I want to write this all down before I forget it even though its 3.45am. I just got home.The Twitter approach gave it a feeling of immediacy, even if it was fictional. Like the old "epistolary" novels.
Some one please tell me -- WTF did he write all of this down 'after the fact' and use multiple Twitter posts to do so?
Or like a novel written in the present tense:
Like any other literary effect, the present tense is an expressive device; but expression works by contrast.... [T]his example from Jane Eyre... works beautifully because it emerges from the context of a narrative told in the past tense. Jane's sudden use of the present conveys as nothing else could the pressure of her feelings as she recalls the high intensity of that summer evening, of her return to the house of the man she hasn't yet admitted to herself that she loves: "I see the narrow stile with stone steps; and I see – Mr Rochester sitting there, a book and a pencil in his hand; he is writing."...I emit a sudden scream. I am blogging.
But if every sound you emit is a scream, a scream has no expressive value. What I dislike about the present-tense narrative is its limited range of expressiveness. I feel claustrophobic, always pressed up against the immediate....
"If I just relate now what's happening now," the writer seems to say, "I can't be held to account for it. It's the way things are. I'm just standing close to the action as it happens. I'm not editing or anything. It's really real."
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22 comments:
I emit a muffled groan: The first link doesn't work.
I ask "Just curious, has anyone tried to write an entire novel in future tense"?
"I emit a muffled groan: The first link doesn't work."
I quickly locate the link and edit the post.
I apologize.
I publish this comment.
Pastafarian is correct. This man joined the Marines to help him quit heroine. That's your first hint that he has problems not caused by war.
Mistake one by the author was not insisting on his assigned seat. The whacked out guy could have been dealt with right then and there before the plane ever took off. I fly way too much and you do see weird hostility out of people in the air. My estimate is one out of five flights. Best thing to do is confront it positively, but firmly at the first sign of trouble. You can't let the problem people think they can get away with it.
And how about his pleasure at ceding his seat to the lady?
Yes, of course, the war messed this guy up...not all the drugs he grew up doing, and tried to kick by joining the military.
We all see what we want to see.
If he had reported the very drunk guy in his seat swearing at him while they were seating the aircraft, all could have been avoided.
Right Ann, his pleasure at ceding his seat was not for the positive act of letting the couple sit together, but for getting away from the whack job who bullied him into the middle seat. If the film guy wasn't such a pussy, the problem guy would never have made it off the ground in the first place.
Of course, I have the advantage of being old, bald, and visibly scarred. If you look like you don't mind being hit a couple of times, the bullies usually aren't so fresh.
""How To Deal With An 'Unruly Passenger' On A Cross Country Flight.""
Just give 'em a knuckle sandwich in the mouth.
That would take care of it and tell the captain to just continue to the destination as all is well.
I can't believe he didn't just tell the stewardess that the guy was in his seat and get it taken care of while they were on the ground.
Oh, there's a lesson about war here...appeasement leads to escalation, and ultimately a worse result.
I don't believe it. The incident was a gift to an expert self-promoter. It doesn't ring true.
Phaha. If somebody had written a movie with all those cliches, people would say it's "too on-the-nose".
Dramatis Personae
[unruly passenger] a racist, drunk, former junkie, irreparably damaged by Darth Cheneyburton and BOOOSH's illegal wars.
[Hero] a Liberal filmmaker whose only problem is that he cares too much.
[pregnant woman] a typical, lawsuit-happy American.
And the closing soliloquy -
"I realize the point is these wars are fucking with our children's minds. A whole generation is being sent home screwed up."'We all love the ones we hate. Blood. Lust. I was born in queens. We all lose hope'. Marco I won't forget you I promise"
The whole thing sounds made-up.
Franklin,
Thread winner!!!!!
Actually a better movie than film guy tweeted.
Palladian may well be right that it's all made up, but it also sounds a bit like the stories about Vietnam vets in Achilles in Vietnam by a Boston psychiatrist (Jonathan Shay). Everything is going along normally and then, bang, the vet just loses control.
The marines take drug users?
The marines take drug users?
Yeah, that seems like a major slip up in the story writing.
I seriously doubt the guy was ever in the Marine Corps. Bipolar delusion more likely, since the pills the guy was popping were allegedly clonazepam which is used to treat bipolar disorder and not recommended for treatment of PTSD.
There's a huge difference between bi-polar disorder and PTSD. One of the author's assumptions is that bipolar disorder is caused by military service but occurrence of bipolar disorder has nothing to do with military service.
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