I was home alone this weekend so I decided to take a flier on Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, which I’ve been curious about since it came out, though there seemed to be a universal consensus that it was terrible.
Which it is, but in a very special way. Only a true artist could create a disaster of this magnitude, a wildly ambitious epic that takes huge swings and completely misses all of them. I don’t quite have the words to describe how, just, off it is. I’m tempted to say it is Francis’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls — full of manic energy, insane plot twists, and sudden, drastic, whiplash-inducing changes in tone— but that would be unfair to BVD, which is a hundred times more fun.
The only entertaining part was watching, say, Adam Driver or Dustin Hoffman and wondering what was going through their heads when filming this thing. I can’t imagine it played any better on the page than it does on the screen; they had to know what they were signing up for; but when Coppola calls you take the part, right? Was it worth it?
In truth I found it hard to watch more than a few minutes of Megalopolis at a time, and my rental window expired with a half-hour still to go. So maybe there’s some fantastic ending that redeems it all — but I sincerely doubt it.
Perhaps it’s time for a rewatching of Apocalypse Now, especially with the recent departure of Robert Duvall. Maybe the smell of napalm will get this bad taste out of my mouth.
Books Acquired: The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan Strange People, Frank Edwards Bretherton, W.F. Morris Men Like Gods, H.G. Wells
Books Offloaded:
Progress Made: The Moronic Inferno, Martin Amis Bretherton, W.F. Morris David Bowie and the Search for Life, Death and God, Peter Ormerod
Books Finished: Epitaph for a Spy, Eric Ambler JOB: A Comedy of Justice, Robert A. Heinlein
For some reason I feel a sense of urgency this month. Maybe because people keen on bringing about the end of the world are currently in a position to actually do something about it; more on that subject later.
I finished Epitaph for a Spy within two hours of posting the last report, then got back to JOB. But I was reading with anger in my heart — knowing what I now knew about the main character, what had previously seemed a little precious was now infuriating. I still assumed that Heinlein had a Plan, that he would pull it all together, but man was he taking his sweet time getting there.
I was away from home, though, and pressed for reading material, so I stuck with it. Eventually he did get to the point, which was… Armageddon.
This one was a bit of a shock. When we left town a week ago, he seemed to be perfectly fine. A couple days ago when I checked in, he was hanging out at the neighbor’s house, where he’d maintained a second residence for more than a decade.
Then yesterday morning said neighbor texted that he was not well and suggested taking him to the animal hospital. By midafternoon, after a couple of increasingly dire phone calls with the vet, we were discussing Youth in Asia. And that was the end of that. It was a stern reminder that the Stark Fist of Removal can come for anyone at any time.
Sid was a true free spirit who would not tolerate being cooped up for more than an hour or two at a time. He also had the kind of freedom that comes from being — how to say this nicely? — a cat of not a lot of brain. Worry never creased his brow in all his days; he slept less like a cat than like a human child: deep and hard and with an angelic glow. He was handsome and charming and he knew it. He was a good boy.
His departure means that our formerly four-cat household is down to a single feline resident. I will say no more about her, lest the wrathful gods be watching. Hug some creature that you love today.
My 5-year-old grandson, a budding literary genius, recently finished his debut novel. It is a masterpiece of economical storytelling, which I will now share with you in its entirety:
Books Acquired: A Coffin for Dimitrios, Eric Ambler Epitaph for a Spy, Eric Ambler
Books Offloaded: A Coffin for Dimitrios, Eric Ambler Journey into Fear, Eric Ambler
Progress Made: Epitaph for a Spy, Eric Ambler A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick JOB: A Comedy of Justice Robert A. Heinlein David Bowie and the Search for Life, Death and God Peter Ormerod
Books Finished: A Coffin for Dimitrios, Eric Ambler The Undying Fire, H.G. Wells
Only recently, at the ripe old age of whatever I am now, have I realized that it’s important for me to always be reading something fun, in addition to whatever else I might be reading for some supposedly high-minded reason. Because if reading becomes a chore I don’t read, and when I don’t read I’m a different person, a lesser person
So currently I am in the midst of devouring the works of Eric Clifford Ambler OBE (28 June 1909 – 23 October 1998), which occupy a sweet spot between lowbrow (suspense-driven potboiler) and highbrow (sophisticated European repartee). A Coffin for Dimitrios was dispatched in short order and I would have gone straight into Epitaph for a Spy, except that it had not yet arrived in the post.
Thus it came to pass that, skimming through the shelves at Cecil’s house, I came across Heinlein’s JOB, a later work that I had never tackled previously. Since I had just finished The Undying Fire, which is based on the biblical story of Job, this seemed to make sense. (Fire itself, after an absorbing ramble through philosophies of all stripes, petered out in a giddy happy ending that would embarrass any musical comedy.)
