let me tell you about my day – i don’t actually say this but I will tell – it’s nice to have someone to tell this to – i like coming home and there’s someone waiting and i tell him about my day – it’s a monologue of course – i tend to do that with conversations – i have so much to say – i go into minute detail – it’s unnecessary but he listens – patiently – you though i’ll tell you about my yesterday – it was a sunday (more…)

American Beauty is, as you might expect from the title, a beautiful film, full of beautiful imagery, the most prominent of which is the image of a paper bag blowing around in the wind. That this should be the most memorable of the film’s images is unsurprising, as it was just such a discarded bag blowing around the plaza of the World Trade Center that was that inspired writer Alan Ball to create the script for the film. (more…)

(this is a follow-on from my explanation of modernism)

Thinking about Modernism a little more, I’ve decided that a big part of the reason I like it is that it seems to extend beyond the story to encompass the whole human experience, rather than just how the characters feel during the events of the book.Now, with a lot of books, and films, this is something that’s always bothered me: books and films always have an ending. Usually they end with the hero saving the world and/or getting the girl. Sometimes they end with a life-changing revelation or an optimistic message for the future, but they do all end. Which is, of course, in sharp contrast to life. Life has only one ending. Rarely, of course, a film will end with the death of a main character, which is generally very climactic and poignant, but this is still in contrast with life: in life when people die they just die, and everything goes on as normal around them. (more…)

I hardly consider myself an expert on the movement, but I am certainly a fan, if only for the wonderful writing of Virginia Woolf. So what is modernism?

Well, to put it into a historical context, it was a movement in literature and the other arts, beginning just before the turn of the twentieth century and lasting until the start of the second world war. It came after the literature of the Victorian age, which generally featured idealised versions of life in which the good people were good, worked hard and got their reward at the end, and the bad people were bad, and got their just-desserts. (more…)