'an attentive listener,' (a scrupulous recorder), and a somewhat lazy reader

luis bunuel's ghostwriter has died. 

jean-claude carrière leaves us a great many films, a few novels and an engaging book of conversation with umberto eco called this is not the end of the book.  not that horsemouth himself is doing too much reading right now. horsemouth's mum is still reading omnivorously sitting at the table in the dinning room in the sunshine (when there is any).

bunuel's autobiography (my last breeath) notes their writing technique. bunuel would go to a fancy restaurant  and sit there with a martini reminiscing, maybe making a few notes, after an hour or so carrière would arrive and, if the mood was right, sit down and they would begin to discuss and reminisce (over another martini). 

the movies they leave us are anarchic attacks upon the bourgeoisie in the name of art and justice. in the one horsemouth has watched most recently (la femme aux bottes rouges, 1974) poet catherine deneuve accepts an artists residency from evil bourgois fernando rey - he offers artists residencies and then systematically destroys the work created by them  leaving only the relationship of bourgeois (owner of capital) and artist (worker) intact.

catherine (who possessed of the super-power of being able to alter reality) wins out in the end and walks off into a painting. 

of course if someone else were to watch it they might derive some wholly other 'message'.

in this is not the end of the book, with umberto eco, he discusses what will happen to their libraries after they die (like most collectors they do not want their books ending up in a skip). eco has the stefan zweig addiction to manuscripts - the actual handwritten and first-draft of the work. both are confident that some university will want to take their libraries for the archive (and they're probably right). 

horsemouth's copy is back in london with his other books. he has not found here (so far) a book that compels him to read. instead he has been watching films - lucio fulci's distinctly anti-clerical  non si sevizia un paperino (1972). filmed at monte sant' angelo sicily.  

in fulci there is a distrust of the village also.  someone is killing the village's children, the police are useless, the village attacks  its outsiders, the village idiot is accused and jailed, the local madwoman is murdered by vigilantes.  but, in the end, it is the outsiders from the modern world who solve the crime and halt the killings. 

similarly the villagers in the black cat are portrayed as a superstitious rabble (and again it is modern outsiders who solve the crime).

today. no work. outside it was attempting to snow. so probably a walk. 

last night a conversation with enza.