I have been having good luck with fiction lately. Valis was really outstanding, and took a bizarre turn somewhere in the middle that I did not expect; that made me happy. Then I read A Scanner Darkly because on the Amazon page for Valis everyone was saying that it was his best work. So I was expecting a lot from it. Mostly it lived up, but at times it had a sort of nauseating effect that I did not enjoy but also recognize as intentional. The biggest problem with it was that it did the same thing that all of Dick's books that I have read (except for Valis) do, which is that it appeared to end about three times before the actual ending. He seemed to have a real problem with endings. There is always one wonderful chapter near the end that would be the perfect closing, and then he insists on including three or four more chapters after that. It gets boring.
After that I read The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. I found it delightful. I am not sure that it was as profound as all the blurbs on the cover made it out to be. But it was deeply enjoyable to read. I am going to add it to my list of independent reading books for my 10th graders (10th grade English is World Literature). I will say that it is the first Indian book I have read that is not excessively lyrical. It is an especially nice antidote to a book like The God of Small Things.
Now I am reading William Gibson's book Pattern Recognition. I am loving this book enormously for several reasons. I need to start by confessing that I did not really love Neuromancer, try as I did. I didn't like any of the characters, and it was hard to stay interested in it. What I did like about it was that it was well-written and charming and funny. This book has all of that, but also has characters who I like and a plot that keeps my interest. The best part is that it has a female main character who is the exact antithesis of every science fiction heroine ever. I almost did not buy this book when I realized that the main character was female, that is how much I hate science fiction females. But this main character is alarmingly and disarmingly human, and feminine. She is a person, not a badass doing-things-that-men-do and looking-sexy-while-doing-them chick. She has flaws and vulnerabilities while still being independent and not hyper-sexualized.
The other thing that I like about it is that it was written in 2003 and, for all intents and purposes, takes place in 2003 or shortly thereafter, but it is written through this sci-fi lens that makes all this very real technology seem very futuristic. With one notable exception, everything the characters do and work with exists right now.Also, Will and I saw Moon and it was absolutely wonderful. I don't really know how to 
explain this movie without giving too much away. We didn't know very much about it before we went and saw it; we had read a very minimal review of it which compared it to Philip K. Dick's work and that's why we decided to see it; I can say that the comparison is definitely apt, in the best possible way. There is essentially only one character in the movie, played by Sam Rockwell, and I am not even sure if I have ever seen Sam Rockwell in any movies before, but he does a really terrific job in this one. The story unfolds in a way that gives the audience a lot of credit and doesn't spoon-feed them at all, and it keeps a very steady, tense (but not edge-of-your-seat) tone throughout. It is a very smooth ride. I recommend it.
So in addition to reading books, I am also watching a lot of movies. Some of them are not worth saying anything about, even though I've enjoyed them. But there are a couple that I will comment on.
I know that The Last King of Scotland came out and won academy awards and everything several years ago, so this is old news. However, I really, really loved this movie. Partly because I really love Forest Whitaker and most things that he does. Did he win best actor for this movie? He should have.
What I did not realize about this movie, though, was that it is actually about a Scottish guy, played by James McAvoy, and not really about Forest Whitaker's character of Idi Amin. Not only that, but I did not realize that McAvoy's character is actually fictional, which creates a very weird dynamic, I think, for the viewer. If the movie relies on McAvoy's character as a vehicle for humanizing Amin, which I think it sort of does, then doesn't the fact that this is a made-up character kind of negate the purpose of the story? Maybe the point of the movie wasn't to humanize Amin, but to showcase his brutality, revealing the naivety of someone like McAvoy's character who would idolize him only out of a white/European fascination with Africa.
So, I'm conflicted about what I was supposed to take away from this movie. A third option is that the point of the movie was to make me feel conflicted. Regardless, I was very taken with it. I have a hard time sitting and watching a movie in one sitting without getting bored. I did not have this problem with The Last King of Scotland, and I think that says something about the caliber of the film.
A movie I did not make it through without getting bored, but which I feel warrants writing about anyway, was Bronson. I do not know if this movie was good or not. I am pretty sure it was not "great." I think it was somewhat clear what the filmmakers were trying to do, and also that they did not accomplish this 100%. The movie is about a sociopath who becomes "England's Most Famous Prisoner" because of his unrelenting violence to himself, other prisoners, and authorities; his self-proclaimed goal is to be famous, and he makes sure that he stays in prison so that he can maintain his fame. The thing about the movie is that it uses these Kubrick-ish, surreal storytelling devices, but it isn't really clear to what end. It sort of starts to make sense when the character starts drawing pictures and making other art that the surrealism comes from his own perception of the world around him. And that his violence is an extension of that.
Because I am reading that Foucault book, this movie was interesting to me because of the idea of the prison as a punishment inflicted on the soul. My interpretation of it, based on that, was that if a person condemned to public torture can escape punishment to the body by mutilating his own body first (Oroonoko), then a person condemned to imprisonment can escape punishment to the soul by manufacturing his own depravity (Bronson), making himself soulless.
I'm having trouble thinking of other movies I've watched recently that were interesting to me. These are the two that stand out. We also watched The Cell, which I loved because of the way it looked, but which there really isn't much to say about. Later this week we are going to go see this new movie called Moon, which I am really excited about and will write about when we see it.
The next post I write will probably be about my cats.
Now I am reading William Gibson's book Pattern Recognition. I am loving this book enormously for several reasons. I need to start by confessing that I did not really love Neuromancer, try as I did. I didn't like any of the characters, and it was hard to stay interested in it. What I did like about it was that it was well-written and charming and funny. This book has all of that, but also has characters who I like and a plot that keeps my interest. 
explain this movie without giving too much away. We didn't know very much about it before we went and saw it; we had read a very minimal review of it which compared it to Philip K. Dick's work and that's why we decided to see it; I can say that the comparison is definitely apt, in the best possible way. There is essentially only one character in the movie, played by Sam Rockwell, and I am not even sure if I have ever seen Sam Rockwell in any movies before, but he does a really terrific job in this one. The story unfolds in a way that gives the audience a lot of credit and doesn't spoon-feed them at all, and it keeps a very steady, tense (but not edge-of-your-seat) tone throughout. It is a very smooth ride. I recommend it.
