superman, a wedding, and mystery stories

1. As you may have heard, Superman just turned 75. I was never a huge Superman fan, but he and I do have some history.

2. I’ve just been re-watching the Robert Altman film A Wedding, which I hadn’t seen in a decade or two. It’s even better than I thought. I remembered how funny it was (it’s one of Altman’s funniest films), but I didn’t remember the number of different levels it had.

On the surface, it’s the story of the wedding of Dino Corelli and Muffin Brenner. Their families are large, dysfunctional, well-off, and incompatible.  Preparations have been made at the reception for hundreds of guests, only one of whom shows up. There are pratfalls, alcohol, various drugs, attempts at infidelity, bad behavior, a tornado, many, many misunderstandings, and one death. There are 48 characters, all in the same place for the same event, and it can be said that they have 48 different experiences.

It’s interesting seeing it now, after having seen Gosford Park, because the films are more similar than I would have thought. Both are very concerned about how class distinctions (and many other things) can be revealed when large groups of people come together.

It is pretty clear that Altman’s rather dim view of weddings had nothing to do with his opinion of romance, by the way. He’s obviously in favor of romance (sex, too) . But, as in Gosford Park, marriage is a very complex social phenomenon and romance, if present at all, is only one component.

It’s also obvious that this is one of the movies I was talking about when I said I’d learned a few things about writing parties from Altman’s films.

3. As I’ve said before, the mystery stories are nearly done, and I have been fairly sure what I was going to do next (more or less), but I’ve been a bit stumped by voice.

My default is to use first person narration by Marshall (the intrepid assistant of the great detective — her “Watson,” as it were), but, as in Stevie One, some stories can’t be told from Marshall’s point of view.

I think I have the solution. It came to me yesterday. It doesn’t answer all of the questions, but probably enough to start.

Because going through an entire novel and changing it from first person to third person, or vice versa, is really no fun.