'Ivy Compton-Burnett is an acquired taste. A friend lent me The Present and The Past a year ago saying I had to read it. For the first couple of chapters I didn't who was who or understand what was going on. Was this even a novel? It just seemed to be a lot of dialogue in artificial archaic speech. Somewhere in the third chapter I suddenly, in a flash of revelation, 'got it'. I understood the tragi-comic 'tone' and understood that by concentrating on the subtle nuances of dialogue all the usual content/interest of a novel would become evident. There are distinct characters interacting and there is definitely plot - quite elaborate convoluted, even melodramatic, plot. But all the usual narrative devices of commentary, scene setting and transitions between scenes have been reduced, almost eliminated.
'The storytelling occurs through the dialogue. All the characters speak in a stylised formal way, even children. This dialogue has a sophisticated ironic tone that is blackly comic (it frequently makes me laugh out loud), yet explicitly expresses a tragic sense of the hopelessness and tragedy of life. The main distinction between characters is where they stand in the hierarchy of the Victorian household in which all Ivy novels seem to be set. In other words these novels are about power, guilt and complicity: the mind games and power games into which we are all locked - the Victorian household and its characters becoming universal archetypes. (It may be a far-fetched comparison but I think that in both the settings and the rigorously `minimalist' style Ivy is to literature what Japanese director Ozu is to cinema, with a similar emotional punch.)
'Because of the concentrated nature of the dialogue, reading Ivy is very intense and she is probably best read in small doses, one chapter at a sitting. But, apart from that, once you `get it' then reading Ivy becomes easy and addictive. It's not like reading Finnegans Wake. I've now read several more Ivy novels and they are all similar, though Present and Past remains my favourite. It's quite short, focused, funny and poignant. We have Cassius, a typical Ivy father/husband: part tyrant part baby. His previous wife suddenly reappears. This appeals to Cassius's narcissism. He thinks he has formed a kind of harem in which he wields absolute power. But then (a little like the infamous harem scene in Fellini's Eight and a Half) the previous wife and the present wife start to bond with each other and power begins to ebb from Cassius: his ego, his sense of self and then his very existence begin to crumble. Even the children start to deride him. And then a series of extraordinary plot twists... which you'll have to read the book to find out!'-- hj
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Gallery
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Further
The Ivy Compton-Burnett Homepage
Ivy Compton-Burnett @ myspace
'London has lost all its Ivy'
'The deeds and words of Ivy Compton-Burnett'
'TPatP' @ goodreads
Douglas Messerli on 'TPatP'
'Ivy Compton-Burnett's Small Economies'
'Terrifyingly Friendly'
'Table Talk'
Finding-Aid for the Ivy Compton-Burnett Papers
'Poison? Ivy? No: merely the least-read great novelist'
John Waters on Ivy Compton-Burnett
Buy 'The Present and the Past'
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Extras
Slideshow w/guitar
Ivy Compton Burnett : L'Excellence de nos aînés
Ivy Compton-Burnett Quotes
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Speed read
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Manuscript page
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Conversation
Margaret Jourdain: We are both what our country landladies call “great readers,” and have often talked over other people’s books during this long quarter of a century between two wars, but never your books.
Ivy Compton-Burnett: It seems an omission, as I am sure we have talked of yours. So let us remedy it.
M. J.: I see that yours are a novel thing in fiction, and unlike the work of other novelists. I see that they are conversation pieces, stepping into the bounds of drama, that narrative and exposition in them are drastically reduced, that there is less scenery than in the early days of the English drama, when a placard informed the audience that the scene was “a wood near Athens,” and less description than in many stage directions. There is nothing to catch the eye, in this “country of the blind.” All your books, from Pastors and Masters, to the present-day Elders and Betters are quite unlike what Virginia Woolf called the “heavy upholstered novel.”
I. C. B.: I do not see why exposition and description are a necessary part of a novel. They are not of a play, and both deal with imaginary human beings and their lives. I have been told that I ought to write plays, but cannot see myself making the transition. I read plays with especial pleasure, and in reading novels I am disappointed if a scene is carried through in the voice of the author rather than the voices of the characters. I think that I simply follow my natural bent. But I hardly think that “country of the blind” is quite the right description of my scene.
M. J.: I should like to ask you one or two questions; partly my own and partly what several friends have asked. There is time enough and to spare in Lyme Regis, which is a town well-known to novelists. Jane Austen was here, and Miss Mitford.
I. C. B.: And now we are here, though our presence does not seem to be equally felt. No notice marks our lodging. And we also differ from Jane Austen and Miss Mitford in being birds of passage, fleeing from bombs. I have a feeling that they would both have fled, and felt it proper to do so, and wish that we could really feel it equally proper.
M. J.: I have heard your dialogue criticised as “highly artificial” or stylised. One reviewer, I remember, said that it was impossible to “conceive of any human being giving tongue to every emotion, foible and reason with the precision, clarity and wit possessed by all Miss Compton-Burnett’s characters, be they parlourmaids, children, parents or spinster aunts.” It seems odd to object to precision, clarity and wit, and the same objection would lie against the dialogue of Congreve and Sheridan.
I. C. B.: I think that my writing does not seem to me as “stylised” as it apparently is, though I do not attempt to make my characters use the words of actual life. I cannot tell you why I write as I do, as I do not know. I have even tried not to do it, but find myself falling back into my own way. It seems to me that the servants in my books talk quite differently from the educated people, and the children from the adults, but the difference may remain in my own mind and not be conveyed to the reader. I think people’s style, like the way they speak and move, comes from themselves and cannot be explained. I am not saying that they necessarily admire it, though naturally they turn on it a lenient eye.
M. J.: The word “stylised,” which according to the New English Dictionary means “conforming to the rules of a conventional style” has been used in reviewing your books, but the dialogue is often very close to real speech, and not “artificial” or “stylised.” It is, however, sometimes interrupted by formal speech. Take Lucia Sullivan’s explanation of her grandfather’s reluctance to enter his son’s sitting room without an invitation. “It is the intangibility of the distinction (she says) that gives it its point.” Lucia Sullivan is a girl of twenty-four, not especially formal at other times.
I. C. B.: I cannot tell why my people talk sometimes according to conventional style, and sometimes in the manner of real speech, if this is the case. It is simply the result of an effort to give the impression I want to give.
I should not have thought that Lucia Sullivan’s speech was particularly formal. The long word near the beginning is the word that gives her meaning; and surely a girl of twenty-four is enough of a woman to have a normal command of words.
M. J.: Reviewers lean to comparisons. Some have suggested a likeness between your work and Jane Austen’s. Mr. Edwin Muir, however, thinks it is “much nearer the Elizabethan drama of horror”—I can’t think why.
I. C. B.: I should not have thought that authors often recognised influences. They tend to think, and to like to think, that they are not unduly indebted to their predecessors. But I have read Jane Austen so much, and with such enjoyment and admiration, that I may have absorbed things from her unconsciously. I do not think myself that my books have any real likeness to hers. I think that there is possibly some likeness between our minds.
The same might apply in a measure to the Elizabethan dramatists, though I don’t think I have read these more than most people have.
M. J:. Mr. Muir in an earlier review says that you remind him of Congreve—a formidable list, Congreve, Jane Austen, Henry James and the Elizabethan dramatists—and the odd thing is that they are all disparate.
I. C. B.: The only explanation I can give, is that people who practise the same art are likely to have some characteristics in common. I have noticed such resemblance between writers the most widely separated, in merit, kind and time.
M. J.: I see one point of contact between your novels and Jane Austen’s. She keeps her eye fixed upon the small circuit of country gentlefolk who seem to have little to do but pay calls, take walks, talk, and dine, in fact—the comfortable classes; she does not include people in what Austen Leigh calls “a position of poverty and obscurity, as this, though not necessarily connected with vulgarity, has a sad tendency to degenerate into it.”
I. C. B.: I feel that I do not know the people outside my own world well enough to deal with them. I had no idea that my characters did nothing but call, walk, talk and dine, though I am glad you do not say that they only talk. Their professions and occupations are indicated, but I am concerned with their personal lives; and following them into their professional world would lead to the alternations between two spheres, that I think is a mistake in books. I always regret it in the great Victorian novelists, though it would be hard to avoid it in books on a large scale. And my characters have their own poverty and obscurity, though of course it is only their own.
I feel I have a knowledge of servants in so far as they take a part in the world they serve. This may mean that the knowledge is superficial, as I have often thought it in other people’s books.
The people in between seem to me unrelated to anything I know. When I talk to tradespeople, their thoughts and reactions seem to have their background in a dark world, though their material lives may not differ greatly from my own.
M. J.: I don’t see any influence of the “Elizabethan drama of horror,” nor much of Jane Austen. I think there is something of Henry James. What about the suggestion that the Russian novelists affected you—not Tolstoy of course, but Tchekov or Dostoievsky. Dostoievsky’s method, “a mad jumble that flings things down in a heap,” isn’t yours. And how about the Greek dramatists?
I. C. B.: I am not a great reader of Henry James, though I have seen it suggested that I am his disciple. I don’t mean that I have any objection to the character, except in so far as it is a human instinct to object to being a disciple, but I hardly think I have read him enough to show his influence. I enjoy him less than many other writers. He does not reveal as much as I should like of the relations of his characters with each other. And I am surprised if my style is as intricate as his. I should have thought it was only rather condensed. If it is, I sympathise with the people who cannot read my books. The Russian novels I read with a sense of being in a daze, of seeing their action take place in a sort of half-light, as though there was an obscurity between my mind and theirs, and only part of the meaning conveyed to a Russian came through to me. I always wonder if people, who think they see the whole meaning, have any conception of it. So I am probably hardly influenced by the Russians. But, as I have said before, I think that people who follow the same art, however different their levels, are likely to have some of the same attributes, and that it is possibly these that lead them to a similar end. The Greek dramatists I read as a girl, as I was classically educated, and read them with the attention to each line necessitated by the state of my scholarship; and it is difficult to say how much soaked in, but I should think very likely something. I have not read them for many years—another result of the state of my scholarship.
M. J.: There is little attention given to external things and almost no descriptive writing in your novels, and that is a breach with tradition. Even Jane Austen has an aside about the “worth” of Lyme, Charmouth and Pinhay, “with its green chasms between romantic rocks.” And there is much more description in later novels, such as Thomas Hardy’s. In The Return of the Native, the great Egdon Heath has to be reckoned with as a protagonist. Now you cut out all of this. The Gavestons’ house in A Family and a Fortune is spoken of as old and beautiful, but its date and style are not mentioned.
I. C. B.: I should have thought that my actual characters were described enough to help people to imagine them. However detailed such description is, I am sure that everyone forms his own conceptions, that are different from everyone else’s, including the author’s. As regards such things as landscape and scenery, I never feel inclined to describe them; indeed I tend to miss such writing out, when I am reading, which may be a sign that I am not fitted for it. I make an exception of Thomas Hardy, but surely his presentation of natural features almost as characters puts him on a plane of his own, and almost carries the thing described into the human world. In the case of Jane Austen, I hurry through her words about Lyme and its surroundings, in order to return to her people.
It might be better to give more account of people’s homes and intimate background, but I hardly see why the date and style of the Gavestons’ house should be given, as I did not think of them as giving their attention to it, and as a house of a different date and style would have done for them equally well. It would be something to them that it was old and beautiful, but it would be enough.
M. J.: I see a reviewer says that Elders and Betters—which has the destruction of a will by one character (Anna Donne) who afterwards drives another to suicide—has “a milder and less criminal flavour than most of its predecessors.” There is a high incidence of murder in some of your novels, which is really not common among the “comfortable classes.” I remember, however, talking of the rarity of murders with a lawyer’s daughter, who said that her father asserted that murders within their class were not so rare. He used to call them “Mayfair murders.”
I. C. B.: I never see why murder and perversion of justice are not normal subjects for a plot, or why they are particularly Elizabethan or Victorian, as some reviewers seem to think. But I think it is better for a novel to have a plot. Otherwise it has no shape, and incidents that have no part in a formal whole seem to have less significance. I always wish that Katherine Mansfield’s At the Bay was cast in a formal mould. And a plot gives rise to secondary scenes, that bring out personality and give scope for revealing character. If the plot were taken out of a book, a good deal of what may seem unconnected with it, would have to go. A plot is like the bones of a person, not interesting like expression or signs of experience, but the support of the whole.
M. J.: At the Bay breaks off rather than comes to its full stop. A novel without a plot sags like a tent with a broken pole. Your last book had a very generous amount of review space; and most of the reviews were intelligent. Elizabeth Bowen found a phrase for one of your characteristics; “a sinister cosiness,” but the Queen tells one that “if one perseveres with the conversations (evidently an obstacle), a domestic chronicle of the quieter sort emerges.” How do you think reviews have affected you and your work?
I. C. B.: It is said that writers never read reviews, but in this case it is hard to see how the press-cutting agencies can flourish and increase their charge. I think that writers not only read reviews, but are subject to an urge to do so. George Henry Lewes is supposed to have hidden George Eliot’s disparaging reviews, in case she should see them; and if he wished to prevent her doing so, I think it was a wise precaution. I think that reviews have a considerable effect upon writers. Of course I am talking of reviews that count, by people whose words have a meaning. I remember my first encouraging notices with gratitude to their authors. Much of the pleasure of making a book would go, if it held nothing to be shared by other people. I would write for a few dozen people; and it sometimes seems that I do so; but I would not write for no one.
I think the effect of reviews upon a writer’s actual work is less. A writer is too happy in praise to do anything but accept it. Blame he would reject, if he could; but if he cannot, I think he generally knew of his guilt, and could not remedy matters. I have nearly always found this the case myself.
Letters from readers must come under the head of reviews, and have the advantage that their writers are under no compulsion to mention what they do not admire. I have only had one correspondent who broke this rule, and what he did not admire was the whole book. He stated that he could see nothing in it, and had moreover found it too concentrated to read. Someone said that I must have liked this letter the most of all I had had, but I believe I liked it the least.
Some writers have so many letters that they find them a burden. They make me feel ashamed of having so few, and inclined to think that people should write to me more.
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Book
University of California Press
'Cassius Clare is the father of five children; two by his first wife from whom he is divorced, and three by his second wife who conscientiously tries to be a mother to all five. The first Ms. Clare implores Cassius to let her visit her children. At first flattered by the suggestion of a harem implicit in the situation, then maliciously foreseeing the predicament which is likely to arise, he consents. To his dismay, the tactless return of the first Mrs. Clare results in an intimate friendship between the two women who have shared this singularly unlovable husband; neither pays any heed to him.'-- copy
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Excerpt
“Oh, dear, oh, dear!” said Henry Clare.
His sister glanced in his direction.
“They are pecking the sick one. They are angry because it is ill.”
“Perhaps it is because they are anxious,” said Megan, looking at the hens in the hope of discerning this feeling.
“It will soon be dead,” said Henry, sitting on a log with his hands on his knees. “It must be having death-pangs now.”
Another member of the family was giving his attention to the fowls. He was earnestly thrusting cake through the wire for their entertainment. When he dropped a piece he picked it up and put it into his own mouth, as though it had been rendered unfit for poultry’s consumption. His elders appeared to view his attitude either in indifference or sympathy.
“What are death-pangs like?” said Henry, in another tone.
“I don’t know,” said his sister, keeping her eyes from the sufferer of them. “And I don’t think the hen is having them. It seems not to know anything.”
Henry was a tall, solid boy of eight, with rough, dark hair, pale, wide eyes, formless, infantine features, and something vulnerable about him that seemed inconsistent with himself. His sister, a year younger and smaller for her age, had narrower, deeper eyes, a regular, oval face, sudden, nervous movements, and something resistant in her that was again at variance with what was beneath.
Tobias at three had small, dark, busy eyes, a fluffy, colourless head, a face that changed with the weeks and evinced an uncertain charm, and a withdrawn expression consistent with his absorption in his own interests. He was still pushing crumbs through the wire when his shoulder was grasped by a hand above him.
“Wasting your cake on the hens! You know you were to eat it yourself.”
Toby continued his task as though unaware of interruption.
“Couldn’t one of you others have stopped him?”
The latter also seemed unaware of any break.
“Don’t do that,” said the nursemaid, seizing Toby’s arm so that he dropped the cake. “Didn’t you hear me speak?”
Toby still seemed not to do so. He retrieved the cake, took a bite himself and resumed his work.
“Don’t eat it now,” said Eliza. “Give it all to the hens.”
Toby followed the injunction, and she waited until the cake was gone.
“Now if I give you another piece, will you eat it?”
“Can we have another piece too?” said the other children, appearing to notice her for the first time.
She distributed the cake, and Toby turned to the wire, but when she pulled him away, stood eating contentedly.
“Soon be better now,” he said, with reference to the hen and his dealings with it.
“It didn’t get any cake,” said Henry. “The others had it all. They took it and then pecked the sick one. Oh, dear, oh, dear!”
“He did get some,” said Toby, looking from face to face for reassurance. “Toby gave it to him.”
He turned to inspect the position, which was now that the hens, no longer competing for crumbs, had transferred their activity to their disabled companion.
“Pecking him!” said Toby, moving from foot to foot. “Pecking him when he is ill! Fetch William. Fetch him.”
A pleasant, middle-aged man, known as the head gardener by virtue of his once having had subordinates, entered the run and transferred the hen to a separate coop.
“That is better, sir.”
“Call Toby ‘sir’,” said the latter, smiling to himself.
“She will be by herself now.”
“Sir,” supplied Toby.
“Will it get well?” said Henry. “I can’t say, sir.”
“Henry and Toby both ‘sir’,” said Toby. “Megan too.”
“No, I am not,” said his sister.
“Poor Megan, not ‘sir’!” said Toby, sadly.
“The last hen that was ill was put in a coop to die,” said Henry, resuming his seat and the mood it seemed to engender in him.
“Well, it died after it was there,” said Megan.
“That is better, miss,” said William.
“Miss,” said Toby, in a quiet, complex tone.
“They go away alone to die,” said Henry. “All birds do that, and a hen is a bird. But it can’t when it is shut in a coop. It can’t act according to its nature.”
“Perhaps it ought not to do a thing that ends in dying,” said Megan.
“Something in that, miss,” said William.
“Why do you stay by the fowls,” said Eliza, “when there is the garden for you to play in?”
“We are only allowed to play in part of it,” said Henry, as though giving an explanation.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear!” said Eliza, in perfunctory mimicry.
“William forgot to let out the hens,” said Megan, “and Toby would not leave them.”
Toby tried to propel some cake to the hen in the coop, failed and stood absorbed in the scramble of the others for it.
“All want one little crumb. Poor hens!”
“What did I tell you?” said Eliza, again grasping his arm.
He pulled it away and openly applied himself to inserting cake between the wires.
“Toby not eat it now,” he said in a dutiful tone.
“A good thing he does not have all his meals here,” said William.
“There is trouble wherever he has them,” said Eliza. “And the end is waste.”
The sick hen roused to life and flung itself against the coop in a frenzy to join the feast.
“It will kill itself,” said Henry. “No one will let it out.”
William did so and the hen rushed forth, cast itself into the fray, staggered and fell.
“It is dead,” said Henry, almost before this was the case.
“Poor hen fall down,” said Toby, in the tone of one who knew the experience. “But soon be well again.”
“Not in this world,” said William.
“Sir,” said Toby, to himself. “No, miss.”
“It won’t go to another world,” said Henry. “It was ill and pecked in this one, and it won’t have any other.”
“It was only pecked on its last day,” said Megan. “And everything is ill before it dies.”
“The last thing it felt was hunger, and that was not satisfied.”
“It did not know it would not be. It thought it would.”
“It did that, miss,” said William. “And it was dead before it knew.”
“There was no water in the coop,” said Henry, “and sick things are parched with thirst.”
“Walking on him,” said Toby, in a dubious tone.
“Eliza, the hens are walking on the dead one!” said Megan, in a voice that betrayed her.
“It is in their way, miss,” said William, giving a full account of the position.
Megan looked away from the hens, and Henry stood with his eyes on them. Toby let the matter leave his mind, or found that it did so.
“Now what is all this?” said another voice, as the head nurse appeared on the scene, and was led by some instinct to turn her eyes at once on Megan. “What is the matter with you all?”
“One of the hens has died,” said Eliza, in rapid summary. “Toby has given them his cake and hardly taken a mouthful. The other hens walked on the dead one and upset Miss Megan. Master Henry has one of his moods.”
Megan turned aside with a covert glance at William.
“Seeing the truth about things isn’t a mood,” said Henry.
*
p.s. Hey. ** L@rstonovich, Hey, Larsty! Lots of love back to you, my pal! ** Kier, Hi! Anything other than the coveted slot would have been like ... I don't know, like when people build huge Mcmansions on tiny little lots. The neighborhood where I grew up has been crammed with them. That was a bad comparison. My brain is not very awake today even after 3 cups of strong coffee, it's weird. I remember you talking about Iggy! That's very cool. Xmas is good for something. Chevy's! Yeah, very weird not weird place. I'm sorry about the invasive, weird questions from your friend's brother. Ugh. It's so very strange how hard it is for some people to get their heads around trans. Or I guess I mean around the idea that it could be a deep and fundamental thing. So much so sometimes that they'll talk out loud as though they're taking silently to themselves. So strange. Just remember, and I imagine you do, that it was almost for sure just a weakness and failure within his ability to conceptualize others without his concepts being infected and derailed by his own naivety and biases, and, as importantly, by his fear of examining himself. Uh, ... I told you I wasn't quite awake yet. But, yeah, something like that? It's strange that something that's personal and essential to you, something that's yours and not anyone else's, would make you a pioneer, an unknown, an example, a threat, etc. to other people, but humans can be so spooked about the unknown. Sorry, pal. My weekend ... Uh, hm, Saturday I began to try to catch up on non-film things, but there are so many of those things, and I got kind of intimidated, but I did do some stuff. Mostly at home. I went out a bought some Xmas pastries. On Sunday, Gisele, Zac, and I went to see the year-end presentations by the students of the Paris Opera Ballet School, which I think is maybe supposed to be the best or one of the best ballet schools in the world? There were two sessions, one in the morning featuring the older, soon to graduate students, and one in the afternoon featuring the really young students. That one was the coolest of the two, of course. Basically, the students show off their skills in groups according to the grade/class they're in onstage while their teachers direct and correct them in front a big audience. Then they all gather together and do a show -- dancing, singing, miming, etc. We went for fun but mostly because the feature film that Zac and I are writing for Gisele to direct next year has a character in it who was in the Paris Opera Ballet School and got kicked out and who is deeply traumatized by his time at the school. After the show, I went with Zac to pick up a Buche that he was going to eat with his family later that night. This one. Then he headed off, and, since he left for the States this morning for his Xmas holidays, we said our temporary goodbyes, which was sad, of course. Then I came home and ate and did not much. Now it's today. What did you do? Love, me. ** Scunnard, Hi. I did, and now I am overflowing. It feels good, and I'm forever indebted. Yeah, ever since you suggested TTK as a viable revisit, my mind has been spiked by a seemingly plausible memory of what that tasted like. That being before that got wussied out by 'Sex on Wheels'. I think I'm ready to whirl around them again, iow. Wish me luck. My schedule might level out in January at some point. I'll remember to convey that. Thanks, man. ** David Ehrenstein, LH in 'Mars Attacks!' is sublime. Ever since Charlotte Rampling became a vocal, very public supporter of Sarkozy in the last two elections here, I try to overcome the sourness that that reveal invested in her work, but I haven't made the transition yet. ** Dom Lyne, Hi, Dom. It's weird how soon Xmas is. So far so good. I hope your mum does Xmas 'with all the fixins', as my mum used to say. ** gucciCODYprada, Hi, C-ster! So you're staying over here. Well, not here. I don't know why I automatically think of where you are and where I am as being the same relative place. Must be some horrible, lingering, unconcious America-centrism shit. Cool possible traveling plans, obviously! Nepal, wow. Well, Thailand, wow too. That job thing is really interesting, obviously as well. So, if you get an 'in' at one of those levels, you could and would be able to do it from outside the US? If I hear of any writing gigs, I'll let you know. I'm kind out of the writing gigs loop, though. I'm all about film and animated gifs now. Not really. Superb about your new novel's progress! I'm really envious. Mine has been backburnered for fucking forever, although I hope to get drowned in it again next month. Have a great, great Xmas! ** Joshua nilles, Oh, that's good. You were talking with Bleach Sloth, cool. Man, talk about a fucking saint of supportiveness. That guy is just amazing and invaluable. Is vegetarianism sitting well with you this time? I swear by it, as you know. I like that title 'Mercantile North'. It sounds really, I don't know, solid and big or something. Cool, man, thank you a lot for filling me in. You sound really, really good. ** James, Hi, J. I am both staying busy and staying out of trouble. Trouble may find me, but I'm not chasing it. Much love back. ** Steevee, Great, I've been looking forward that review. I'll check it today. Everyone, eminent Steevee has weighed in critically on PTA's film adaptation of Pynchon's 'Inherent Vice' for the world's (including your) delectation @ Indiewire right here. ** Cal Graves, Aw, thanks, for choosing my blog. Does that I mean I get to be immortal by default? Immortality is one of my dreams. Wow, what a question. You mean a new body part permanently as opposed to only for the length of time I would need it there to accomplish some wish I could otherwise not? I think you mean permanent, right? That's hard. I think I wouldn't want anything permanently. Everything my imagination tries out makes me feel like I would feel and look like a freak. Wow, you stumped me with that one, but maybe my imagination is locked into the wrong way of thinking about it? Tell me what you would choose. Maybe that will help. ** Bill, Mystically good luck with the grading. ** _Black_Acrylic, Wow, that's tremendous news, Ben! Cool! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. I saw the email, thanks. I should be able to get to it today. Thank you so much! We finished the edit of Scene 4 on Friday, and Zac will be away on holiday starting today, so this weekend was editing-free. The producers say they are happy with what they've seen thus far. Scene 4 is a very weird one, and they'll see it for the first time today, so that'll be a test. I didn't know about the Henson book. Henson books are few and far between. I'll look for it, for sure. ** Misanthrope, Hi. Oh, okay. Taller baskets. Yeah, makes sense. I'll see if there's some place in Paris that has cronuts. Some American-owned place maybe. Yum. Wow, change your FB password to something psychotic. ** Rewritedept, Hi. See, re: Nick, makes sense. Fingers crossed on the Berlin Festival, yeah. My weekend was pretty good, yeah, thanks. Glad yours was too. I got the link. I haven't had a chance to listen yet. I will, of course, and I'll be hoardy with the link, of course. Well, all the scenes in our film are rough cuts, so they all need to be completed. We have one last scene that isn't even edited at all yet, so that'll be the next task when Zac gets back from the US. My favorite cheese is a boring one: Swiss. Can't help it. It's the cheese that most excites me. What's yours? ** Right. Today I get to give one of my very, very, very favorite novels of all time its very first spotlight on my very own blog, so I'm very happy. Are you happy? IC-B is very great writer, and this novel is my pick her for very best. See you tomorrow.