I haven’t finished Mao II yet but will post when I do. In the meantime, I thought I’d let the class know that I just finished watching La Strada, which is the film that Danielewski mentioned in the interview that Prof. Sample posted a while back (Danielewski took the name Zampano from the film).
So, it’s an Italian film from the early 1950s and was not what I was expecting at all. Actually, the character of Zampano was not what I was expecting at all, but I think I managed to find a couple of insights into Danielewski’s choice.
First, to summarize (SPOILERS): the character Zampano in the film is a big, muscular one-man traveling show, performing feats of strength, etc. He brings on this girl, Gelsemina, who has the mannerisms of Charlie Chaplin and a face described by another character as an “artichoke.” She’s really sweet and there’s some lingering love issues but he treats her like sh*t pretty much and at the end leaves her in the middle of nowhere and sneaks off. Years later, he hears that she dies and finally, realizing how much he loved her, falls to his knees by the sea and cries–the first time we see him display any sort of emotion.
So, not quite the intellectual who might write of the Navidson Record, right? Well, per those aforementioned insights:
1) Early in the film, before performing this trick where he straps a chain around his chest and expands his chest to break it, he tells the surrounding crowd that “men have gone blind” from doing the trick… I think he said something about straining an optic nerve… I forget. But, as we know of course, Zampano in HOL is blind.
2) The guy was a drunkard. And in HOL, there’s a lot of references to Zampano drinking, like the slip where he talks about a character drinking and accidentally says “I” instead of “he,” etc.
3) Also, I was thinking about that line in the book (the coded message) that says, “Dear Zampano, who did you lose?” Of course, if you read the quick summary I gave of the movie above, the clear answer to this is the girl, Gelsemina. That was pretty much the climax/resolution of the film–how he lost her and how he realized he “lost” her. Everything in the film led up to him losing her. So…
… That’s all I got. Has anyone else seen the film? If so, did you make the same or any new connections?