Tag Archive: The Road


HOMELAND STAYS CONNECTED

Filed under: Fiction, Italy, Movies, Television — Leave a comment
October 16, 2012

Homeland’s Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) with his magic cell phone.

I think all of us know in our hearts that the drama we see on our big and small screens mostly bears only a passing resemblance to the ‘real world’.

Mostly we are content to accept this. After all, no-one wants to see all action heroes like James Bond or Jason Bourne spending half their allotted time hobbling on crutches or checking into casualty wards.

When there are villains to track down, there is something reassuring about their apparently indestructibility.

Yet, in the light of the recent backlash in some quarters against the Emmy award winning Homeland, it seems that the collective suspension of disbelief doesn’t necessarily stretch to portrayals of new technology. Continue reading →

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A PARABLE FOR THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT

Filed under: Books, Fiction, Good causes, Politics — Leave a comment
February 11, 2012

PARABLE OF THE SOWER by Octavia E. Butler (1993)

The Parable Of The Sower is set in the near future (2024 – 2027) . It  is the story of  a small group of people clinging  frantically to hope even though the fabric holding society together is in tatters.

Its central character is an 18-year-old black woman named Lauren Olamina.  She is the daughter of a preacher and part of a close-knit family in a community trying to preserve order and dignity aware that outside the wall of their protected world there are hordes of have-nots wanting a piece of what they have. Lauren’s family are not wealthy but she knows that  “to the desperate we looked rich”.

In presenting this doomsday scenario  Butler could be describing the background today’s occupy movement:

“I thought something would happen someday. I didn’t know how bad it would be or when it would come. But everything was getting worse : the climate, the economy, crime, drugs, you know. I didn’t believe we’d be allowed to sit behind our walls, looking clean and fat and rich to the hungry, thirsty, homeless, jobless, filthy people outside”.

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FATHERS ON THE ROAD

Filed under: Books, Fiction, Parenting — Leave a comment
November 16, 2009

Well worth reading a great (and rare)  interview with Cormac McCarthy in the Wall Street Journal on the eve of the release of the movie version of The Road.

McCarthy comes across as someone with a finely tuned bullshit detector. He drew upon his own relationship with his young son for his post apocalyptic masterpiece. I was particularly touched by what he said when asked about the reaction to the novel from other fathers:

“I have the same letter from about six different people. One from Australia, one from Germany, one from England, but they all said the same thing. They said, “I started reading your book after dinner and I finished it 3:45 the next morning, and I got up and went upstairs and I got my kids up and I just sat there in the bed and held them.”

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