{"id":204,"date":"2008-06-13T17:34:39","date_gmt":"2008-06-13T21:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dennisdanvers.com\/?p=204"},"modified":"2008-07-24T16:49:13","modified_gmt":"2008-07-24T20:49:13","slug":"children-of-men-and-the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dennisdanvers.com\/?p=204","title":{"rendered":"Children of Men and The Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

I like to end the sf course with recent work that’s gotten a lot of positive attention. The book can’t be too long, however, and that’s been a problem lately. No Neal Stephenson, for example. This year, however, the short science fiction novel, The Road<\/em>, was blessed by Oprah and Pulitzer. The film Children of Men <\/em>was widely admired and seemed to be a natural companion. Both are beautifully done. Neither one is exactly a day at the beach. I’ll be curious what my students make of them. I hope they don’t want to lock me in a basement.
\nTotal immersion in the planet’s demise takes a toll, so I wanted to get away from the darkness for a while and catch up on email but found myself reading about peak oil. I could’ve clicked on a video. I’m not sure what of. A big straw\u00e2\u20ac\u201da sucking sound? I resisted the temptation and walked over to a bike shop in Carytown and bought a new bike to replace my stolen one, after a decent period of mourning. This proved to be just the thing, followed by a brisk ride through the park, the air redolent with smoke from North Carolina fires. Here’s hoping I never have to pedal it down McCarthy’s Road. The tires would melt, cannibals would eat me. Okay? Okay.<\/p>\n

Children of Men<\/em> gets to me in some new way every time I watch it, but it’s always exhausting. It’s like living through the Bush years on fast forward. In both book and film redemption is frail, perhaps an illusion.
\nMaybe I should rent Sullivan’s Travels. <\/em> Maybe it’s time for a remake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I like to end the sf course with recent work that’s gotten a lot of positive attention. The book can’t be too long, however, and that’s been a problem lately. No Neal Stephenson, for example. This year, however, the short … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennisdanvers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennisdanvers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennisdanvers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennisdanvers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennisdanvers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/dennisdanvers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennisdanvers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennisdanvers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennisdanvers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}