Two literary adventures with my friend D.---
On Saturday 08 December, D., his friend M., and I watched the more than seven hours that is the 1968 Russian language film version of War and Peace. It was shown in two parts. The first part was just over four hours, with one ten-minute intermission at the two-and-one-half hour mark. Then there was an one-and-one-half hour break for dinner. The second part was just around three hours in length, with one ten-minute intermission. D. had a luxury that M. and I did not: having read Tolstoy's novel.
Dinner at Peso's was spent discussing what we had just seen, as well as D. asking M. and I to speculate on what we thought would happen. Unfortunately, this tasked my brain with having to try to remember details surrounding the War of 1812. I rediscovered that I am not well-versed in the history of the Napoleonic era.
It was a great film, with enormously staged and choreographed set pieces. It was worth admission alone for the dancing scene in the ballroom and the battles in the Russian countryside. It was also nice to see hundreds of extras and no that they were actual people rather than computer graphics. However, it is also a film that you probably only see once in your life, even if you have another opportunity.
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This past Saturday, 15 December, D. read from one of his four unpublished Christmas novellas. Three of the novellas are tied together by theme, atmosphere, and subject matter—Christmas tales of medieval England—and are usually read, one at a time, on three successive Saturday evenings in December. On "off" years, the fourth Christmas novella—a modern telling of Hansel and Gretel—is read. This year was the latter. It is my favorite of the four, what D. likes to call the "homicidal Christmas novella."
He wrote it in 1988 and I have had the pleasure of hearing it read aloud four times in the past thirteen years of our friendship. I always remember the frame of the story, if not the details. During this reading, I was especially struck by other books that it reminded me of or echoed.
The first association for me is "Hansel and Gretel" from Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales, which seems appropriate, especially since this is the inspiration for D.'s novella. The dysfunction of the family, the journey of (self) discovery, and the selfishness of the witch are easily translated into "our" world. But, I really like how D. uses other elements of the story in subtler ways. My favorite example is the portrayal of the house "built of bread, and roofed with cakes, and the window was of transparent sugar." D. has the modern-day witch mouth sweet nothings to the equivalent of Gretel—"sweetie," "sugar," "honey."
The second book that I am reminded of is Stephen King's Misery. The relationship of D.'s "witch" and children is reminiscent of King's Annie Wilkes and Paul Sheldon. The violence of both tales is swift and without seeming cause.
The third association was that of Peter Verhelst's Tonguecat. In fact, I read the opening pages again to make sure that this one was genuine, and I believe it is. D.'s novella and Tonguecat have little in common as far as subject matter or character, but they share a reliance upon myths and archetypes to nourish their plots.
The evening was also filled with good food and drink for the thirteen of us gathered in D.'s studio apartment. Mulled wine, lemoncello, and beer accompanied finger foods both savory and sweet. The wife made the tiniest sandwiches—cheddar and chive biscuits with either roast beef and gingered ketchup or smoked ham and pineapple mustard—that were quite a hit. Christmas music was listened to and conversations were had, before we had to drive back from Seattle and enter our real lives again and hunker down in our warm bed.
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