Two or Three Things I Know About Her, a film by Jean-Luc Godard

Decided to post about this film on here. I should post more films, because it would be nice to catalogue and think on them more.

I was really in the mood for taking art things for what they are when I saw this, so despite the fact that it was mainly made up of musings on reality that can often be annoying because they can differ so much from one's own, I took them as they were and tried to experience them, and this ended up being awesome. Eye opening to ways of negotiating reality. I anchored my thoughts while watching to an idea I've been focusing on a lot because it seems to end up being a very fruitful approach to things despite its seeming limitations - how does one live in the modern world? In this vein, I imagine that the protagonist is a lot like the protagonist of The Book of Daniel - struggling and uncertain in the modern world - except that she is French instead of American (and my film watching has taught me that this is a very significant difference in approach to life, the French being a lot more into philosophising at length and living kind of more poetically) and that she hasn't latched on to the external obviously and self consciously fallacious outlet that the American male has.

It was all the greatest things about film to me - the way it just mused along in life, creating beauty and meaning by cutting up words with images in the way of poetry, so that it was full and interesting and Important. Plus I could have sympathy with the protagonist. Plus it was occasionally endearingly obvious, as things often fall to - like it ended with words not obviously related to a zoom out from some modern consumer goods laid out on a lawn. One of my favourite sort of films.

The Book of Daniel, by EL Doctorow

I ended up enjoying it very much in a way I didn't think I would. Because I wouldn't call it a masterpiece as some have apparently called it - with it's occasionally clunky language unsure if it belongs to the old writing's rococo style or the direction writing was moving more and more towards at the time (1970s USA; admittedly, Doctorow was educated in the past style but was trying to do the new, and a lot of people end up being sometimes awkwardly caught between the two, even today - DFW's answer to this is to embrace both as well as the awkwardness that comes with it, although if he gets it right could be debatable; plus, on the other hand, it tends to make for maybe even more annoying writing if you try to make everything to submit to one or the other as though they are completely distinct, like I was taught often in my writing course) and its maybe quite pedestrian ideas about the complex social and political issues it dealt with (the modern world, twentieth century USA, McCarthyism - although I suppose this is forgivable because he's a fiction writer, a casual observer, not an expert, and it's not like he didn't make an effort, or differed too much from some experts, plus I'm not sure to what extent this justifies anything [probably only to the extent that they make an effort that's not a complete fail]. In spite of everything, however, I decided from the beginning to take it for what it was and make what I could from it because I don't want to be a total hater - and this ended up being really rewarding, as it always tends to. It helped in my quest to bring myself in to the world and feel more at home in it - stories, knowledge, history seem to be always invaluable in this. It taught me more about enjoying writing that may not be my ideal style and how if you let yourself really feel the writing, really internalise what it's trying to get at, it ends up being surprisingly adequate to experience. I even let myself be taken in by its musings on the things of the modern world, such as the sort of weird culture that's embodied in Disneyland - the sort of things I've read about many times and decided to get over - and really think about it and get something from it.

So the conclusion is that lots of things are pretty awesome if you let them be, and thinking and learning is fun.

The Old Devils, by Kingsley Amis

I can't believe this novel won the supposedly important Booker Prize. Its style was the sort of realism that tries to be transparent words to draw attention to the story but which is always so shitty because it throws vitality of language out the window. Also, the characters were mostly deplorable. Also, there was a lot of telling instead of showing, because, as with lots of books like it, it has points - the sorts of observations about women or about men or about how people handle certain situations and why they do as they do - it wants to make of the sort that, if they're going to be pushed out there, can only be said and always sound stupid when said except to the people who agree with them, and so they make the non agreers incredulous and angry. Etc.

But I didn't resist it, tried to get why a book like this could win a damn prize, and came to the conclusion that somehow there is this hidden magic behind the words if you manage to ignore them that sucks you in a makes you feel something for people, even though when you think about it you don't actually feel anything for these people, it tricks you into feeling and half way wins you over, at least makes you feel like maybe you've experienced something of life, in a way.

Ulysses, James Joyce

I hardly got into it because I'm so damn slow and decided to sacrifice optimal reading experience for practicing speed, so I can't have a proper opinion on it. However, I think that basically it's really good and somewhat mindblowing - in its in-depth structure and goodness at the writings - except for its focus on the grotesquaries of day to day life, which were important as a thing to come out into the light once upon a time but now have been written and written so that there's nothing grand about revealing them in literature. Also other themes that have since been done to death - in fact, it reminded me very much of lots of things I don't really like that have come after, only its better and also more justifiable because it was In the Beginning. However, it also reminded me a very lot of DFW in different ways to the stupid ones. I can only assume that he loved the book and had read it many times and modeled his work on it to quite a degree - because of funny things like exhaustive detail of the objects in one draw, words not often used normally but noticeably used by Joyce and DFW like supine and akimbo, and a voice that perfectly blends a distant formal viewing of the world with the voice of the character in a way that borders on annoying sometimes but is still fun to read but is still difficult but is awesome.
I would like to read it again, but I will as always stop myself and move on to something else, which is possibly a silly idea.