Woke up. World still here.

[alexsarll]

Two Edinburgh previews last night. It wasn't surprising that both included material about the expenses crisis, the smoking ban and the general decline of British civic society - but what are the odds on them both having jokes about raping horses?

When the Observer music magazine first hit, it was briefly the best music mag going - between the decline of the weeklies and the way the monthlies seemed trapped in retro rockist amber, that maybe wasn;t saying much, but still. Picked one up this weekend for the first time in ages and it seems to have followed the same trajectory as the Guardian's Saturday mag, turned into a flimsy, shiny guide for confused consumers, written by churnalists incapable even of contradicting a press release (I'm enjoying Neil Hannon's Duckworth Lewis Method album a great deal, but anyone repeating the lazy lie that it's the first album entirely devoted to cricket needs their genitalia used for a wicket until they apologise to the Cavaliers). One exception, though - Paul Morley talks about his crash course in classical composition. As much as I like Paul Morley's writing, a lot of his journalism lately has been on autopilot - still ahead of the competition, but far behind what he can do. This one has had all the usual tricks pruned away, without for a moment feeling compromised.

Finished Joe Haldeman's The Forever War yesterday. I'm not sure where spoiler etiquette points when you're discussing a book from 35 years ago, but Ridley Scott's film of it comes out in a couple of years, so let's just say that I can see exactly why he feels there'd be a wider audience for it now, geopolitically speaking. One element I'm not sure he'll get on to the screen is the bit where, as our time-dilated protagonist encounters humans from 500 years in his subjective future, everyone on Earth has turned homosexual. A trope which also appeared - coincidence again - in the Cordwainer Smith story I read yesterday, 'The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal', written a mere decade earlier but considerably more terrified by the Planet of the Gays.

Otherwise, what have I been doing? Finishing up Torchwood and the second series of Justice League Unlimited (both of which, surprisingly, have a greater degree of ambiguity to them than Alan Bleasdale's much-praised GBH, which I am enjoying but which is basically a pantomime). A (not quite) midnight picnic in the park - and the only hassle we got was a Fighting Fantasy-derived heckle when we were clearly playing a card game - stupid young people. Pubs, of course. A play on the Heath, or half of one. It wasn't a weekend that lives in legend, but it was fun.

Comments

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Do you reckon? I just assumed that myth and roleplaying already had enough crossover to explain it - see also Pendragon, or Ars Magica.

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

I think the emphasis on offering libations, sacrifice etc to the gods, whilst also paradoxically seeking personal honour in the most selfish manner, is peculiar to classical literature, as well as the idea of spiteful gods inflicting punishment on mortals for transgressions that are alien to the modern mind.

Chivalric literature is a good comparison, though, with its idea of a Hero being similarly idiosyncratic as the Epic Hero, requiring an irreconcilable mix of chastity and (amorous and martial) valour to be the perfect knight (hence Lancelot weeping when he, an adulterer, is still proven to be the best of knights, as it meant there wasn't anyone who actually fulfilled the brief, as it were - Galahad had already faded into the twinkly ether by this point).

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Oh, for sure, but I think a lot of the same people who read classical literature are the ones gaming. Certainly, while I can't remember a direct link, I was into Homer before I was reading Fighting Fantasy. And certainly some of the people who go on to study Classics properly got their start there. I don't think we're disagreeing on the fundamental here: whoever wrote those books knew their classics. I just don't see that needing them to get in an academic for that, when it's entirely plausible that a gamer would already know it. Or, of course, a long-time gamer who has since become an academic, in which case we're both totally right!

I think one fundamental which any audience of whatever era would share is finding Galahad really bloody annoying.

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

Given how venal and rough Malory is reputed to have been in real life, and definitely was as an editor (he chopped out all the romantic soliloquising of the de Troyes originals and replaced it with extended battle scenes, like some sort of medieval Paul Verhoeven or something), it's possible that we're supposed to find Galahad a dislikeable sanctimonious prig. Malory likes 'em flawed, bitter, violent and sexy.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yes and no - Malory's the first great synthesis, so while he's rough and brutal compared to Chretien, compared to the Geoffrey/Wace/Laymanon tradition he's Mr Fluffy.