December 1, 2020. Today I start my retrospective of all Terrence Malic movies in the order of their release. Of course I have already seen all of them in that order, rushing out to the theater or grabbing the first DVD release in later years. Most I have seen at least twice, several many more times than that. But this will be my first attempt to watch them all consecutively in a short timeframe. I hope to average about one a week.

​No doubt everyone who reads and everyone who writes has a construction or phrase that is anathema. For me it is “could be seen.” Every time I run across it I find myself kicked out of the reading process into my editorial mode to think of ways to correct or improve. Too often its use strikes me as authorial laziness.
 
I have just finished rereading “A Boy’s Own Story” by Edmund White. For me this is one of the most beautifully composed works of imaginative fiction ever. One might say, and one does, that it is one of the most overly beautifully composed works ever, to the degree that one wonders if the extravagant beauty of the net diminishes even further the small fish caught therein.

Photograph by William Christenberry

Preface: Various readers who have encountered Sawyerville on this website have expressed interest in knowing more about the community.  The following piece is cribbed from information found in my two memoirs (which see under "Jonathan's Books"),  which has been edited together and expanded for an unpublished autobiography.

Recently I watched Peter Weir’s 1993 movie “Fearless” again. I’ve always liked it hugely. I think now I like it more than ever.

For me it is thematically and stylistically closer to his earlier movies “Picnic at Hanging Rock” (1975) and “The Last Wave” (1977).

In the earlier movie, a group of teachers and young girls from a finishing school picnic at Hanging Rock on Valentine’s Day in 1900, and a young teacher and some the girls go missing. They are never found, and the movie becomes a meditation on unsolved mystery and its effects.