Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Starting 2017 right...

Today was spent cleaning my apartment...and boy, did it need it. Washed everything. Dusted. Vacuumed...and had to empty the container twice. And my nose and eyes are shredding me for it, thanks to all the dust I stirred up.

Anyway, while laundry was working, I did some rethinking about A65. I didn't like how simplistic and obvious it was having Casey's big film be a reworking of Virgil's Aeneid. So I went searching for something better. For a few moments, I was thinking Candide by Voltaire would be good...but the story didn't really suit what I wanted; too cynical. Then I found Simplicius Simplicissimus, by Hans Jakob Chrisoffel von Grimmelshausen...a precursor to Candide but in a more satirical style.

It's well-known in Germany; there was even a miniseries of it made in the 70s for German TV and an opera of it worked up in the 40s. And since Adam speaks German (and Latin and Greek on top of being English), it fit. I hope. I've never read it so I ordered a copy from a bookseller in Baltimore. So far, all I've got is the synopsis.

What's nice is, it will be a counterpoint to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, if I understand what it's about, well enough. So I'll be referencing two books in the book instead of one. That'll be fun to pull off.

Let it never be said I made things easy for myself.

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