Missing Link (2019)

Director and writer Chris Butler has done a few animated features I liked (Corpse Bride, Coraline, and Paranorman, plus Kubo and the Two Strings, which I still haven't seen but hear is good). Also, the marketing for this one reached me through my kindle—I already knew that clownish feathery Big Bird look of the monster on first sight, so maybe my unconscious was manipulated into the choice. Missing Link is a Bigfoot story, set in the late 1800s, but the twists on the various aura of Sasquatch legends come early and often. This hairy eight-foot-tall monster (voiced by Zach Galifianakis) speaks English and is a sensitive, mild-mannered, timid soul, charming but almost fawning. In the right mood he can roar frighteningly, but more often he's like the polite restless smart kid who's been traveling in the car too long. He reads a lot and wants to join the yeti in the Himalayas he's read about. He's the only one of his kind in the Washington state forests (nice to see Washington!) and he's lonely. So he sends a letter to lure the great explorer and possible crackpot, Sir Lionel Frost (voiced by Hugh Jackman, having the time of his life). Frost is a bit of a Sherlock Holmes type and a preening egotist who fancies himself the world's unrivaled discoverer of monsters. The first scenes feature an encounter with the Loch Ness monster, for example. He wants to join an exclusive explorers club that won't have him without firm evidence of his claims and even then probably won't have him. He's disreputable by his very interests and beliefs. Bigfoot's letter works, he and Frost strike the deal, and they're off to storied Shangri-La. Along the way they pick up an old flame of Frost's, Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana), and a would-be assassin, Willard Stenk (Timothy Olyphant). It's a long way from Washington state to the Himalayas. Frost puts Bigfoot in a ridiculous outfit and names him Mr. Link (evolution is a side issue here). Later Mr. Link chooses Susan for his first name. It's all light-hearted and actually a lot of fun—Galifianakis stealing scenes at will, aided and abetted by animation that harks to a cleaned-up buffed-up Jay Ward style for Frost and Adelina, reminiscent of Snidely Whiplash and Nell, with flat heads, jutting chins, poufy lips, and razor-sharp angular lines. Mr. Susan Link is wonderfully expressive, toothy and bubbly. I liked it best when they were all clowning around at their ease, even in danger, but there's a big action-packed climax too. The whole thing is compact and clever enough that it adds up to a fun time.

The Way of All Flesh (1873-1884)

I really enjoyed Samuel Butler's posthumously published fictional account of his life, and if it took the fraud of landing on the Modern Library list of greatest 20th-century novels to get me there I guess that's OK. As influential as it might have been for 20th-century youths, however, it was written in the 19th century and it's about the 19th century. I know little else of Butler. I had him confused with Samuel Johnson and thought be belonged  more to the 18th century or something. "The way of all flesh" has a wonderful ring to it, riffing on the biblical line "the way of all the earth." "The way of all flesh" came to English by way of idiomatic Danish and German, but it feels Shakespearean and is now mostly associated with Butler. The Way of All Flesh is a big story of an arguably small man, spanning four generations and proceeding at a stately pace, setting out each generation by turn even as it gradually, almost imperceptibly, zooms in on our hero, Ernest Pontifex. We don't even see him in the first third of this novel. The story, which spends much of its time exploding Victorian hypocrisy in calculated assaults, is strikingly modern. In many ways it's about an individual identity, socially defined, in conflict with its environment. Butler was a lifelong bachelor and if he wasn't gay (a debated point) he certainly understood being an outsider. Ernest comes from a long line of clergy and that is the career expected of him. But Ernest is reflexively individual, a kind of intellectual gadfly contrarian by today's lights. The description of Ernest's treatment by his abusive father is less notable for the physical aspect, simply described as regular beatings, and much more for the detailed emotional stresses inflicted, aided and abetted by his mother. Today more and more we call it gaslighting. Nothing excuses such treatment, but Ernest's insistence on taking possession of his own destiny, with all the inevitable mistakes that entails, was obviously hard for everyone to deal with. In fact, it's the willful seizing of his own destiny that is likely more shocking and influential than his talent, which is modest. Ernest Pontifex is a genuine oddball, an intellectual true to his own self-determined principles. He is described late in this story as a "one book man," which would apply equally to Butler, author of the satirical utopia novel Erewhon and translator of Homer. Ironically, perhaps, Butler is still a one book man, but that book since his death has turned out to be this one, published according to his direction after his death, which came in 1902. The Way of All Flesh was important to A.A. Milne and George Orwell, among others. I had an idea while I was reading that it might have made an impression on James Joyce, who was also shaped by similarly pervasive church forces. Different churches, different cultures, so maybe not. The Way of All Flesh has really wonderful storytelling and a great story to tell. Ernest is strange and lovable in his perverse choices. Overton—Ernest's godfather and the ostensible author of this narrative—frequently refers to him as "my hero," which at first I took to mean the way he expressed "the hero of this story." But he uses it so often I got the impression he might have meant that Ernest was indeed a personal hero. He is for me too now I know his story.

In case it's not at the library.