Re: Watchmen?

"Duggy" <Paul.Duggan@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:1149132573.270732.141740@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

Agent Smith wrote:

For pathos, I was absolutely obsessed with Roschach, although
Dreiberg and Juzpeczyk had plenty, too.

I'd like to point out that the presence of Kovacs' psychiatrist moved
me too, but the kid and the paper guy are easier to remember (even
though the psychiatrist is a more sympathetic character.)

Now that I've read (am reading) that thread, I'm sympathetic to the
people at the newsstand. The psychiatrist has pathos from his
experiences during Rorschach's story. He was a little tragic before the
"bomb" ever fell.

Moore is a pretty good writer and likes to pack his scripts.
I should hope so.
OK.
Who else packs their scripts?

I'm not sure. I know that during the release of LoEG, it was talked
about because Moore was putting so much detail into his panel
descriptions, etc... but I don't know enough about how other writers
work.

It'd be interesting to see the script from Watchmen, to know what
Gibbons was told, and what he invented. It'd be interesting to compare
scripts from different, important comic writers.

OK, fair enough. Possibly, but then Roshach's story was more like
that IMHO, there were scenes in that I found really distasteful.
I wouldn't be surprised if that's the general view. Rorachach's Tale
was staggeringly brutal, but the camera always cut away from the
grisly parts. Thus, no splatter.

Which made it worse in some ways...

That's the beauty of literature. Leave the most intense moments to the
imagination. I guess I'm just more visual than others, but I always
thought that was from reading comics. Maybe I got it in engineering
school.

And, to a degree the murkiness and the "comic style" of "Tales..."
took away the splatter in that, too. IMHO.

I'm shy about showing the story to my friends, because I'm afraid
they'll think I'm nuts.

I've given it friends who do and don't read comics to generally good
reception.

That said, you've got to pick your targets.

Certainly not girls you're trying to impress.

I guess you're not a superlative addicted Stan Lee junkie, eh?
Not at all.
How can this be?

It even annoys me when Moore goes too far in his alliteration and
superlatives... especially Splash Branigan. Splash pisses me off
something chronic.

Are you sure it isn't satire? Stan Lee's writing style became so iconic
that people sometimes caricature it. Alliteration was also mocked in
1987's best picture, "Broadcast News." Maybe it has something to do
with Spiro Agnew. For me, I was taught to admire The Raven's "soft
uncertain rustling of each purple curtain."

I haven't been able to figure out why I like certain kinds of poetic
musical devices, but am annoyed by guys like Jesse Jackson and Johnnie
Cochran. Is it just in the delivery?

I was doing a English Lit degree when I first purchased The Watchmen
and instead of reading the set text for that week's tutorial, I read
The Watchmen.

I was reading The Watchmen instead of set texts for my English Lit
degree.

I guess you weren't reading it off the racks, in monthly installments.
If your teacher found out, she'd have ripped you a new one.

From the Euegene O'Neill biography on PBS, I was amazed to learn that he
won his two Pulitzers and the Nobel before he even wrote his magnum
opus, "Long Day's Journey." It *was* autobiographical, with the only
detail changed being that, in O'Neill's life, the sick child had
apparently died before the advent of any of his brothers. His death was
always an important presence in the O'Neill family's daily life.

I love it. Joyce would be proud.
Usually I get Pinter rather than Joyce. With a touch of Beckett.
Feel free to take that as a compliment. Didn't Joyce win the Nobel?
I have only marginal exposure to Pinter and Beckett, but I didn't
like either.

I've had limited Pinter, but I keep meaning to. I'm told I "hold
back" like he does. Not sure what that means.

Minimalism seems to be in vogue these days. I was reading William
Gibson's latest, and noticed that he has a lot of short sentences,
frequently only one or two words. People actually speak in that sort of
clipped manner, and it was also Rorschach's trademark.

The last actual modern literature I read was "Bright Lights Big City,"
and it was such an easy read that it only took me a couple of days. I
like easy reading, but I don't care for that trend. I'm not suggesting
ponderous material or purple prose, but this stuff is written at the
middle school level.

These days, I read mostly non-fiction. I was most strongly influenced
by Sheehan's Pulitzer winning "A Bright Shining Lie," the biography of a
prominent officer in Vietnam. Sheehan actually discusses his prime
influence, Halberstam, and how the two approached the task of
composition. I think that fiction writers should acknowledge the genius
of Sheehan and Halberstam.

Too bad I have only vague ideas for using it to create an innovative
style and make the literary world take notice.

Never having read Pinter, that's the best I can offer.

Beckett was actually pretty deliberate. I had to write a short play
for my creative writing course, and I was watching the complete works
of Beckett at the time... and so... I wrote a play in which one
character gave a monologue, another character appeared, and they
talked, the original character left and the second character had a
monologue. The catch was that the conversation were the two
monologues intertwined...

This happened to me once. I'd been reading Lovecraft and felt the urge
to write a short story. It came out having a lot in common with old HP.
Did yours get an 'A'?

The marker remarked that it was very Beckett, but made out comments
that suggested that she missed the crossover.

I always wanted to play around with clauses, sort of as a technical
exercise, the way Joyce and Faulkner played with stream of
consciousness. Can you imagine forcing yourself to write into a
format where it was numerically specified ahead of time how many
clauses were allowed in each sentence? 1,2,3,4,5,5,4,3,2,1, and like
that. Wouldn't that be a trip.

I do like a challenge.

Dream up a few more gimmicks like that one and find a way to build a
novel around them, and you might get famous. Another idea I've got is
to overuse appositives. Just jam vast quantities of stuff together
without verbs and see if the reader can decipher it. That should pass
for avant gard-ity. Have I been ruined by the small quantity of
Faulkner that I've read?
.