Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Schopenhauer, where are you now?

Grim news I'm afraid. A friend reports from the Charleston Festival that Patrick Marber, so long a favourite as a writer and performer on The Day Today and Paul Calf's Video Diary (during which he cries out the blog's title), is embarking on a screenplay of Ian McEwan's Saturday. How depressing that people are prepared to put up vast amounts of money to fund this liberal wankfest. Time for another link to Ellis Sharp's seminal essay on this politically and artistically pernicious little novel.

Worse, Ronald Harwood, who was Marber's co-panellist at Charleston, announced that he's to write the screenplay of Irène Némirovsky spectacularly-overrated and badly-written novel Suite Française. Harwood is a good choice though as he admits to having no pretensions as an artist, writing screenplays solely because it's a good life. I suspect, however, that if one took him at his word, and placed his work accordingly, he and all those nodding approvingly at such commonsense would cry "Snobbery! Elitism!".

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:26 pm

    Well, you shouldn't be too surprised Marber's Closer is about as closeted and liberal a piece of wankery as you could possibly hope for.

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  2. I haven't seen it Matt. I did look at the scene on YouTube with Natalie Portman as a lap dancer (no idea why I chose that clip) and was stunned how awful it was.

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  3. Heh heh - I can't imagine. It doesn't get any better than that, believe me. Still, on this form, Marber shouldn't have any trouble in recreating the insufferably smug Perowne family.

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  4. Anonymous7:18 pm

    I could never explain to anyone exactly why I felt so repulsed by the glib McEwan. I never got further than two pages of the three novels I once tried.

    Thanks to Ellis Sharp's seminal essay and some of your past posts I am thankful I am not the only one to feel rather sick when trying to read his creepy stories in bland urbane prose.

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