ello, pop, guardians, more mike and sharon

Here’s a few things.

1. I’ve joined Ello. Not much to report so far. I’m alternately pleased and frustrated by the fact that it seems designed to be as different from Facebook as possible. I Iike the intent, but I really have no idea how anything works. Either I’ll figure it out or I’ll quit, and I’m not taking any bets on which.

 
2. This being the first Thanksgiving without my mother, I’ve been thinking about my parents, and something occurred to me about my father.

To some other members of my generation, my parents, and especially my father, represented intelligence and sophistication. They lived in New York City, went to jazz clubs and chamber music concerts, read widely (both fiction and news), went to foreign movies, and so on.

When I was on vacation, I stayed with a friend who knew my parents when he and I were kids, and he remembered my father as rather rough-hewn, blunt of speech, a practical businessman who’d never been to college.

And both of those things were true. I guess that’s another lesson for writers — people have many different sides, and they don’t show the same things to everybody they meet (and sometimes people just see different things, for various reasons).

 
3. I just watched Guardians of the Galaxy again. The first time I was still somewhat in shock from having just seen Lucy, so now I think I’ve got a clearer picture. Guardians was generally praised for its humor and irreverence, and it definitely has those elements, but the snark is just a thin outer coating for a very gooey center.

The intergalactic badasses on this team bond almost immediately, talking about friendship and getting drunk so they can reveal all their griefs and insecurities. It was one thing when Gimli and Legolas realized they were friends after two and a half endlessly long Lord of the Rings movies, but the Guardians seem to get to that stage before the opening credits are over.

(By the way, it’s particularly silly to feel you have to speed through these sorts of character arcs when you know you’re going to get sequels!)

That being said, Gamora is one who disappoints the most. It’s several big steps down from her initial (and wonderful) rejection of Quill and his “pelvic sorcery” to her final, cooing acknowledgement of him as her “Star-Lord.” James T. Kirk would have cringed at that one.

I still like the movie, but I think it is a bit of a problem when you end up liking the CGI characters more than the ones played by human actors.

 
4. I saw a documentary where Norman Mailer said he always felt good about his novel Tough Guys Don’t Dance, mostly because it had been so quick and easy to write. He said it was like a woman who had had 12 kids, but was always especially fond of the last one, because the delivery had been so easy.

I’m sort of feeling that way about my current story. It’s funny how that goes. Stevie One came together pretty smoothly. One Night at the Quarter was a lot of work. I think you can sort of tell the difference. Which isn’t to say that one is better than the other — Inherent Vice and Mason & Dixon are both great books — but as a writer I think you do feel a special fondness for the ones which were smoother going.

Part Six is posted, by the way.

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