If something isn’t working with a project, sometimes it is best to check your scope.
The previous Non-Fiction book I review was Astounding, which I didn’t love. Space Odyssey made me feel like the problem might have been one of scope. This isn’t a book about Kubrick. It isn’t about Clarke. It’s about that one time these two very different people came together to work on a singular project, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and once that was done the book ends without biographing further. However, if this was a biography, it wasn’t the biography of a movie as much as the two men who worked hardest to craft it. Kubrick and Clarke and principally the characters this book focuses on.
I would be lying if I didn’t say that Kubrick stole the show from Clarke, which is odd in light of the fact that the author seemed to know Clarke personally. It’s not that Clarke doesn’t come across as an interesting person in this, as some of the anecdotes about Clarke and his own writing process really resonated with me, and reminded me of my own writing process. It’s just that Kubrick was a personality for whom one can understand the cliche description of being ‘larger than life,’ which (from reading this book) had an overwhelming sense of blindsided determination when it came to making his art. He wasn’t just a pain in the ass, he was a neurotic, determined, and dictatorial pain in the ass, but the kind of person who brings out the drive and the determination in others. I found his pedantry kind of delightful, even though I would probably hate to be a victim of it in real life.
The story really does show how both of these men worked towards maintaining a sense of scientific and artistic integrity, and how their pedantry ensured that all the details that people truly relish about the movie worked well. Clarke crafted 2001 for Kubrick, and work on the movie was already going before Clarke ever finished. The author shows how the two men, independently and working together, worked through the logical problems that arise when writing good fiction. To whatever extent this does become a biography of the art piece and not its creators comes through in these sections, as well as though that remind you of the time when this was written, and what was going on socially and politically that gave this work its genesis.
I really did have an excellent time with this.
Failures in Polymathy 