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Go to the Beginning Black Notebook (which concerns Anna's novel Frontiers of War) (Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) Anna has divided the pages in this notebook into a left side (the real story behind her novel Frontiers of War) and the right side (the commercial aspects of Frontiers of War). Here, we see the right half of the pages. Anna details two business dinners she has with television producers, one British and one American, who each want to adapt her Frontiers of War novel. Both times she dines with them with great reluctance after trying to weasel out of it during their initial correspondence. Both times, they want to change her novel beyond recognition, but they don't want to pay her to write something new because they want to take advantage of the best-seller status already attached to the Frontiers of War title. Both times, Anna picks fights with them out of shame towards her own novel. The British producer is a soft-faced, pleasant man supposedly working on his own novel. He suggests moving Frontiers of War from Africa to England (so as to save the budget). Anna antagonizes him by claiming that she wants to film her novel as a comedy. She then gives him a scathing description of a potential scene complete with fighter planes landing with two missing from the formation, a teddy bear sitting on a dead pilot's bunk, and a muscle tightening in the throat of a surviving pilot. (Anna repeats "A muscle tightens in his throat" at least three times until the phrase becomes completely absurd.) She and the British producer curtly part ways. The American producer is a hard-drinking, pleasant woman who has more interest in arranging a rendezvous with her American colleague over at the next table. Neither she nor Anna wants to talk about Frontiers of War, but finally she suggests turning it into a musical. Anna deliberately shocks her by claiming membership with the British Communist Party. That kills the dinner. Anna excuses herself to go home, and the American producer -- with a look of relief -- goes off to hook up with her lover. Red Notebook (Anna's disillusionment with Communism) Anna's entries in August 1954 mention about how she and Molly discuss for the umpteenth time leaving the British Communist Party. She then describes a mystical dream she has one night of the entire world getting covered with a beautiful web of red fabric that stretches out from a map of the Soviet Union. The shades of red then get invaded and transformed by all other colors in the world, and she wakes with a feeling of joy. Right after this, Anna has pasted in some scribbled notes from November 1952 describing a writers' group within the British Communist Party that she attended. Everyone is supposed to analyze a pamphlet about Stalin's position on linguistics. The pamphlet seems like nonsense to Anna, but she's afraid to say anything because she hasn't been trained to analyze philosophy like some of the others. However, the others also seem uncomfortable, and unwilling to start discussing the pamphlet. Some try to make what Anna recognizes as the usual excuses for the pamphlet such as the different cultural tradition from which it originates (i.e. the Russians having a different culture than the British) and the poor quality of the translation. |
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