This week I finished:

Common Sense, by Thomas Paine: I read this book because the more I read about it, the more my book seemed to be following its legacy, though I want to be careful about flattering myself, given its sales and influence.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much of this book made common sense though the language was hard to understand.

I didn’t realize a book had affected American history so much. I understand about 500,000 copies sold at a time when the number of colonists was about 2,500,000, meaning 20 percent of them bought it, the equivalent of 60 million copies of a book today.

Paine railed on monarchy, especially hereditary, how England was helping itself, not the colonies, and was making them enemies of France and Spain, nations the colonies would rather trade with.

As I understand from reading and watching relevant histories on the book, before he published it, on January 10, 1776, colonists angry at the Intolerable acts and more hated impositions favored reconciling with England. This book transitioned the nation-to-be to revolution, writing the Declaration of Independence six months later.

I also understand that the ideas he called common sense weren’t common sense when he wrote them, but that he helped them become so.

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A Brighter Summer Day, by Edward Yang: Yes, I posted about watching this movie for the first time two months ago. I knew I had to watch it again, despite its four-hour length, because of its complexity and nuance. It has over one hundred speaking characters.

I started re-watching it before Parasite and didn’t choose Parasite with any expectation it might be comparable. Others, including big movie aficionados seemed to have found them comparable, that is, and I suppose in intent they might be, but I didn’t see them as comparable. A Brighter Summer Day is just on another level.

My second time watching it helped pick up a lot more interwoven threads. This movie is like a tapestry in how everything interacts. I could watch it many more times and pick up more—especially if I learn more about Taiwan.

This time I picked up a lot more about a teenage boy’s ignorance and confusion about the life of a pretty girl. It reminded me of many relationships I’ve forgotten most details of, though I thought I could never forget them at the time. I remember that struggle, pain, and helplessness. Unlike the main character in the movie, I was older than fourteen when I started connecting with a very pretty girl.

Also unlike him, I wasn’t growing up in a war zone with occurrences like secret police taking my father away to interrogate him for days. I knew of gangs in other schools than my high school but didn’t see them murder people in other gangs with my own eyes, as he did.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible for a single movie to speak on as many issues as it did: coming of age, family, gangs, war, peace, etc. Like Yi Yi, it’s about life, like almost no other movies I can think of.

I recommend both works.

• ← My annual bike ride upstate and lunch at the farm providing my CSA, then riding back by the Little Red Lighthouse under the George Washington Bridge
• Stop saying the playbook for doubt and deception comes from “big tobacco.” What to say instead. →