A few months ago I made a posting concerning Wim Wenders, Peter Handke and Walker Percy. In conversation/correspondence with a filmmaker chum I mentioned that of all Percy’s novels The Thanatos Syndrome would be the most translatable into the modality that is film since it works brilliantly and disturbingly as a thriller on a purely surface level. My…
She refers to a phenomenon of moviegoing which I have called certification. Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees…
Ignatius snorted at the movie credits. All of the people involved in the film were equally unacceptable. A set designer, in particular, had appalled him too many times in the past. The heroine was even more offensive than she had been in the circus musical. In this film she was a bright young secretary whom…
“Oh, my God!” Ignatius stared at what he saw. Once in high school someone had shown him a pornographic photograph, and he had collapsed against a water cooler, injuring his ear. This photograph was far superior. A nude woman was sitting on the edge of a desk next to a globe of the world. The…
“I no longer pretend to understand the world.” She is shaking her head yet still smiling her sweet menacing smile. “The world I knew has come crashing down around my ears. The things we hold dear are reviled and spat upon.” She nods toward Prytania Street. “It’s an interesting age you will live in—though I…
Unaware that he was being trailed, Ignatius pushed his cart against the traffic down St. Charles toward the Quarter. He had stayed up so late the night before working on his lecture for the kickoff rally that he hadn’t been able to move from his yellowed sheets until almost noon, and then it had only…
Dear Reader, Nature has sometimes made a fool; but a coxcomb is always of man’s own making. — Addison As I was wearing the soles of my desert boots down to a mere sliver of crepe rubber on the old flagstone banquettes of the French Quarter in my fevered attempt to wrest a living from…
“Irene!” Santa said angrily. “You all the time thinking of that boy, and with all the trouble he’s giving you. You better wake up, babe. If you had any sense, you woulda had that boy locked away at Charity Hospital a long time ago. They’d turn a hose on him. They’d stick a letrit socket…
Still on Toole, this just posted by Cory MacLauchlin. After the reading the actors talked about the colorful characters and the power of the dialogue. While most of them had heard of John Kennedy Toole, they had no idea how funny and heart-wrenching his life story was. a confederacy of duncesButterfly in the TypewriterCory MacLauchlinJohn Kennedy…
“Be sure to stress the importance of this historic conclave,” Ignatius said. “We shall want no fly-by-nights in this core group.” “There may be a few costumes. That’s what’s so wonderful about New Orleans. You can masquerade and Mardi Gras all year round if you want to. Really, sometimes the Quarter is like one big…
manwithoutqualities 