Liesandstatistics:

liesandstatistics:

kneehigh, I see your Oliver and raise you a Hodgman and Darnielle.

(by Lalitree)

 Well, this is the greatest picture I never knew existed.

This article crystallizes a lot of the problems I had with the Lost finale (and really, all of Season 6). A lot of people have defended the finale by saying it focused on the characters, not the mysteries, but even in that respect it was lackluster -- the writing in S6 turned nearly all the characters into thinnest cardboard. Only Ben and Fake Locke managed to overcome the tepid writing, and that's only because Michael Emerson and Terry O'Quinn are so good at what they do.

Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat, by L.M. Montgomery

L.M. Montgomery's one of my favorite writers, mostly because the Emily series is so dear to me. But I can recognize that a lot of her output was kind of same-y, and the Pat books (which came out late in her career) kind of solidified my impression that she has one plot she's comfortable working with, and all her novels are just that one plot trying on different hats.

The two books follow little Pat Gardiner, who hates change and loves her dear home Silver Bush more than anything in the world. I prefer Montgomery's stories about children over the stories where they've grown up, because the children tend to be funnier, more optimistic, and more full of promise than they do when they're adults. Since Montgomery's books tend to be a series of sketches or set-pieces strung together chronologically, her adult heroines are hewed-in by the scope of their lives. Their families sigh over their failure to get married; they turn down the advances of scores of tiresome men; they are separated from their dear childhood friends due to work or education; their relatives age and die; their ambitions become a struggle, and it's all generally a huge downer. That was my main problem with Mistress Pat: all Pat wanted to do was live at Silver Bush and have things never change, and so the book contains every meticulous detail of her never really leaving Silver Bush and...being upset when things inevitably change.

I read a review that suggests Mistress Pat is so pessimistic because Montgomery was going through personal stress and depression while caring for her sick husband. It also suggested that her workhorse plot was wearing a pretty fancy new hat: unlike previous heroines, Pat isn't ambitious to write or pursue a career, and she comes from a happy family rather than a broken home. The book deals with sibling rivalry and the problem of incorporating new people into the household after marriage, in a way that seems more frank and less idealized than her other books. And it's not badly written (although personally I'm tired of her nature descriptions; they show up like clockwork every 5 pages in ALL her books, and they practically smother The Blue Castle to death after its snappy and hilarious start). But I still found it to be kind of a slog, especially after the light humor of Pat of Silver Bush.

All that said, this really made me want to go back and read the rest of Montgomery's work in chronological order, to get a better sense of this plot's progression. I've already plowed through Anne of Green Gables, and was pleased it held up in memory as well as it did.

rubadub:

Oh No, The Radio.

Owlsey

I just saw on Last Plane to Jakarta that Will Owsley died yesterday, apparently suicide. I didn't know he was a part of Amy Grant's touring band or that he was a well-regarded Nashville musician, but I loved the catchy power-pop album he put out circa 2000. "Oh No The Radio" was the bumper music for an L.A. radio show and I thought the opening guitar riff was the greatest thing, so I tracked it back to his self-titled album and put it on the minidisc I reserved for only the awesomest of songs. When my family drove up to Oregon one summer, I played this for them and waited with giddy expectancy to hear how much they loved it. But they didn't remark on it one way or the other and I was bitter about it from Redding to Grants Pass.

Knowing so little about him, the name "Owsley" has always conjured up this vague sense-memory of summer and happiness and the opening riff to this song. To find out that he was hurting like this is heartbreaking.

I'm reading The Raymond Chandler Papers and man is this guy amazing. I love Raymond Chandler so much. He's brusque, holds strong opinions, reads everything critically, and doesn't apologize for or deprecate his own critical standards. He admits to being a hard person to like, and he says all sorts of things I wouldn't accept in current living authors: statements starting with "why do all women writers...", or meditations on "the homosexualist" and how heterosexuals and homosexuals can never understand what's going on in the other's head. But his positions never seem cruel or essentialist; you get the impression that a good, cleanly argued debate with evidence might change his mind. And in the meantime his style is still sharp and lively, sixty years after its heyday.

There's probably a reason all my favorite authors are dead; I can buff away all their flaws with rationalization until they shine!

The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler

After reading his biography, I wanted to go back and re-read all of Chandler's books chronologically, too. So that makes two authors I'm trying to read in their entirety, in order, at the same time. Fortunately I've allotted many, many hours to avoiding writing this summer, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Bad things about this book: Marlowe is a real jerk about gay people; the book (famously) fails to explain who killed the chauffeur; and it took me until this, my third or fourth reading, to really get a handle on the bewildering web of cause and effect that tie all these murders together. Chandler's biography points out that Chandler really couldn't care less about plot, and he's written stories where it's not even clear what physical actions are actually taking place. But that's okay, because the best thing about this book is that it's written more awesomely than anything ever, except maybe later Chandler novels.