Little Infinities

I don't have a particularly good reason for not updating recently, but I do have a short list of flimsy excuses, including but not limited to being busy, being tired, and not feeling inspired. Of course, there's no shortage of things on which I could write and in fact I've been maintaining an informal list of topics to discuss. I feel these things fading from my memory even as I type this, unfortunately. I don't generally like to write blog entries that summarize the things I've been doing recently because I feel it really squanders a lot of the potential of some of the subjects about which I choose to write. I may be left with no other choice, however, since very few of these subjects are still fresh in my mind.

Some weeks ago, I attended a showing of The Martian, a science fiction film starring Matt Damon. I don't go to a lot of movies, but it's a fun thing to do if you have a special person to accompany you. The film seems to have received a lot of critical acclaim so I assumed I would enjoy it--and I did, to a point. I feel it really only explored the idea of being isolated on an uninhabitable planet on a very shallow level. The whole movie was a bit saccharine and overly feelgood in a Hollywood way, which  is not what I was expecting after reading reviews of the film. Maybe I'm cynical about this kind of thing, but I was really craving something a tad grittier--which is not to say that humor is entirely out of place, but it felt a little forced and unnecessary in the case of The Martian. I'll have to read the book sometime to see if the tone is similar. Even if that's the case, it still might be an interesting read, and after all, I have been reading a lot more recently.

Speaking of investigating a film's source material--I watched both the film version of The Fault in Our Stars and the book of the same name recently. Of course, I did this in what would probably be considered backwards order since I read the book after watching the movie, but it was interesting to note the differences between the two. It's definitely a book targeted towards young adults, but the material had more than enough depth to appeal to me. Although I enjoyed the film, I did feel it was a tad sentimental in tone--and this is a trait from which the book itself does not suffer. The Fault in Our Stars is a refreshingly straightforward glimpse into the life of a teenage girl by the name of Hazel Lancaster with terminal cancer and her relationship with Augustus Waters, a boy she meets in a support group who has recovered from a milder case of the life-threatening disease. Cancer did succeed in taking his leg, but not his life. For Hazel, her days are perpetually numbered, a fact that gives her a substantially different outlook on life than her former peers.

In my previous entry, I wrote about Norwegian Wood, a book I very much enjoyed. Before moving on to The Fault in Our Stars, I read a French children's story from the 1940s by the name of The Little Prince. Although short and relatively simplistic, it's a wonderful book packed to the brim with allusions and symbolism. The titular prince himself lives on an asteroid floating in space beyond the earth, tending to his best friend--a rose encased in glass. He maintains his miniature volcanoes--he rakes the coals--and wonders what lies beyond his home. On his journeys he meets other asteroid residents and eventually makes his way to the earth itself, where he meets an airplane pilot who has crashed his plane. Technically, it is through this pilot's eyes that the story is told. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the author of Le Petit Prince, was a pilot himself and in fact lost his life flying shortly after the book was released. He left behind an impressive final work.