June 17, 2024

Back to It

What a nice weekend. Yesterday, I went to the H.E.B. to get some necessities for the week, but spent the rest of the day reading. I’m currently about half-way through Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shards of Earth. I’m enjoying it enough to keep reading, I guess; I enjoyed Children of Time much more, but I’ll stick with it. Continuing my science-fiction Father’s Day, I watched Oblivion last night. It was lovely to look at, and Tom Cruise was Tom Cruise, but the film was ultimately just weird. I take it some aliens were stealing Earth’s water after killing most of the population, but, for some reason, made Tom Cruise clones to take care of the day-to-day logistics. I’m not sure, really. I think I was texting and reading hi-fi reviews at the time. I think Morgan Freeman showed up at some point. Oh, and spoiler alert.

Box 158 has a typed 1974 Preface for Writer’s Choice: Each of Twenty American Authors Introduces His Own Best Story to “The Time of Her Time,” wherein he writes: “Reader, the story you are about to peruse is the godfather of Lolita.” Speaking of filthy, there’s also a document called “The Johnson Transcript” that’s railing against supposed false statistics reported by the “Pinnagon” about American casualties in Vietnam. I have no idea what this is about or what it was for—perhaps a satirical piece for The New Yorker or The Village Voice?

Boxes 458 and 459 contain research, contracts, and drafts for a screenplay adapted from “The Last Night.” The screenplay is co-written by Mailer and Norris Church. I read about 25 pages of “Version 5,” dated April 10, 1997. Most of these were exposition, told form a documentary in the year 2027 and though a speech by the handsome, black, and fantastically named President John Franklin Delano Hall. The documentary explains the hopeless condition of the planet, while Hall outlines a plan to send 10,000 ships carrying one million people to Mars. There’s also a “Secret Viewer”—a spy, hacker, or puppetmaster—that watches the president along with the viewer. It looks like most of the interaction takes place through screens, an interesting choice. Even the president’s discussion with his sick wife is not in-person.

I’m going to try to get a scan of the screenplay, as I want to finish it, and/or maybe write something about it. I need to write to John to see if he ever thought about trying to get it made. I wonder why it didn’t happen back in the nineties.