Reading: Mistress Masham's Repose

Moving: walked 2.7 miles

Watching: The Theory of Flight

Listening: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

5 September 2000: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I nearly watched "The Yearling" last night. I was checking out what movies would be on, and I saw that this is Jane Wyman month on TCM. The Yearling is the only book where the animal dies that I have ever read on purpose. I still have nightmares about the illustration in King of the Wind where Sham is being whipped. I don't read dog stories and I nearly walloped RDC a few days ago when he asked if Cynthia Voigt ever kills off spare pets. In fact I didn't remember that scene in The Runner until just now. I'll really have to wallop him now.

So anyway. I started out knowing better. We watched "The Theory of Flight" with Helena Bonham Carter (post-hair) and Kenneth Branagh. As far as I can work it out movie-wise, since I don't follow celebrity gossip much, Branagh and Emma Thompson split just around the time of the hideous stupid "Frankenstein." I certainly can understand how that final scene with Elizabeth would have made Branagh fall in love with Bonham Carter. RDC hates "A Room with a View" and I don't think he has much sympathy for my lusting after both HBC and Cary Elwes in "Lady Jane" (or both Julia Ormond and Brad Pitt with long hair in "Legends of the Fall," or "First Knight," which is unwatchable except for that scene with Julia Ormond posting with her hip-length braid bouncing) but I think "Fight Club" and this have allowed him to appreciate her as an actress, and certainly if Woody Allen chose her as a costar, that must mean something in RDC's book. And I love "Margaret's Museum." There's a movie.

Then "Theory of Flight" was over and I hopped to TCM. Jody and his unnamed fawn are running through the vasty frontiers of Florida with the other deer. Fodder-wing dies. Gregory Peck, looking about 17 years old, eulogizes him and asks for varmints in heaven. The tableau with all the Forresters looking just like the N.C. Wyeth illustration is perfect--the casting in this movie is great, as close to Wyeth as humans can be, except that Jane Wyman isn't huge and Gregory Peck isn't puny. The first big storm drowns all the crops. Then Jody waters the tobaccy plants that should have bought his Ma a well, after 30 years (that's another thing, neither Wyman nor Peck is old enough) of hauling water from the sink and walk off, and Flag (named with Fodder-wing's dying breath) reaches into the enclosure to nibble the tender shoots.

I went to bed. I'm not that stupid. I had read it by the time, in fifth grade, we watched the movie in class. The boys were crying, even. I knew what was coming but still I fell apart. I can read the book with pleasure, still, but I don't think I've read that one chapter in 20 years.

RDC asked a few things about it, and I told him he should read it for the same reason his U.S. lit professor told him he should watch "Gone with the Wind" (because it's a great piece of Americana). I told him how Fodder-wing got his name and wondered whether Rawlings messed up or whether there really were grizzly bears in north Florida in 1880. I told him about the snake and the doe's liver and the vigil and the doctor and the fawn and the albino 'coon bag. RDC asked why Jody instead of anyone else had to shoot Flag and I told him it's a bildungsroman and he had to learn about being hungry and besides, Ma was a bad shot and Penny'd broken his leg.

But I went to bed at the first sign of Flag's endangering them all and left RDC watching "Pi" again on IFC.

"Pi" is a great movie too, and better for having no pet deer having to be shot.

Oh, and I lied. I have deliberately read a book where the animal dies. I listened (if that counts) to A Day No Pigs Would Die. Perhaps it wasn't deliberate: I knew the father would die but I didn't know about the pig.

So I went to bed and finished The Orange Fairy Book. This morning over breakfast I started Kenneth Graham's The Reluctant Dragon, which reads more like Samuel Clemens and his great jumping frog or like Stuart Little than like The Wind in the Willows. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it sounds American. I'm only on the first chapter or so (it's very short, maybe second-grade level) but if the setting weren't so clearly described as downs, I'd never guess story to be British (even with St. George). As it is, downs are so inextricably linked with Watership Down in my head that I don't forget.

"The Theory of Flight" soothed some of my cravings. RDC asked a few days ago if there were a movie I'd particularly want to watch next. "Sense and Sensibility" I replied promptly. It's been in my head lately, ever since I suggested cocker spaniel-sized elephants to JUMB as a good housepets and one that "perhaps could make itself useful in the kitchen." He denied it just as promptly. Someday I'm going to have to tie him down like in "A Clockwork Orange" and make him watch "A Room with a View" and "Pride and Prejudice" and "Persuasion" and "Sense and Sensibility." But then he would probably want me to watch "Dead Ringers" again, which I never not nope will do again. Anyway, my next suggestion was "Dead Again." "Really?" he asked, not quite so violently opposed but not enthusiastic either. Then I suggested "Peter's Friends." So maybe it wasn't Emma Thompson that I really needed to watch but Kenneth Branagh, since I enjoyed "The Theory of Flight," RDC theorized. Nope, I doubt it. I don't think it was Branagh who soothed me but Gemma Jones, who played HBC's mother in this movie and Mrs. Dashwood in "Sense and Sensibility." Heh.

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So I have a notify list now. The usual suspects are on it, plus one person who has never written me. Hi. Drop me a line. I don't bite.