novels, comets, movies
"The Fellowship of the Ring" came out in theaters twenty years ago, almost to the day. Below is an essay that I wrote in the days after I saw it -- an essay that, besides being a bit of a time portal, covers a ton of subjects about books, movies, history, religion, dead white males, … Continue reading The Fellowship of the Ring
December 16, 2001* Last night I finished David Ferry’s rendition of Gilgamesh; I read it out loud. It has reminded me of my favorite moment ever in “Star Trek”: the Epic of Gilgamesh as told by Patrick Stewart in “Darmok,” an episode during the fifth season of “The Next Generation” TV series. Captain Jean-Luc Picard … Continue reading Twin Towers at Uruk
It's a common trope in fiction: a final confrontation between the central hero of a story and its central villain. It's an important trope in Westerns, both on the page and screen -- Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" is just one famous example. And we see it in works of fiction that are too many to count: … Continue reading Hero, meet your villain; or, never mind