Sunday Sundries, 208

1. AOTW: This is a group award to all of you who sit in front of me in the left-turn lane checking out your phones (or texting), not noticing that the left arrow has come on--and does anything have a more evanescent life than a left-turn arrow? This week, one AOTW (despite my gentlemanly honking behind him/her [couldn't tell]), sat through the entire arrow's brief life, not even turning himself/herself. Is there a more evident case of justifiable homicide, Your Honor?

2. Last night, Joyce and I drove over to Kent to see the new Robin Hood film, starring as the awesome archer Taron Egerton (he of The Kingsmen). I simply must see every Robin Hood movie; I've been an addict since the late 1940s when I was but a Wee One. I loved the story so much that way back in the spring of 1969 (at the end of my third year of teaching) I wrote with some kids and directed a play for seventh and eighth graders--The Adventures of Robin Hood; or, The Man with the Green Robber Band. (Why it didn't immediately go to Broadway and the West End and to Hollywood I cannot fathom.)

Anyway ... last night's film. It had a bit of a Guy-Ritchie look about it (think: Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law as, respectively, Holmes and Watson). This film was more like Robin Hood's origin story--he's back from the Crusades, discovering that the Sheriff of Nottingham has become enormously corrupt--as has the church--as has just about everyone else in power. It's not until the very end that the move to Sherwood Forest commences.

Egerton was okay as R. Hood, but there were surprises: Friar Tuck was not fat; Little John (Jamie Foxx) was not huge. Oh well. And Maid Marian was definitely a contemporary (ours) woman.

Far too much action for me--arrows, swords, explosions, panicky horses,etc. Not enough subtlety. But subtlety is an element missing from most popular films these days--although I'm not sure how popular this one is: There were only about 15 people or so in the audience.

Glad I saw it--makes me want to go read Howard Pyle again ...

(Link to film trailer.)

3. A busy reading week--I finished three books.

     - The first was one I've been picking away at in the evening in bed--Wilkie Collins' 1872 novel, Poor Miss Finch. (Some of you know that I'm reading my way through all of Collins' novels--getting close to the end ... sigh.)

Miss Finch is a young woman, the daughter of a pompous preacher and an overwhelmed, cluttered mother; she (Miss Finch) is blind and lives with her family in a small, remote, rural parish. She has an aide, Miss Protolungo (she's French), who narrates almost all of the novel, which is the story of Miss Finch's love affair (her first) with a new resident in the area, Oscar Dubourg. She falls for him; he, for her.

Then ... complications. Oscar's twin, Nugent, shows up, and he is immediately smitten by Miss Finch, as well. Oscar has an illness; his medication permanently alters his skin to a dark bluish color. He can't bring himself to tell Lucilla (Miss Finch). Lucilla decides to have eye surgery to restore her sight. What will happen when she can see Oscar?

And so .. a novel of hope, of betrayal, of foolishness, of forgiveness.

Not Collins' best--but I had so much fun reading it, trying to guess what would happen next ...  And now, it's on to his next novel, The Law and the Lady (1875).

     - I also finished Jonathan Lethem's 2018 novel, The Feral Detective. I admire and enjoy Lethem's work a lot (usually); this one, I fear, is not up to his best--but who among us gets better and better and better? (Not I!)

Anyway, it's the complex tale of a young woman, Arabella, the missing daughter of a friend. Our main character (and narrator), Phoebe, enlists the efforts of an eccentric P.I. named Charles Heist (they end up in the sack, by the way) to help her find Arabella. (We're in the Los Angeles area, by the way.)

Well, the story veers weird. They end up out in the desert, where they encounter some runaways/castaways that call themselves The Bears (guys) and The Rabbits (women).

Don't want to give away much more--but I'll just say this was one weird ride with one weird set of characters.

Trump fans will not enjoy some of the things that are said, some of the things that happen.

     - The third was a fairly brief group of essays by Jonathan Franzen--The End of the End of the Earth (2018), a motley collection that includes an essay on 9/11. Many of the pieces deal with Franzen's other-than-writing obsession: birding. He's been all over the world, and here we read about some of those trips, including the title essay that deals with a trip to Antarctica. He says in another piece (commenting about the tenuous status of all kinds of bird species): "They indicate the health of ... our ethical values" (38).

Franzen is a favorite--got to meet him once at an event at the Cleveland Public Library--and I've read all of his books. Although he is a good essayist, he is a powerful novelist, so I read/finished this book mostly out of a general affection for his work rather than out of a compelling interest in most of the pieces.

4. We're finally nearing the end of the Netflix series The Bodyguard. Tense, tense, tense, and I hope I can be adult enough tonight and finish the last 45 min or so! (I wouldn't bet on it, if I were you.)

5. Final Word--a word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers ...

     - Oxford English Dictionary--a rare, obsolete word--but it's time for a comeback!

quagswagging, n.   The action of shaking to and fro.

Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: quag v.1, swag v., -ing suffix1.

Obsolete. rare

1653   T. Urquhart tr. Rabelais 2nd Bk. Wks. xi. 78   Advised her not to put her selfe into the hazard of quagswagging in the Lee.