Coming up with a title for any sort of work presents an opportunity for great creative mischief. A few days before the UK and its choice filled the news, wall-to-wall, I had been thinking of a British gift for wry understatement. My classic example is Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, "The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club." Unpleasantness, indeed. Murder.
A theme of titles also recalls another British source, this concerning a long-term lack of clarity, for The Who song is called "Baba O'Riley" and not "Teenage Wasteland."
Another favorite, since it arrived on the scene, is "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." On the slight chance you've never seen it, here is the trailer.
It is summer, time for reading, once a time for going to the movies where the air conditioning was free. Perhaps it is still a time for that. All of which means titles. Titles, titles and more titles. "To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street" or "Nancy's Mysterious Letter" or "Big Wednesday." For years I read southern writers during the summer, heat always being a component of southern fiction. Eudora Welty's "Delta Wedding," Carson McCullers' "The Member of the Wedding" and other works, Truman Capote's "Other Voices, Other Rooms," Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood." Whether it is true or not, I remember summer as the time of seeing westerns and the occasional epic (for the era), like "Giant."
Making lists of things to read, things to watch is a perfectly valid summer activity. So, too, is writing a list of gifts to make for Christmas and then starting to make them. But, she whined, there is so much time and so many other things to do. In December, just remember using that as your excuse. Meanwhile, I'll be over here trying to find a version of "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers." And taking a nap.
4 comments:
Oh, yes, Marylinn---reading Carson McCullers out in the hammock (when there still were beautiful wine-glass elms in New England,
and Josephine Tey and Erle Stanley Gardner, Anya Seton, Taylor Caldwell,
Irving M. Stone--all those long lovely historical novels and mysteries--yes, Eudora Welty--oh, those
lovely sleepy summer afternoons before we were quite grown, and books opened
innumerable worlds--thank you for reminding me. xoxo
Melissa - When summer come a'calling. xo
I haven't seen "Dr. Strangelove" in an age, but it used to be among my very favorite top ten movies. Perhaps that's what I will do this summer, along with the usual reading. Re-watch my top ten movies. Here they are: The English Patient, 8 1/2, La Strada, Wings of Desire, The Seventh Seal, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Harold and Maude, The Graduate, Philadelphia Story, Days of Heaven. And I just started reading Trollope -- nice, long and somewhat tedious but fantastically so reading.
Elizabeth - A divine plan, re-watching favorite movies. Giulietta Masina's face in LA STRADA, oh. Oh. I have never read Trollope. So many worlds to explore. DR. STRANGELOVE never wears thin, nor does any favorite. Enjoy. xo
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