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conuly , a story about fact-checking a family legend. I figured from the start that the grandmother’s story would be true, or there wouldn’t be an article about it; and having encountered similar articles and short documentaries I guessed that there’s be one misleading detail somewhere that would throw off the search for a long time.
When you’re doing archival research, you have to figure out who the people you’re looking for were at the time, and this story demonstrated that in a manner that I’m saving to use as a plot point someday.
Gone to Tarleton. A post on tumblr sent me to look up Elizabethan performer Richard Tarleton, who died just around the time Shakespeare was starting his career and remained a comedy legend through the seventeenth century-- as in, people were practically writing RPF about him (there are sketches and dialogues in which his ghost shows up as a character). And he lived long before film or audio recording, so all we can do is hunt through plays and broadside ballads for clues as to what his performances were like. And the whole history of humanity is full of ephemeral artists like this.
Meanwhile, a_t_rain has posted another lovely bit of sixteenth-century RPF: In 1580s London, apprentice grocer John Heminges decides to revive an ancient guild mystery play and ends up getting married, finding a new career, and meeting a friend who will change his life.
Also via Tumblr:
Andrew and I watched The Blue Dahlia (1946) on the weekend. This is another one of those movies that sounds like noir when you describe it, but I’m not sure it is. I told Andrew that it didn’t feel quite twisty enough to be. Later, I thought aboutsovay ’s definition of noir, which tends to involve the falling-away of every bit of workaday reality the protagonist has previously taken for granted, to vertiginous, terrifying, but also sometimes liberating effect. There is a character in The Blue Dahlia whose life has come to feel like a dream or a nightmare, but he’s not the protagonist, Lt. Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd): he’s Buzz, the protagonist’s old bomber-crew gunner, and his life got like that before the start of the film, when he took a piece of shrapnel to the head. Also he’s played by William Bendix and he walks away with every scene he's in.
conuly , a story about fact-checking a family legend. I figured from the start that the grandmother’s story would be true, or there wouldn’t be an article about it; and having encountered similar articles and short documentaries I guessed that there’s be one misleading detail somewhere that would throw off the search for a long time.When you’re doing archival research, you have to figure out who the people you’re looking for were at the time, and this story demonstrated that in a manner that I’m saving to use as a plot point someday.
Gone to Tarleton. A post on tumblr sent me to look up Elizabethan performer Richard Tarleton, who died just around the time Shakespeare was starting his career and remained a comedy legend through the seventeenth century-- as in, people were practically writing RPF about him (there are sketches and dialogues in which his ghost shows up as a character). And he lived long before film or audio recording, so all we can do is hunt through plays and broadside ballads for clues as to what his performances were like. And the whole history of humanity is full of ephemeral artists like this.
Meanwhile, a_t_rain has posted another lovely bit of sixteenth-century RPF: In 1580s London, apprentice grocer John Heminges decides to revive an ancient guild mystery play and ends up getting married, finding a new career, and meeting a friend who will change his life.
Also via Tumblr:
People who try to copy historical writing styles don’t say enough weird stuff in them. I’m listening to a 1909 story about a ghost car right now, and the narrator just said he honked the car horn a bunch of times, but the way he phrased it was “I wrought a wild concerto on the hooter”.
I followed the link and the story turned out to be ‘The Dust-Cloud,’ by E.F. Benson. I keep forgetting just how good Benson’s writing is-- the phrase quoted on Tumblr isn’t even the best bit of it. (CW for mentioned animal and child death—off-stage and implied, but integral to the story)Andrew and I watched The Blue Dahlia (1946) on the weekend. This is another one of those movies that sounds like noir when you describe it, but I’m not sure it is. I told Andrew that it didn’t feel quite twisty enough to be. Later, I thought about
sovay ’s definition of noir, which tends to involve the falling-away of every bit of workaday reality the protagonist has previously taken for granted, to vertiginous, terrifying, but also sometimes liberating effect. There is a character in The Blue Dahlia whose life has come to feel like a dream or a nightmare, but he’s not the protagonist, Lt. Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd): he’s Buzz, the protagonist’s old bomber-crew gunner, and his life got like that before the start of the film, when he took a piece of shrapnel to the head. Also he’s played by William Bendix and he walks away with every scene he's in.
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Date: 2024-10-01 07:46 pm (UTC)From:And yeah, so much ephemerality...
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Date: 2024-10-01 08:46 pm (UTC)From:Oh, you might like this review of Get Back if you haven't read it already. I only saw it a day or two ago: https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/the-banality-of-genius-notes-on-peter
(shameful confession -- I still have to watch the series, if I can ever manage to find the time and the energy)
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Date: 2024-10-02 02:25 am (UTC)From: