Thursday 10 June 2010

In which I write about books that turned into Ralph Fiennes movies.

So yeah, I am currently reading (in bits and pieces when I have, like, five minutes to myself WHICH IS NOT OFTEN) The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, because, I don't know, I want my books to drive me to suicide or something. I mean, seriously, this thing is kicking my ass. Like this, for example:
'It's in the boy's capacity,' Mr Parkis said with pride, 'and nobody can resist Lance.'

'He's called Lance, is he?'

'After Sir Lancelot, sir. Of the Round Table.'

'I'm surprised. That was a rather unpleasant episode, surely.'

'He found the Holy Grail,' Mr Parkis said.

'That was Galahad. Lancelot was found in bed with Guinevere.' Why do we have the desire to tease the innocent? Is it envy? Mr Parkis said sadly, looking across at his boy as though he had betrayed him, 'I hadn't heard.'
Naturally (I think?) this reminds me immediately of The English Patient, which we all know is the most depressing movie (though curiously, not book) of all time.

Where was I going with this? The fucking oil leak is depressing the hell out of me.

2 comments:

Ashley said...

Graham Greene is one depressing motherfucker. Brighton Rock had me about ready to retire into my Hobbit hole and never come out.

Also, I don't like The English Patient (movie, not book), even though I love Ralph Fiennes, and even though it has Naveen Andrews in it. And I don't remember hating the book, even though it's been like seven years since I read it.

Ms Elanious said...

There's an oil leak?? Huh. That's odd. You'd never know it to talk to all my red-county-in-a-blue-state neighbors. They'll tell you the whole thing's really a mostly fictitious tempest in a teapot, but that the Obama administration is surely deficient in some regard to it all the same. Shall I send them to you forthwith? I'm ready to be done with them. Also, they're so ridiculously impossible that just watching/listening to them might be entertaining enough that you forget to be depressed.