminating on what makes food Japanese and what makes cooking
Ooku v.2, Fumi Yoshinaga. Excuse me while I unsuccessfully try to stop the pupils of my eyes from turning into little heart-shaped glowy things whenever I think about Ooku. ♥ _ ♥ Sorry about that. Anyway. It's the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate, and a plague has killed almost all of the young men in Japan. These are various stories of the Ooku, the Inner Chambers of the Shogun's harem, and the young men who find themselves in it, one way or another. In some ways, of course, this is simply history with the genders flipped. Many of the most outrageous and amazing things are taken directly from life, such as the abduction that begins this volume. In other ways, this is so pointed and direct and beautiful and logical and gorgeously world-builded that I drown under a wave of superlatives. It's well worth pushing through the tin-eared and badly-archaicized translation. This is one of those manga I give to people who don't read manga. Highly recommended.
The Sherlock Holmes movie, whatever the actual title is: Oh, hey. What I was expecting from this film was precisely less than nothing, as the one preview I'd seen for it made it look as though no one involved could read English let alone Conan Doyle, and what I got was probably the most intelligent action movie of the year, or at any rate the one that will not actively insult your intelligence. Witty, well-acted, some fun gimmicks, and not only do I know precisely where it takes place in canon (it's the Thing with Irene Adler and the Cabinet minister), but it makes a nice sequel to Young Sherlock Holmes, a movie that is one of my great eighties guilty pleasures, and I have no doubt that sequel-ness was intentional. The only place I think they really discarded canon was in the lack of evident class-structure: Doyle's Holmes, as everyone forgets, was a champion prize-fighter and could bend a poker with his bare hands, but he would never have appeared before a lord without his jacket on. Robert Downey Jr.'s Holmes does not care about seeming a gentleman. Apart from that it's a lovely portrayal and I think Jeremy Brett (who is IMO the One True Holmes) will not have to return from the grave and haunt him. Jude Law is very good and totally unrecognizable as Watson. Slashiness meter rather ridiculously high which I enjoyed and suppose that in an England without the class structure one can get away with more, so it was plausible for this version but would I think be a bit much in a more conventional one. Rachel McAdams is not old enough yet to play Irene Adler but does what she can with what she has. And if you like From Hell, apparently megapolisomancy is the Totally In Film Aesthetic. This was about five thousand times more entertaining than I had ever imagined possible; not a film for the ages, but a damn good action movie in a bad year for them. Recommended.
* As we all know from the manga Hikaru no Go, nothing, but nothing in the entire universe, is more interesting than Go, and if you accept this as a God-given maxim Hikaru no Go could almost be populated by rational humans
