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🦋 Doubles
They say that if you meet your double, you should kill him -- or that he will kill you. I can't remember which; but the gist of it is, that two of you is one too many.-- Double Take
I'm midway through The Double now, and still not sure how to approach reading it. It seems at times like a Woody Allen movie, exploring the humorous consequences of its main character's depression/inferiority complex; at other times I think Saramago has something enlightening to say about depression, but the (overly?) dismissive tone of his narrator makes it impossible to develop this much -- every thing he says, he cuts down. I'm pretty sure the intent of the book is neither broad comedy nor pedagogy, but I'm sort of alternating between these poles in my reading -- I'm hoping Saramago will show his hand a bit when the doubles meet.Bill of Orbis Quintus linked to an interview with screenwriter Tom McCarthy, in which he discusses among other things his most recent project, the movie Double Take (a longer article about the movie is at Art in America). Sounds great -- he says it is based on "a Borges tale about meeting his own double" -- at first I thought this was referring to "Borges and I", but this is probably wrong, unless the relationship between the source text and the movie is very loose indeed.* He's changed it around so that the movie is about Alfred Hitchcock rather than Borges, which seems to me like a excellent move -- not that I wouldn't be glad to see a movie about Borges, but throwing Hitchcock into the mix can only produce good consequences. Here is a clip: ...And yikes! another, mind-boggling, clip underneath the fold.
* (The story referenced is "The Other", from The Book of Sand.)
 (...And thinking further, I'd say the relationship between source text and movie is indeed very loose, and who knows, "Borges and I" may have been the inspiration for this. I need to see more of the movie to have any actual opinion about this, though.)
posted afternoon of Saturday, July 25th, 2009
➳ More posts about The Double
➳ More posts about José Saramago
➳ More posts about Readings
➳ More posts about Jorge Luis Borges
➳ More posts about Alfred Hitchcock
➳ More posts about The Movies
These are excellent. I never bothered to try and find them. Borges is a definite reference.
He'd probably bristle at the "screenwriter" thing...he's a novelist first, I'd say, then a conceptual artist.
Look up the International Necronautical Society!
posted afternoon of July 26th, 2009 by Bill
bristle at the "screenwriter" thing
Ah -- I don't really know who he is outside this interview.
posted afternoon of July 26th, 2009 by Jeremy
INS's home page crashes my browser.
posted evening of July 26th, 2009 by Jeremy
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