Lunar_Affinity Has Ways Of Making Me Talk
Apr. 27th, 2006 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
f4f31) Who is your style icon ?
Um, don't know if I have one. I love Tom Waits' look from the 70s, which is kind of distressed hipster (no, not the trousers) and I have the odd moment of admiring Keanu Reeves (mostly for The Matrix). Bogart, obviously, and Cary Grant, which is probably more of an attitude than something reflected in what I wear. Yes, Bogart.
2) How many alter egos do you have?
Not as many as I used to. f4f3, obviously, but Lothario Lad, who used to roam Cons as Bastard Man's sidekick is in retirement, Grimm Olsen (my Warhammer RPG Trollsplayer for hire, who's leather jerkin had "Born To Write Wrong" picked out in studs on the back) hasn't had an outing in a long while, and I retired Melmoth when I stopped using Compuserve about 10 years ago. So just the one, now.
3) You have 5 books that you can rescue. Which ones do you go for?
Only five? And what am I rescuing them from, I wonder?
i) The collected novels of Raymond Chandler, in the lovely Everyman edition - Chandler's prose style, and his sensibility, matches most closely how I'd like to write, and how I see the world most often. It's a cliche to say that Marlow is a faded romantic, but Chandler is too, and his romance is with cities, and the people who live there.
ii) Flashman and the Redskins by George MacDonald Fraser. I love Flashman (and Fraser's) world view, and taking Flashman out of Europe lets him indulge his love of Western Movies.
iii) "From First to Last", by Damon Runyon. "On Broadway" has more of Runyon's great "Guys and Dools" stories from his mid period, but First to Last lets you see him developing as a writer, and the last pieces have a brave wryness that I admire a lot.
iv) Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. I read this every year or so, and never tire of Zelazny's humour and scope. It's a Science Fiction novel about human colonists on another planet, disguised as a glittering fantasy about one man's war against the Hindu Pantheon, fought partly by becoming the Budha. In one of the twists that I love he admits when questioned by Death to being a false-Budha, but insists that his disciple, Kali's former sacred assassin, became the true Budha before being slain by Death. See, I can't help trying to sell the book.
v) Cerebus, Church and State by Dave Sim. Cerebus is a 300 issue graphic novel, and Church and State takes up about 60 of them. It's about politics and religion, an aardvark who becomes pope and ascends almost to heaven, it's a satire on superheroes, and the supporting cast includes the Marx Brothers, Mick Jagger and Keef Richards, Spider Man and Elrod the Albino.
4) What's your worst habit?
Procrastination.
5) What's your ideal holiday?
A cottage somewhere in Ardnamurchan, not Sanna Bay but my own secret beach nearby, a mound of books and weather good enough to walk in and clear enough to sit on a hill and look out at Muck, Eigg, Rhum and Skye as they draw and quarter the setting sun, and its blood runs across the water towards me.
Um, don't know if I have one. I love Tom Waits' look from the 70s, which is kind of distressed hipster (no, not the trousers) and I have the odd moment of admiring Keanu Reeves (mostly for The Matrix). Bogart, obviously, and Cary Grant, which is probably more of an attitude than something reflected in what I wear. Yes, Bogart.
2) How many alter egos do you have?
Not as many as I used to. f4f3, obviously, but Lothario Lad, who used to roam Cons as Bastard Man's sidekick is in retirement, Grimm Olsen (my Warhammer RPG Trollsplayer for hire, who's leather jerkin had "Born To Write Wrong" picked out in studs on the back) hasn't had an outing in a long while, and I retired Melmoth when I stopped using Compuserve about 10 years ago. So just the one, now.
3) You have 5 books that you can rescue. Which ones do you go for?
Only five? And what am I rescuing them from, I wonder?
i) The collected novels of Raymond Chandler, in the lovely Everyman edition - Chandler's prose style, and his sensibility, matches most closely how I'd like to write, and how I see the world most often. It's a cliche to say that Marlow is a faded romantic, but Chandler is too, and his romance is with cities, and the people who live there.
ii) Flashman and the Redskins by George MacDonald Fraser. I love Flashman (and Fraser's) world view, and taking Flashman out of Europe lets him indulge his love of Western Movies.
iii) "From First to Last", by Damon Runyon. "On Broadway" has more of Runyon's great "Guys and Dools" stories from his mid period, but First to Last lets you see him developing as a writer, and the last pieces have a brave wryness that I admire a lot.
iv) Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. I read this every year or so, and never tire of Zelazny's humour and scope. It's a Science Fiction novel about human colonists on another planet, disguised as a glittering fantasy about one man's war against the Hindu Pantheon, fought partly by becoming the Budha. In one of the twists that I love he admits when questioned by Death to being a false-Budha, but insists that his disciple, Kali's former sacred assassin, became the true Budha before being slain by Death. See, I can't help trying to sell the book.
v) Cerebus, Church and State by Dave Sim. Cerebus is a 300 issue graphic novel, and Church and State takes up about 60 of them. It's about politics and religion, an aardvark who becomes pope and ascends almost to heaven, it's a satire on superheroes, and the supporting cast includes the Marx Brothers, Mick Jagger and Keef Richards, Spider Man and Elrod the Albino.
4) What's your worst habit?
Procrastination.
5) What's your ideal holiday?
A cottage somewhere in Ardnamurchan, not Sanna Bay but my own secret beach nearby, a mound of books and weather good enough to walk in and clear enough to sit on a hill and look out at Muck, Eigg, Rhum and Skye as they draw and quarter the setting sun, and its blood runs across the water towards me.
