reeling and writhing

some books should be dropped into the TV well

I've heard some grumpy mutterings about the film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, supported by this review and remarks* from Slate writer Troy Patterson:

...do not, when attempting any course of reading aimed at appreciating Waugh's wit, give undue attention to Brideshead Revisited, a misfit of a book, much loved, and often loved in the wrong way, as the vomitous stupidity of Miramax's new film adaptation attests.

There's a comic novel in there, but it is not, as the common expression goes, struggling to get out. It's lodged there quite contentedly; the book's acid portraits of dull dons and rich oafs are enmeshed with its affectingly tender peeks at lost youth and also with its eagerly overwrought splendor and its sincerely bogus religiosity.

This was the seventh novel Waugh published—the eighth he attempted—a grasp at grandeur written in a mere four months, during a leave from the British army in early 1944. "Waugh wrote Brideshead with great speed, unfamiliar excitement, and a deep conviction of its excellence," Martin Amis once remarked. "Lasting schlock, the really good bad book, cannot be written otherwise."

I'm no longer surprised I didn't finish it, though I do remember the attempt, not something that always stays in my mind - books I don't finish sometimes end up leaving my mind altogether, reflecting Gerald Murnane's memorable phrase (from his essay of the same name) 'some books are to be dropped into wells'.

Come to think of it, I believe I missed early episodes of the famous 'eighties mini-series as well (yes, even with Jeremy at the height of his fame). I think I'd rather read The Forsyte Saga properly than revisit Waugh's hasty pudding, though I could certainly return to the miniseries.

*The link to that Slate review comes via The Complete Review, where you will also find this account of Ammon Shea's Reading the OED, from which the CR writer has extracted the following gem:

How perfect, for example, is it to learn, after reading Pierre Bayard's How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, that one of the definitions of 'Bayard' is:

A person armed with the self-confidence of ignorance.

only god knows

Having got into Big Love from the start and barely missed an episode since, I'm completely hooked, and hook is the operative word. Although the cast is very strong indeed, with Chloe Sevigny and Jeanne Tripplehorn both magnetic, I think it's the superb plotting that has drawn me in.

The dark underbelly of Utah is exploited perfectly by the writers of this series, who do not at any point pretend that the three houses owned by Bill (Bill Paxton) and his three wives, Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn),Nicky (Chloe Sevigny) and Margene (the quite edible Ginnifer Goodwin), are an affordable proposition for any man alive. One of the wives recently suggested that he did not get her garbage disposal unit fixed because he was tight - his son gently suggested another euphemism, but it's clear to any lower middle class viewer they are damn lucky to have a garbage disposal unit at all.

Our disbelief thus agreeably suspended, we are taken up to the compound of the backblocks United Effort Brotherhood, from which the Henricksen family are refugees, enough times to make us realise that these people are haunted by their past. The self-styled prophet of the Brotherhood, Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton), could easily qualify for membership of the Mafia, only it's Scripture that binds his deals. The casting of Sevigny as the patriarch's spoilt, overspending favourite daughter is a stroke of pure genius - Nicky is a role made in heaven for the screen mistress of the lowering scowl (and isn't it amazing to see her smile, even to skip for joy, as often as she does in this show.)

At the end of the first episode a brief paragraph alerts us to the fact that there are over 20,000 people in Utah currently living in polygamous relationships. The fancies of a few writers around a table suddenly acquire documentary dimensions.