Skill and Dash

[handful_ofdust]

Trying to get myself back into the right headspace to deal with writing Chapter One of A Tree of Bones. The good part is that discussions with Steve have sparked a really fun outline--some great stuff upcoming, if I dare say so myself. The bad part is, as ever, life itself: My looming rewrite on A Rope..., various clashes with Cal, even the weather. After a fun evening out (dinner, followed by Season of the Witch, which is really cheesy and yet utterly satisfying--Chris Alexander rightly I.D.s it as a modern-day Hammer movie, since it palpable takes place in a version of "Mediaeval Europe" which routinely runs together events separated by up to 200 years, and claims a journey of "40,000 leagues" can be made in six days), we woke to a minor snowpocalypse that only later resolved itself into clear, sunny, cold "normalcy" that nonetheless had Cal wading hip-deep through drifts high enough to make me very glad indeed I bothered to force him into his snow-pants. Still, we soldiered on: Managed to do the usual workout-and-brunch with Mom, then run a few errands--I bought new bras for the first time in months, and we finally got the living-room blinds fixed so that both sides go up and down again. Also bought Cal a new backpack, not that he appreciates it.

Anyhow: I think I may have mentioned that I had picked up Charles Portis' original book of True Grit, but even if I didn't, man...that's a hell of a ride.;) And having just seen the first adaptation on AMC, I have to say, the Coen Brothers' version is far more faithful to the text: They really get that Mattie Ross is just as shrewd and canny, as utterly relentless, as fearless, "double-tough and pitiless" as Rooster Cogburn himself, any day of the week; her entire idea of justice is taken direct from the Bible's bloodiest passages, and she has that complete lack of humour about herself that pervades adolescence, to boot. The book, of course, is written from her POV as an old lady, but time doesn't seem to have mellowed her at all--she is an entirely practical creature from beginning to end, only considering her own motives (let alone those of others) from the safety of hindsight, when nothing can be done to alter her actions. This is one of my favourite passages, from pages 114-115:

[Trader Bagby's wife] spoke good English and I learned to my surprise that she too was a Presbyterian. She had been schooled by a missionary. What preachers we had in those days! Truly they took the word into "the highways and hedges." Mrs Bagby was not a Cumberland Presbyterian but a member of the U.S. or Southern Presbyterian Church. I too am now a member of the Southern Church. I say nothing against the Cumberlands. They broke with the Presbyterian Church because they did not believe a preacher needed a lot of formal education. That is all right but they are not sound on Election. They do not fully accept it. I confess it is a hard doctrine, running contrary to our earthy ideas of fair play, but I can see no way around it. Read 1 Corinthians 6:13 and 11 Timothy 1:9, 10. Also 1 Peter 1:2, 19, 20 and Romans 11:7. There you have it. It was good for Paul and Silas and it is good enough for me. It is good enough for you too.

I'm also fond of this one (page 185), in which she unsympathetically dissects the background of the Permalee brothers, two of Lucky Ned Pepper's men:

[Their mother] was a notorious receiver of stolen livestock but was never brought to law. Her husband, Henry Joe Permalee, killed himself with a dynamite cap in the ugly act of wrecking a passenger train. A family of criminal trash! Of her youngest boys, Carroll Permalee lived long enough to be put to death in the electric chair, and not longer afterwards Darryl Permalee was shot to death at the wheel of a motorcar by a bank "dick" and a constable in Mena, Arkansas. No, do not compare them to Henry Starr or the Dalton brothers. Certainly Starr and the Daltons were robbers and reckless characters but they were not simple and they were not altogether rotten. You will remember that Bob and Grat Dalton served as marshals for Judge Parker, and Bob was a fine one, they say. Upright men gone bad! What makes them take the wrong road? Bill Doolin too. A cowboy gone wrong.

Does Mattie even notice herself that she's essentially comparing Rooster to all these men? Remember, when given a litany of prospective marshals to choose from, she doesn't go for the best tracker, let alone the guy who usually brings his prisoners in alive--she waits to find out who's accounted "the meanest", and when she first hears Rooster's name, you can fair see her eyes snap out sparks. "Where can I find this Rooster?" She demands.

That's what the older adaptation doesn't get--they spend a whole lot of useless time trying to make Mattie softer, more likeable, and she just isn't. She's a flinty, terrifying bitch who happens to be just young and unformed enough to make the people around her underestimate her. But what binds she and Rooster together is a true meeting of not so much the minds as the wills; they are similarly intractable, amused and energized by obstacles. LeBeouf, poor innocent, will never understand; God knows, the two of them barely do.

All right...I need to power down, get ready for an eleven o'clock gym visit. I'm hoping to transcribe some of these notes, too, but not right now. Maybe in the morning...and then again, maybe in the morning, my rewrite memo will be here...

'Night, all.

Comments

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Man, she would so have disapproved of the Presbyterian church I attended as a teenager (most of whom were really defectors from the local United congregation).