"The Last Word" by Gwynne Garfinkel

[teenybuffalo]

I am very taken with this horror meta poem: "The Last Word," by Gwynne Garfinkel. Sad and funny, and a true appreciation of two characters who are overshadowed by the more monstrous figures, but who are pivotal to the plot and meaningful to some of us. I'm feeling warm and fuzzy about Garfinkel's appreciating these two for themselves

Comments

[moon_custafer]

I was reminded of Mad Love the other week, when an acquaintance of mine went down to the courthouse to offer her testimony as a character witness for the surgeon who saved her a year or so back, and who is now up for killing his wife. I think he's quite likely guilty, but I can't blame her for her PoV either.

[teenybuffalo]

O_O Good heavens, Holmes, that's an awful situation.

If they're the same news story I think I've found, the detail of the husband praising his wife in flowery lines from Game of Thrones also feels like something that Dr. Gogol would do if he'd been into 21st-century pop culture instead of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

[sovay]

he husband praising his wife in flowery lines from Game of Thrones

You know, even without the frame-story of the murder, that feels karmically like a very dangerous thing to do.

[sovay]

was the subject of this picture, which I like a lot, along with the also-underappreciated Valerie Hobson (he's smiling! I didn't know he could do that! he looks relaxed and everything)

That's a really lovely picture. I'm not sure that I have ever seen him smile, at least not when it wasn't meant to be taken as a bad sign. Was this taken on the set of Bride of Frankenstein, or did they star in something else together?

(Valerie Hobson is so good in Q Planes (1939), The Spy in Black (1939), and Contraband (1940)! Can I blame David Lean for not knowing how to direct her that everyone thinks of her as beautiful and essentially boring?)

starred in an entire movie about beautiful young soldiers caring about each other and dying in each other's arms

I keep meaning to watch Journey's End; I want to see if it continues David Manners' streak of being really good in non-genre movies. I know Clive had also starred at one point in the stage version.

If the world ends with this foul year, I want it known that I died as I lived: raving about

[moon_custafer]

I've never seen Journey's End but I once read read the script to the play. It has its flaws (all the focus is on the officers and not the enlisted men, and there's generally a bit of class snobbery) but I suspect it was unusually realistic for its time. It's also one of the most slash-friendly texts I've ever read. Almost all the characters can be shipped with each other.

[gwynnega]

I love that photo of Clive and Hobson. And I'm pleased that my poem elicited this post about Mad Love!