"Excuse me, Mrs. Robinson. I have to be going now. This conversation's getting a little strange."

I read Animal Farm early enough that I had no idea what the metaphor was, but it was the most upsetting fucking book I'd ever read.

Somebody should do "Early Morning, Cold Taxi." The only decent song Roger ever wrote.

That is a good song. We don't have the wherewithal or time limit to go past side one, though, especially into the bonus tracks.

Speaking of non-Pete songs, I'd love to see you singing "My Wife." Preferably with your wife and Sphere in the audience.

Now you're just trying to get me in trouble.

OT: The Job discussion at the end of the last natter thread made me hope that David Maine will take that story on for his next Biblical novel.

I think Boxer's fate was supposed get an emotional response, though.

When I was young, like five or six, the film version broke me. I was inconsolable for hours at home afterwards, then we went to visit my cousins and I spent my time there relating what happened to Boxer and sobbing. I can remember being exhausted from crying.

I think that George Orwell's writing philosophy was like Brecht's-- to incite action rather than emotion.

Isn't the incitement to action the emotional response they've prodded you for though?

Isn't the incitement to action the emotional response they've prodded you for though?

I always think that, and my teachers always sort of argued with me. Although I am not so sure how much action I could take as a blubbering mess!

My thing with Brecht (and I think I may have spoken about it here before which would be embarrassing: "Hey, do you wanna hear my one deep thought again?") is that he was a better artist than polemicist or theorist. He himself was unable to write plays that met his own criteria for what a play should be; he tried to create a slew of characters that were rigged for an audience's disdain and still, people liked them. So, he goes and rewrites the material to make the characters less complex. I mean, when you're chopping lumps of the more sophisticated storytelling from your work, it's time to devote yourself full-time to pamphlets.

Everyone should embrace the colophon.

I think I have found my new tag.

Aimee, don't let them scare you off Watership Down; it's a marvelous exciting, creative, and moving story. There are melancholy parts, but nothing that should break you. I enjoyed it immensely and reread it regularly.

Spoilers for the next HP book.

How spoil-y?? Like on a scale from "Hermione shags Ron" to "Neville gets killed"?

They are middling spoilers (so-and-so will have an important role in the book 7) except the one about Snape where she answered the question about whether he was on the side of the good or evil.