Happy Tuesday, readers. Well, the Olympics are over - which Julia is thankful for - and it was a truly stunning Summer Games, with magnificent individual and team performances. For the fifth Summer Olympics in a row, the U.S. won the most medals.
Abby Wambach, Kevin Durant, Michael Phelps, Missy Franklin, May-Treanor, the women's gymnastic team, Serena Williams... oh, my! So much excitement. And the handball - thrilling as hell.
Speaking of sports... It's impossible for sports radio, ESPN and its legions of analysts, to hype up the football season any more than it is doing right now. Since when did fans become to interested on every single thing that is going on in every training camp? Who the hell cares? Why are so many preseason games televised?
Dwight Howard. Was there every any doubt that he would end up in L.A.? Nash, Kobe, Metta, Gasol, and Howard as your starting five? Chris Duhon, Antawn Jamison, Jordan Hill, Steve Blake, Darius Johnson-Odom, and Robert Sacre coming off your bench? Can you say TITLE?
In other news... What news? Julia is getting ready for school to rev up, Gabriel is back in the swing of things at his new school, and I am at home, applying to jobs I inevitably won't get! Oh, to be out of this town. I'm trying to brush up on my Italian, in preparation for next year's trip abroad, and Julia is rifling the job ads for next fall; we need something to look forward to.
Born today:
John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
Galsworthy is best known for writing The Forsyte Saga, a set of three novels and two interludes that was late combined into one grand, cohesive collection (and made into an acclaimed BBC miniseries in 1967); the story follows an upper-middle-class British family (not unlike Galsworthy's own) and its dealings with money over the generations.
Galsworthy, educated at Oxford, was encouraged by Joseph Conrad to forgo his career at law and become a writer, which he did at the age of 28. He was always financially secure. He was too old to fight in the first World War, but he did make contributions to the war: he signed over his home to be used as a rest home for wounded British soldiers; he worked at a French hospital for disabled soldiers; he wrote pro-British magazine articles for publications such as The New York Times.
Galsworthy's books and plays were well-received, and he was regarded as a skilled essayer of society and the issues that plague it. In 1921, he and Catherine Dawson Scott founded PEN - an international organization of writers (its first members included Conrad, H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw) a non-government human rights organization that promotes worldwide expression through writing; PEN still gives out multiple yearly awards. Galsworthy won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932, but died the next year from a brain tumor.
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Notes:
- I might have went to the Ross Macdonald well once too often. His 1969 Archer outing The Goodbye Look (1969) was enjoyable but ultimately way too complicated.
- I think James Lee Burke is a magnificent writer - but a verbose, windy (can we use today's word 'bloviate' here?), often pretentious one. He describes southern Louisiana and its landscape as well as anyone in the history of the world, but The Glass Rainbow (2009), which has a lot of exciting elements, finds him at his worst - going on and on and on, stretching his story way beyond its capacity, considering the one-dimensional villains don't exactly necessitate amplitude.
- The 2012 film Intruders, which nevertheless features a solid performance by one of my favorite actors, Clive Owen, is a terrible film, miserable to look at, bankrupt of ideas, terribly shot and scripted, and without one half-decent scare.
- Julia and I are just starting to get into TNT's The Closer, which is fitting since the series is ending (and the spin-off, Major Crimes, which propels supporting player Mary McDonnell, into the lead role, is getting underway). I used to watch the series years ago, and it's a nice reminder of how good the show is.
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Today' entry in the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time? How about...
Matt Damon
as Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
I've commented before on this blog about how Damon is, in appearance, manner, and soul, the character Patricia Highsmith charted, with unsentimental, often curious glee, throughout five novels. Why wasn't this performance awarded with an Oscar nomination? Damon is everything you want in the role - shy, calculating, fey, smart, wimpy, oddly sexy, understated, and, finally, very creepy. You can see why people - including Jude Law's Dickie and Philip Seymour Hoffman's Freddie - overlook him, but Damon doesn't play Tom Ripley as a wallflower; we can see his confidence and stealthiness developing scene by scene. We trust him and at the same time we don't. He's the boy next door with a couple of dead bodies out in the garage. He didn't plan for them to be there. They just are, and that's that. No reason not to go about his day.
Images:
http://www.boot.com/JohnGalsworthy.jpg
http://re-cyclethemovie.com/img/9984088_big.jpg
Information:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/forsyte/ei_galsworthy.html
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