Wednesday, October 27, 2010

"Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him)?"

That's the name of the new documentary that's out now about Nilsson. I've been waiting a long time for this. It was actually shot a few years ago but I guess was held up for monetary reasons. (It's cheap to make a documentary but expensive to distribute it). As far as I'm concerned there were many good singers during the last century but only three great ones--Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, and Harry Nilsson. he was a darn good writer too.











Finishing up on "Till We Have Faces"

I've been re-reading the old CS Lewis classic lately and should finish it in a day or two. There are some places where the writing seems a bit clumsy to me this time. Certain phrases he uses that don't read particularly well or that sound a bit corny. And I must say that I've always felt that the second book the queen writes seems a little outlandish, and I find myself thinking she couldn't have been so wrong about things in the first book. Her second youngest sister really is a selfish trouble maker. Lewis wrote her that way, and now he wants us to believe the queen was just terribly confused. But her sister did taunt her and say terrible things to her. There's no mistaking that. She truly did mistreat her queen-sister. I tend to believe now that Lewis wrote the queen's second book almost on a lark--that he changed direction from something else he had originally planned, and so, the queen's two books don't always make sense when comparing them. At least it's my only explanation. I still like the story very much. But I now consider Perelandra to be his masterpiece of fiction. I don't think there's a word in it I would change.

Tomorrow I will try to put into thought the kinds of things I like to see in writing, and why these things work for me. Of course I'll also exemplify things I don't like. I've been thinking about this a lot lately.