Cesario's been reading your blog. Quick write something..

I am working on three writing projects right now, plus reading several books.
Most of the writing isn't fit to print, so you get to hear about what I am reading (get ready for long quotes, Hero, but trust me, these are not boring...).

And there is a quiz at the end, so pay attention.

Cesario, do English major's still read Graham Greene?
Or do they just watch the movie versions like everyone else?
If you have seen Jordan's 1993 version of "The End of the Affair", you need to read the book.  He makes  "minor" changes to the plot and characters, but minor to some, are major mutilation to others.

The film's only major stumble is in allowing Bendrix's final wooing of Sarah to succeed, at least temporarily. In the novel, he chases her from one place to another, making impassioned pleas on behalf of his own (sexual) desire; but he is unable to break her resolve. In the film, the two former lovers return to Bendrix's apartment, have sex, and begin to glimpse a rather more conventional form of happiness as they plan a life together. This imagined happiness ultimately slips from their grasp; but the film's audience may see this as divine revenge against Sarah for breaking her promise, rather than (as the novel has it) a direct consequence of Bendrix's self-absorbed pursuit. In the film, Sarah emerges as a person of weaker character--a woman so desperate for a virile man than she is willing to cash in her passionate relationship with God. Consequently, her quasi-miraculous interventions are much less credible.

David S. Cunningham, Movie Review, Christian Century
                           

So read the book.
I thought you might find this part interesting.  Sarah is contemplating materialism (not the consumer type, the incarnational type), and how it makes  love possible.

From Sarah's Journal......

It was very hot today and it dripped with rain.  So I went into the dark church at the corner of Park Road to sit down for a while.  Henry was home and I didn't want to see him.  I try to remember to be kind at breakfast, kind at lunch when he's home, kind at dinner and sometimes I forget and he's kind  back.  Two people being kind to each other for a lifetime. 

When I came in and sat down and looked round I realized it was a Roman church, full of plaster statues and bad art, realistic art.  I hated the statues, the crucifix, all the emphasis on the human body.  I was trying to escape from the human body and all it needed.  I thought I could believe in some kind of God that bore no relation to ourselves, something vague, amorphous, cosmic, to which I had promised something and which had given me something in return-stretching out of the vague into the concrete human life, like a powerful vapour moving among the chairs and walls.  One day I too would become part of that vapour-I would escape myself for ever.

And then I came into that dark church in Park Road and saw the bodies standing around me on all the altars-the hideous plaster statues with their complacent faces, and I remembered that they believed in the resurrection of the body, the body I wanted destroyed for ever.  I had done so much injury with this body.  How could I want to preserve any of it for eternity and suddenly I remembered a phrase of Richard's-about human beings inventing doctrines to satisfy their desires, and I thought how wrong he is.
If I were to invent a doctrine it would be that the body was never born again, and it rotted with last year's vermin.  It's strange how the human mind swings back and forth, from one extreme to another.  Does truth lie at some point of the pendulum's swing, at a point where it never rests, not in the dull perpendicular mean where it dangles in the end like a windless flag,  but at an angle, nearer one extreme than another?
If only a miracle could stop the pendulum at an angle of sixty degrees, one would believe the truth was there.  Well, the pendulum swung today and I thought, instead of my own body, of Maurice's.  I thought of certain lines life had put on his face at personal as a line of his writing; I thought of a new scar on his shoulder that wouldn't have been there if once he hadn't tried to protect another man's body from a falling wall.  He didn't tell me why he was in hospital those three days;  Henry told me.  That scar was part of his character as much as his jealousy.  And so I thought, do I want that body to be vapour (mine yes, but his?),  and I knew I wanted that scar to exist through all eternity. But could my vapour love that scar?  Then I began to want my body that I hated, but only because it could love that scar.  We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds?  Love extends itself all the time, so that we can even love with our senseless nails;  we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve...

And of course on the altar there was a body too-such a familiar body with all the parts of a body, even the parts the loin-cloth concealed.  I remembered one in a Spanish church I had visited with Henry, where the blood ran down in scarlet paint from the eyes and the hands.  It had sickened me.  Henry wanted me to admire the twelfth century pillars, but I was sick and wanted to get out into the open air.  I though, these people love cruelty.  A vapour couldn't shock you with blood and cries.
When I came out into the plaza I said to Henry, "I can't bear all these painted wounds."  Henry was very reasonable-he's always reasonable.  He said, "Of course it's a very materialistic faith.  A lot of magic..."
"Is magic materialistic?  I asked.
"Yes, Eye of newt and toe of frog, finger of birth strangle babe.  You can't have anything more materialistic than that.  In the Mass they still believe in transubstantiation."

The End of the Affair
by Graham Greene

And if you think the 1955 version might be better, think again.  Here is an excerpt from the a article by Vaar Aragon.  He is not as diplomatic  as Mr. Cunningham,  and I am sure with a name like Vaar,  he has his reasons  for not being to fond of "Slavic Communists  with a hazy grasp of the English  Language."

   The 1955 film adaptation is widely - and somewhat excessively - despised by critics.  Its interpretation of the book’s events are crude and often sentimental.  A good example is the very end.  Maurice comes to the Mileses’ house, and finds that Sarah has died. 
He goes home and receives her last letter to him (posted during her illness) in the mail.  It describes her religious convictions in detail, and invites him to follow her.  He promises to do so, and the end credits roll. 
I think much of the film’s awkwardness can be blamed on its director, Edward Dmytryk.  It’s hard to believe that he, a Slavic Communist with a somewhat hazy grasp of the English language, could have had much sympathy with this odd love story driven mostly by dialogue and dialectic theology. 
The censors also bear some of the blame.  In the book, Maurice and Sarah use expletives, sleep together, and address God in quasi-blasphemous terms.  Needless to say, very little of that is found in the movie, and as a result it falls rather flat.
                                           

The Quiz:  What heresies of Christolgy is Sarah flirting (sorry, no pun intended) with here in this diary entry?

Leave your guess answer in the comments.

I know, I know. Jacques Barzun, Multiple Choice, and what I said before....forget it. Do the quiz.

click below for your choices