#The Fortune Men

[dandunn]

Thank fuck we're not like that anymore right.

[bookcoversonly]

Title: The Fortune Men | Author: Nadifa Mohamed | Publisher: Knopf (2021)

[k-wame]

JACOB FORTUNE-LLOYD & ED SPELEERS ↳ Midas Man (2024) dir. Joe Stephenson

[kiivg]

.ngl Davrin came out of nowhere and just hehehehehehhehe 👉👈😳💕.

[frank-o-meter]

A publicity photo from the 1969 production of “Fortune in Men’s Eyes”. It’s was produced and directed by Sal Mineo in Los Angeles. Don Johnson played the lead role of Smitty and Mineo took the role of Rocky.

[dream-thief-forever-amen]

Just appreciating the beadwork and embroidery in Fangs of Fortune’s exquisite costuming. Found these on mydramalist and was drooling.

[cary-elwes]

My favourite movies of Cary Elwes

[mellpenscorner]

Jane Austen: and here we have the love interest. He might have some issues, but once you get to know him, he's a great guy. Good looking, heart of gold, the works.

Charlotte Brontë: get ready for the weirdest man you have ever met.

[esse-est]

Jeremy Stockwell and Bartholomew Miro Jr. in the theatrical production of Fortune and Men's Eyes, 1969. Photographs by Kenn Duncan.

[avelera]

A few random thoughts about the comic issue of "Men of Good Fortune" in The Sandman and how they pertain to Dreamling as a ship based on the show.

I get the sense when reading MoGF that it's a... shall we say, "young" story? It's the sort of story that has its seeds in your high school creative writing class. You're learning about English history and you're also writing short stories and you think, "Wouldn't it be cool if two guys met every 100 years to talk about these events I'm learning about and it's the same guys because they're immortal?"

I say this in part because I wrote a similar story in high school without having read MoGF, but also because it's a very simple story with no actual plot arc, nothing actually changes by the end in the original comic. The addition of Dream "missing" the meeting adds a lot of weight and consequence that isn't there in the comic. The closest it gets is, "Dream says he's not going to come to the next 1989 meeting but then a bunch of stuff happens off screen and he shows up anyway, thus confirming they are indeed friends." That is barely a plot beat of any kind, nothing really changes, it just clarifies that they are friends, which we could have suspected the whole time.

Anyway, on that note, I've got a deep-seated suspicion that in the very earliest drafts of this story, Dream was Death. Because it makes sense. Death spares a commoner on the condition that he report back every century to tell about how his life is going. Also, Death is certain that this mortal will want to die at some point because of all the horrible things he's living through, but in the end he doesn't and they become friends.

Again, this is a very simple story, basically a fable. Then this story is lifted into a new setting, the Sandman universe, and the antagonist of Death is turned into Dream but Death is still there, because Death as a figure makes much more sense than Dream as the basis for this wager.

I've commented many times before that Hob has less than nothing to go on as far as guessing Dream's identity but that one very natural conclusion he could come to is that Dream is Death because Death is much easier and thematically consistent with what happens in the story than Dream. Dream even remarks in the show (paraphrased) that, "[He] is far more terrible than Death," which objectively makes very little sense other than in their personal mannerisms.

But Dream's curiosity as to Hob's will to live isn't all that consistent with his function as Lord of Dreams, can you really tell me that the Lord of Dreams can't conceive of a mortal that would want to live forever, who wouldn't dream of living forever? IMO this is one more piece of evidence that the story was lifted from an earlier draft where there is no Dream and Death, there is only Death and Hob, with Death left in as sort of a homage to the original premise and to explain why Dream would get involved at all in such a wager.

It also kind of explains why the implications of this centuries-long friendship get largely ignored until quite late in the Sandman comics. Dream would be Hob's only constant, at least that he can speak to and isn't like the Sun and the Moon or something, and yet our only nod to this is very very late in the comics.

Again, I think this is because in a fable about Death and A Normal Guy meeting over and over as a commentary on English history, it makes perfect sense that you wouldn't really explore the interpersonal implications of how Hob feels about this guy, if Hob cares about this guy, because it's Death, clearly this is just a fable.

But once it's not Death, once it's someone else, once Dream's interactions with this guy actually don't align with his function, actually rather glaringly doesn't align with his function such that his relationship with Hob actually becomes Dream's biggest singular point of individuality, the biggest piece of proof that he is an individual person and not just his function because watching this guy live has nothing to do with his function because he's not Death, then we also begin to wonder how important are these guys to one another, as individuals, because it's not a simple, streamlined fable anymore about Death and Just A Guy meeting.

Basically, I think that as is often the case, the inconsistencies are what give some of Gaiman's juvenilia works the charm that they have. They raise more questions than they answer, because they're not rigorously plotted and the implications of certain story decisions aren't explored, for example even how magic like immortality works in this world doesn't really make consistent sense (ex. Orpheus and Hob have very different immortalities within the same story despite both being gifted by Death, one can't choose to die whenever he wants and there's no explanation as to why this is other than The Story Demands It, which is rather clumsy but does lend to a sense of myth).

It's not until much later in the author's career in the comic and (retconned with) the show that the narratives begins to inquire into things like, "What do these two individuals mean to each other as people. Does Hob mourn Dream, or think of him when he's not there? Does the singularity of Hob in Dream's life matter to him, or give him pause?" all questions that would be absurd in a simplistic fable about Death and Just A Dude but once lifted from that original context, create fascinating inconsistencies that begin to matter and become fodder for deeper explorations as seen in fanfiction and shipping these two characters.

[gayestwizardlord]

Ngl the one good thing that EAH did was show how dedicated the guys are to the girls they love. Literally they would change their bad behaviors, dress nice, and do so many more for the girls they like because they care. THIS IS WHAT PEOPLE NEED TO DO. I LOVE THE SHOW FOR THIS

[writing-for-life]

MEN OF GOOD FORTUNE 1389-1589–Jill Thompson

MEN OF GOOD FORTUNE 1689-1889–Jill Thompson

MEN OF GOOD FORTUNE 1989–Jill Thompson

And just adding that these are well over a decade old and were done for a movie pitch…

[clarkkantagain]

fortune and men’s eyes dir. sal mineo 1969

[k-wame]

JACOB FORTUNE-LLOYD & ED SPELEERS ↳ Midas Man (2024) dir. Joe Stephenson

[philosophybits]

Fortune may crowd a man’s life with fortunate circumstances and happy opportunities, but they will, as we all know, avail him nothing unless he makes a wise and vigorous use of them. It does not matter that the wind is fair and the tide at its flood, if the mariner refuses to weigh his anchor and spread his canvas to the breeze.

Frederick Douglass, "Self-Made Men (1872)"

[bobbole]

Hob vs Shakespeare: or capitalism vs Art (and the corresponding visions of immortality)

written for The Sandman Book Club

Leaving aside the holy transfiguration that has been made by fandom in recent years, the character of Hob is very significant. Representing the literary topos of the ordinary man, the man without qualities, the all-too-human human, he is characterized not by his virtues (and if we want, not even by his vices) but precisely by being a normal, banal creature, as all human creatures are in the eyes of the gods.

Hob's entry in Men of Good Fortune also has countless references in mythological literature. Two deities, Death and Dream, who observe human beings with the curiosity of those who never, or almost never, get down in the middle but are always up high (It might be interesting...). Can eternity be humanly bearable? Can a human being eternally refuse the embrace of death? It reminds me a little of the wager between God and the Devil on poor Job in the Bible: will Job be able to endure the most terrible misfortunes without denying the name of God?

But Hob isn't a man of faith. He does not see in eternal life a means to elevate himself as a human being but to enjoy earthly opportunities. He is an entrepreneur, an ante litteram capitalist: whether it is the war, the printing or the slave industry, Hob's actions have value as instruments to make money and a high standard of living. Love and pain, however great and lacerating, do not deter him from the one constant goal in a life full of ups and downs: to live forever. The ambition, precisely, of an ordinary man without qualities, whose interpretation of eternity can only coincide with the desire for the eternal, abundant satisfaction of materialistic needs.

Hob's vision of immortality is particularly jarring in a story full of great writers' cameos. Chaucer. Marlowe. Shakespeare. Immortals too, of another idea of immortality, achieved through art. There could not be a more stark contrast between these two visions and it is no coincidence that Hob's immortality is the result of a game between gods and human while that of the artists often is a deal with the divinity, be it benevolent or malevolent. Hob's immortality is an immortality without sacrifice, or rather, without there being anything really worth sacrificing for: no love is so great as to make him give it up. The immortality of the artist, on the other hand, is one for which the artist sacrifices everything, primarily himself.

Yet it is not the immortality of artists that we identify with. It fascinates us, seduces us, but it is to the immortality of the common man, the immortality of Hob, that most of us would look with envy. Capitalist immortality in a capitalist society: Live & Consume. Forever.