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This weekend I watched Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2. Ah, the eighties. Shoulder pads and big hair on the women, more hair on Bill Murray, and action-comedy films with more dialogue than explosions. ( Read more... )
Last night I finally finished Paul Elie's The Life You Save May Be Your Own, which I've been picking up and putting down for months. It's a remarkable group biography of four American Catholic writers, Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, and Walker Percy. Picking it up as I did, however, without more than a few faint impressions about the Catholic Worker movement and knowledge of the names Merton and O'Connor, I wasn't able to really appreciate the interweavings of the four lives. I was busy trying to keep track of what decade the overall narrative was in, and to assimilate the brute facts of each life. Though it's natural enough given the literary focus of the book, it frustrated me that the subjects' personal connections were so glossed over. I particularly wondered about Day's relationship with her daughter and the phantom grandchildren who appear only to carry her coffin. It would be good to read it again, after reading a regular biography of Day, and some Merton, and the O'Connor stories that Elie makes the most of in his analysis.
In Buffyverse fanfic news, I highly recommend Facing the Heart in Darkness by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
liz_marcs. It's a story about the New Council and Xander in Africa, told from the point of view of one of the holdovers from the old council, and it's terrific. It is also a work in progress, but it seems quite sure to be finished sooner rather than later.
Last night I finally finished Paul Elie's The Life You Save May Be Your Own, which I've been picking up and putting down for months. It's a remarkable group biography of four American Catholic writers, Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, and Walker Percy. Picking it up as I did, however, without more than a few faint impressions about the Catholic Worker movement and knowledge of the names Merton and O'Connor, I wasn't able to really appreciate the interweavings of the four lives. I was busy trying to keep track of what decade the overall narrative was in, and to assimilate the brute facts of each life. Though it's natural enough given the literary focus of the book, it frustrated me that the subjects' personal connections were so glossed over. I particularly wondered about Day's relationship with her daughter and the phantom grandchildren who appear only to carry her coffin. It would be good to read it again, after reading a regular biography of Day, and some Merton, and the O'Connor stories that Elie makes the most of in his analysis.
In Buffyverse fanfic news, I highly recommend Facing the Heart in Darkness by
liz_marcs. It's a story about the New Council and Xander in Africa, told from the point of view of one of the holdovers from the old council, and it's terrific. It is also a work in progress, but it seems quite sure to be finished sooner rather than later.