We have come to the end of another discussion... However, please feel free to revisit any question! Today is a two parter and we will revisit the play with another question when the movie is released and more people have a chance to see it. Thanks, Noodlemantras, as always for all your insights and ideas. You always give me so much to think about! On to the last question...


“Well. Do you like me now? Do you like me now?”


Do you?

There's a lot to think about in that little question. For now I'm going to say no, I don't like him, but I do admire him. And I'll think my reasons into shape and post them later.

I'm with Endora. No, I don't think I like him. But I do have a lot of sympathy for him. He was just another of us flawed human beings, trying to adjust in a world that made no sense to him.

Well, I have to say, I do like him!

I don't think I'd want to encounter him in real life, but he is a lovely fantasy.......on a rather flippant note, I have a bit of a thing for "bad boys" and Wilmot is the most gorgeous bad boy I think I've ever seen!!

Seriously, I like Wilmot's honesty, his wit and his panache. As played by Johnny, he becomes larger than life and possibly far more attractive than he was in reality, but I do think the real Wilmot probably had a physical beauty and charm that won hearts, even though in most cases he probably broke them.

His writing is startling in its frank, often crude style, but it also contains passages of great beauty and feeling. Most often, when I read it, it makes me smile - it is so incisive and witty.

I hope the film inspires people (not only here) to read more about this fascinating man.

(returning having thought a bit)

I would very much like to be able to like him. I like honesty, and to me he seems to have stuck to his principles and lived in the way he chose. The fact that he may have hurt people in many ways doesn't worry me. He said at the start that he didn't want to be liked. I said then that he refused to accept responsibility for how others took him. He gave fair warning, it was then up to them. It's a bit like the disclaimers you see in car parks and so on advising you that you use the facility at your own risk. I admire the way he did all this.
The problem for me, the point at which I lose faith in him, is the death bed conversion. I do not like him for that. I like to think that this was a sham brought on by the delusions of a brain whose chemistry was shutting down, but his references to part of the bible make me think he could have really meant it. I wish he hadn't. This final about turn is the reason I cannot like him.

I think I would say the complete opposite, DITHOT!

I like the things he stood for, truth, honesty, and his humor and genius at writing. But I can't say I would have liked him personally, for the way he treated the people closest to him. I think he used the premise of being honest with people to be cruel, to keep them at arm's length. I know he warned people not to like him and that they would suffer for it if they did, but to me, it was his way of not taking responsibility for his actions against others. I felt compassion for him, knowing his childhood and past and how it shaped the man he became, but it's still hard to overlook his cruelty. As others have said, his letters to his family show a different side to him and I might have a change of heart when I get around to reading those. But at the end of the play and the film, no, I did not like him. I felt compassion and pity for him.

Thank you Liz, you summed up my feelings exactly. The one thing I would like to add is that he would go outside the box in his thinking and writing. (like Hunter?) I have to admire that as it is so very different then what surrounded him. To be original in any century is to be admired, even if you do not like the outcome. (ok to me!)

Thanks again Liz and DITHOT for another great fun, fact filled and knowledge gathering discussion. I am all the smarter for it.

Raven

I think we have to remember too, that we are only seeing him in last years of his life in the play. The younger JW might have been less cruel and easier to like. I need to read the biographies...



That is very true, Raven! Look how JW has passed the test of time. He is not a hugely well known author or figure but he has certainly outlasted quite a few!

I think he is a deliciously, delightfully outrageous storybook character, but I wouldn't want him to be any part of my personal life. He's got some admirable traits, but, like Liz, I would be too hurt by many of his actions if he were someone close to me.

I like him. He reminds me of so many people I have known, especially when I was younger. People who fought tooth and nail to be brutally honest in their art. Who spent their days and nights mired in sex, drugs and rock and roll. Not a cliche, but a way of life. Yeah, their personal relationships suffered for it, hurting close friends and lovers and all sorts of innocent bystanders who got in the way, but it wasn't boring. And a lot of them are dead, but they left such great music for the world to enjoy and love. I'd much rather have been hurt by them then to never have known them.

I really like him.

I see the tortured soul, the struggle between good and evil, and right and wrong, and the long battle with alcoholism. A man who wanted to do the right things yet somehow never really quite did until the end.

I think if I had sat with him through those discussions he had with Burnet at the end of his life I would have liked him even more.