Oh, joy. I don't think I'd known that someone did a claymation of William Burrough's A Junky's Christmas. Someone recommended it to me, an online kew-el kid. William Burrough's world view isn't improved by his, for once, mixing sentimental fantasy into his mispanthropic* schtick, so thrilling to the pathologically eternally adolescent. The same thing that makes people pretend that Lovecraft was a genius. No, not thrilling, gratifying. It means you don't have to try any more.
I'd rather drink eggnog. I hate eggnog. And I'm allergic to milk.
Where did people ever get the idea that there was anything remotely progressive or liberal or attractive or good about reading such nasty stuff? Burroughs was a hypocritical asshole right-wing reactionary whose favorite journalist was the putrid Westbrook Pegler, who pretty much ended up a drunk working for crypto-Nazis. Burroughs' world view and writing is directly related to his pathological political viewpoints. It's not lefty or progressive. It doesn't even make it as boldness, there's nothing bold about a view of life that's unrelievedly and unrealistically dreary and awful.
You're just bringing it up to get attention like a little boy who belches at a Christmas Party.
Grow up. Nihilistic pessimism is for self-obsessed teenagers, adults know there's more to life than that.
* I just invented it, meaning "hates everything".
Never a big fan of Burroughs, and I ignore him now. I know some of his stuff has been made into movies, but it confirms for me that movies are extremely conservative and seldom all that challenging.
ReplyDeleteI can think of several books I've read that tested the boundaries of the written word, of how to communicate in print, of how to tell a story. Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" is a classic example, though most people don't realize it (the most unreliable narrator in literature, and yet everyone believes him). I know lots of short stories and novels that test the limits of narrative, or go to a bleak place and leave you there, or refuse to tie up loose ends, etc., etc., etc.
Movies? With rare exception, and those the movies that are faithful to the original book/story, never even try. Philip K. Dick was a middling writer with amazing ideas (I still insist he's the real "Kilgore Trout."). His ideas never, ever get to film. Hemingway was homogenized into movies. His most cinematic (and best) short story will likely never make it to film.
Aside from light shows ('2001') and CGI, movies don't experiment. Not with narrative, not with storytelling techniques peculiar to film, nothing. Maybe in 500 or 1000 years, film will develop its own vocabulary, but until then?
Moss-bound as a bunch of old corporate codgers.
Which, I should have appended to that comment, is why Burroughs gets filmed, but not more interesting and imaginative and thoughtful writers.
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