Flicking the channels this evening as I polished off the last of the home brew. Troy was on. Brad Pitt is in it. I admire Brad Pitt because he had done his time when he needed to in the gym. Peter O' Toole was holding our end up for great acting. Christ, he must have been in his eighties when he was playing Priam. Anyway, at the end of this not so wonderful movie (maybe if you're an American fourteen year old ... ) I noticed that the screenplay was by David Benioff.
He must have read the Illiad, which is more than I can remember doing. Once on a Greek island holiday I read The Odyssey, but ... Everybody should have read the Illiad. Or the Lliad.
David Benioff wrote a brilliant book called The City of Thieves. About the siege of Leningrad in the Second World War. Really wonderful novel. It's about a David Balfour and Allan Breck kind of duo looking for some eggs. Much better than anything I could ever get near writing. Good thing about the jobbie I once had was getting kids to read stuff like that.
Once I'm in this bar in Stockbridge with the Domestic Bliss and I gets the beers in and the barman looks oddly familiar. The second time I go up to the bar, I ask him if he's Mathew blah blah. The kid had long hair at school and played in a very good blues band, as I discovered later. He said: You were my school librarian. You got me to read Charles Bukowski. And so I did. Ham and Rye. A great book! Apart from all the crap ... maybe doing a wee bit of good here and there!
5 comments:
That movie was just crap. Seriously bad.
Marie! Hard to see how they could have made it worse!! Hotboy
They could have made it worse with Bavarian actors.
I've realized after reading this post, that librarianism and rabloggyism are both forms of missionary work.
Albert? Met an old pupil in the pub. He was the bartender. He said: You were my school librarian. You got me to read Charles Bukowski.
Job well done! Hotboy
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