I'm back from my teaching gig in Nebraska, which included a six hour, midnight-to-dawn, 100 mph drive across Colorado and Nebraska with my new BF and fellow instructor Harley Jane Kozak. (Think Planes, Tranes, Automobiles.) I'm in the process of getting myself dug out but thought you might be interested to check out the trailer for the adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. No less an authority than Nikki Finke has designated it a hot trailer.
(Although, to be entirely fair, I did not love the novel the way most others seemed to. It felt very much like an elaborate set up for, what was for me, at least, a not terribly unexpected twist. Still, James Wood loved it, though I agreed with him as far as the "mundanely told, so excruciatingly ordinary in transit" side of things went.)
More cogent literary musings are in all of our futures. But I know you've heard that before. Faith, people. Faith.
I didn't particularly like it either, although it did have a grim fascination that pulled me along, waiting to see what poor Kathy and her Hailsham classmates would have plucked from their young bodies. A genre leap to creepy thrillerdom for Ishiguro, whose Remains of the Day remains, because of its English butler, among the saddest, most human of novels. His, a deeper, more permanent wound near the end of the story than those cuts of body parts.
Posted by: Ward | June 16, 2010 at 03:08 PM
Tranes?
Posted by: Paul Lamb | June 16, 2010 at 03:19 PM
Wow, that's pretty funny. Am a HUGE Coltrane fan, was listening to Naima while typing. Thus "Tranes" ... Sorta tempted to leave it as is.
Posted by: TEV | June 16, 2010 at 03:39 PM
Love Harley Jane. One of the best humans ever.
Posted by: tod goldberg | June 17, 2010 at 12:15 AM
I agree completely about the novel. It was well told, but also very obvious. A problem when lit writers dip into genre. THey often don't know they're ploughing no new ground.
Oh, and welcome back. How did the teaching go?
Posted by: Niall | June 17, 2010 at 10:40 AM
OK. For once and for all, as the man from Eltingville would say, I demand to know: is Harley Jane any kin to Roman Kozak, the Billboard staffer who wrote a book about CBGB and died young in '88? (She's not mentioned in his NY Times obit, but is she a cousin or somethin'?)
Posted by: Lawrence Tate | June 18, 2010 at 08:16 AM
Saramago died.
Posted by: esaúl | June 18, 2010 at 12:18 PM
^ What?
Posted by: Drew | June 18, 2010 at 07:00 PM
Saramago, despite his age, wrote with amazing energy and passion, an inspiration for those of us still trying.
Posted by: Ward | June 20, 2010 at 12:35 PM