Re: an Easter egg
Malcolm Lawrence (malcolm@wolfenet.com)
Sat, 11 Apr 1998 23:40:07 -0700
Tim O'Connor wrote:
> The writer in question really confused me: She arrogantly told me that
> she'd never read Hemingway or Salinger or Fitzgerald or Faulkner or
> (Flannery) O'Connor or Harper Lee; she'd read virtually nothing published
> earlier than 1980. I suppose that works if one wants to be a blank slate.
> But I couldn't imagine being as blank as all that -- or as arrogant.
Reminds me of an acquaintance of mine who is a filmaholic. Movies are his life,
he even went bankrupt in his mid-20s trying to fund the one he was making
which, uh, went nowhere. He's still writing scripts though and literally sees
everything. At every year's film festival here in town he usually sees about 90
of them over a three week period. All types, both Hollywood and indies, from
whatever country they happen to be from, subtitles or no. He's a maniac. And I
remember speaking with him one day and he said "I don't know, I saw Citizen
Kane finally and, uh, I don't know what all the fuss is about." My jaw mentally
dropped open. I don't think I'll ever understand people who aren't able to take
a work of art from whatever time period its' from and empathize with it's
historical context and realize the significance of it to its own particular
time and place. That's always been the most fascinating thing about the ancient
Greeks to me. The more you investigate their work the more you realize that
they did it all. Better. Thousands of years ago. And what we were able to
salvage from the dustbin of history is only a scrap compared to everything else
that is lost forever. Amazing.