Ah, yeah, you beat me to this logical punch before I posted above. My bad. It is good to see some of the old WUiB gang posting in one place again, though it sucks that this is what occasioned it. I'll fourth (fifth?) the longing for WUIB's return, but for the very reasons you mentioned, Miller, I think it's gone for…

While there was never an official announcement, I got the impression that it just didn't make practical sense to continue as a feature. It never got very many hits, and while it had a fervent cult following on the site, our numbers were small. What's more, it must have been an especially time-consuming and…

My work schedule has been periodically interfering with my ability to participate here, but I'm nevertheless going to man up and take those Lame Points for going AWOL for this discussion. I did read the book though, and found it full of verve and creativity, but was needlessly bloated and soggy, lacking both depth and…

The Tingler
How on earth could you guys have left out Vincent Price experimenting with LSD in the Tingler??

Wait a minute, doesn't he have, like, five kids? Is he really going to snort away as much of their inheritance as he can?

Wow, partdavid, that was truly amazing.

Nah, he won't flatline while there are still ridiculously oversized paychecks from CBS to be cashing. Two and a Half Men seems to be the only thing keeping him alive at this point, a horrifying reality that is presumably pushing Charlie further and further into dissolution and public self-destruction.

The Great Reveal
While we're talking about style, I want to ask: What was all of your experiences regarding the revelation that Iris was the true author of the Bind Assassin? I found the similarities to the writing style between the "real-world" passages and the Blind Assassin excerpts to be so consistent that I first…

Oh shit,

Well, Atwood is also a recognized and published poet, in addition to being a novelist. While any high-quality writer is presumably concerned with the rhythm and flow of language, I'm willing to assume that Atwood is more keenly attuned to the musical possibilities of language than others. While I never found her…

I read For Whom the Bell Tolls right before starting this book, so somewhat unexpectedly, I got a double dose of the Spanish Civil War this past month. Robert Jordan was certainly not much of a Communist, but he mingled with and worked for the Reds in the fight against Franco. An enemy of my enemy is my friend, and…

Also, there are some telling parallels between the ostentatious excesses of the Sakiel-Norn elite and the various fashion spread interludes Iris lives through, notably the "Harem Ball".

Iris's self-styled suffering
I find it really interesting that Iris is someone who is so obsessed with self-abnegation, with denying herself even a record of her accomplishments. She effectively erases her independent identity when she consents to be married to Richard, she refuses to admit to anyone, even herself,…

I'm mostly in agreement with Ms. Adequate on this issue. For such a nakedly grasping social climber as Richard Griffen, public death would be about as total as corporeal death. The suicide on the Water Nixie was just a natural consequence once Iris had destroyed his reputation. While I don't think there's anything…

Well, I suppose it's a matter of personal taste, but I wasn't really bothered by Iris's crusty narration. Her cynicism and the life experiences that gave rise to it are positively the center of this novel,and I can't see how I could have appreciated and enjoyed the book without also admiring the crucial puzzle piece…

This ties in a bit with the above thread regarding the willful disregard of reality, but I read Laura's suicide as being the only logical response to her entire worldview being shattered in the space of a single conversation. Laura has spent over a decade living under the self-constructed narrative that her purpose in…

Yes, an excellent observation, Ms. Adequate. I fully agree with your expansion on this topic, TR. Another example, perhaps one of the biggest in the book, is Iris' sacrifice of her own life's work, submitting the Blind Assassin under Laura's name. She sees it as a noble, selfless gesture of love that ends up being far…

On the question of Iris's jealousy, I was under the impression that she wasn't jealous of Laura, but rather of the misunderstood popular image Laura took on after Iris published the Blind Assassin. Iris published the book in a deliberate attempt to wrest the public narrative of her and Laura's lives away from Richard…

This is slightly off-topic, but all this talk about the applicability of the MPDG trope got me thinking. A girlfriend of mine once jokingly referred to herself as a "Manic Pixie Dream Girl", and I'm 89% sure that she's never even HEARD of AVclub.com. That's just one piece of anecdotal evidence, but I'm curious as to…

Oh, does she? Oops…I (mis)remembered that fact not being emphasized.