I love that concept. I love to hear or read someone who is passionate about something (especially books and movies!). And these books are very pretty white-and-black volumes with original cover artwork. The one that I was drawn to was The Wolf Man, the movie which strikes me as the sensitive boy's favorite of the Universal Studios monsters.
The werewolf as a monster is rich with symbolism, but Reed helped me see that the appeal of this movie has a lot to do with Lon Chaney, Jr. as the awkward, doomed main character Larry Talbot. He has zero chemistry with the lead actress Evelyn Ankers and a complex relationship with his estranged father. They are bound by love but find each other impossible to understand. Larry can never match his father's hopes and expectations or integrate into his society.
Reed absolutely loves the tension between the script and what the actors bring to life (for example, with any other cast Ankers would be playing his love interest), all centered around the tragic, doomed lead actor. Reed sees so much pathos in Lon Chaney, Jr. and this book is actually more of a deeply felt meditation on the man through the lens of The Wolf Man.
It's so raw and emotional, in fact, I was sometimes taken aback, a little embarrassed. That feeling made so much sense when I got to the afterward and read that Reed died by suicide before finishing the final edits. Those gaps in polish -- a repeated phrase here, pages of obsessively repetitive sentence structure (like that bird that got into the Library the other weekend, bashing itself against the glass, sensing what it needed but unable to reach it), were evidence of a man becoming undone. And so this book is a portrait of existential despair through the prism of Lon Chaney, Jr, through the reflection of The Wolf Man.
It's heavy, amazing, intense.
-Michael G.
No comments:
Post a Comment