Tagged!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So I've been tagged. By Tim F. of Balloon Juice -- see here. Here are the questions, here are my answers:

1) Name a book that you want to share so much that you keep giving away copies.

There is a temptation, given my Straussian background, to mention Plato's Republic and Machiavelli's The Prince here. (Yes, I just gave in to said temptation.) At least I didn't mention Natural Right and History. (Damn.) But I'll stick to fiction: Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Skvorecky's The Engineer of Human Souls, Kawabata's Snow Country, anything and everything by these authors, as well as by Calvino, Garcia Marquez, Bulgakov, Capek, Grass, Tanizaki, Machado de Assis, Eco, and Le Carré, among others.

2) Name a piece of music that changed the way you listen to music.

Everything by Pink Floyd, particularly Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall, as well as "Echoes" on Meddle. "Comfortably Numb" has been my favourite song since I was in high school. Pulse is an incredible two-disc live album that's now also available on DVD. I'd also add Sgt. Pepper's by The Beatles, as well as many individual songs.

3) Name a film you can watch again and again without fatigue.

These aren't necessarily the best films -- I'd probably put Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Kieslowski's The Decalogue at or very near the top -- but movies I can watch again and again purely for the sake of entertainment include Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ghostbusters, The Back to the Future trilogy, Ocean's 11 and 12, American Pie, Rear Window, Waiting for Guffman, What's Up, Doc?, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Bad Santa (preferably the badder version), All the President's Men, and various Woody Allens, including Annie Hall, Love and Death, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, and Radio Days.

4) Name a performer for whom you suspend all disbelief.

Not sure. George Clooney comes to mind. One of the only true movie stars of our time. Maybe Bette Davis in All About Eve, one of the great performances of all time. Humphrey Bogart. Woody Allen in his prime. Pacino at his best. Toshiro Mifune in Kurosawa's classics. Actually, though, I'll go with Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara, the stars of most of Ozu's great films (Tokyo Story, Late Spring, etc.) -- truly beautiful performances each and every time.

5) Name a work of art you’d like to live with.

It's tempting to go big. I'd love to have the Mona Lisa in my living room. And Michelangelo's David. And Picasso's Guernica. And so on. I'd like a selection of works by Constable and Turner, too. But two of my main artistic passions are Japanese art and expressionism. And specifically Hiroshige and Munch. And so it's a tie between two series of works. I'd like to live with Hiroshige's 100 Famous Views of Edo and Munch's The Frieze of Life.

6) Name a work of fiction which has penetrated your real life.

Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Skvorecky's The Engineer of Human Souls, and Kawabata's Snow Country. Does cinema count? If so, I'll add the complete works of Kieslowski and Ozu. Maybe also Crowe's wonderful Almost Famous.

7) Name a punch line that always makes you laugh.

So much in Seinfeld makes me laugh. I watch it over and over and over again. The precise moment at which the Gene Wilder character falls in love with the sheep in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex -- the look on his face is unfathomably brilliant. So much in The Simpsons. I'll single out one episode in which Homer, vocabulary expanded, refers to Bart's "Machiavellian countenance". Which brings us full circle. It's been fun.

And now I'd like to tag ALL of my wonderful co-bloggers and guest bloggers. Also Joe Gandelman and Michael van der Galien of The Moderate Voice. Go for it.