Andromeda
By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
The smooth-worn coin and threadbare classic phrase
Of Grecian myths that did beguile my youth,
Beguile me not as in the olden days:
I think more grief and beauty dwell with truth.
Andromeda, in fetters by the sea,
Star-pale with anguish till young Perseus came,
Less moves me with her suffering than she,
The slim girl figure fettered to dark shame,
That nightly haunts the park, there, like a shade,
Trailing her wretchedness from street to street.
See where she passes -- neither wife nor maid;
How all mere fiction crumbles at her feet!
Here is woe's self, and not the mask of woe:
A legend's shadow shall not move you so!
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Of all the Troy reviews I've read so far, Stephen Hunter's in The Washington Post cracked me up the most. "There's no doubt that Troy is Homeric, but the Homer in question seems not so much the blind poet of yore as the Homer named Simpson," he says. Of Orlando Bloom's Paris, he notes, "Petersen...in search of the powerful youth market, spends...time with western civ's greatest twit, the party boy Paris, pale and beautiful, who loves to start wars but lets his poor older brother finish them. Maybe Petersen will sell more tickets that way, but Bloom's Paris is the least compelling character. He's not a soldier, he's not a man, he's not a father, he's not a god. He's a punk." This makes me giggle in a mean way.
1. How far have you been willing to travel to attend a fannish event?
I went from Washington, DC to Denver, Colorado to see Kate Mulgrew and host the first-ever meeting of the Kate Mulgrew Appreciation Society (then still known as Now Voyager). I've done fannish things on other long trips, but that is the only trip of any length I have ever taken specifically for a fannish activity.
2. How far have you gone in trying to save a show or to get a sequel?
Just a couple of letters.
3. How far have you been willing to overspend on one particular fannish item?
I've never spent an outrageous amount for a particular collectible; even autographs seem outrageously expensive to me, and I've no idea what I would do with a prop that Avery Brooks once touched. I've spent an outrageous amount on books, DVDs and small collectibles over the course of my lifetime, but there's no one item that nearly broke my budget any given month.
4. How far have you been willing to go tracking down a rare fannish item?
Long ago, in my youth, before the Internet, I went through British magazines and tracked down a British book import service so I could get Torvill and Dean's autobiography right after it came out in Britain, which was years before St. Martin's published it in the US.
5. How far have you gone to try and pimp someone into a fandom?
Sending videotapes and smutty fic.
Am not yet finished writing down all my favorite moments in Desolation Island but I did have to mention this one: on page 142, Jack is unhappy because he feels that Stephen has manipulated him regarding espionage-related stuff. O'Brian writes, "It wounded him. He took up his fiddle, and standing there facing the open stern window and looking out on to the wake, he stroked a deep note from the G string and so played on, an improvisation that expressed what he felt as no words could have done. But when Stephen behind him, speaking over the sound, said, 'Forgive me, Jack: sometimes I am compelled to be devious. I do not do it from choice,' the music changed, ended in an abrupt, cheerful pizzicato, and he sat down again." And then they chat about birds and fish and stuff and are back to being utterly effing adorable together.
We have more cicadas! And I'm sure I had other things of interest to note, but damned if I can remember what they were now.
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