Resul Pookutty Talks Sense

I heard Resul Pookutty speak to an audience last week...
"Keep perfecting the same thing for ten years without shifting your mind to either sides, then neither the Academy nor the world could ignore your existance."

Now, isn't that a 'lean' idea? Absolutely no fat content! Just narrow focus.

The same thing Al Ries and Jack Trout keep talking about in all their books - 'to score big, you have to narrow your focus'!

Of Victorian Scrolls & Contorted Minds

Let me quote from Lila by Robert M. Persig -

"Victorians repressed the truth whenever it seemed socially unacceptable. To speak plainly and openly was vulgar. Hence their apparatus for self-correction became paralyzed. Their houses, their social lives became filled with ornamental curlicures that never stopped proliferating. Sometimes the useless ornamentation was so heavy it was hard to discover what the object was for.
Ultimately their minds became the same way. Their language became ornamental, to the point of being incomprehensible."

So what do I think when I'm thinking? I probe into the difference between the 'difficult' themes and the convoluted ones.

Persona by Bergman isn't very easy to comprehend. So is Metamorphosis, the book by Kafka. But, both give enough scope to sit back and rack one's brain. Despite their 'heavyness' in meaning they're both suave and lean. Very seasoned story telling!

In comparison does Renoir's much lauded 'Rules Of The Game' live up to them? Barring contorted story telling, why should the rest of the world be even interested in the manners and mores of prewar France? Into this category I add The Godfather by Coppola. When critics over glorifies such works to an extremely inaccessible height....

To quote from Lila again ( on Victorianism) - "it was just like their ornamental cast iron furniture: expensive looking, cheeply made, brittle, cold and uncomfortable."