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acsversace-news · 7 years ago

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Tony Magaldi corrects the record about one Gianni Versace anecdote that has persisted all these years: The designer did not eat breakfast at News Café the morning of his death on July 15, 1997. “His routine was to visit our newsstand in the morning and buy out-of-town papers; once in a while he had coffee with us,” explains Magaldi, managing partner of the iconic 24-hour café on Miami’s South Beach. “But he rarely ate here; he had his own chef at home.”

News Café will be one of the locations seen when American Crime Story:The Assassination of Gianni Versace premieres Jan. 17 on FX, but the script doesn’t put the designer there on that fateful day. “I thought they might re-enact when he came in that last day, but it was another scene,” says Magaldi, who recalls standing on the café’s front steps on that July 1997 morning. “I remember how hot it was – July in Miami, you know? He came in, bought his papers and left. Not long after, a cop came by on his bicycle and asked if Versace had been here, and I said yeah, I had just seen him. And then he sped off. It’s one of those days you don’t forget.”

Memories of Gianni Versace have not faded in South Beach over the two decades since Andrew Cunanan shot and killed the designer, who was just 50 years old, on the steps of Casa Casuarina. Versace had purchased the South Beach mansion for $2.95 million in 1992 and lovingly converted it into not only his personal residence but also one of the world’s most celebrated examples of Italian Baroque splendor (it's now a luxury hotel). Versace’s big-picture vision in this endeavor shouldn’t be underestimated: In 1992 South Beach still felt undeniably dingy and largely underdeveloped, dotted with faded Art Deco buildings occupied by senior citizens, many of whom spent their mornings (before the sun rose to sizzling temperatures) in lawn chairs on the porches of these forgotten hotels; locals had dubbed it “God’s waiting room.” But with News Café as a buzzy spot at Eighth Street and Ocean Drive, Casa Casuarina situated between 11th and 12th streets, and now-legendary hotels like the Clevelander, the Carlyle (used as a location for 1996’s The Birdcage and now a condo building) and the Tides (where portions of 1999’s Random Hearts were filmed) nearby, not to mention considerable help from the fashion and modeling industries, the oceanfront avenue evolved within less than a decade into one of the world’s most glamorous vacation spots.

These days you will find plenty of onlookers at the gates of Casa Casuarina; the numbers have not diminished after all these years. “We have literally thousands of people taking photos in front of the house each week — it’s actually the third most-photographed home in the U.S., after Graceland and the White House,” maintains Chauncey Copeland, general manager of the property, now the Villa Casa Casuarina, a boutique hotel, restaurant and event space owned by Victor Hotels Management since 2013.

American Crime Story execs contacted both Magaldi and Victor Hotels Management early in 2017 when they were getting set to film this latest installment of the Ryan Murphy-produced anthology. A miniseries highlighting the devastation and after-effects of Hurricane Katrina had been planned, but as the 20th anniversary of Versace’s murder approached, this story — broken into 10 episodes and based on Maureen Orth’s 1999 book, Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History — was pushed to the front of the line. The News Café scene was filmed in just one day in May 2017. “They needed a couple of days prior to that, because just the month before we actually had closed down the newsstand; everyone is always on their phones these days, so we didn’t really need it anymore,” Magaldi says. “But they did a great job bringing everything back to what it looked like at that time.”

The production took over Casa Casuarina, meanwhile, for the entire month, Copeland says. “At one point I know they were going back and forth about how they could re-create things as best they could on a Hollywood lot,” he notes. “But then they realized how little we had changed the environments, and they got very excited about filming on site. They didn’t have to do very much to it: They switched out some courtyard furniture for something more of that era, added some vintage chaise lounges by the pool, repainted the gate the color Versace originally had it, and removed some exit signs that are required because we’re a hotel. That’s really it.”

Indeed, it would have been costly to reproduce Versace’s vision on a soundstage. After he purchased the property, the designer reportedly spent $33 million on restoring and enhancing the original 1930 building, which had been conceptualized by Alden Freeman, an architect and heir to the Standard Oil fortune. Casa Casuarina, which takes its name from the species of tree Freeman regretfully razed while constructing his home, had changed hands and fallen into disrepair over the years; it was a dilapidated apartment building with 24 units when Versace discovered it during a South Beach vacation (among the elements that charmed him was a 1928 statue known as Kneeling Aphrodite, installed long ago by Freeman and currently positioned at the front entrance). Versace combined the building’s 24 units into an Italianate villa with 10 bedroom suites; after purchasing and tearing down the property next door, he added both a new wing and a garden with a 54-foot, mosaic-lined pool.

Those 10 bedroom suites remain largely unchanged, Copeland says. Donatella Versace removed furniture, artwork and other personal items, putting most of it on the auction block at Sotheby’s in 2001 after selling Casa Casuarina in 2000 to telecom millionaire Peter Loftin, who tried to make a go of the property as a private club. The current owners painstakingly examined books and old magazine layouts in an effort to reproduce Gianni Versace’s original interiors. “We combed through old photos and available film stock and also spoke with people who had worked with him on the design,” Copeland says. “There were several pieces we had to re-create, but we wanted to be faithful to his original vision.”(It should be noted that Donatella Versace has disavowed the miniseries; on Monday the Italian label released a statement affirming that no one connected with Versace authorized Orth’s book or the resulting screenplay, and that the miniseries should be considered “a work of fiction.”)

During high season — October through April — booking one of the suites can be tough, especially if you want to stay in the connected two-bedroom Villa and Empire suites; Versace slept in the former, which is adjacent to the latter via a lavish vestibule. The decor is as opulent as you might expect, with details ranging from frescoes to double-king beds that stretch 12 feet across. Rates for any of the 10 suites range from $899 to $1,599 per night during the slower summer months on up to $1,399 to $2,999 during high-occupancy periods. Hotel guests also are able to swim in the ultra-glamorous pool, but only until 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. “That’s when we start to set up the restaurant, with tables on the pool deck,” Copeland explains. “On Monday, when the restaurant is closed, you can swim all day.”

Rechristened Gianni’s in 2016, the restaurant features a menu that showcases Mediterranean seafood and is helmed by executive chef Thomas Stewart, who cooked dinner for the James Beard Foundation at Casa Casuarina soon after taking over the kitchen. In addition to the dining room, tables spill over onto a raised terrace and the aforementioned pool deck (during high season, tables also are positioned in the galleries leading to various dining areas). And regardless of season, don’t expect to walk in without a reservation; the privacy of the property remains strictly guarded. “Anyone with a reservation is of course welcome to enter,” Copeland says. “We’re very protective of the space, but that’s also for the enjoyment of our guests.”

Ultimately, with the premiere of the miniseries a week away, has Casa Casuarina been feeling any effects from, say, the release of various trailers, which make it clear that Versace’s beloved South Beach residence was used to its full advantage? “We’ve been on a steady rise in interest the past few years, so it’s really hard to say,” Copeland says. “A lot of people, however, still don’t know that they can stay here and eat here; I have no doubt that interest will increase within the next few months.”

Twenty years later, Magaldi is happy that News Café patrons still seek out the site because of its connection to the most famous neighbor he’ll ever know — not because it’s good for business, though that idea is undeniable, but very simply because he genuinely liked Gianni Versace. “He was very gentle, quiet, unassuming,” Magaldi says. “Everything I saw about the [miniseries] production was that they were trying to be respectful to his memory. That was important to anyone who was here when it happened. That made me feel good about doing it.”

Copeland agrees. “If they bring to film what we saw them doing, I think it’s going to be a very high-quality production,” he says. “From our point of view, what Gianni Versace brought to South Beach was nothing less than heroic. He established himself right here in the middle of things when it was still very edgy and unknown. What happened was a tragedy. But we’ll always feel it’s important to celebrate the man.”

#acs versace #the hollywood reporter #article #casa casuarina #january 2018 #.thanks to musexmoirai for the link

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unproduciblesmackdown · 7 years ago

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yallnve realized by now that this is a fulltime 100% narnia blog...and as i havent slept since finding out someone somewhere was set on making "the silver chair" into a movie & the dynamic world of narnalysis is the best i can offer,

first of all im like.........ya rly gonna just jump into the silv chair!! im not really interested w the details on what anyone plans to do with the content b/c i donno, ive never been really interested in the book. not because its like bad or anything, actually it's probably the most cinematic in terms of things actually happening at a steady rate. i just like what i like, maybe because its sort of lower scale? whatever. its not like its hard to make into a movie i dont think, is what im saying. that would be either the horse and his boy or prince caspian, probably the latter b/c like a genuine 1/3 of it is an expository flashback. but all of the books are bit tricky to adapt coz theyre just short, you have to pad basically all of them in some way or another. but sure. silver chair. w/e

the thing is that you Have to assume despite starting afresh that theyre doing this one since the first three books have been recently filmed? and this being the fourth. but How Are You Going To Just Jump Into This One. thats an awful lot of exposition thats being built on, at this point in the game we're neck deep in the Lore. you'd really just have to have read the previous books or at least seen the movies. are they counting on the audience to have done that? but at the same time its really not fair to fully rely on that. in the book you can go "read the other books" and wave it off in a sentence of "and then they explained it all" which does tend to happen in the actual text a fair amt. its a bit awkward in movie form though? its a plot point right off that eustace knows who prince/king caspian is. so then you have to sum up dawn treader. and that has to do with what happened in prince caspian, in which the plot of lww is pretty important. like, alright, possibly you could just explain tvotdt & take it from the perspective of the girl who doesnt know crap about narnia yet? but thats not nearly as good a starting point as lww. on account of that ones meant to be a starting point! i'll see scholastic / any publishings that try to push magician's nephew as the first book In Hell, frankly. strongest narnpinion right there. the published order over the chronological order

anyways i'm sure it can be figured out, its just.......Interesting to think how the silver chair intro might be made into Intro To Narnia v.2.0? will they even try or will it be "ok but seriously just have read the books or whatever before you come in here." mystery unfolds

another thing thats interesting is that lww is clearly abt like, hey kids here's a version of the resurrection for you. whereas silver chair doesnt have anything to do w any Biblical Events at all (tho of course neither does prince caspian, tvotdt, or the horse & his boy). it is instead about how atheists will try to steal your firstborns for.................reasons. (no reason, theyre just evil.) this one is just a major amplified version of another particularly ridiculous CS Lewis Apologism Favorite that runs through the books: that when it comes to having no Faith (in aslan but you know also the abrahamic god) everyone who doubts aslan/god is like, actively lying to themselves, because they have that Gut Feeling telling themself that their faith is not only whats righteous but also whats true. the gut feeling of truth is a big theme in the books, shit hinges on it all the time and makes doubt all Clearly Sinful instead of a reasonable result of aslan effing off for centuries or whatever. and speaking of, god only knows if lewis is really suggesting that real life doubt or nonreligiousness is 100% populated by people who are clenching their fists like "i know in my heart jesus is real but i dont want to believe it so i won't, damnit!" which yknow makes no sense for like....life, and uh? i dont know what its supposed to mean for like....other religions? i dont think he's about putting the nuance that not every concept of religious Faith is the same as in christianity into this book, i dunno abt his thoughts irl. lord knows its a mystery how he thinks that "if jesus wasnt lying and jesus wasnt Insane then christianity is real" argument means anything. nothing in the world fits that argument for finding out if something is true or not........and also it hinges on that concept of "insanity" which......like.......i'm sure is all about nice 1940s ideas of how "insane" people act. its shit, throw it out, i mean. and besides? as though theres a Logic argument to prove christianity as truth? have you just Solved religion, lewis? have you? sometimes, i swear..

anyhow so in the silver chair its just a big ol festival of his "atheists are lying to themselves" and "atheism starts by someone who Knows The Truth (jesus is real) lying to others, likely aka the devil or whatever, and the stand-in for the devil is a witch again." and lewis really seems fond of the allegory of the cave. smh! like, in that allegory "knowing" that your faith is true is impossible! but youre also out here arguing its logically provable? and don't forget the gut feelings thing. but it makes NO sense for him to drop it into this book universe because in this allegory the prince captured by atheists & the protags are people who have hopped into the cave and seen the sun and shit!! they dont need to be the people who have only ever seen shadows who need to be convinced that an outside world can exist!!! bitch!!! get your allegory in order. silver chair just.....lord. the lying babysnatching atheists

a n y w a y s . . . thats a weird conflict to put in your third act, and its also a weird argument to make re christianity, that even though you acknowledge its impossible to know that your faith is in something thats real, you're willing to risk it? its sort of like that idea that you might as well be religious even if you dont "believe" any religion is true, because you lose nothing and potentially gain both comfort in life and reward in an afterlife. but its kind of a big deal in christianity that you're supposed to believe that what you believe in Is Literally Real. maybe apologists are allowed to do that sort of thing in their arguments, i suppose. its like in the last battle where he has a dude who believes in another deity accepted into the christian afterlife b/c despite a lack of belief, his virtuous nature is, from a practical standpoint, accepted to be for all intents and purposes to be equivalent to having believed in the christian god, like if he happened to follow all other rules except the Believing In Jesus one then he's good to go anyhow. interesting in that its also supposed to be pretty vital in christianity that one has to accept jesus as god in order to be Saved all up into heaven! i suppose that guy in the book was meant to have been converted right before death or whatever. at that point its very unclear who is exactly dead or not, but probably everyone. still, aslan clearly makes the argument that "basically you might as well have been believing in me, so you're good to go." fascinating stuff. another one to ask lewis abt

uhhhh another point is that i think theyre intending to make other movies also? but not all four remaining ones!! and if i had to guess which one they'd be leaving out uhh lets say....the horse & his boy....................which conveniently is the other sort of sparsely plotted one. two kids ride horses towards narnia, briefly have to have a shenanigansy undercover sneak through a crowded city, ride towards narnia some more, and then one of them stays at some guys house while the other kid goes into narnian battle where he himself doesnt actually do anything, but that fact is described pretty funnily. its still sort of a fun one, on account of the sneaking around hijinx, and the fact that it happens to give ANY of the details of what tf the pevensies did for like the twenty years they reigned over narnia's golden age which the lww just tells you absolutely n o t h i n g about! the answer is: a lot of battling probably, on account of narnia went from being ruled for a century by someone who could kill you in a second and also why would you have invaded narnia at that time, it wouldve been like trying to invade russia. but then a bunch of kids took the throne and upended the whole system and the snow went away, it seems like a destabilizey time to invade or whatever. imo. but then again they mightve bought themselves a few years on account of aslan having shown up and all. but lbr, they were just put into battle right off and coronated three seconds later, theres no reason on that front that they wouldnt shy away from having more battles. and the books said there were a lot of battles. and in thahb, its like, well we've been battling a lot lately and now we're in shenanigans and we'll just have to battle our way out of it, which they absolutely do. edmund straight up decapitates a guy. how ARE they supposed to just transition immediately into english schoolchildren after a couple decades of that mess??? they even have the fancy courtly speech. its magic i suppose

the point is its kind of a fun book, oh also, aslan is TOP shenanigans in this one. he straight up actually attacks one of the protagonists, for Reasons, but still. not that he doesn't murder the pevensies in the last book. i mean, i guess you could argue that its just like Divine Coincidence where what with the unaligned timelines betwixt england and narnia, aslan couldve just picked the moment everyone was gonna die anyway and just tossed them over to X point in time in narnia. but I Donno.....im kinda with that university student who's stressing about whether aslan cause ww2 for the purpose of sending the pevensies to the wardrobe. like, that train accident that killed everybody killed four people on the platform & five people on the train in different carriages and everything, or maybe the numbers are switched because i dont remember where lucy was. im saying, that was a hell of a crash. but sure. anyhow, even more fun, aslan appears as a cat to the Other protag while he's spending a night on the edge of the wilderness, and scratches him for saying he once threw rocks at a stray cat. like, hard #same, aslan!!! wtf dude why arent YOU being claimed by satan

whats also fun is that it doesn't really take place in narnia, which is also the reason besides pacing that you wouldnt really want to make this one into a film? because uhhhh the whole worldbuilding lewis crapt upon everyone for calormen is clearly racist as fuccck. if you arent already familiar with all the books (namely this one and i suppose the last battle) then its like.....i guess its some sort of vague notion of the ottoman empire? its really just a mashup of any number of white-english-variety racist notions. everyone is brown, is it an inaccurate stab at an amorphous amalgam of middle eastern culture? east asian? are people islamic or hindu? just try and guess what he was going for because its just. not based on anyone needing to know anything about reality. lewis was against seasoning food i guess, because it will mention i guess like, people cooking with onions like the heathens they are. (spoilers: this country just exists in the narniaverse to represent Those Heathens). its not necessarily an Evil place, they are noble savages ok!! with their formal seriousness and cutthroat customs.......b/c they are not as advanced and peaceful as the white northern christians, see. closer to the less developed violence of their inherently backwards ways and Cruel Society reigned by violence DONT CONVERT OR YOU'LL DIE, KIDS. but also.....you wont be white? the reason of calormens existence is really never explained. telmarines came from englandverse on accident thru a magic portal just lying around, possibly thats whats meant to have happened there too? its never attempted to be explained. anyways its basically the intro to the disney aladdin.

lewis is entirely inconsistent and self contradictory all throughout the series for the sake of the authors convenience. this is part of what makes the stories fun and the worldbuilding charming. it is also what allows him to pull stunts that have you pinching the bridge of your nose in exasperation and writing out essays to try to figure out how narnia is supposed to work. it is also what allows him, five books in, to be like, "here is the country to the south where the demon-worshipping gross scary brown uncivilized folk sit around hating narnia and confirming any racist notion you have about any nonwhite nonchristian country or culture." thanks, clive

its of course ludicrous and, of course, the protagonist shasta just so happens to be white despite being raised calormene. spoilers, he is narnian. or really from archenland, which isnt narnia but is still white and pro-narnia so its alright. i mean, technically narnia is allied with calormen at all points in time of the series? calormen just quietly tries an invasion in that book and also in the last book. so thats interesting. i suppose lewis is anti-crusades, which is big of him. the pevs arent out here trying to conquer calormen and convert them to narnianism. so that must not be the Destiny of the true christian? or are we meant to believe calormenes are beyond help? shasta who is of course secretly not "really" calormene is still representing someone undergoing "conversion," yet again, the guy is white. i suppose being brown is whats hopeless?

theres an inadvertently laughable line at the start of the book where a calormene expositorially points out that shasta is white by comparing him to the "accursed but beautiful" narnians. who are all white? is he just talking about the pevensies? the archenlanders (i cant remember where theyre meant to have come from either.) are like, all humanoid narnian natives white?? wtf, aslan. anyways, the dialogue is unnatural and funny enough, but its also like.....ok lewis, we got it, whiteness is the standard for all universes and everyone wishes they were white. stupid, sexy narnians.

what alllllmost suggests that being a poc isnt an automatic fastpass to hell is that im fairly sure the second protagonist aravis is a nonwhite calormene?? i dont remember it ever saying she was "fair" like the narnians the way the book immediately points out that shasta is. she is of course escaping an arranged marriage (the calormene plot to sort of vaguely try to invade narnia is also based on forcing susan to marry a dude she doesnt like yet who she apparently genuinely considered as a suitor when he wasnt acting like a jerk? so not only a dude who isnt white but a dude who isnt aslanian christian. its a whole complicating element to just toss out in this otherwise flat af worldbuilding, dude!! not to mention? despite the battles and shit, susan was out here considering marriage? how absolutely fucked up would it have been if any of them married and then effed off back to england. moving along) but she is from the start portrayed as equally sympathetically as shasta and nothing about her is pointed out as being Bad and Reprehensible, which the narration has no qualms about doing. she even gets to spend some time with her calormene friend, who is not exactly meant to be as sympathetic or noble but certainly isnt portrayed as at all evil. like...theres at least the occasional exception apparently, in which maybe not every person is inherently evil and violent and cruel. who knows

also aravis definitely later marries the white protag?? but apparently interracial marriage isnt entirely Unthinkable here. wait, also, aravis claims to be somehow a direct descendant of the calormene god tash? first of all, is that true, comma, possible? in the last book its confirmed that tash is real, albeit, like, a demon. dunno what c.s. is telling us with that one. is aravis related to a demon. we can only guess on account of the theme of Inconsistency

anyways. i suppose you could make it into a movie if you just threw out the racist shit. but the "calormen is also distinguished from narnia via its religion" element is also a touch janky. can it be thrown out too? if they intend to produce the last battle, will it be thrown out then. it kind of comes up again. if you get rid of those elements though, the stakes get a little blurrier and more political and more "wait well why would they have any beef with each other in the first place" if you cant just easily point out that the calormenes are shaking their fists at the narnians and their demon worship and their jealousy at not being white. again, are all centaurs white or something? wtf

truly calormene is the most racist ass shit in the whole series, but the concept comes up in less painfully direct ways other times, too. why are there native species in narnia that are considered inherently evil?? sure, the white witch as the stand-in for the devil wasn't originally from narnia. was she creating shit too? i dont remember what she was up to on account of i havent read the magicians nephew in a hot minute. i know they had to take a pegasus into a garden of eden type shit to smoke her out of wherever she was lurking for some reason or another. still. whys there whole types of creatures who are universally and unilaterally condemned? i know we're meant to believe that they just have evil intent according to their nature, but uh....theres no point at which any of these creatures are given a chance? maybe they served the white witch because she was nice to them for once. you're not given the chance to know. EXCEPT for the fact that you get shit like: giants are evil save for the occasional exception, like in lww when a "good" giant is described as having like, a long family line, and "traditions." not like Those Sorts. they do talk in like prince caspian and shit, when their numbers are miserable and theyre discussing tactics, whether to get help from the gross hags and harpies and etc and ppl will talk about Those People and Sorts and Rabble and its like...jfc. b/c apparently sommme of them can be decent! if theyre a giant or whatever. and meanwhile the dwarfs are always chaotic neutral or whatever. not believing in aslan but not necessarily being anti-narnia coz they live there. but sometimes being good guys!! but sometimes being bad guys, and jadis was cool to them apparently. like.................theres definitely cases of Types of narnians who fall outside the "born good / born bad" system, and thats pretty fucked. wolves too? theyre the Talking Beasts aslan definitely created, but on the side of the white witch? how was she having trees be on her side, too? whats going on around here. whats the moral meant to be. smh

uhh well anyhow, you could do a nice essay on gender re narnia. on account of sometimes its staleass typical sexist tropes like uhh, say,, the devil stand-ins keep being women? witches, ok. and the idea of "women need to be protected as pure creatures" as a basic sexist notion, and even lewis taking a relatively subdued jab at the idea of calling that sexist. susan being the miniature mom character type, and of course the infamous last battle bit where, in an attempt to describe her lack of spirituality as a self-insert of what lewis considered his own period of fake maturity via rejection of christianity, she's of course not only described as not believing in narnia (which????? what is anyone supposed to make of that. again, in the allegory of the cave shit, she's been outside the cave!!! she lived in narnia for YEARS AND YEARS and then WENT BACK. how are we supposed to believe she just convinced herself it wasnt literally real? its not quite the same as someone losing their faith in christianity.) but as like, wearing makeup, damn her. even if he wasnt trying to make the point that "look at boys and go to hell" which, i suppose he couldnt, as in narnia susan was being courted just fine as queen, yet i suppose also she didnt marry anyone—anyways, of course its still sexist to slight the way she decides to dress as some form of false maturity, even if its meant to be metaphor. just clumsy af & not great when again, devils are always witches around here. and being younger is to be more spiritually pure which like............mmm ok. this is sort of another one of those weirdly sexless fantasy universes, why do those keep happening. i mean sure this is a christian fairy tale for kids. but nobody even gets married save for in the last paragraphs of a couple books. its left a bit ambiguous whether thats even spiritually acceptable in the narnia rules, unless its to Continue the Line a la the telmarine monarchy from caspian the first to tirian the whateverth. hm

but also of course you get the young girl characters being...somewhat almost allowed to fight (archery mainly) but anyways at least being given equal status to the boys who are there also. theres even mention of once apparently narnia being ruled by a queen w no kings around. fantastic. and theres some non-witch lady characters on occasion. the human characters are where the dynamics are most at, i suppose, but anyways this at least has some nuance & at times seems to go just a bit beyond what you might expect from some old dude in the 50s. still not that surprising or innovative, but not completely flat, and seeming to contain at least a little reflection upon the topic

the essay of race re: narnia would be really short though. Its Racist Af. if you threw classism in too, you might get a bit more length out of it. but really its just so flat in this subject, and totally needless. there's the fact that even narnia is ruled by white english people but.....you can really do without juxtaposing this with the heinous nonwhite country somewhere over there. the rest of the books operate just fine w/o this

tolkien mentioned HIS scary brown backwards civilization to the south a lot more fleetingly in lotr but its....v much the same worldbuilding as narnia??? aka middle earth is pretty much an imaginary proto-england where you dont want to go too far east or south or you run into dangerous &/or inherently evil territory!! ok, jrr.....who was the other people in the inklings?? what did they write. could no one rein these guys in. coz lewis is over here with his Alternate Universe england. with uhhhh wilderness to the north and west and the dangerous evilish racismland to the south. and the ocean and dont forget narnia is a flat earth to the east. also? why are the lone islands like that. can aslan take care of some of that shit. for gods sake. anyways. the all-white good guys / evil poc should be thrown out of everything, thats not what makes the worldbuilding in either lotr or chronarnia at all interesting. yet is it is surely a subsection of the inherent Englishness of both examples........it warrants analysis but not "carrying on into films or anything based on either's precedence in the fantasy genre."

god who knows what im talking about at this point. im just saying "if they arent looking to even bother trying to wrangle the horse and his boy into something not ludicrously racist then i wouldnt be at all surprised." still, do you suppose theres like a curse where unless all narnia books are given some sort of film adaptation, the world won't know peace? more likely the world would end, maybe. the curse of clive. i dont really remember but that elder bbc series sure didnt cover the whole saga

well this is long enough but lets all set off in more endless, doomed narnalysis, such as

my thesis on trying to figure out what. the Fuck any reader is supposed to make out of edmund's role in the lww

whats the deal with merpeople?!

where are all these witches coming from, anyways

seriously if the narnians were just less murderous to the Undesirable species would they have been on the pro-aslan side all along

if there was only two humans staying in narnia at its birth, wouldnt their line like, die out immediately with their kid.

where did the archenlanders come from

where did the calormenes come from

oh yeah and like. are we seriously meant to believe that, at the end of the world, when aslan reveals that being goodnatured supercedes having the Wrong Religion, there is only one calormene in all of a) current existence and b) history who fits the bill? really. why even bring it up, then.

how did narnians react to their four monarchs completely disappearing......for real.....and what happened to the line to the throne?? was there just no ruler until the telmarines came in and took things over for the rest of the few centuries or whatevs.

when was that deep magic in lww written? at the start of narnia? coz thats the magicians nephew. again, how tf did the white witch get any leverage in that one. how was that supposed to be a good idea. wtf. see my thesis

whats the white witch supposed to represent as a stand-in for the devil? not helping that i dont remember the details of magicians nephew for shit, but she's definitely in the Multiverse lore of narnia as being from a different world as narnia and england. wtf is like...her nature

how weird is it in narnia that you have a god who drops in confused alien children to both go on personal journeys and save the world? is narnia-aslan/earth-jesus also dropping other children from other worlds into other other worlds? via other forms? hmm

lewis is all but inviting us the readers to be filling in the blanks with narnia fic. he's basically like, outright actually inviting fic with people wanting to speculate what happens with susan, who must inevitably return to narnia as lewis intends her to represent his own departure from (and obvious inevitable return to) christianity

a weird detail that is also never elaborated on: in addition to the narrator freely inserting loads of opinions into the narration, there's a time or two its made clear that like, the narrator has gotten this info from interviewing the characters. how'd you know about that last battle, "they all died and this happened in the afterlife" shit, huh. just another weird element

sussing out other lewispinions, like how he hates all schools apparently

narnia vs middle earth!! both quasi englands, both pre industrialization, both with christ figures running around some more than others, both with the need for rightful kings, totally different roles for humans tho. well, thats the whole comparison

and, inevitably, more.

#just narnblogging #or narbling #stay tuned for......murder

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pikapepikachuu · 6 years ago

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'I’m hungry to start the work': Bill Shorten's five-year journey has just weeks left to run

Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size Bill Shorten stands on a metal stairway in Australias biggest brewery and tries to convince the assembled workers that the coming election will not be an empty exercise. Whatever you do, you get a politician at the end of it, he concedes, drawing a few smiles from the crowd, but his speech is heavy with warnings about the importance of every ballot paper. How you vote has a direct effect on the laws and conditions you get at work, he says. There is a connection. If you think that everythings going up in Australia but the wages, your vote can change that. If you want to see energy bills get under control, your vote can change that. Shorten worries in private about the apathy among voters who have seen six prime ministers over a dozen years. Here, in front of about 100 workers at the Lion brewery in western Sydney, he is trying to give meaning to the election to be fought on May 11 or May 18. He seems to feel his greatest challenge is to persuade Australians that it matters.

Labor leader Bill Shorten has served two terms as Opposition Leader. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Shorten projects his voice over the conveyor belts and palletisers. He tells the workers he wants Australia to be a manufacturing nation. He knows their salaries and conditions are good but he says they may have family members in retail and hospitality where the penalty rates have been cut. He talks about Medicare, hospitals, schools, restoring penalty rates and lifting the minimum wage. He promises to force companies to hire more apprentices. The applause is polite but not effusive. Everyone can see the television cameras. They know this is merely a warm-up for the election campaign. A few want to take a selfie with the candidate, but there is none of the manic energy of the 2007 campaign, when Kevin Rudd shocked his own side with his popularity. The wariness in the audience is given voice when Shorten takes questions. One worker asks about negative gearing and gets an assurance that Labors tax increase will allow anyone with an existing rental property to keep claiming a concession. When the public questions are over, someone asks Shorten whether she can trust Labor to stop asylum seekers coming by boat. He assures her she can, but she is not convinced. An older man asks him to do more to help grandparents who have to take custody of their grandchildren but do not get as much support as foster parents. Shorten asks for the mans details so his office can respond in more detail. Advertisement There is no doubt Shorten is match fit for the election. Five-and-a-half years after he became Opposition Leader, he is tantalisingly close to becoming prime minister. To stumble now would be to lose the unloseable election, a spectre so grim he will not rest until polling day. Im hungry to start the work, he tells The Sunday Age and The Sun-Herald. Shorten has a long list of what he wants to achieve in government to deliver real progress in peoples lives. Fifteen years of education. That means genuine, universal access to preschool, he says, reeling off the first item on the list as we travel from Sydneys west to Sydney Airport.

Bill Shorten poses for a selfie during a marginal seat visit in Melbourne.Credit:AAP Weve got to tackle the challenge of dementia and aged care, weve got to help people deal with it better. In the big health fights that people have in their life, weve got to make sure they dont feel financial burden on top of the health challenge. I really want any kid from any postcode in Australia to get all the options TAFE or university, whatever dream they want to pursue. I want merit and how hard you work to be the passport, not how rich your parents are. Theres more. Advertisement Weve really got to be one of the best countries in the world at so much, he says. Why shouldnt we be the best at healthcare and education, why shouldnt we be the best at climate change? We should be an energy superpower. We should have a more independent foreign policy. We should close the gap with the first Australians. Its all about opportunity and fairness. I want every Australian to have opportunity and every Australian to receive fairness. And theyll do the rest. Loading Stone by stone, Shorten and his team have added so many promises they now have a mountain to climb if they win power. They vow to restore penalty rates, change the law to raise the minimum wage, hold a plebiscite on a republic, raise $32.1 billion over a decade from changes to negative gearing and raise $56 billion from changes to tax refunds on dividend imputation. Not least, they promise to spend billions of dollars on energy projects while cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent by 2030, in a Parliament that has swung wildly on climate change over two decades. Shorten will not admit he is promising too much. He plays down the risk of a traffic jam in Parliament for his crowded agenda. Well just keep advancing. You can get things done if you want to, he says. As proof, he nominates the National Disability Insurance Scheme, an idea he backed in his earliest days on the Rudd frontbench. Advertisement Rudd, of course, took power in 2007 with a wish-list so long he had to launch dozens of reviews rather than taking immediate action. Shorten insists he can avoid that. Youve got to go in with a clear agenda, Shorten says. And were outlining it. Love us or hate us or be somewhere in between, you cant say were not working out the issues now. We havent been an opposition whos coasted on the mistakes of the government. The government clings to the hope that voters do not like Shorten, given polling that shows more voters disapprove of his performance than approve of it. While voters do not crowd around him when he walks down the main street of Burwood in the electorate of Reid a short time after the brewery visit, there is no sign of hostility. Shorten approaches workers and shoppers outside the Westfield on Burwood Road, striking up conversations and introducing them to the Labor candidate, Sam Crosby. One of the pedestrians, Hana Shahim, asks for a photo with him. Ive always voted Labor, she says. Nobody offers a stronger endorsement.

Bill and Chloe Shorten.Credit:Paul Jeffers The campaign will change this dynamic. The media pack will be bigger, the pressure on Shorten will be higher and the risk of encountering an unhappy voter will be greater. One other difference will be the presence of Chloe Shorten. While Chloe has many other calls on her time, not least family in Melbourne, Labor is hoping to have her on the campaign as often as possible, in the belief that Australians warm to her and Shorten himself campaigns better with her. Advertisement Shortens friends believe he is a stronger campaigner than Prime Minister Scott Morrison and will emerge triumphant in a matter of weeks. With a solid Labor campaign, they say, he might achieve a swing of more than a dozen seats. Helped by a bad Coalition campaign, the swing might reach 20. There are no such boasts from Shorten himself. He is careful not to look like he is taking the result for granted, even though he thinks the Coalition has become a tribe of warring clans that are incapable of running a government. His team assumes the government will rely more heavily on scare campaigns and negative advertising when the election is underway in earnest. Shorten knows how a scare campaign works. He wounded Malcolm Turnbull at the last election with the false claim that the government was privatising Medicare and will revive the health funding message at the election to come. He insists, however, that he wants to give Australians something to vote for, not just vote against. He takes this message to the Holmesglen campus in Melbourne, where he tells students he would put more money into TAFE and increase the cost of visas for skilled foreign workers.

Bill Shorten, flanked by two Labor candidates, speaks to students and teachers at Holmesglen TAFE. Credit:Erik Anderson The message about foreign workers causes unease in the crowd, given some of the students are from overseas and pay fees for their training in the hope of becoming permanent residents one day, but Shorten makes no apology for putting a priority on locals. His pledge to increase the number of apprenticeships is central to his policy platform. As in Sydney one day earlier, Shorten uses his Melbourne visit to try to motivate his audience to vote for change. Again, apathy is the enemy. Whether he is talking about wages or healthcare, he ends his sentences with three words: Your vote matters. Advertisement The fact that Shorten visits Holmesglen with two Labor candidates, Jennifer Yang in the seat of Chisholm and Fiona McLeod in Higgins, is testament to his confidence. Winning Chisholm from the Liberals is a reasonable prospect but taking Higgins would be unthinkable at any other election. Shorten believes he has been tested by his time as Opposition Leader and can be a better prime minister because of it. The contrast with Morrison and Turnbull, both elevated to the leadership from within government rather than winning an election first, is central to the way he sees himself. It is also a big reason why he believes he is ready for the campaign and the work that would come after an election victory. Ive learnt a lot, he says. In opposition thereve been some terrible days and thereve been some good days. The governments run out of steam. Thats a charitable interpretation. I think the nations looking at us to see if were stable, theyre looking to us to give them three years of continuity in government, with no surprises. No surprises? It is an impossible promise, but Shorten is nothing if not confident. And he says he is more than ready. Ive been practising for this for five and a half years. David Crowe is Chief Political Correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Most Viewed in Politics Loading https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/i-m-hungry-to-start-the-work-bill-shorten-s-five-year-journey-has-just-weeks-left-to-run-20190329-p5192d.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

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t-shrt · 4 years ago

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100 q tag

no one wud read it but ima do it anyways cos fun tag by @dubblebubble

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk? more cereal than milk cos i love tht crunchy crunch

2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day? LOVE

3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books? receipts, pen lol

4: how do you take your coffee/tea? coffee=basic latte/hot tea, no sugar

5: are you self-conscious of your smile? sometimes, not too often tho

6: do you keep plants? no but i want to but ill be terrible at it so no

7: do you name your plants?

8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings? digital art

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself? yes very it keeps me sane

10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach? side/back, back esp nowadays

11: what’s an inner joke you have with your friends? lots lol

12: what’s your favorite planet? earth? hahahah it used to be jupiter cos i loved sailor jupiter as a child

13: what’s something that made you smile today? friend + nct + fics

14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like? two separate bedrooms, a balcony, good amount of plants, separate fridge for alcohol, sizeable kitchen

15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is! it rains diamonds in jupiter and saturn $$$$

16: what’s your favorite pasta dish? bolognese hahahaha im boring

17: what color do you really want to dye your hair? i just dyed my hair a darker ash brown n i quite like it ive been light for awhile

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up. one came 2 mind cos we both recently talked ab it, a longtime close friend of mine n i used to have the biggest fight where he threw me a pair of scissors n i threw him a basketball in retaliation lmfaooo it still became a running joke more than a decade later...

19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it? not really...prolly shud

20: what’s your favorite eye color? i actually like brown hahah, maybe a slightly lighter shade of brown

21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that’s been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces. it was a gift from my parents, a simple small messenger bag with a lot of slots, brought it with me literally everywhere, during my hookups, my night outs, been stained with questionable things (its been cleaned lol!).... almost lost it in a club only to be found by a friend... it has foundation stains tho lol

22: are you a morning person? n o

23: what’s your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations? sleep, listen to music, watch stuff, not reply to messages

24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets? no

25: what’s the weirdest place you’ve ever broken into? nothing rly comes to mind but im p sure ive been somewhere like tht lol

26: what are the shoes you’ve had for forever and wear with every single outfit? LOL my adidas superstars

27: what’s your favorite bubblegum flavor? ermm the red colored ones?

28: sunrise or sunset? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm very good question

29: what’s something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing? hmm what comes to mind is the way both of us sometimes exchange goodnight msgs w nct farm emojis heheeh

30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared? lol ofc....

31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks. unfortunately im rly basic on socks, u wud most likely find me wearing black ankle socks or black ballet(?) socks nothing more nothing less.......

32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends. a lot has happened usually during that time lol. duno which story to pick honestly hahahah. i think a memorable one might be when we were drinking n played games and we talked and talked and joked n nek min one by one we fell asleep in the same room hahah... im sure there are other stories tht might be more eventful but fr the life of me my memorys fuzzy rn lol

33: what’s your fave pastry? i love strawberry shortcakes! or mille crepes

34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it? i kept a LOT hahah. prolly named a few, but nothing was too special. i think it rly reflected how i managed my relationships then, n evn yrs aftwds, like i ws always lonely n my instincts were to gain quantity cos deep down i cudnt trust ppl n cudnt get too committed lololol

35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often? i wish i was cos sometimes ppl wud make pretty colorful notes, but i usually just buy ones tht i wud use cos practicality.

36: which band’s sound would fit your mood right now? mmmmm is it cheating if i say nct cos they cover a range of genres lmao. but their ballads i guess yeah.

37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean? i mean i prefer to keep it clean, but its always really messy HAHAHA ;_;

38: tell us about your pet peeves! 1. someone rude 2. someone who doesnt know how to respect others’ boundaries 3. someone self-entitled n takes themselves 2 seriously

39: what color do you wear the most? black on black on black on black baby

40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what’s it’s story? does it have any meaning to you? an evangelion ring, its the black (lilith) moon with lcl gem in it, to me i guess symbolizes my struggle with human relations, n how eva as an anime illustrated tht n the fantasy of having everyone’s consciousness merged into one--n the fact that lilith in itself (in astrology) signifies the darker side of a human being? i guess n the fact that evn if u acknowledge ur darker side u cud still use it to further urself

41: what’s the last book you remember really, really loving? hmmmm i guess last was a self help book, unfuck your boundaries, helped me support my need to strengthen my boundaries

42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it! little rogue :) its in a small alleyway, a little quaint shop, easy to miss... small potted plants, with an amaaazing matcha latte

43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with? siiigh a guy i was involved with lmfao i cut him off tho

44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything? hmmmmm good question i guess lately ive been very thankful tht i could feel comfortable taking my own time and space, n accepting the positive energy others wn give 2 me. being single really, really does help evn tho id feel lonely sometimes, bc the only weight i carry is the weight of my own soul n i wn learn how to nourish that

45: do you trust your instincts a lot? very i think

46: tell us the worst pun you can think of. i have a lot HAHAHA if u were a friend of mine ud prolly get tired of them. a genuinely bad one wud be haha youre so punny lmfao

47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe? nothing rly lmao if theyre healthy n someone derives happiness frm it i wudnt want it to be banned

48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today? probably not lol, i mean i think i retained similar fears since i ws a kid but now obviously my biggest fear(s) would be more...specific to me

49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought? its the digital age baby spotify ftw (in all srsness i wish i collected vinyls tho hh)

50: what’s an odd thing you collect? i used to collect ramune bottles lmaoooo

51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them? hmmmm nah lets not do this right now lol

52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far? LOL too many but i love shitpost quality memes tbh

53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them? pulp fiction. i actually loved it, i think i still do, its entertainment value is kickass, havent taken the time to dissect it in any other way

54: who’s the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face? oh man i think it ws the dude i ws seeing lmao fk him

55: what’s the most dramatic thing you’ve ever done to prove a point? a lot, n most of them im not proud of, cos some involves self harm

56: what are some things you find endearing in people? kindness n genuineness, someone’s courage in being vulnerable

57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics? dont feel like it rn but everytime i do 10/10 will dramatically reenact the lyrics right to the guitar riffs

58: who’s the wine mom and who’s the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why? im definitely the wine (aunt) lmfaooo im already one tbh

59: what’s your favorite myth? Eros + Psyche, Icarus and the sun

60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves? i love poetry hahah...cant think of any rn

61: what’s the stupidest gift you’ve ever given? the stupidest one you’ve ever received? id love any gift given 2 me as long as they wont harm me or anything lmao n i dont think ive evr given anything too stupid. well.. idk if this is stupid tho like i sent flowers thanking my ex for ‘helping me live’ well aft we’ve blocked each other off cos the end to the relo was js daaamn toxic lmao

62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind? nope

63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be? music i do spotify n im pretty particular ab organizing my playlists i guess. my books im alright with as long as theyre just stacked properly no problem

64: what color is the sky where you are right now? prolly rly dark blue cos its 12 am

65: is there anyone you haven’t seen in a long time who you’d love to hang out with? a lot tbh cos ive rly been focusing on stuff internally

66: what would your ideal flower crown look like? daisies, sunflowers, n baby breath here n there

67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel? somber i guess maybe a tad bit nostalgic?

68: what’s winter like where you live? heeella cold not cos of the temperature itself but the winds thooo, if it drizzles evn in the slightest it feels like needles piercing through ur bones literally

69: what are your favorite board games? i like the game of life, ummm cards against humanity?

70: have you ever used a ouija board? no n never will lol

71: what’s your favorite kind of tea? the fruity kinds

72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you’ll forget it? yea def lol

73: what are some of your worst habits? disappearing from people when i feel strong emotions

74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns. they’re small but they’re so full of love, full of life, full of strength, and full of care for others, they’re the type of person who will seek their goals till the end despite obstacles and still be able to not lose their warm heart on the way. they put so much thought and care to every aspect of their life even when in the past they have been handed some bad things, and i adore them for that.

75: tell us about your pets! none :( wish i have a cat though

76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren’t? hahahhaah

77: pink or yellow lemonade? pink!

78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub? neither sometimes i think theyre weird sometimes cute sometimes weirdly cute lmao

79: what’s one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you? write up 24 things they love about me to stop me from hating myself

80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why? white. no but if i had to id say white anyways lol cos its a blank canvas

81: describe one of your friend’s eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of. i dunno uhhhh her rounded eyes which seemed to at first glance, harbor plenty of wonder seemed to be weighted by many untold secrets, the traces of which could be found when she erupts into laughter where the wonder would manifest itself in the form of small stars in the dark of her eyes.

82: are/were you good in school? meh. i try

83: what’s some of your favorite album art? weirdly i like cigarette after sex’s one cos its so simple yet telling

84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones? planning on getting an evangelion one, another heart one, a sunflower one, and prolly a ghibli related one

85: do you read comics? what are your faves? manga? naruto 4evr LOL

86: do you like concept albums? which ones? hmmm thinkin of dpr live’s IAOT

87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives? lord of the rings, harry potter, one of ghibli movies lol

88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy? i think impressionism is very cool evn tho i dont do it myself

89: are you close to your parents? eeeeee

90: talk about your one of you favorite cities. Melbourne is a wonderful city where many things could coexist in one--happiness and sadness, camaraderie and loneliness, hot and cold, quiet and full of life, productive and relaxed, bursting with unfocused energy yet incredibly organized, and for many reasons it’s become one of my favorite cities, and definitely my favorite to live in.

91: where do you plan on traveling this year? no plans tbh lol maybe home?.......japan? heheheh nahhh

92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch? it depends lol mostly i guess drowns my pasta in cheese

93: what’s the hairstyle you wear the most? i always wear it down, either straight or wavy

94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday? a friend of mine

95: what are your plans for this weekend? stay in most likely, do stuff

96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot? 100% procrastinate lmaoooo

97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house? ISTG, jkjk INFP, leo sun aquarius moon cancer rising, ravenclaw

98: when’s the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it? im alws meh ab hiking tbh lmao

99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them. Long Slow Distance - NCT 127, Four - Sleeping At Last, idontwannabeyouanymore - Billie Eilish, Stop This Train - John Mayer, Digital Lover - Crush

100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why? 5 years into the past so she’d stop focusing her life around anybody else but herself

#tag #tag meme #tags

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tuthillscopes-blog · 8 years ago

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Henry Greens Party Going: an eccentric portrait of the idle rich

check it out @ https://tuthillscopes.com/henry-greens-party-going-an-eccentric-portrait-of-the-idle-rich/

Henry Greens Party Going: an eccentric portrait of the idle rich

Amit Chaudhuri revisits a masterful tale of revellers stranded in a hotel, which recalls Joyce and Woolf but resembles neither

In the late 1980s, after i would be a graduate student in Oxford, I purchased a amount of three novels by a writer I hadnt heard about, Henry Eco-friendly. The Eco-friendly everyone was speaking about then had an e in the finish of his surname, and the name was Graham. He was almost a precise contemporary of Henrys: born in 1904, annually before Eco-friendly, he resided considerably longer. Both belonged to well-to-do families, but Eco-friendly was particularly affluent. His father was an industrialist. Id attempted studying Graham Greene, but had not made much headway. Then Henry Eco-friendly arrived, and Graham quickly grew to become, for me personally, another Greene, after which not really that. About Henry Eco-friendly, however, theres an irreducible, longstanding excitement one of the couple of who’ve read him.

I have to have purchased the 3-novel amount of Loving, Living, Party Going because John Updike had, in the summary of the amount, not just given Eco-friendly centrality like a precursor, but known as him a saint from the mundane. The religious example was excessive, what had helped me admire Updike to begin with was the means by which hed deliberately made room for that mundane, for that banality that fills our way of life and means they are truly interesting. But I discovered Eco-friendly to become a different of author, with almost no chroniclers impulse that every so often directed Updikes decade-lengthy projects, with no abiding curiosity about realism, despite his remarkable eye and ear and the gift for recording character. Replying to some question offer him by Terry Southern for that Paris Review in 1958 Youve described your novels as nonrepresentational. I question if youd mind defining that term? Eco-friendly stated:

Nonrepresentational was designed to represent an image that was not really a photograph, nor a painting on the photograph, nor, in dialogue, a tape recording. For example, the deaf, like me, hear probably the most astounding things over-all them that have not actually been stated. This enlivens my replies until, through mishearing, a brand new degree of communication is arrived at. My figures do not understand one another greater than people do in tangible existence, yet they are doing so under I. Thus, when writing, I represent very carefully things i see (and I am not seeing very well now) and just what I hear (that is little) however i express it is nonrepresentational since it is not always what others hear and see.

Eco-friendly actually stands approximately James Joyce, in the inclination to become intolerant of ordinary British syntax and punctuation, and Virginia Woolf, in the feeling of how narrative could be formed by things outdoors of event. But, out of the box obvious from his remarks to Southern, Eco-friendly further conflates his aesthetic with disability and eccentricity. (Right at the beginning of the job interview, he will not field an inconvenient question for the reason he cant hear the interviewer, although it rapidly becomes apparent the deafness is opportunistic.) Greater than Joyce and Woolf or other author I’m able to consider, Vegetables contribution towards the modern novel may be the imprimatur of the unapologetic eccentricity and, through it, a reconfiguring of the thought of singularity.

IMG 2 TT

Communicated joy and delight Henry Yorke AKA Henry Green

I have seen that Picador omnibus edition in the hands of readers and teachers, creased, carried with a degree of protectiveness. But, by all accounts, it didnt do well and soon went out of print. Since then, Greens nine novels have had spasmodic resurrections, come and gone and come back again. What will it take for Green to penetrate the general consciousness? His writing went out of view after he died in 1973 (and he hadnt written a book for 20 years before that), though more recently a handful of influential literary champions made him something of a cause. But maybe its to do with what Ezra Pound known as age. Most likely the recent decades havent been receptive to some novelist whose sole purpose appears to become to fashion a language that to speak pleasure. Woolf was shockingly neglected her present status owes less to literary critics regarding feminism. Jean Rhys was absolutely forgotten until her last work, Wide Sargasso Sea, permitted her to become annexed later by postcolonialists. Joyces mythic scaffold and verbal play identified him to academia to be essential both to modernism and also to the work of hermeneutics. I mention these authors not just due to their ability to transform and delight but additionally because some facet of their writing continues to be converted advantageously into some terms which are vital that you particular literary historic moments. With Eco-friendly, were given one type of artist who, such as the poets of ancient India and A holiday in greece, is not to provide us but delight. We dont get sound advice with your a author.

I hesitate to Party Going a modernist work because its sui generis, stands by itself, and it has not given itself to the modernism industry. However it has something that is similar to standard modernist texts, through which I am talking about not just what Frank Kermode known as its mythic structure, or its mythic punctuation of dead pigeons and bathing women, or its purgatorial fogbound atmosphere, or even the periodic abnormality of their syntax, but the truth that its thinking about and not the journey however the waiting, and not the event however the interruption. Dense fog working in london causes all trains to become cancelled. Traffic on the highway reaches a dead stop some people enroute towards the station need to abandon their cars and walk a minute of both liberation from, and lack of, class privilege. Among throngs of frustrated but jubilant commuters several wealthy people has convened they expect to go to the south of France as visitors from the qualified Max Adey. Two women especially are in search of Max: Julia Wray and Amabel. Max continues to be intending to escape Amabel, but she tracks him lower. Meanwhile, the entire group continues to be gone to live in the station hotel and given rooms with baths the shutters towards the station happen to be introduced lower. Amabel in some way finds her way inside, and Max reaches once ashamed, trapped, and temporarily disarmed by her immense beauty. It appears to Julia, whom Max have been courting inside a room not lengthy ago, that her putative romantic holiday with Max isn’t to become.

The simultaneity from the narrative causes it to be less just like a text supervised by an omniscient narrator than the usual particular type of cinema, a cinema less invested in one protagonist as with whats happening at the same time in a number of rooms and also the spaces around them. The fabric continues to be organised by an auteur akin, in the method, to some film editor, like a montage of quickly intercut scenes that produces a fantasy of unity and continuity. The restricted but unique locale and also the limited time period of the experience stimulate Jean Renoirs The Rules of the Game, which depicting several upper-class individuals with conflicting love interests who end up stranded with their servants inside a manor house on the country estate throughout the weekend too constitutes a narrative from nothing. Released, like Party Going, in 1939, the show isnt about either belonging somewhere or just being in exile it’s about inhabiting a transient, busy condition of unfinishedness. The aesthetic of these two works is remarkably congruent. Both also appear before the destruction from the worlds contained within them, and both possess a strange indestructibility. Renoirs film was trashed by the best and also the left because of its pointless portrayal from the inefficient wealthy, simply to be recognised in later decades like a landmark of cinema.

Self-absorbed upper classes Satyajit Sun rays Kanchenjungha.

Kanchenjungha (1962) by Renoirs most gifted student, Satyajit Ray is known as following the mountain peak the films upper-class holidaymakers are advised of because they mill round the hill station of Darjeeling. They’re completely self-absorbed, as the Kanchenjungha provides an opening right into a world beyond that will not present itself. Are you able to believe this area was only a Lepcha village prior to the British switched it into the town? states the insufferable patriarch Mister Indranath for the finish from the film. Empire! It had been insubstantial by 1962, such as the mist. Its becoming intangible in Party Going too, but not really much. Its there, within the global allusions, the truly amazing railways.

Sun rays film is instantly. The expertise of studying Party Going approximates this a feeling of getting joined, through the sentence, a particular continuum and time period. The 4 or 5 hrs it requires to complete the novel can also be the time where the fog rolls in after which begins to lift. The spell lifts too, so we understand weve joined a global we cant possess. This conflation from the figures time using the readers suggests the authors preoccupation with and mastery of form, that is a different type of reality towards the one the novel is depicting the result of his abstract nonrepresentational method.

Party Going isnt a singular within the usual feeling of the word. It provides us a superbly comic account of their figures, but it’s also an assemblage of moments, as well as different types of awareness around the globe as well as of writing. Eco-friendly is certainly not otherwise mindful of his literary context: when Julia walks towards the station and registers the procession of headlights at nighttime, the narrator points to the novels antecedents: These lights will come like ideas in darkness, inside a stream There are the epic similes, signalling to all of us that Eco-friendly resided currently once the British authors inheritance went beyond European modernism. Here the narrator describes a couple in Maxs party browsing the station to place their host:

Like two lilies inside a pond, romantically some of it but infinitely remote, encircled, supported, floating inside it for a moment, but forecasted when you are different onto another plane, even though there am much water you can avoid seeing these flowers or were prone to miss them, was Miss Crevy and her youthful man, apparently peaceful, envied for his or her clearly easy conditions and Angela coveted on her looks by all individuals water beetles if you want, by individuals people standing round.

Eco-friendly makes them vivid, semi-ironical comparisons frequently. Here, the simile concerns the station masters look at crowds of smokers, every third person smoking it could have the ability to looked to Mr Roberts, ensconced in the office away above, like November sun striking through mist rising off water. As Max and Amabel talk on the telephone before he heads off and away to the station (he’s laying to her about his intentions), her observation that here i am like a few old washerwomen slanging away at one another sounds more striking of computer should, as though Amabel were unwittingly situating the storyline inside a world good reputation for the epic. Two pages on, as Alex proceeds with the fog inside a taxi, it appears the [s]treets he experienced were wet as if that fog 20 feet up had deposited water, and glare which lights slapped within the roadways recommended to him he may well be a Zulu, within the Zulus hell of ice, sitting down in the taxi in negligence Umslopogaas together with his axe, skin beating within the hole in the temple …. And Robert Hignam, because he presses with the crowd within the station, remembers:

When small he’d found patches of bamboo in the parents garden also it was his romance in those days to pressure through them they increased so thick you can avoid seeing what temple might lie in ruins just beyond. It had been now, these physiques so thick they may have been an outlet of tailors dummies, water heated. These were so stiff they may as well happen to be soft, inflamed bamboos in groves only while he had once pressed with these, moist and warm.

The shutters are soon likely to come lower within the station, keeping new commuters out Maxs group will probably be at the same time nervously and luxuriously ensconced within the station hotel. Regardless of the feeling of enclosure and jail time (we’re simply inside a condition of siege you realize), the narrative has ramified and been placed on the planet: Party Going is both a comedy along with a cosmology. It is not about being hemmed in or trapped, or about being British. It enacts a fluidity of perception where it is also about being Zulu, about people being when compared with branches, to household servants inside a princes service, where Amabel is famous not just in London however in northern England and Hyderabad, in which the a large number of Smiths, a large number of Alberts, countless Marys seen collected below from the hotel window appear woven tight just like any office carpet or, more stylishly made, the holy Kaaba soon to create out for Mecca. Party Going is partially art-house movie, having a unique soundtrack, and partially certainly one of individuals remarkable British texts, like Basil Buntings Briggflatts, by which locality, eccentricity as well as class flow interior and exterior other cultures. Its this flow that’s envisaged here with regards to the noise, the murmurs, the silences, the laughter and also the courtships that occur as the trains have stopped, to ensure that any time things might open within an unlikely way.

A brand new edition of Henry Vegetables Party Going is printed by NYRB Classics.

Find out more: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/18/henry-green-party-going-amit-chaudhuri

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