You can’t make a movie and say ‘It was all a big accident’ - no, it has to be a conspiracy, people plotting together. Because in a story, a story is about intention. A story is not about spontaneous order or complex human institutions which are the product of human action but not of human design—no, a story is about evil people plotting together.
One of the strengths of Apollo 13 is that it has only good guys in it, battling together against an unforeseen, mysterious and near-lethal twist of fate.
Which isn’t to say this undermines his overall point—such movies are the exception, and interesting partly because of that—just that his language was too forceful.
There’s a mystery novel that left me incredibly angry at the author because I was expecting an interesting complex cause tying all the murders together, but there wasn’t. I’m probably a calmer person now, and for all I know, there may have been hints I was missing about what sort of story it was.
Apologies. I’ve seen a post with a link to a rot13 page—I’ll see if I can make that work for future spoilers.
You still might want to read the book—it had a lot of engaging detail and characters.. That’s why I was so angry at not getting the sort of ending I wanted.
Tyler Cowen, on the danger of narrative for human reasoning, TED talks (TEDxMidAtlantic) 11/5/09, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoEEDKwzNBw
One of the strengths of Apollo 13 is that it has only good guys in it, battling together against an unforeseen, mysterious and near-lethal twist of fate.
Apparently he hasn’t seen many Cohen brothers movies...
Or movies that are about relationships instead of stuff blowing up. There are plenty of good movies with plots and no bad guys.
Which isn’t to say this undermines his overall point—such movies are the exception, and interesting partly because of that—just that his language was too forceful.
There’s a mystery novel that left me incredibly angry at the author because I was expecting an interesting complex cause tying all the murders together, but there wasn’t. I’m probably a calmer person now, and for all I know, there may have been hints I was missing about what sort of story it was.
Gur Anzr bs gur Ebfr
...I think it’s a sign of the times that I can read rot13 to the extent that I know what book you said. Dammit, I was going to read that book one day.
I read Sbhpnhyg’f Craqhyhz before Gur Anzr bs gur Ebfr, so the nature of the ending was no surprise to me; but I still enjoyed the book.
Apologies. I’ve seen a post with a link to a rot13 page—I’ll see if I can make that work for future spoilers.
You still might want to read the book—it had a lot of engaging detail and characters.. That’s why I was so angry at not getting the sort of ending I wanted.
It probably isn’t a common enough affliction to have to worry about.
But yeah, I’ll pick the book up some time.