The Heart is a Lonely Graduate

BOOKS READ SINCE LAST POST: THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, NATIVE SON, HENDERSON THE RAIN KING
MOVIES WATCHED SINCE LAST POST: THE GRADUATE

And her eyes looked up straight into the blind sun while she counted something in her mind. And then this was the way. This was how it was. - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

The black, starlit sky seemed close to the earth. He strolled along the sidewalk, pausing once to knock an orange peel into the gutter with the side of his foot. At the far end of the next block, two men, small and motionless, stood arm in arm together. No one else could be seen. His place was the only store on all the street with an open door and lights inside. - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

The singing filled his ears; it was complete, self-contained, and it mocked his fear and loneliness, his deep yearning for a sense of wholeness. - Native Son

I said to myself, "I knew that this place was of old." Meaning I had sensed from the first that I might find things here which were of old, which I saw when I was still innocent and have longed for every since, for all my life-and without which i could not make it. - Henderson the Rain King

Although, when all is said and done, I have grown this portly front and the other strange distortions that attend all the larger individuals of a species...Oh, my body, my body! Why have we never really got together as friends? I have loaded it with my vices, like a raft, like a barge. Oh, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? - Henderson the Rain King

And sometimes a voice has counseled me, crazily, "Scorch the Earth. Why should a good man die? Let it be some blasted fool who is dumped in the grave." What wickedness! What perversity! Alas, what things go on within a person! - Henderson the Rain King


I've actually got another one of these in under a month. Only one book on the list read since the last post but it was a special one. If reading this list has done nothing else, it got me to read Lonely Hunter. I've struggled with what to write in these posts because I didn't really want to get into a synopsis and review type situation. There are plenty of those on the web and really, what does anyone care about my opinion of english lit classics? But reading this book did me the favor of giving me something to talk about, because it got me thinking about why i liked it so much. What about it resonated so deeply with me?
I quoted a passage from the book that really summed up what resonated with me. It has to do with the same reasons I love low budget horror movies. Specifically, it has to do with a sense of scale.

(So much time has passed since I started this post i felt the necessity to note it. It really had been less than a month since the last post when I started this one but that has long since slipped by. So, anyway, to continue...)

A sense of scale. A small storefront open and brightly lit at midnight. The light from inside cast a little dome of yellow warmth on the sidewalk outside. Holding back for a few feet the cold black empty sky. What qualities does a low budget horror movie have? Poor lighting. Threadbare sets. A small cast of piteous actors. Very few locations. The world they inhabit is very circumscribed. Small. Ordered in its on way. The rules that apply to the monster in whatever shape it takes are set. Defy them and you die. Understand them, obey them, use them, and you live. It is the opposite of the world we actually live in. There is no silver bullet solution to rear ending someone or screwing up at work. But in those movies that bullet, a stake, cross, love, whatever, can win the day. The movie starts here the first time you watch and will do so the next time you watch it, and the next. It ends where it does and what happens in between will happen the same way every time you push the tape into the player and press play. The dirt that is on the print will fuzz the movie in the same place. The tracking will roll and fuzz the picture for a few seconds every time as it adjusts. There are rarely police officers and certainly no military that comes to save you. You are stuck with the five or six people on the screen and they run through the plot with laughable earnestness. But, my god, how you love them.

For me they are spending weekends at my dads and getting to stay up all night if I could make it. Plugging one VCR tape after another into the machine while everyone was asleep and just letting those worlds wash into me like high tide. Then, as now, I always gravitate towards sequels. At that point all the rules, the formula, are firmly established. There is less money but a more solid base. Part two is often a direct to video distillation of the essential points of the first film. It's a memory of it, painted in broad clumsy strokes and I love them for that very reason. It is escapist, it's simple. It's nostalgic. I can always "find things here which were of old, which I saw when I was still innocent and have longed for every since, for all my life-and without which I could not make it."

And there you go, a blog about a book that has absolutely nothing to do with the book itself. A study in tangents. Until next time...