Thomas Covenant Books In Film Deal
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
I don’t care that Covenant’s character was unique (so far as I know; it’s a long time since I read a lot of fantasy novels) for his unbelief in the world he found himself in. I don’t care that he was a modern-day leper who found himself miraculously cured of his ailment soon after waking up in The Land, forgiven for his many and continuing transgressions by the inhabitants of the fantasy world that he refused to believe was real, and worshiped for his ability to defeat the Big Bad Evil Overlord.
I don’t care, because the lynchpin event for the whole series is a rape. A disgusting, ugly, impersonal rape. And of course this sets all sorts of seen and unforeseen circumstances in motion, like a pebble starting an avalanche.
I hated the character as I continued to read the books, simply to find out if he’d get over his stubborn refusal to believe in the world he found himself in, and I hated him even as he moped and felt guilty about the rape and was forgiven for it.
I also hated Donaldson’s sledgehammer prose, his clumsy attempts to be poetic, and most of all the repetetive use of the word “incarnadine” to describe all the bad stuff Lord Foul does to the moon, the Land, and fluffy little bunnies.
Fortunately, a kind soul wrote a short “Thomas Covenant the Tank Engine” parody to make me feel better.
For the love of God, good books generally and fantasy epics in particular, please don’t make a movie out of these loathesomely pretentious literary simulacra.
This may well be the most off-topic comment posted, but since I can’t post on the entry that this pertains to, I’ll just post on the most recent entry. And if THAT ain’t the very essence of the anarchy of the ‘Net, I dunno what is.
Anywho, I was doing some searching for my Eclipse book on the Internet, and I came across a blog entry of yours in which you used the book as part of a meme:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions
Having thus been drawn into this by fiat, I thought I’d participate fully. Unfortunately, that’s not possible on that particular post, since archived entries evidently cannot be commented upon.
Thus, I end up here, dredging up the detritus of Spring, 2004. My book happens to be “Setting up Your 9401 Model 150”, and while it was a little difficult to get to page 23, thanks to IBM’s insistence on chapter-page numbering, I think I managed fine. The appropriate sentence:
“Locate the power plug connector on the back of the unit.”
I shall leave it to the reader to determine their own interepretation of that particular quote.
Seeya…
Hah! Yes, comments get shut down pretty quickly as an anti-spam measure. I’ve been thinking of letting them stay “open” longer since I have MT-Blacklist, an anti-spam plug-in. However, my blog is just reaching the point where it’s actually starting to attract spam, so I probably won’t open up anything older than a month or two.
Luckily for you I happen to know you are not cynically flogging your book and thus spamming. I also happen to know that you might be interested in the fact that “Alien Encounter” at Disney World is now “Stitch Encounter.” I hear that it’s much, much better now that it has Stitch. As of course it would, because anything is better with Stitch.
Looking forward to seeing you all, too. Thus endeth the very off-topic comment for the day.