THE MT VOID
06/30/23 -- Vol. 41, No. 53, Whole Number 2282

Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
The Algebra Wine Club (comments by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)
Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Films,
Lectures, etc. (NJ)
Mark's Picks for Turner Classic Movies in July
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
FINNEGANS WAKE (correction) (letters of comment
by George Phillies and Jim Susky)
This Week's Reading (TIME'S ARROW) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)

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TOPIC: The Algebra Wine Club (comments by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)

If we have the TCM Wine Club and the NPR Wine Club, we should have
the Algebra Wine Club, especially as both mathematics and wine have
the specialized term "sec". [-mrl/ecl]

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TOPIC: Science Fiction (and Other) Discussion Groups, Films,
Lectures, etc. (NJ)

Meetings in Middletown are in-person; meetings in Old Bridge are
Zoomed. The best way to get the latest information is to be on
the mailing lists for them.

July 6, 2023 (MTPL) FERMAT'S LAST TANGO (2001) & novel
THE LAST THEOREM (2008) by Arthur C. Clarke & Frederik Pohl
<https://tinyurl.com/LastTheorem-Clarke-Pohl>
July 27, 2023 (OBPL) THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR
by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
August 3, 2023 (MTPL) FANTASTIC VOYAGE (1966) & novel
FANTASTIC VOYAGE by Isaac Asimov
<https://allnovel.net/fantastic-voyage/page-1.html>

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TOPIC: Mark's Picks for Turner Classic Movies in July (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)

A film that was much admired during its lifetime (it was released
1962) was DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES, with a cast headed by Jack
Lemmon and Lee Remick. It told the story of two very likable
people whose lives were ruined by alcoholism. The film is rarely
seen these days. It was based on a live television play from
PLAYHOUSE 90, also called DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES, which starred
Cliff Robertson and Piper Laurie. The actors in the film were not
well known to audiences and some of the acting is the best of the
early 1960s. Lemmon's performance, both when his character is
drunk and when he is sober, is as powerful as any we are likely to
find today, and in fact both he and Remick were nominated for
Academy Awards for their work. Lemmon in particular has to convey
the nightmarish nature of his delirium tremens.

The film was directed by Blake Edwards, known these days for his
comedies: VICTOR/VICTORIA, THE PARTY, and the "Pink Panther"
movies. But before these, he directed several detective films and
other dramas.

[DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES (1962), Wednesday, July 19, 5:45 PM]

Other films of interest:

SUNDAY, July 2
2:00 AM Soylent Green (1973)
4:00 AM Westworld (1973)

MONDAY, July 3
1:00 AM Flesh and the Devil (1926)

THURSDAY, July 6
11:30 AM Angels in the Outfield (1951)
11:00 PM Secret of the Blue Room (1933)

FRIDAY, July 7
12:00 PM Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932)

SATURDAY, July 8
6:00 AM Forbidden Planet (1956)

MONDAY, July 10
10:00 PM Harvey (1950)

THURSDAY, July 13
9:30 PM Dead Man's Eyes (1944)

FRIDAY, July 14
7:30 AM The Leopard Man (1943)
10:30 AM The Swarm (1978)
1:15 PM The Pack (1977)
3:00 PM Night of the Lepus (1972)
4:30 PM Of Unknown Origin (1983)
6:15 PM Razorback (1984)

FRIDAY, July 21
3:45 AM The Great Dictator (1940)

SATURDAY, July 22
4:45 AM Network (1976)

SATURDAY, July 22
10:00 PM The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959)

SUNDAY, July 23
4:30 PM The Boy with Green Hair (1948)

TUESDAY, July 25
6:00 AM The Invisible Menace (1938)

SATURDAY, July 29
6:15 PM The Omega Man (1971)

SUNDAY, July 30
10:15 PM Being There (1979)

MONDAY, July 31
2:15 AM Daisies (1966)
6:00 AM Them! (1954)

===================================================================

TOPIC: FINNEGANS WAKE (correction) (letters of comment by George
Phillies and Jim Susky)

In response to Evelyn's comments on FINNEGANS WAKE in the 06/23/23
issue of the MT VOID, George Phillies writes:

There seems to be a missing line in your discussion of FINNEGANS
WAKE.

Evelyn responds:

Yes, there was, though it was missing only in the PDF version, and
there was a missing close quotation mark in all versions. It
should have read:

... And Marion
Turner's THE WIFE OF BATH: A BIOGRAPHY (2023) talks about
"FINNEGAN'S WAKE", which should not have an apostrophe. According
to "The Guardian", Thomas Flanagan, a professor in the English
department at UCB, "the insertion of an apostrophe would presuppose
that Finnegan is an individual and that he is dead (hence his
wake)."

Flanagan's reading allowed plural Finnegans (a collective of Irish
people), and the implied exhortation that they wake from their
slumbers, precipitated by the weight of their history and the
strictures of Catholicism." [The quote is from "The Guardian", not
directly from Flanagan.]

[Jim Susky also pointed this out.]

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TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)

After Martin Amis died, I re-read his "science fiction" novel,
TIME'S ARROW (Vintage International, ISBN 978-0-679-73572-4). I
put "science fiction" in quotes, because there is no real science
fiction premise, just the idea that time runs backward. There is
no scientific explanation for this--it just is.

As with COUNTER-CLOCK WORLD (by Philip K. Dick), one difficulty of
writing a novel with this premise is the dialogue. In
COUNTER-CLOCK WORLD, the conversations started with "good-bye" and
ended with "Hello" but otherwise proceeded in the same time flow as
in our world. Amis goes further, with conversations also running
backwards, the words and sentences are still shown in our time
direction. But his narrator, who at least some of the time seems
to understand that everything is reversed, early on gives an
example of how the dialogue really sounds: "Dug. Dug." "Oo
y'rrah." And so on.

Why they do this is not clear, since they also say, "I have noticed
in the past, of course, that most conversations would make much
better sense if you ran them backward." This implies that they
don't realize that their world the the backwards one, so why they
give the conversations in our world's pronunciation order is not
clear.

And the description of "progress unrolling" (syringes no longer
disposable, a color television being replaced by a black-and-white
one) given as a series of short statements is so similar to
Baoshu's "What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Reveal" that one is
tempted to see an influence there, although it seems unlikely.
[-ecl]

===================================================================

Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
--Samuel Butler