Word: writer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...been killed in a particularly senseless crime. As the film opens, his wife Sarah (Kathleen Turner) walks out on him because his grief has made him so deeply withdrawn that he cannot help her bear her sorrow. Her departure leaves Macon with his dismal career as a writer of travel books for people who hate traveling; with the dubious consolations of his own family, a sister and two brothers who are as joylessly guarded and compulsive in their behavior as he is; and, of course, the excellent but increasingly (and understandably) snappish company of Edward...
...suppurating surface, this writer, Philip Marlow, is as racked and brilliant as the man who created him. Marlow, who relishes the cheap irony that his name echoes that of Raymond Chandler's famed sleuth, is a failed novelist hitting 50 with a terrifying thud. His career has been sidetracked by illness and bile. His marriage to an actress (Janet Suzman) is just an awful memory. He lies in a London hospital with psoriatic arthritis, a crippling condition of the skin and bones. The pain and the pain-killers force Marlow's mind down strange old country lanes and treacherous culs...
...music is a psalm and, for Philip, a therapeutic balm. In the final shot of The Singing Detective, Marlow the writer is able to walk out of the hospital in the guise of Marlow the slick detective. "He's stopped lying there moaning and suffering," Potter observes, "ready to deal with the world as a detective would -- tough-minded and able to manipulate it." In the pain- streaked world of Dennis Potter, that counts as a happy ending: hero cured, beautiful woman on his arm, and Vera Lynn warbling We'll Meet Again in the tuppenny jukebox of his soul...
...Guinness Book of World Records says that mystery writer John Creasey in England published more than 500 books," says Isaac Asimov. "But it seems fair to say that no one has written more books on more subjects than I." The vertical pronoun frequently occurs in the author's conversation, but there is as much self-concealment as self-promotion in his talk. As he approaches his 70th year, for example, Asimov has come to see himself merely as a "born explainer." Yet explaining implies understanding, and there is very little in this world that Asimov does not understand. If something...
Dennis Potter' s BBC serial about a writer lacerated by memory and fantasy, The Singing Detective, comes to a Manhattan movie house. On big screen or small, it' s a bloody masterpiece...