The Big Picture and the Closeup

Is it more important for a memoirist to avoid inflicting pain on those close to him or to tell the truth as he remembers it? Is the allure of suicide to be taken on its own terms or treated with the taboo our society generally imposes upon it? Which should sway the thinking person: the less than conclusive evidence for God’s existence and meaning in the universe or the less than conclusive evidence against God and meaning? There is not going to be an objectively final resolution to these problems. Should drama therefore not “go there”? And if it does “go there,” must the dramatist furnish a right answer? Not in my book.

I very specifically recall the thrill of reading Tolkien sitting there. And while I was reading it, I often had playing softly, so as not to wake my parents, one particular record from The Treasury of the World’s Great Music. This LP combined on one side the symphonic version of Borodin’s Polovetsian Dances and Dukas’ The Sorceror’s Apprentice. Now with all respect to Howard Shore’s estimable soundtrack for the Peter Jackson’s near-definitive movies, once you’ve listened to these pieces, you will never think of Shore as being in the same class in capturing the thrill of those books.