Friday, August 01, 2008

Sequels and Prequels

Diane Arbus: Identical Twins (1967).


Marcy Dermansky, Twins: A Novel (William Morrow, 2005). Competing twins in school -- tattoos, experimentation, and infighting between identical twins Chloe and Sue.


Both covers are creepy -- this second version evokes Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides (1999 film based on the 1993 novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, set in Grosse Pointe and Detroit in the mid-1970s). And let's not forget the Stanley Kubrick version of The Shining (1980) below, which hearkens back to Diane Arbus's photo above.

[Note: removing the inbed, as it seems to be causing a crash].

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

8 comments:

Lana Gramlich said...

Are you just wishing you had 2 women these days or something? *LOL*

Marcy Dermansky said...

Hey Erik-

Thanks for posting the two covers to my novel. I love that photo by Diane Arbus. If you're interested, my absolute favor cover to Twins - which unfortunately never made it to the bookstores - is posted on my website. It's a marvelously creepy photo of twins taken by Mary Ellen Mark.

http://marcydermansky.com/

Best,
Marcy

Charles Gramlich said...

Something a bit weird going on with your webpage. I don't seem able to load it using IE at all, and on Safari it says some things won't load. Not sure why.

I liked the twins in The Shining. Very freaky.

Sidney said...

When I was a kid, there was another kid in the neighborhood who was born the same day as me. Our families, who knew each other long before we were born, referred to us as twins. We used to introduce each other at school and say we were twins.

I'd kind of forgotten that. I can remember at least one teacher going: "You two sure don't look alike."

Don't know what ever became of him.

JR's Thumbprints said...

My wife's cousin walks her dog in a Chicago park. She used to routinely chitchat with another dog lover. One day she asked him, "So what do you do for a living?" "I'm a writer," he answered. "Oh," she responded, "What have you written?"
As soon as he told her, she knew who he was - Jeffrey Eugenides. He has since moved from Chicago.

As for twins, how about the dying twin in the womb that gets absorb by the other. Eeerie.

Johnny Yen said...

There's a scene in "The Shining" that has to be an homage to that Arbus photo.

I think I've mentioned before that Arbus' husband was Alan Arbus, who had a regular role on the old MASH show as psychiatrist Sidney Friedman.

Erik Donald France said...

Thanks all for the comments!

Technology has been a pain lately, but hopefully things are back on track.

Lana, stop with the fantasies!

Marcy, I love your book! It is perfect about that age group, an excellent companion piece to the movie 13. I've added a link to your website and plan to write more aboout Twins at some point.

Charles, Jim and Linda, thanks for the heads up on whatever was going in ghost in the machine-wise.

Erik Donald France said...

Johnny, that's true and yes, Kubrick and Arbus were connected from the 50s.

Sidney, somewhere, no doubt, your "twin" is out there!

Jim, Eugenides is interesting (Class of 1978). His 1970s house is in Grosse Pointe Park, on Middlesex, between Jefferson and Lake Saint Clair. Good detail on the dog encounter!