So I got done reading the Club Dumas recently. I really liked it, it’s the book that The Ninth Gate was based on. I can’t decide if people should read the book or see the movie first. I think maybe the book. They’re different enough that it’s not the same story, though in some parts it certainly feels like it. There are also some really cool literary devices used throughout. I shall put a clip, that I think Davy will particularly enjoy (Primarily because of the Napoleon References, not the uh, subtext). I love this brief section for several reasons. I’ll let you enjoy it for your own.
“At that moment, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to do it. He sensed it with the lugubrious intuition that precedes certain events and marks them, even before they have taken place, with inevitable disaster. To be prosaic, Corso realized, as he threw the rest of his clothes on top of his coat at the foot of the bed, that his initial erection was now in visible retreat. Cut down in its prime. Or, as his Bonapartist great-great-grandfather would have said, “La Garde recule.” Totally. Anxiously he hoped that, as he was standing against the light, his unfortunately flacid state wouldn’t be noticed. Very carefully he lay facedown next to her tanned, warm body waiting in the dark and used what the emperor, out on the muddy fields of Flanders, would have called an indirect-approach tactic — sizing up the terrain from the middle distance and making no contact in the critical zone. From a prudent distance he played for a time in case Grouchy arrived with reinforcements; he caressed the girl and kissed her unhurriedly on the mouth and neck. But no luck. Grouchy was nowhere to be seen. The old fool was chasing Prussians miles from the battlefield. Corso’s anxiety turned into panic as the girl moved nearer to him and slipped her firm, warm thigh between his thighs. She must have become aware of the extent of the disaster. He saw her smile, a slightly disconcerted smile, but encouraging, as if to say something like “I know you can do it!” Then she kissed him with extreme tenderness and put out her hand, to help things along. And just when he felt her hand at the very epicenter of the drama, Corso went down completely. Like the Titanic. Straight to the bottom, no half measures. The orchestra playing on deck, women and children first. The next twenty minutes were agony, atonement for all his sins. Heroic attacks meeting the immovable barrier of the Scottish fusiliers. The infantry on the attack glimpsing only the slightest chance of victory. Improvised incursions by the light infantry, in the vain hope of taking the enemy by surprise. Skirmishes of hussars and heavy charges by cuirassiers. But all attempts met with the same results– Wellington was messing around in a remote Belgian village while his pipers were playing the march of the Scots Greys in Corso’s face. The Old Guard, or what remained of it, was glancing desperately in all directions, teeth clenched and face against the sheets, twenty minutes by watch, which, for his sins, he hadn’t removed. Drops of sweat the size of fists ran from the roots of his hair down his neck. He looked with wide staring eyes over the girl’s shoulder, desperately wishing for a gun to shoot himself.”
In his defense. He was pretty drunk, and his follow up line of “This only happens the first 30 or so times” is pretty solid.
Tags: A long post about a dudes wang, Book Review, Corso's got a softy, The Club Dumas
Posted by admin - 26/07/08 - 0 comments
