Tuesday, September 20, 2005

More posting on postillions

In my further search for that postillion who, "from what height fallen" and fiercely "pursued with terrors and with furies," now lies "thunderstruck and astonished" upon the drenchéd earth, I discovered that the British actor Dirk Bogarde wrote his autobiography and titled the first volume A Postillion Struck By Lightning.

If you clicked that link, you discovered that nobody has reviewed the book on Amazon. Oddly enough, the audio version has four glowing reviews by readers plus an Editorial Review that states . . . somewhat obscurely:

Autobiography comes in two flavors -- one, the life of an interesting person, badly written; two, ditto, but written with energy, charm and style. It is to this latter classification that Dirk Bogarde's story of his early life belongs.

That "ditto" worries me. Strictly speaking, it would mean that Bogarde is an "interesting person" who has penned a "badly written" autobiography "with energy, charm and style." I suppose that such is possible if one takes "style" in an other than literary sense, but I don't intend to read badly written books even if penned by interesting people.

For those still wondering about Bogarde, he's known for starring in such films as Death in Venice (1971), which I saw as a student at Baylor University, and that controversial film The Night Porter (1974), which I've never seen but which also starred the beautiful and mysterious Charlotte Rampling (whom I first saw in Zardoz (1974), a film in which she starred with Sean Connery).

Given the intertextual nature of the internet, this post could go on and on, linking site after site into a chain mail fabrication impenetrable to all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune hurled like thunderbolts at poor postillions . . . but little would be accomplished.

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