Culture Vulture

Moneyball, by Michael Lewis

2012-02-04T08:16:00.003-06:00

I really liked The Blind Side, so when I watched Moneyball awhile back, I immediately found myself wanting to read the book, hoping it would be as good - that it would have all the best parts of the movie and more. This did not turn out to be the case, oddly enough. The book didn't have any of the cheesy family stuff that to my mind basically spoiled the movie - no wife, no daughter, no sappy singing - so that was a plus. It also didn't really have any characters at all. I mean, there was some Billy Beane, but he didn't come to life on the page at all. Kind of makes you wonder how the filmmakers made all the characters as compelling as they did, honestly. Also, to my great surprise, all that fantastic dialogue in the movie is hardly to be found in the book. There are a few moments of the scouts talking, but they fall totally flat as compared to the sparkling hilarity of those scenes in the movie.

Even more surprising is the fact that the book doesn't have much to say about the "system" that you didn't know from the movie! I thought there would be extended reflections on it, how it changes the game, what it means - but no! There was a lot more ire about the "establishment," and the money angle, but that was pretty much it. You learn more about Bill James and how everyone ignored him for a long time, but Lewis seems to expect that this fill you with righteous indignation and basically carry the emotional weight of the book - and it just didn't. At least for me. In general, I was surprised by just how terrible the writing was. I mean, Lewis is no Proust, but this time I found myself getting really annoyed by the trite, formulaic writing.

The movie does take some insane liberties as far as truth goes, at least, if the book is taken as the true story. The biggest injustice, I think, is the portrayal of the A's manager, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. In the movie, he's the last hold-out, the guy who refuses to play Billy's way. In the book, he's basically hired to do what Billy says. I wonder how Art Howe felt about the movie. Apparently Paul Podesta refused to be part of the movie, but the character that replaces him doesn't seem that different, functionally speaking.

Overall, the book was annoyingly repetitive and not especially informative. It's not something I say often but - the movie is actually better. Despite the family sap and the constant punching things. Give the book a miss and watch it on video.

Fear and Trembling, by Amelie Nothomb

2012-02-04T07:54:00.001-06:00

A friend of mine recommended this to me not so long ago, and I read it this morning during an ill-fated mission to buy train tickets to Istanbul (the Istanbul train station is closed for 2 years while they build the high speed rail. Huh.) - which gives you an idea of how short it is - you can get through it in an hour, tops. And oh man is it great. Absolutely sublime.

The novel tells the story of a young woman (who shares the author's name) working at a Japanese company for one year. It is a hilariously funny but oddly moving and beautiful tale of masochism. There is a strangely simple transcendence to be found in the grinding misery of corporate life: "My mind was not that of a conqueror, but that of a cow that spends its life chewing contentedly in the meadow of invoices, waiting for the train of eternal grace to pass by. How good it felt to exist without pride or ambition. To live in hibernation." (41) Nothomb does not paint a pretty picture of Japanese culture - there is an especially devastating interlude where the author describes the life of Japanese women, and the virtues of suicide. The novel decidedly confirms a lot of negative stereotypes about Japan and the seething horror of a life essentially sold to business. It would actually make an amazing companion piece to Kafka's Metamorphosis, I wish I'd read it early enough to put it on my syllabus. Fear and Trembling is a grim look at modern (Japanese) life, but it is also wonderful and funny and interesting. Much recommended.

36 Arguments for the Existence of God, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

2012-02-03T16:11:00.001-06:00

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is one of those rare novelists who can weave incredibly complex intellectual ideas into fictional narratives. As is often the case with such books (it's also true of The Housekeeper and the Professor, and 7 Types of Ambiguity), the ideas are slightly more compelling that the fictional narrative, to me at least, but in 36 Arguments the story definitely gives the ideas a run for their money. The characters are wonderfully vivid and lifelike, particularly the women. But the various narrative strands - while quite interesting - don't quite coalesce as strongly as one might like. And you do get a 20 page long segment of philosophical debate a la Ayn Rand, though it's a compelling debate at least. Still, it's an impressive novel, particularly in its timeliness - I honestly can't recall ever reading a book that was so clearly written for this particular moment in time, and that captured current issues so insightfully.

The central character of the book is a guy named Cass, who has just achieved huge professional success with a book on atheism. The appendix, which contains 36 arguments for the existence of God and refutations of them, is included in the end of this novel. My mom thought it was unnecessary, but I was quite impressed by it. It's an impressive academic work, definitely on the dry side, but very interesting. In general, I don't know that I've ever read a more persuasiveand sympathetic argument for atheism. I read the appendix after finishing the first chapter of the book, which I think was a good way to go about it, timing wise - there are references to it later, and it's nice to have it all clear in your mind. But it's also not necessary reading, unless you're really interested in atheism as a philosophical/psychological problem. I do think that reading it enhances your experience of the novel though.

Anyhow - so that's one piece, Cass the successful atheist and his academic career. Then there's his girlfriend Lucinda, also an academic, whose career has suffered a blow, and who is rather bitter about it. I thought her character was especially well done, in that she's just barely likeable, but remains kind of human and understandable. Then there's Cass' past, particularly his encounters with a former teacher, who is a kind of religious... figure. Hard to describe, but very well captured. And his fellow students, and an ex-girlfriend, also well done - annoying at times but highly lovable. Then there is a Hasidic shtetl and a young mathematical prodigy there. Which is thrilling and has some marvelous scenes that bring together math and religion in really fascinating ways, but otherwise kind of peters out.

Overall though, a really interesting work, with a thoughtful interlacing of religion, math, and love - I suspect I'll find myself returning to it mentally.

Zayde, by Mme de Lafayette

2012-01-27T17:03:00.003-06:00

Nicholas Paige (the editor and translator of a new edition of the book) argues that Zayde is the "last great French romance," and interesting because it is both a romance and a kind of pastiche of one; a book where all the standard tropes and techniques appear, but don't get used in their typical ways. I would perhaps add to this that the techniques, when used, come across as somewhat strained and tiresome. The mistaken identity issue is carried to such an extent that it almost seems like a parody, not to mention, largely unnecessary. As Paige points out, very little actually happens in much of the book. It's quite dull, really, until it picks up about 3/4 of the way in, in a flurry of agitation that feels mostly tiresome.

One thing I found intriguing was the way the book somewhat relied on a mysterious prophecy ("you will marry the man in this painting!"), wavered on its value ("perhaps they can convince her father it doesn't matter!"), made it come true ("you ARE him!" uh... spoiler alert, sorry), then explained the somewhat coincidental chain of events that brought it about ("it was all a ruse!"). Really odd, when you think about it. Undermining the otherworldly, then having it cash out (because maybe it could be kinda true!), then undermining it again. Wacky. Strangely wish-washy for a novel written in the 1660s.

Perhaps more intriguing though - are all romances like this? - is the way that the book almost reads like a philosophical thought experiment conducted to think through how love works. What is true love? What makes two people fall in love? How can jealousy be overcome? How can you ever truly know another person, and do you actually need to, to love them? The novel stages these extensive discussions on the nature of love then promptly acts out the ideas mentioned in them. People pause to tell stories from their past that contain nuggets of wisdom the characters need in order to reform (which they maddeningly don't seem to understand).

Actually, the main sub-plot of the novel, one could say, is on the problem of misunderstanding, or miscommunication. In this, it is perhaps an interesting early fictional work, in that there is a real problem about intelligibility and understanding. The characters are either deceived by other people, or deluded by their love, jealousy, or general emotions. Feelings completely overpower reason in this book, repeatedly. People constantly project their ideas onto others and take them as true. This is especially charming when a guy is falling in love with a woman who doesn't speak his language, and the novel is simultaneously trying to claim that this really is true love (as opposed to all the mistaken cases of love in the story) and illustrating how completely misguided he is in all of his views of her. Pretty thorny, but the novel hardly seems to notice.

Not a bad read, but not an especially exciting one either, I have to say.

Epitaph for a Small Winner, by Machado de Assis

2012-01-23T20:28:00.003-06:00

A friend of mine recommended this to me awhile back, and then a random internet searched revealed that it's one of Woody Allen's favorite books. And I couldn't help but think of that as I was reading, imagining how Woody Allen read it, how it influenced him, etc. It enhances the reading experience, actually - you can kind of see the connection between the novel and Allen's worldview.

It's a strange book, but quite pleasant. It vaguely reminded me of reading Nathanael West's books, though that might be a misleading comparison. Another friend of mine who's also reading it noted that it reminded him of Tristram Shandy, which is definitely a more logical connection to make, although the postmodern experiments are much more restrained and happily unobtrusive. It's presented as a memoir written after the protagonist's death, and it's a random sort of story, a curiously placid account of an ultimately unsuccessful life. In that though, it's a kind of touching account of the human condition, foiled romances, failed ambitions, abstract philosophical speculations that prove nonsensical and maybe even insane, and yet - contentment. A short read, and a worthwhile one.

The Artist

2012-01-21T14:17:00.000-06:00

Not so long ago, the boyfriend and I were at the Museum of Science and Industry, and stopped at the silent film exhibit to watch a few short movies. They were basically incomprehensible. Partly because the image quality was somewhat shoddy, making it hard to track the actors' expressions. But also because the narrative was extremely difficult to follow. A caption (intertitle?) would appear, setting the scene, and then a bunch of stuff would happen with no hints as to what it meant, and by the time the next words appeared, we had no idea what had happened. I mention this because one of the most impressive aspects of The Artist is that it is a modern day silent film - something I would not really have thought possible.

The opening beautifully sets this up, showing you a silent film, then panning back to show you the audience watching it (and the orchestra playing the score), then the main actor behind the screen, waiting to take a bow. We are thus subtly introduced to the conventions of silent film. When later in the film, the music stops and then launches into the next piece, you kind of envision an orchestra setting down its instruments and turning the pages on the sheet music. It's kind of great.

What is more, the plot is quite easy to follow, despite the fact that you don't get intertitles for every single piece of dialogue. In a lot of cases, you can actually read the actor's lips pretty easily, especially when you essentially know what is going to be said in a given context anyhow. But a lot gets conveyed purely by the expressiveness of the actors' faces. And it makes you realize what gifted actors some of the modern celebrities we've come to know and love actually are - and much better a showcase this movie is for their talents. James Cromwell is generally plays rather taciturn types ("That'll do pig"), so one forgets what a wonderful face he has, and how much it conveys.

The trope of the person who cannot adjust to the transition from silent films to talkies is, I think, a somewhat cliche one, but what makes The Artist so unique is that it illuminates how gradual that transition actually was, and what was lost in the process. The sound pictures of Peppy Miller appear in the movie without sound, and in the process, you kind of see how much the early talkies still relied on the basic format of silent films - they were silent films with sound, as opposed to contemporary cinema, which is essentially an entirely different format. It made me think of that Walter Benjamin argument about steel; how steel was initially used as a replacement for wood, and only later did people come to understand that it could be used to make completely new inventions that no one had ever dreamed of. I think the same could be said for sound in film - early cinema only gradually figured out what it wanted to do, and perhaps one could say it is still figuring that out. This movie, by illuminating some of the advantages of silence, makes the stakes more apparent.

It also, subtly, points out how much more open silent films were to foreign actors. American audiences are probably unfamiliar with Berenice Bejo, the charming star of The Artist. But her filmography on imdb spans for pages - it's just that most Americans don't watch French films. And it's their loss, because she's a delightful actress. She has the most wonderful face - you absolutely fall in love with her from the very beginning, and because it's a silent film, you pay attention to her features in a way you probably wouldn't, in a talkie (also, incidentally, an argument for seeing the movie on the big screen).

The story itself is, as I've said already, a rather worn trope, and it's not an especially new spin on it. It's the form of its delivery that is so fantastic - the medium is the message. The people who gushed over Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds as a love letter to cinema would do well to watch The Artist and see what such a love letter looks like when done properly. It's a tour de force - a wonderful, thought-provoking movie about movies.

Shame

2012-01-19T23:21:00.001-06:00

I haven't been to an artsy movie in quite awhile, so I might be a little bit out of practice. But...are they always this boring? I had been looking forward to seeing Shame for awhile - I like Steve McQueen, Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, and sex, so I figured it'd be great. And in a strange way it did seem like a good movie, despite having very little narrative and being mostly pretty dull. I want to say a little more about it, and in some sense there will be spoilers, but it's more that I want to run an "explanation" by you and see what you think.

Incidentally, I just checked whether other online reviews discuss this at all and it turns out they do, but for the wrong reasons. So - kind of a spoiler, but not really: to me, this seemed like a movie about the fall-out from incest. I mean, the basic plot is that Fassbender is a sex addict, Mulligan, his sister, shows up and wants to stay in his apartment, they argue a lot, she seems to also have some really messed up relationships and be pretty screwed up emotionally, etc. Now, plenty of people on the Internet are like omg there are scenes of them naked together it's incest!!! Which is dumb. I mean, not having siblings I can't really speak authoritatively about it, but being a degraded European, I don't see anything weird about being naked around your siblings. There is, however, a definite sexual tension (I think) between the two of them, and they both have some serious sexual problems, and some of those problems seem connected to their relationship, which alternates between uncomfortably close (emotionally and physically - in the sense of location, not sex) and rather detached. Also, there's this scene where she says "We're not bad people we just come from a bad place." which seemed to me like an obvious allusion to some secret in their past. Finally - if that is what's going on, it provides some kind of organizing idea for the narrative, which is otherwise pretty aimless and meandering. To say that it's purely about Fassbender's sex addiction doesn't really account for the fact that all the focal points of the plot seem to come back to his sister in some way - even if it's because they're happening while he's avoiding her. So if that's what it's a story about, then there is a point, and it's subtle, and actually quite well done and kind of interesting.

If it's just about Fassbender being a sex addict - I'm not that impressed. McQueen is brilliant at creating a visual subtext - one of the best aspects of the movie is how Fassbender mostly sees women as sexualized body parts; thighs, cleavage, an open mouth. It's extremely well done and actually somewhat disturbing. but the sex addiction story doesn't really do much for me. I guess maybe because I don't find it revelatory that nymphomania might be a rather sordid and unpleasant kind of lifestyle. I don't find it surprising that sex can be totally unsexy and actually rather mechanical and gross, even if it's a threesome with hot women. I mean seriously - have you ever watched porn? Or even that David Duchovny show, Californication?

Much has been made, on the internetz, of a scene where Fassbender meets a nice woman and then is unable to perform. This, to me, was not an especially compelling scene. Again - not surprising that someone accustomed to mindless intercourse might find genuine intimacy hard to negotiate. But the scene also just wasn't entirely believable to me, and it didn't really carry much weight story-wise. I'm glad it wasn't overdone, but I think one would need a bit more insight into Fassbender's mental life to see it as meaningful, because he mostly just exuded a rather undifferentiated anguish throughout, which wasn't all that engaging.

Steve McQueen is an amazing director. You should watch Hunger, if you haven't, because it's phenomenal. Shame isn't really on the required viewing list, but it is a McQueen movie, and as such, there is something kind of mesmerizing about it. It is visually rich, but narratively disappointing.

The Old English Baron, by Clara Reeve

2012-01-06T16:58:00.004-06:00

This book was so lackluster that I completely forgot about it about 5 minutes after I finished it. I read it in one go when the jetlag woke me up at 6am (I have to admit, another pro of e-books - being able to read in bed without disturbing the precious angel snoring beside you), and it was pretty bland. Clara Reeve was a big defender of romance, and the Preface to this book includes a rather preachy explanation of how the "business of Romance is, first, to excite the attention; and secondly, to direct it to some useful, or at least innocent, end" (though she does admit that it "may be abused, and become an instrument to corrupt the manners and morals of mankind"). She cites Castle of Otranto as a major influence, but complains that it's overdone and so exaggerated as to be comical (which she's kind of correct about, but that's also what makes Walpole fun! the campiness of it!), and proposes that her novel will have all the benefits with none of the flaws.

As it turns out, her novel is dull as dishwater, a bland swapped-at-birth sort of story with a little ghosting thrown in. Perhaps it's because I've been reading so many fantastic (by which I mean the mode of writing, not the quality) novels lately; I kept expecting there to be some suspicion as to whether the ghosts were staged, or some acknowledgement that spectres aren't an everyday occurrence, but there was nothing of the sort. They were a thoroughly un-momentous part of the story, largely tangential. The narrative acts as if they brought the mistaken identity story to light, but it seems pretty clear that it could have been uncovered without supernatural invention. Indeed, as is so often the case with these stories (you see the same thing in Henrietta, come to think of it), the clear give-away is the fact that the person in question always strikes everyone as looking (and usually behaving) awfully noble for someone allegedly of the lower classes. This, of course, subtly reinforces the class divide even as it allegedly muddies it - some people are just born better!

Overall, a pretty unremarkable novel, ironic, given Reeve's passionate defenses of the genre.

What I Read in 2011

2012-01-03T19:00:00.000-06:00

The 10 best things I read in 2011 (in no particular order):

War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
I wrote a post on it, but the long and the short of it is, yes, it really is as good as they say. The 'peace' parts are pretty so-so, but the war parts are so incredible that it's still probably one of the greatest books ever written.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz
Read it, then put it on the syllabus for a class I was teaching a few weeks later and read it again. A touching, funny, and generally wonderful book. The story of an awkward, overweight, comic-book reading nerd, but also a very intelligently done history, of a kind, of the Dominican Republic, and the story of a family. Not the kind of thing I normally go for at all, but this one is so smart and so funny and is really just a joy to read.

A Winter Book, Tove Jansson
Maybe my favorite Jansson book so far. She made my top 10 last year as well - I adore her. This one is also a series of vignettes, but it's about a relationship between two women, and it is a wonderful illumination of the vagaries of love and companionship.

The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman
Posted about this one as well - not a masterpiece, but just a very satisfying, pleasant read.

(Not that You Asked), by Steve Almond
Posted about it at length - intelligent, hilarious, and moving. I really enjoyed it.

Anecdotes of Destiny, Ehrengard, Winter Tales, by Isak Dinesen
Yes, I know, this is really a three-for-one. My love for Dinesen's writing is coming to rival the one I have for Tove Jansson. I am pretty much enraptured by every book of hers that I read.

The Marquise of O and Other Stories, Kleist
Posted about it. If you like Kafka, you must read these. They are cryptic and strange but absolutely incredible.

A High Wind in Jamaica, by Richard Hughes
Posted about this one too (I have gotten so much better about doing it regularly!). A-mazing. The more I think about it, the more I appreciate what an utterly brilliant book this is.

Seraph on the Suwanee, Zora Neale Hurston
Posted. It's really messed up in a lot of ways, but it's also an incredible portrayal of love and insecurity.

The last slot is a toss-up between Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, Chimanada Ngozi Adichie's That Thing Around Your Neck, Rebecca West's Return of the Soldier, Charlotte Lennox's Henrietta, or maybe even Autobiography of Red, by Anne Carson. I can't make up my mind, and I feel like if they don't make the cut, they should at least get an honorable mention.

Full list of what I read after the jump (because it's long, there needs to be a jump.)

1. Studies in the History of the renaissance, Walter Pater
2. Memento Mori, Muriel Sparks

3. Civilization and its Discontents, Sigmund Freud (x2)

4. Gilgamesh, Translated by Stephen Mitchell, (also Epic of Gilgamesh, Translated by Andrew George)

5. Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace

6. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke

7. Lucy, Jamaica Kincaid

8. Light in August, William Faulkner

9. Dziady, Adam Mickiewicz

10. Jealousy, Alain Robbe-Grillet

11. Ireland, India and Nationalism in 19th Century Literature, Julia Wright

12. The Dead School, Patrick McCabe

13. Ciao, America! An Italian Discovers the US, Beppe Severgnini

14. Prize Stock; Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness; Aghwee the Sky Monster, Kenzaburo Oe

15. Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard

16. Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison

17. Wittgenstein's Mistress, David Markson

18. Shamela, Henry Fielding

19. Magpie Rising, Merrill Gilfillan

20. Seraph on the Suwanee, Zora Neale Hurston

21. The Curtain, Milan Kundera

22. Le Pere Goriot, Balzac

23. The Stoic Comedians: Flaubert, Joyce, Beckett, Hugh Kenner

24. S/Z, Barthes

25. The Dalkey Archive, Flann O'Brien

26. The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre, Todd Kontje

27. Lucinde, Friedrich Schlegel

28. Melmoth Reconciled, Balzac

29. Ennui, Maria Edgeworth

30. Modern Epic: The World System from Goethe to Garcia Marquez, Franco Moretti

31. Saturday, Ian McEwan

32. Wild Irish Girl, Lady Morgan

33. Strange Country, Seamus Deane

34. Music (??? I have no idea)

35. The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, ETA Hoffman

36. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, David Sedaris

37. The Confusions of Young Torless, Robert Musil

38. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses, Michael Taussig

39. The Double, Dostoevsky

40. The Lover's Dictionary, David Levithan

41. Bai Ganyo: Incredible Tales of a Modern Bulgarian, Aleko Konstantinov

42. Consider the Oyster, MFK Fisher

43. Trotsky: A Graphic Biography, Rick Geary and Andrew Helfer

44. Talking to the Dead: A Study of Irish Funerary Traditions, Nina Witoszek and Pat Sheeran

45. On Poetic Imagination and Reverie, Gaston Bachelard

46. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, Henri Bergson

47. Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Novalis

48. The Romance, Barbara Fuchs

*49. War and Peace, Tolstoy

*50. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz (x2)

51. The Heat's On, Chester Himes

52. The Blind Side, Michael Lewis

*53. A Winter Book, Tove Jansson

54. The White Castle, Orhan Pamuk (x2)

55. Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner

56. Jazz, Toni Morrison (x2)

57. How to Cook a Wolf, MFK Fisher

58. Good Women: Three Novellas, Jane Stevenson

59. East West Mimesis: Auerbach in Turkey, Kader Konuk

60. Hadji Murat, Tolstoy

61. On Tremendous Trifles, GK Chesterton

62. The Fall, Camus

63. Carnet de Voyage, Craig Thompson

64. Ignorance, Milan Kundera

65. Coup de Grace, Marguerite Yourcenar

66. Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson

67. Snow, Orhan Pamuk

68. The Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West

69. The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen

70. The Epicure's Lament, Kate Christensen

71. Apology, Plato

72. Captive Mind, Czesław Miłosz

73. Georges, Alexandre Dumas

74. The Lover, Marguerite Duras

75. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

76. Season of Migration to the North, Tayeb Salih

77. Uncle Silas, Sheridan LeFanu

78. Manhood for Amateurs, Michael Chabon

79. Maus, Art Spiegelman

80. Erasure, Percival Everett

81. The Colored Museum, George Wolfe

82. Remapping the Rise of the European Novel, edited by Jenny Mander

83. Strange Concepts and the Stories they Make Possible, Lisa Zunshine

84. The Mighty Angel, Jerzy Pilch

85. Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais

86. The Hothouse by the East River, Muriel Sparks

87. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman

88. Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs

89. Flaubert and Don Quijote: The Influence of Cervantes on Madame Bovary, Soledad Fox

90. The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester

91. Essential Neruda, Neruda

92. The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver

93. Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin

94. Euthyphro, Crito, Plato

95. Wolf Hall, Hillary Mantel

96. Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Sophocles

97. Poetics, Aristotle

98. Glover's Mistake, Nick Laird

99. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

100. The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of his Friend Marilyn Monroe, Andrew O'Hagan

101. The Unfortunate Traveller, Thomas Nashe

102. Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard, Isak Dinesen

103. Shame and Necessity, Bernard Williams

104. Kokoro, Natsume Soseki

105. The Thing Around Your Neck, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

106. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, Jonathan Shay

107. Iliad, Homer

108. The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean

109. The Appointment, Herta Muller

110. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell

111. The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman

112. Eline Vere, Louis Couperus

113. Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin

114. In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays, Anais Nin

115. The Devil's Elixirs, ETA Hoffman

116. Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes

117. Vathek, William Beckford

118. Play it as it Lays, Joan Didion

119. (Not that you Asked), Steve Almond

120.The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 1762-1800, EJ Clery

121. The Monk: A Romance, Matthew Lewis

122. Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X, Michael Eric Dyson

123. Greek Street, Peter Milligan and Davide Gianfelice

124. A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes

125. Comedy in a Minor Key, Hans Keilson

126. The Female Thermometer, Terry Castle

127. Zofloya, or The Moor, Charlotte Dacre

128. Baltasar and Blimunda, Jose Saramago

129. Henrietta, Charlotte Lennox

130. The Marquise of O and other stories, Kleist

131. A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs Veal... Daniel Defoe

132. Winter Tales, Isak Dinesen

133. Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu

134. The Children's Book, by A.S. Byatt

For those who are wondering how on earth I can possibly remember all the books I read this year - I adore bookmarks. I have a lovely bookmark holder made for me by a friend. I take the bookmark off the front read a book, write the name of the book I've just read on the back (and the date I've finished it), and put it on the back of the pile. I've been doing this for years. I mean, the writing on the bookmarks thing started in like, 4th grade. The pile system started sometime in high school. But I have a few bookmarks where the top title is something I read in elementary school, it's pretty awesome.

The Children's Book, by A.S. Byatt

2012-01-02T12:53:00.001-06:00

I have to confess - I really don't like A.S. Byatt's writing. I really try to appreciate her, but there's something about her books that really irks me. However, she came to the UofC last year and did a reading, and I was very impressed. She's a lively, extremely sharp woman; a real pleasure to listen to. While she was there she read a portion of The Children's Book, and it sounded great. A friend of mine had earlier mentioned loving it, so I figured I'd give it a try. In the last few days I not only gave my students their final exams, I also spent over 24 hours in airports and on planes. So I was actually able to read the entire book in 48 hours. And I enjoyed it, though I still found parts irritating. Certain sentences seem needlessly overcomplicated and just badly written. She uses the word stolid constantly. The plot was engaging but I suspect that if I hadn't gotten to read it in one long go, I would have gotten sick of it. Though Byatt is an extraordinarily astute writer, she also has a bit of a penchant for a kind of melodrama that I find really off-putting, and totally out of keeping with her otherwise high level thoughts. Still, it's an intelligent book.

In a way, it's a historical novel, evoking turn of the century England and the various political upheavals of the time. The first portion is a somewhat idyllic description of a group of children, the next one is of the adults in their lives and their various sexual misadventures, and the third rather curiously opens with a reflection on why the culture of the early 20th century was so fascinated in the idea of childhood. From there, it chronicles the children and their progress to maturity, and then the first world war. That final portion is where it really leans heavily into rather cliche war-time stuff in a somewhat disappointing way.

One could also see it as a work in the tradition of the great realist novels, a comparison I think it not only invites but also deserves. The sprawling cast of characters occasionally feels ungainly - some of them disappear and resurface in rather awkward ways, where you think "oh, that guy? matter? ooops.", and others seem bloodless and largely irrelevant - but also does a fairly admirable job presenting a whole swath of socio-political issues embodied in actual people. Some of the characters are so convincing that I was genuinely moved when reading about them, though this may be at least partly due to serious sleep-deprivation.

Overall, I'm not a Byatt convert, but I definitely think this is one of her better books.

Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu

2012-01-02T10:39:00.005-06:00

I suppose the primary interest of this novella is the fact that Bram Stoker almost certainly borrowed from it quite liberally when writing Dracula. As an early forefather of vampire fiction, it undeniably has an important historical status, but it has to be admitted that Dracula is a much more complex and satisfying read, building on and developing elements of Carmilla into a far more interesting whole.

But Carmilla is not totally uninteresting. I suppose there are some spoilers ahead, but to be honest, it's not like the plot isn't extremely predictable, so ima go ahead and "ruin" it. The most entertaining thing, to me, about the novel is the fact that Carmilla is pretty forthcoming about her murderous intentions on the narrator. She keeps repeating that she loves her, and that this love will lead to the narrator's death. The narrator declares these odd speeches to be unintelligible, symptoms of some strange illness or general flights of fancy rather than openly expressed death threats. One could reflect, I suppose, on the way love and death are so intertwined as to make this confusion somewhat plausible - but it's really not. Even in the context of the story, Carmilla sounds completely loony tunes, and it's preposterous that the narrator is so blind.

The other vaguely interesting aspect is the unbelievable clumsiness of the denouement/explanation. After all this suspense and mystery, just when the novella starts planting some clues and making it seem like the family is finally gonna catch on to what's happening - a family friend whose daughter is dead shows up (admittedly, this has been prepped already in the opening, when we first heard about the daughter's death) and relates the story of his child's demise. Whadya know, it is virtually identical to the narrator's own story (ironically, it was the death of this daughter that led to Carmilla being welcomed into the narrator's home!). Mystery solved, next there is a rapid slaying and some pseudo-scientific explanation (couched in terms of an attempt to persuade a skeptical audience and deploying all kinds of scientific language) and boom, the end. 60 pages of build-up, 4 pages of climax and resolution. It might not be quite that extreme, but it's pretty close.

Like I said - makes you appreciate (and want to re-read) Dracula.

The Marquise of O and Other Stories, by Kleist

2012-01-02T10:38:00.002-06:00

Completely amazing. The introduction to the book describes the stories as a "negative expression of the ideals of the Enlightenment" (7), "he constantly presents situations and characters which are disturbingly paradoxical and intractable to rational analysis; they point towards the 'absurdity' of life" (15). My own take on it was rather different (and I aim, in the coming weeks, to investigate whether others have arrived at a similar conclusion): to me, these stories were a kind of anguished yet devout attempt to understand the ways of God. They have a Scandinavian quality to them (this sense was quite possibly heightened for me by the fact that I read them at the same time as I was reading Isak Dinesen's Winter Tales), a dark, fairy tale like style that unflinchingly depicts some of the more vicious sides of life, and presents man as this tragi-comic miniature in a massive cosmic order, inflated with a sense of self-importance that is never entirely misguided, despite the magnitude of that cosmos, because after all, isn't each of us the center of our own universe?

The stories describe people struggling against a cruel world; victims of nature, God, and other people. Kleist was apparently a big influence on Kafka, and it shows (Michael Kohlhaas in particular has a fantastically Kafka-esque quality, or should I say that it reveals that Kafka had a Kleist-esque one). I'm not going to discuss them story in detail (though I want to), because I refuse to deprive you of the pleasure of discovering them yourself. They are incredible.

A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal (etc etc), by Daniel Defoe (maybe)

2011-12-28T01:06:00.000-06:00

I downloaded the free version of this on amazon. Which was neat, because it included Walter Scott's Afterword, which turns out to be the best part of the book (book might be putting it generously - the whole thing can't be more than 20 pages). The story itself is pretty stock - Mrs Veal, who is dead, comes over to a friend's house and chats with her for awhile, in the process mentioning that Drelincourt's Book of Death is a very accurate characterization of the afterlife. The story itself is pretty stock, but becomes much more entertaining once Walter Scott tells you that the whole thing is meant to be a commercial for that Drelincourt book. What is also really interesting to me about the Walter Scott portion is that he sort of genially mocks the people of "back then" for being taken in by the hoax, but also says that the book is so well written that it's almost hard not to believe it, and that if something like that ever would happen, it would be described in exactly that way. De-lightful.

The Ice Storm

2011-12-26T00:02:00.003-06:00

I saw this when it came out in theatres back in the day and was none too impressed with it. I watched it again earlier this week when a friend of mine auditioned it for the role of "modern tragedy he shows to his class to try to make them care about the class."* It didn't make the cut**, but I appreciated the chance to watch it again, especially because my love for Ang Lee has only increased in the intervening years. But you know what? I still didn't like it. It's still a movie about moody, dysfunctional and listless people who are beset by various tragedies, some of their own making, some sheer accident. You can't quite bring yourself to feel bad, because it all seems so inevitable: there is no possible happy ending for this crowd, really. They're going to be miserable no matter what they do.

However, my friend pointed out to me that it's also a movie about a generation and what happened to it, namely, the free love crowd of the 60s who moved out to the suburbs and became disaffected fuck-ups and horrible parents. Ouch. And from that perspective, I guess it is a more interesting movie. And the movie does hint that it should be seen in those terms, I guess, but it still just doesn't really come across to me. I think it's because everyone is so unbelievably uncomfortable - nobody seems relaxed, ever. The dialogue is awkward, usually cutting across painful silences (the whole movie seems pervaded with silence, actually) and to be honest, a lot of it sounds like a pretentious version of the kind of prose you love in earlier 20th century American novels, Salinger, Yates, etc. It all has that kind of earnest urgency, where the most innocent moments are fraught with meaning, and generally overwhelmed with the anguish of being.

What is great though, is the cinematography. My god, it's beautiful. Especially the shots of ice. Just lovely. The way the story unfolds is also well done, in these brief vignettes, giving the whole thing a vaguely dream like air. It's definitely an Ang Lee movie, style wise. It's also fun, I have to say, to see all these various actors looking so young. Not just baby Christina Ricci, Tobey Maguire and Elijah Wood (baby Frodo actually looks basically the same. Poor guy.), but Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver! All sweet and fresh-faced! It's kind of great. Overall though, though I respect the craft of it, this is just not a movie for me.

*One of my students emailed me yesterday and helpfully suggested that watching movies might make people care about the class more. Because, he explained, most of the books are very boring and nobody cares about them, though he did say that it's nice to know what famous books are about.

**That honor went to Chinatown, which is not only awesome, but it's an absolutely brilliant counterpoint to Oedipus. I didn't write a post about it, because all I really have to say is dude, that movie is so awesome, and wtf can someone please explain the plot to me. But it is perhaps worth mentioning that yeah, watching it while thinking about Oedipus is really fascinating. The hero on a relentless search that can only lead to harm, realizing his error too late, etc. Lots of fun.

Carnage

2011-12-24T01:17:00.002-06:00

Roman Polanski's Carnage opened in a few select cities, and apparently - one of them was Ankara. Ha! IN YOUR FACE!
Sorry.
Once again, I knew absolutely nothing about it beforehand, so I went in with no expectations whatsoever (aside from a vague sense that it would probably be good - I just watched Chinatown a few days ago), and I was utterly charmed. Carnage is not the new Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? but the comparison invariably comes to mind. Both are movies that feature two couples in a room, a kind of drawing room comedy from hell with various arguments, unpleasant revelations, alliances broken and re-formed, etc. Both, I think, are very obviously plays that became movies, and honestly, both are arguably much more powerful in the theatre than on the screen. Carnage, fortunately, is not nearly as grim as WAOVW - it shares the wicked moments of humor, but doesn't follow it with a plunge into the abyss. It is also not paced as well - about 3/4 of the way through, there's a noticeable drag, where both the characters and the audience just want it to be over.

The New York Times review made some good points about aspects of the play that got lost in translation, or just weren't quite accurate. I wouldn't go so far as to say the movie "misses its mark badly" - perhaps you have to be a New Yorker to notice and get that upset over the movie's mis-steps. I do agree though, that the movie seems poised to be a scathing social critique, but it fumbles the catch. I almost want to watch it again to rethink that aspect. Because the first time around, you're so focused on the dynamics between the characters and what will happen next that you don't really think about what they're actually saying. I hadn't thought so much about the translation, but it's undeniably true. There are portions of dialogue that ring a bit off-key, and culturally speaking, the play is just obviously French, as are the people in it. The attempt to make them Americans (excuse me, New Yorkers - a kind of halfway between French and American) doesn't really work. I can't exactly put my finger on why, but there are various scenes that seem kind of clumsy until you imagine someone doing them in French, and then it clicks and seems totally natural. Then you realize why these characters seem stilted - it's not because they're in a movie that was actually a play, or because they're stuck in one room - it's because they're Frenchpeople disguised as Americans! Fish out of water! It seems somewhat telling, in this regard, that two of the actors (Christopher Waltz and Kate Winslet) aren't actual Americans - and perhaps that is why they come off as more believable?

The best thing about the movie is definitely the performances. Even though all of the characters are basically jerks, you also kind of like them all. Of course your sympathies ebb and flow throughout, but it's a testament to the skill of the actors that though occasionally lost, your good will towards them generally returns. Kate Winslet is good, though her character is a bit incoherent in some ways, Jodie Foster is wonderful, completely against her usual character (I think) and totally persuasive, John C Reilly is fantastic, initially playing his usual nice guy role before letting his true colors show, but the real prize is Christopher Waltz. The same guy who made Inglorious Basterds worth watching once again steals the show. I find Waltz completely hypnotic. In fact, there is something rattlesnake like about him, all smiles and friendliness but always tensed and ready to strike. And in this movie, most of the venom is for the sake of laughs, and they work. He is hilarious. Plenty of the other characters produce laughs too, but he is definitely the most consistent.

This, ultimately, is what makes the movie by all means worth watching: it's really funny. It's not a masterpiece (though you can see the potential for it to be - the basic scaffolding of it is brilliant), but it's an entertaining movie. And that's good enough for me.

Henrietta, by Charlotte Lennox

2011-12-23T07:49:00.001-06:00

De-lightful. It's rare to read a novel whose didacticism you actually find pleasure in. A key component is the wicked satire and wit of it - moralistic it may be, but humorless it is not. But it's also a rare case where a heroine's virtue is actually endearing. I think this is largely because, unlike so many 18th century female characters, she's got common sense, wit, and a healthy dose of moxy. She does burst into tears occasionally, but you can hardly blame her, given the frustrations and travails she's put through, and she is also perfectly capable of laying the smack down when the need arises, which is pretty awesome. She gets pale and her eyes flash and she speaks with lofty contempt - the kind of detail you will either find utterly insipid or totally awesome (I, having been taught by my father at a young age to idolize Edmund Dantes as a raging badass, fall in the latter camp, surprise surprise). Although she is an absolute paragon of virtue, she is neither heartless nor dull. Basically - she's actually someone you could see yourself wanting to be when you grow up. Why aren't all romance novels like this?

Apocalypse Postponed, by Umberto Eco

2011-12-22T11:50:00.003-06:00

I don't generally blog about the lit-crit that I read (though I really should), but I read this one purely for fun, and it was a bit of a disappointment, so I figured I'd warn you. The book is a somewhat scattered collection of essays and short pieces - I think the guiding principle was stuff that had not previously been translated into English. As it turns out, in most cases, there's a pretty understandable reason: it's about some very specific aspect of 1960s Italian culture that really isn't of much interest to an English-language audience. What is more, many of the pieces feel really dated - Eco spends a lot of time arguing for why studying tv is worthwhile, and how one ought to go about doing it. I think those arguments have been made elsewhere and better (though that's purely a hunch on my part); at very least, the way he represents his opposition makes them seem like dinosaurs. As with most of Eco's critical works, even when he's not that great, he's still pretty interesting, so it's not a bad read for the most part, and definitely has its thought-provoking moments. But I actually ended up not reading the whole thing - confronted with the final section, on Italian culture, I threw in the towel.

BUT! But. Before you dismiss this book altogether, I have to tell you something. There is an essay in this collection called "The World of Charlie Brown," and it is amazing. It is short and sweet and absolutely wonderful. Less an analysis than a description, in academic terms, of Charlie Brown and his friends ("Aware of this vocation to the abyss, Pig Pen turns his plight into a boast; he speaks of the dust of countless centuries, an irreversible process: the course of history." (43)), and the kinds of stories Schultz tells about them, it's just so wonderful. Everything you love about Charlie Brown plus everything you love about the humanities rolled into one. You should check this book out of the library just for the 5 minutes it will take you to read this short piece, because it will make your day.

The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975

2011-12-20T03:13:00.003-06:00

I stumbled across this somewhat randomly in the New Arrivals section of Netflix instant. It's a fascinating movie. It's a documentary about the Black Power movement shot by Swedish filmmakers from 1967-1975, with voice overs from various people in the present (Talib Kweli, Melvin van Peebles, Erykah Badu, ?uestlove).

The best thing about it, really, is the footage itself. If you like Jamel Shabazz's photography, you'll love this too. Just gorgeous, gorgeous video of black life in the 60s and early 70s. The other thing that really intrigued me about it was the fact that a lot of the movie is basically told from a Swedish perspective, and you get glimpses (only glimpses, alas - I would have loved a more sustained reflection) on international perspectives on the civil rights movement, and the American response. Because they were outsiders, the Swedes, it seems, got a lot more access, and much more intimate interviews (there's a particularly wonderful segment of Stokely Carmichael with his mother). I would have loved to learn more about the Swedes who were involved, how this type of coverage was received in Sweden, etc. I imagine there must be a good book out there about international perspectives on, for example, the Black Power movement (I'm especially curious about the Eastern European one) - Ima have to track it down (feel free to leave recs in the comments). It's not all sunshine and cheer - there's one somewhat disturbing scene of a Swedish bus tour through Harlem, with the tour guide making some really disgusting comments.

Of course, the interviews, and the perspectives on that historical time, are also pretty interesting. There is a really powerful scene of Angela Davis in prison, being asked how she feels about violence - it's intense. But just as amazing are many of the 'man-on-the-street' scenes. It really hit me, just how many assassinations there were back then, really, how terrifying life in that movement was. I am regularly amazed by how little I know about the Civil Rights movement, and while this movie wasn't walking you through the history by any means, it does give you enough information to be able to keep up, and introduces you to a lot of the major players in very personal ways.

The voice overs from the present, I have to say, didn't do much for me. There's not much in the way of serious reflection on the legacies of the time and what they mean for the present - more just personal reflections like "Wow, this meant a lot to me." Ok Talib, that's nice, but... so what? You know? Actually, the movie was a nice companion piece to the Michael Eric Dyson book on Malcom X that I read recently, and made me appreciate it more. If anything, it actually made me think a bit about how the energy of radicalism of the Black Power movement sort of dissipated into a more introspective artistic one, where real political action got diluted into artistic representations. I love those artistic representations (I'm a big fan of Kweli, Erykah, and Questo, for example) but I don't know that they're organizing free meals and after school programs for poor kids. The movie glances over a critique of capitalism, mentioning its necessity, and also describing the Black Power is Green movement - the idea of supporting black business - but there isn't much examination of how the success of the latter kind of worked against the aims of the former, and left an entire segment of the population even worse off, in some ways. That's a very hard discussion to have though.

Overall, a really interesting movie, definitely worth watching.

Baltasar and Blimunda, by Jose Saramago

2011-12-19T11:03:00.000-06:00

It took me weeks to get through this book. The language is absolutely gorgeous, but it's the kind of beautiful where if you don't do it all at once, you get exhausted. Especially because there's not much in the way of plot.

I was utterly charmed by the style from the very beginning, especially when I got to this:

Inflamed with holy zeal and indignation, the friar turned on St Antony and rebuked him, as if he were a servant caught neglecting his duties, Some saint you are, to protect only your own silver while watching the rest get stolen, well, in return you'll be left without anything, and with these harsh words, the friar entered the chapel and began to strip it of all its contents, removing not only the silver but the altar cloths and other furnishings as well, and once the chapel was bare, he started stripping the statue of St Antony, who saw his removable halo vanish along with his cross, and would soon have found himself without the Child Jesus in his arms if several friars had not come to the rescue, who feeling the punishment was excessive, persuaded the enraged old man to leave at least the Child Jesus for the consolation of the disgraced saint. (14-15)

Lovely, right? Notice, however, that it's all one sentence. This is the kind of prose that you need to sink into and bask in for hours to get the proper effect. It really doesn't work in fits and starts. When you're reading in short bursts, you're looking for a story, not a three page sentence, even if it is a beautiful one.

There is a story, kind of, but it has no real suspense, momentum, or even point. There are Baltasar and Blimunda, who love each other. Blimunda has a spooky power that allows her to see inside people when she's fasting, and to collect their wills. This isn't in any way necessary to the plot, but nothing really is, so why not. They are friends with a priest who is building a flying machine. Meanwhile, there are also the King and Queen of Portugal, and their children. That's basically the story. Wait, you say, that's not a story, it's just a bunch of characters! Indeed.

But the writing really is quite beautiful.

Zofloya, or The Moor, by Charlotte Dacre

2011-12-18T14:35:00.001-06:00

I had high hopes for this one. The author apparently wanted to do something like The Monk, but with a female villain. So I was looking forward to a really, really evil woman. And definitely, the novel is somewhat shocking, I guess, in its portrayal of female villainy (though Vathek far outpaces it) - but actually, pretty much ALL the women in the text end up being at least a little evil, which somewhat weakens the overall effect. And the moralizing is so heavy handed and droning that you lose most of the campy entertainment of the evil, which is a serious drawback. I guess there's also the shock value of an interracial love affair, but there's so much else going on at that point that you honestly don't really notice it. Overall, I have to say, the book was a bit disappointing - not a must-read by any means.

Some spoilers ahead, so be forewarned. The novel start with the story of a young couple who love each other so much that they wrap themselves in a kind of cocoon of joy, selfishly delighting in happiness and spoiling their children rotten. By page 3, it's made very clear to us that those children WILL be rotten. Oh yes! They could have been good! But poor parenting will doom them! To make matters worse, a mysterious houseguest arrives, a man who is so evil that his greatest delight is to be a homewrecker. Sure enough, he manages to seduce the young mother. This, it turns out, will ruin the children far more than their pampered upbringing. A mother who is a poor role model basically dooms her children to a life of evil.

So right away, the children are set up as pretty villainous, even before they've done anything. Unlike Ambrosius in The Monk, who had some moments of humanity, the daughter in this novel, Victoria, is basically evil to the core. She is interesting, occasionally, in her strategical scheming (realizing she can't appear too bold) and in her awareness of her masculine character (she's definitely a woman who project masculine energy), but she seems remarkably stupid when it comes to making plans and getting what she wants, which is irritating. In the midst of her various evil machinations, Zofloya the Moor enters the scene, with offers to assist. He's a mysterious sort of guy - he appears whenever she thinks about him, and is regularly accompanied with sweet music. She half wonders about this, and the various foreboding things he says, but she's too busy with her own schemes to really care.

You also get the story of the son and the mother, but neither are all that compelling. They all manage to be reunited by the end, by pure coincidence, though there's a bit of fate in it too, because, as the author tells us, "Such are the retributions of a just Providence, which, though sometimes tardy, are generally sure, even in this world." (256). The text also, in the conclusion, rather bravely tackles the problem of evil, suggesting that it obviously can't come from God (who is good), therefore must be blamed on Satan.

One vaguely interesting aspect of the text that I might find myself thinking about more later is the problem of knowing another person - Victoria's husband initially suspects her of being perhaps a bit cold-hearted, then becomes a bit of a jerk himself, but then becomes an all-around good guy who is completely oblivious to his wife's monstrosity (and murderous impulses). This part of the text is heavily, heavily ironic. I mean, constant scenes of the husband thinking how wonderful his wife is as she's trying to kill him. This is of course echoed later in Zofloya's interactions with Victoria, kind of, in that the reader can't help but notice the foreboding nature of the things he says, and Victoria seems oblivious. There are various scenes throughout the novel of characters misunderstanding or misjudging each other, which seems like it could be an interesting aspect to think about...

Oh! By the way: if you DO decide to read this book, don't read the Oxford World Classic's version. Not only does it give away the entire ending on the back cover (which is really, really annoying), the endnotes, by Kim Ian Michasiw, are just dismal. I mean, I normally don't notice endnotes, but these were so awful that they stuck out. They fall into three categories: either they unnecessarily give away parts of the plot, or they seem to be there just to show you that the person who wrote them is super smart and has read other books too, or they're utterly inane.

Moneyball

2011-12-16T04:10:00.003-06:00

Pacing-wise, this is one of the strangest movies I've seen in awhile. Something about it felt totally haphazard. It couldn't seem to decide what aspect of the story it was most interested in, the A's, Billy Beane, his baseball past, his family life, his 'quest to change baseball,' the system behind it... It all became a bit of a hodge podge. The acting, for the most part, is excellent - however you feel about Brad Pitt, you can't help but admit that he's a pretty good actor. Though the movie did call for him kicking/punching things and being UPSET a lot, which got pretty old.

So, to my mind, the most interesting thing in the movie is the 'system.' The movie presents this as Billy Beane stumbling across a young guy* (played by Jonah Hill) who studied econ at Harvard, specifically, the theories of a guy named Bill James, that basically introduce a totally new way to think about how baseball works, and specifically, how to draft players. This is pretty fascinating stuff, and you can bet I'll be reading Michael Lewis' book to learn more about it**, because the movie didn't nerd out on it nearly enough to my satisfaction. Partly, I guess, because they figured readers would get bored. But I wonder if it's also because the kind of changes to the game that it brings about are the same ones that would make it rather un-cinematic. There are a few shining moments of sports heroism in the film, and what you realize later is that they basically go against the entire system. Of course, those moments are anomalous even in regular baseball - that's what makes them heroic. But at the same time, the argument against the system seems to be, to some extent, that it's changing the game, and if anything, it would seem that it's changing the game precisely to eliminate moments like that. I really hope this is something the book discusses.

The best part about the movie, actually, is some of the dialogue. It's kind of amazing. Lots of the movie is kind of meh and uninteresting, and then there are these occasional scenes that are just phenomenal, with fantastic, snappy dialogue. I suspect this is Aaron Sorkin's doing, because I think that's what he's good at. I also think he's not so good at telling stories well in a movie format (I really, really didn't like The Social Network). I want him to team up with someone who's good at crafting narratives and start making good, old-fashioned Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn type romantic comedies. Wouldn't that be awesome? Sorry, tangent. The point being - there are some really wonderful scenes.

Still though, I wouldn't say this is one you need to rush out and see in theatres. I think that if you're not into baseball, its appeal is pretty limited (and if you are into baseball, you'll quite possibly be frustrated by how little of it you get). The main flaws of the movie are the extensive amount of time it devotes to Beane's past (when it flashed the picture of him as a young player for the 8th time I was like OK I GET IT, HE USED TO PLAY) and to his relationship with his daughter. Yeah, she's a sweet kid, and she has a surprisingly good voice***. My friend Margaret pointed out that she's also the only female in the movie, really, which is totally true, and I hadn't even noticed. But she also has almost nothing to do with the story, so her presence on screen was basically dead time, narrative wise (doesn't Laura Mulvey or Teresa de Lauretis or one of those feminist film theorists say that whenever women appear on screen, the action generally grinds to a halt? Totally true, in this case.), and felt like a cheap trick, emotionally. Really, his whole family life seems pretty much beside the point, though his wife's new husband is kind of a fantastic character and makes for some entertaining moments. But they also feel like scenes from a different movie that accidentally got pasted in to this one. The problem is, all the stuff with his daughter is the main thing I remember about the movie, a few days later, which is really unfortunate.

Basically, I'd say this is one you can easily wait for video on, and you'll probably enjoy it more if you've read the book first.

*Wiki tells me this guy was Paul DePodesta, who did not approve of what the movie did with him, forcing them to create a kind of composite character instead.

**I'm really curious to see how much it resembles The Blind Side - which I really liked - does Lewis just have a basic formula, where he writes books about the way a few key people create major changes in the way various sports get played?

***She keeps singing this song through the entire movie, which turns out to be The Show, by Lenka. It sounded so familiar, it was driving me crazy - the internet tells me it was featured on Old Navy commercials, which I guess is where I know it from, though I could've sworn it was in some other twee indie movie, like Juno or something.

Comedy in a Minor Key, by Hans Keilson

2011-12-16T03:18:00.003-06:00

I noticed this on the new arrivals shelf at the library (that shelf is like the chewing gum rack by the cash registers at the grocery store: it is not to be resisted) and a few days later a friend of mine mentioned having just read it and liked it, so I figured I'd give it a go. It's a very short novella - I read it in bed this morning with a cup of coffee (I love Fridays!). The internet tells me that there is an upsurge of interest in its author, who died in March of this year - two NyTimes articles (which are annoyingly packed with spoilers) describe him as one of the greatest authors of our times. To be honest, I don't really share that view. Comedy in a Minor Key is certainly an interesting read, but it's not going to make my all-time greats list, though it is a very interesting book.

The novella is the story of a young couple, Wim and Marie, who are hiding a Jewish man named Nico in their upstairs room during the Second World War. He gets sick and dies (that's not a spoiler, it happens on page 3) and they have to dispose of the body. To describe it that way makes it seem as if it's suspenseful - and it's not. Which is kind of an interesting aspect of the book: its strangely placid, unruffled nature (one is tempted to speculate that there is something very Dutch about it). It's a slight, subtle sort of text - this is not to disparage it, but rather, to say that it's not some kind of deep, anguished exploration into the tormented psyches of people living through a hellish war, but a calm, rather sparse story. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a comedy, or even light-hearted, but it's not a depressing read by any means, despite the subject matter. There are moments of humor, moments of insight, and moments of sadness. The narration has a kind of thoughtful quality, as though it were turning these events over in its mind, musing over them but without necessarily coming to any conclusions. It has that modernist feel that you get in authors like Conrad, of a somewhat hazy world, and language as this shining light trying to see its way through the mists and understand something about what's happening. Overall, it's definitely a book worth reading.

A High Wind in Jamaica, by Richard Hughes

2011-12-15T08:18:00.001-06:00

This book is so fucking wild. It's honestly one of the most shocking novels I've ever read, I think. To wit: "It would have surprised Mrs. Thornton very much to have been told that hitherto she had meant practically nothing to her children." Lines like this abound, calm announcements of rather astonishing claims that go against everything you thought you had believed about human beings and how they work and yet seem somehow true. It is, at moments, hilariously funny. It is also deeply chilling and seriously messed up. It's a great book.

The novel is the story of a group of children, initially living in Jamaica (with all the racist portrayals of the "natives" that you might expect, sad to say) who get sent back to England and end up on a pirate ship. It is in many ways like the adventure novels of Robert Louis Stevenson, or Jules Verne, except that it's told with this absolutely incredible - and utterly devastating - insight into human psychology. The prose, incidentally, is also quite lovely, in that somewhat laconic 1920s kind of way. For example:

When swimming under water, it is a very sobering thing suddenly to look a large octopus in the face. One never forgets it: one's respect, yet one's feeling of the hopelessness of any real intellectual sympathy. One is soon reduced to a mere physical admiration, like any silly painter, of the cow-like tenderness of the eye, of the beautiful and infinitesimal mobility of that large and toothless mouth, which accepts as a matter of course that very water against which you, for your life's sake, must be holding your breath. There he reposes in a fold of rock, apparently weightless in the clear green medium but very large, his long arms, suppler than silk, coiled in repose, or stirring in recognition of your presence. Far above, everything is bounded by the surface of the air, like a bright window of glass. Contact with a small baby can conjure at least an echo of that feeling in those who are not obscured by an uprush of maternity to the brain. (119)

A long time ago I wrote a post on a novel called Weiser Dawidek, by Pawel Huelle. Recently, someone left an angry comment on the post, telling me I was sooooo wrong. Interestingly, one of the things I hadn't liked about the book was that it seemed to me to be really fascinated with how children see the world, a topic I claimed to find totally uninteresting. Well, as it turns out, I was wrong. When done well, portrayals of childrens' perspectives are fucking riveting. I mean, one of the incredible aspects of High Wind in Jamaica is its depiction of how these kids process what's happening to them. And it is totally fascinating. It's a fairly non-sentimental account - the children aren't particularly valorized or held up as innocent little angels. Often as not, they're vicious, bothersome little shits, even when they are very cute and precious. In other words - you don't have to love kids to like this book. Not at all. In fact, people who have treacly adoring views of children would probably hate this novel.

The pirates, by the way, are also fantastically well done. Lovable but in no way idealized, and in fact, deeply problematic in many ways. They are sympathetic characters, but also occasionally monstrous. Basically, to read this book is to take on a seriously intense moral ambiguity that is cast in very human and persuasive terms. It's kind of devastating, in a way.

But yeah. This book is fantastic. Much recommended.

Greek Street, by Peter Milligan and Davide Gianfelice

2011-12-11T08:37:00.001-06:00

I was not at my best and brightest today, to put it delicately, and somehow, all I could seem to do was lie in bed and read this series. All of it. The whole things took maybe 3 hours? And despite the fact that I didn't think it was that well done, and didn't even especially enjoy it, it was somehow the exact right thing to be doing today. In other words, do I recommend it, not especially, there are much, much better graphic novels out there, but at the same time, this one makes for a strangely satisfying way to spend an afternoon if you are otherwise incapacitated.

The artwork, by Davide Gianfelice, is probably the best thing about the series. It's pretty nice looking. Unsurprisingly, there are lots of scantily clad and extremely voluptuous women, and they are really hot. The carnage is gory and super cool looking. Basically, it all just looks really awesome.

The plot, however, is a bit of a mess. Even leaving the whole greek angle aside, it's just a really convoluted story, and one that gets increasingly ridiculous. Maybe it was due to my reduced number of brain cells, but at moments, I honestly wasn't sure what was going on (thinking back on it, there are aspects of the story that still don't make sense). There are lots of various subplots, and they're stitched together pretty clumsily at times. The characters don't make much sense, nor is it clear who - if anyone - we're meant to be rooting for, which one could say is a sign of a nuanced moral compass, but to me seemed more like inconsistent character portrayal. And it annoyed me.

Then, of course, there's the greek angle. The series is supposed to be a modern retelling of greek myths/tragedies - I heard about it from one of my students, who brought it up when we were discussing Oedipus Rex. Some aspects of this are quite clever. But overall, it doesn't really work, partly because the author is trying to unite like 20 different stories, and makes a muck of everything in the process. And it's generally not clear what the relationship between these characters and the original Greek texts is. Some of the references don't really make sense - by the end, it seems like people are randomly being given names of Greek characters, despite not really being in any way references to them. It's really irritating. What is more, at various moments characters actually READ Greek tragedies, which makes it all a bit post-modern, I guess, but also gums it up even more.

The more I think about it (or try to), the plot is just badly done. It's kind of a disaster really. I might try re-reading it at some point, because it actually seems like a potentially informative example of a really badly done plot. It's a pity, because it seems like such a cool idea, and the artwork is really neat.

I totally wanna read more graphic novels now though. Maybe I'll finally read Sandman...

The Monk, by Matthew Lewis

2011-12-10T05:46:00.001-06:00

Like many Gothic novels, the supernatural is largely besides the point here. This is really the story of a bad, bad monk. It's actually a fairly clumsy novel, when you think about it - Lewis couldn't seem to make up his mind as to how bad the monk should really be, so he veers between delighting in his lascivious evil and tracing its roots to his earliest days to portraying him as actually not that bad a guy, on the inside, and really he was just corrupted by the evil Catholic church, and he feels really sorry for what he's done, and, and... One could be charitable and say that it's a character study of the effects of evil-doing, but that would be a stretch. Really, it's just an entertaining romp through melodramatic, heinous crimes, with a nice dose of "omg you guys Catholics are so messed up" on the side.

The book is actually tracking two stories, one the story of a young woman named Agnes who falls in love with a very nice young man, but due to a series of unfortunate events (one of them being a pesky ghosts that demands proper burial) is separated from him and placed in a convent. But her lover finds her there and impregnates her, which the Prioress, surprise surprise, does not like that ONE BIT. The Prioress being a monstrous creature, she sets up all kinds of vicious tortures for poor Agnes, as her lover tries to save her. Her lover, conveniently enough, is also her brother's best friend. Which matters, because it provides a link to the second story - these characters know each other!

The second story is of Ambrosius the evil monk and his passion for Antonia - who Agnes' brother is in love with. Ambrosius also matters to the first story, because he is a much respected monk, and part of the Prioress' motivation in punishing Agnes is that she wants to look good in front of Ambrosius. Agnes also pleas with Ambrosius for mercy at one point, and he denies her. She then curses him to seek a similar mercy and be denied, which of course comes true. Lewis reminds us of this a few times, to sort of reenforce the narrative weave - these stories aren't two novels stuck together! They are totally connected!
Anyhow, Ambrosius lusts after Antonia, and becomes an increasingly evil dude in the process. It should be mentioned that before that plot really gets off the ground, there's also a subplot about a young monk that he befriends who - spoiler alert! - turns out to be a woman, Rebecca. They become lovers (Ambrosius' initial fall from grace, though the book can't quite decide to play it that way, and also offers lots of hints that actually, Ambrosius was already too proud of his virtue, and thereby headed for sin), then he tires of her, and she becomes increasingly evil, but also remains loyal to him, which conveniently allows her to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of super evil acts. This matters, I think, because it shunts some of the moral weight onto someone else, leaving Ambrosius himself a bit more likable as a character.

Like I said at the outset, the supernatural is kind of peripheral to the text. Yes, there's an actual ghost - which is great, because she enters the text as a ghost story that all these silly superstitious people believe in, and then turns out to be real, and then it turns out that she has some basic demands (bury my body, say some prayers for me) that, once met, get rid of her altogether, and everybody goes back to business as usual. Doesn't seem to be an issue as far as questioning reality goes, despite the fact that the same characters who interact with the ghost are the ones who had earlier pooh-poohed the ignorance of the superstitious. The book also ends with a pretty dramatic otherworldly move (which I won't give away), also kind of a curious choice, in that you'd think the book could just as easily have done without it. But it does have a certain epic satisfaction to it, I have to admit.

But the real terror in the text is entirely human in provenance. It's the evil of Catholicism as an institution, mainly, but more specifically, the evil of a small cast of horrific people. This is an interesting aspect, in that it again calls forth the Gothic's power of social critique. These aren't really novels about ghosts. The supernatural is basically window dressing for this really appalling view of the world, where people are sick monsters who do utterly awful things. Some critics put a kind of rosy spin on this - in his Intro to the book, Howard Anderson writes that "At its best, as in The Monk, the Gothic novel acknowledges that useful warning [of dangers near at hand (as provided by Northanger Abbey)] by expanding our assumptions about where we live to include the dark and frightening regions within ourselves and beneath the familiar relationships to which we look for support."(xvii). Dude, you make it sound like that's a good thing...

Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X, by Michael Eric Dyson

2011-12-10T04:27:00.001-06:00

I tend to find Michael Eric Dyson's work incredibly frustrating, in that he writes about topics I find interesting, and I agree with a lot of what he says, and respect him as a scholar, and yet... he annoys the hell out of me. This book started out the same way. The Preface, a highly personal account of his experience teaching a seminar on Malcolm X and the problems he had with some of the students - particularly a group of young black men - that segued into a a blend of autobiography, diatribe, and self-promotion, was pretty off-putting, even though I absolutely acknowledge that the problems he was facing were thorny ones. When I realized that the book was published in 1996 (I had thought it was pretty recent), I understood why he felt he needed all that justification of his qualifications to speak on the subject. But it still annoyed me. Dyson somehow regularly fails to be compelling to me when he gets personal. I respect the guy, but I don't especially like him. Luckily, after the first chapter, the book moves into a more strictly academic mode, and in the process, it gets a lot better. Dyson is unbelievably well read (and he makes a point of letting you know that in the copious footnotes), and his analyses are generally extremely insightful and interesting. I suspect most readers will find the book overly dry and academic - it reads like a dissertation, for the most part (especially the second chapter, which is essentially a literature review of Malcolm X biography/criticism, and while it is impressively exhaustive, it's also quite dull) - despite its many moments of high flown rhetoric. It's not exactly an entertaining read, but it's a pretty good primer, not so much on Malcolm X as critical receptions of him, and his legacy.

Dyson occasionally veers into pretty explicitly political claims that come across as extremely prescient, given the current political climate. To wit:

Black progressive intellectuals and activists must view class, gender, and sex as crucial components of a complex and insightful explanation of the problems of black America. Such an approach provides a larger range of social and cultural variables from which to choose in depicting the vast array of forces that constrain black economic, political, and social progress. It acknowledges the radical diversity of experience within black communities, offering a more realistic possibility of addressing the particular needs of a wide range of blacks: the ghetto poor, gays and lesbians, single black females, working mothers, underemployed black men, and elderly blacks, for instance.

Black progressives must also deepen Malcolm's and Martin's [Martin Luther King Jr.'s] criticisms of capitalism and their leanings toward radical democracy. The prevailing economic policies have contributed to the persistent poverty of the poorest Americans (including great numbers of blacks) and the relative inability of most Americans to reap the real rewards of political democracy and economic empowerment. A radical democratic perspective raises questions about the accountability of the disproportionately wealthy, providing a critical platform for criticizing black capitalist and business strategies that merely replicate unjust economic practices. (101-102)

Overall, the book is at its strongest when it discusses black masculinity, and traces Malcolm's legacy in various movies like Boyz N the Hood, Juice, and Straight Outta Brooklyn. He makes some really interesting points ("The reinvention of American popular culture by young African-American cultural artists is fueled by paradox: now that they have escaped the fiercely maintained artistic ghetto that once suffocated the greatest achievements of their predecessors, black artists have reinvented the urban ghetto through a nationalist aesthetic strategy that joins racial naturalism and romantic imagination." (109)) and the argument is compelling. Also admirable is his careful criticism of the gender politics of Malcolm X, the Civil Rights movement, and black social institutions in general. Overall, it's a nuanced book: Dyson admirably manages the balancing act of celebrating Malcolm X as an inspiring figure and a hero of sorts while also critiquing his shortcomings, and acknowledging that the last year of his life was characterized by utter turmoil (moral, intellectual, and emotional), making it next to impossible to make any grand claims about the direction he would have moved in had his life not been cut short.

Overall, it's a pretty good book. I wouldn't say it's a must-read, unless you're specifically interested in Malcolm X, in which case, by all means - not just for the argument, but also for the bibliography! For the general public, not so much, but it would definitely make the short-list for anyone working on (or invested in thinking about) African American culture.

The Ides of March

2011-12-08T14:37:00.001-06:00

I've been here long enough now that I'm edging into the territory of getting to see movies that have been released since I left the States, and actually not knowing anything about them. Which is nice. Most movies are vastly improved by having no foreknowledge of what's going to happen, and The Ides of March is one such movie. So I don't want to give away too much - even though you have quite possibly already seen it - but at the same time, it's hard to talk about my impressions without mentioning some of the major plot aspects (which are quite possibly only a surprise to me anyhow, but still). So I'll do my best, mmmkay?

The thing about this movie is that it's trying to tell two different and only slightly related stories. Now, the conjunction of those stories is actually a very interesting one, that could have made for a phenomenal film if handled more skillfully, but in this case, the movie really only managed to pull one of them off well. What makes the movie extra intriguing though, is that it perhaps unavoidably seems like it wants to make certain political statements, but its plot also serves to undercut those very ambitions.

The centerpiece of the movie is Ryan Gosling (so hot right now), who plays a guy working on George Clooney's presidential campaign.* George Clooney is every liberal's wet dream. This is where the movie clearly has certain political aspirations. It wants to imagine a Democrat running for president who can admit to being atheist, and say things like 'You might panic and call it Socialist or the redistribution of wealth, but I will not stand by and watch the wealth get distributed to the richest people,' etc. It's this kind of hope that if you hear someone in a movie say it, it will be a little closer to coming true. I think this is actually a good plan, and exactly what movies should do (I've said it before, I'll say it again: go read Herbert Marcuse's Aesthetic Dimension). So Ryan Gosling is a True Believer in what a wonderful president George Clooney is gonna be. There are clear echoes to Obama's campaign here, and actually, I could swear that Clooney adopts certain aspects of Obama's body language and mannerisms (and does it terrifyingly well). So at first, if you know nothing about the movie, you might think that this is going to be an inspiring political utopia type story. Seriously, about 30 minutes in I remarked to my friend that this was basically like watching the politics version of porn.

But if you thought that's what the movie was gonna be about, you - like me - should have realized that The Ides of March would not be an appropriate title for such a film. So, of course, the other shoe drops. Actually, two of them. The first sub-plot involves - surprise, surprise - a young female intern. D'oh! Cue the first story line, kinda - the crisis of faith**. This would probably be pretty predictable and uninteresting, but luckily, there's a second sub-plot - a series of dramatic turns which threaten to cost Ryan Gosling his job, and which lead to some serious machinations, revealing a rather uglier side of politics. This is the much more successful part of the film, and the one it devotes more of its energy towards. The first one, unfortunately, it doesn't quite pull off, because you're not entirely sold on Ryan Gosling's good faith in the beginning, and you're not entirely sure whether his crisis actually is one, and if so, whether it has more to do with the latter set of issues than the former. In other words, is Ryan Gosling in it for ideals, or is he looking out for number one first and foremost? Or do these two plots mutually inflect each other in some sort of causal fashion? This would be a fascinating set of issues to explore, but the movie doesn't pull it off. It's a great pity, because that would have made the difference between a generally entertaining and somewhat interesting film and a real masterpiece. I'm inclined to blame this on George Clooney's directing, because while Ryan Gosling may be the it boy of the moment***, as far as I'm concerned, he proved his worth in Half Nelson - he could pull off this role if he needed to.

But it's still a pretty good movie. Evan Racheal Wood****, in my opinion, gave a pretty unimpressive performance as the intern, but the script wasn't helping her much. The movie did succeed, however, in once again reminding us all that the number one rule of politics is "don't fuck the interns" - which of course makes you think man, why are politicians so dumb as to keep getting caught in these various sex scandals? - but what is more impressive, it also really highlights just how messed up the whole sleeping with interns scene really is, not to mention the appalling sexism behind it. I mean, I'm getting to be more and more of an embittered feminist these days, so maybe I just really noticed it, but I think there's something skillful about the film's portrayal of it. There's a long pan of a young intern carrying a tray of coffees at one point in the film that is pretty incredible as a subtle yet totally withering critique.

Overall, not a bad movie at all. Much better than the usual fare (in Ankara that is), but I'd say it's probably worth renting no matter where you live.

*Here's the deal: there are some actors, like Ryan Gosling and George Clooney, who will always be themselves to me. I don't care what role they're playing, I'm still gonna say things like "Look out Ryan Gosling! That girl is trouble!" as I'm watching. That isn't to say they're not good actors. It's just that they've reached that point. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, intriguingly, has not reached that point for me, but that also might be because his name takes too long to say.

**This actually made me think of a play I saw at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in early 2010, The Good Negro - I hadn't been that impressed with it at the time, but I find myself thinking of it occasionally. That was actually a really good play. Worth reading, or seeing, if you get the chance.

***I have been deluged with links to various Ryan Gosling tumblrs in the last few days. I'm mostly over it, and I kind of thought I was mostly over Ryan Gosling as a result - I was sort of edging that way after watching Blue Valentine and Crazy Stupid Love, not that he's bad in either of those movies, but I was getting somewhat weary of just how lovable he always seems to be, and I was worried I'd feel that way watching this. And I didn't. Partly because he's not the usual saintly character - though it has to be said, he is slightly less convincing when he isn't being lovable. On the other hand, now that he's become such a big deal, I'm more intrigued in watching him and trying to figure out why. One thing I noticed this time is that he has the faintest hint of a lazy eye. Which normally really, really creeps me out, but he manages to make it work. It gives him the vaguest suggestion of a vacant stare, but he pulls it off - it becomes a kind of dumb puppy quality. The other thing I noticed is he has this thing, when he's staring into someone's face, he's actually moving his eyes a lot, not gazing deep into their eyes, but trying, it seems, to look at as much of their face as he can, which makes it seem like he's obsessively, excuse me, lovingly, trying to memorize every detail.
Incidentally, yes, Paul Giamatti and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are also both in this movie, and their performances are pretty much totally forgettable. I really suspect it's a Clooney-as-director problem. Sorry George.

****Ok, this is not generally the kind of thing I really notice, but damn, she did not look like a 20 year old. There's actually a scene where Ryan Gosling is guessing her age, and I had her pegged at 26. The internet tells me she turned 25 in September. In the movie though, she says 22, and I thought to myself "With that skin? I don't think so." Which surprised me - that I had that thought, I mean - but I think it's more a testament to the fact that I'm noticing lately that my skin is aging and I'm not happy about it. Yes, I know, it's the cigarettes. But anyways, Evan Racheal Wood's skin is not looking so good in the movie, and all the foundation they slathered onto her does not help one bit.

(Not that You Asked), by Steve Almond

2011-12-05T03:08:00.001-06:00

It's been awhile since I loved a book as much as I loved this one. It touches on pretty much all the things I love and am interested in (literature, sports, food, sex, politics, self-discovery) in a thoughtful, and fantastically well-written way.

The first piece, a series of letters to Oprah, is cute and pretty funny, if a little fluffy. Then comes the second, on Vonnegut, and just knocks your socks off. It starts off as a paean to Vonnegut, combined with an account of actually seeing him in person, and then it (bravely) moves into a description of "the Vonnegut apostasy." I don't think I've ever read anything that admitted to this. I wasn't even aware that it existed, until I read this piece and felt this deep sense of recognition. There are a number of maudlin, uninteresting things one could do with that epiphany, but instead, Almond turns it into a broader reflection on why Vonnegut hasn't been more influential, then returns to a kind of homage (based partly on some fascinating archival research), conveying a profound appreciation, one that contrasts subtly with the adoring fanboyism that the piece opens with. It's a really impressive piece.

From there, he moves into sex, with a few amusing essays about various encounters and discoveries. They're clever and amusing, but they also make you aware of what a good writer Almond is: good sex scenes are not easy to write, and his are fantastic. Fittingly, the section ends with a short guide to writing sex, which is really insightful and interesting.

Then there's a great essay on being an Oakland A's fan living in Boston - not the best piece of sports-fan writing I've ever read, but highly entertaining and definitely resonant. Then there's a wonderful section on "fame," a great description of reality tv - where you really appreciate Almond's honesty with both himself and his readers - and a really well done account of his interactions with a trash-talking blogger (am I secretly hoping that Steve Almond will read this post? Maybe!). Then two very brief but powerful essays on literature and being a writer:
I'd sit there and read a sentence like "I'm going to die from love" and start crying. And what's strange is that it felt so good to cry, there was a kind of joy in it, because all feeling is joy, because the capacity for feeling is the great, unstated human achievement, and because somewhere, off in the distance, I could see that my capacity to feel wasn't going to mess me up forever, and that someday, if I kept at it, the writing thing, if I kept myself open to the lashings of the world, the true, brutal hurt of the place, I might start to get somewhere. (181)
This is followed by a really touching homage to food and friendship, and one to heavy metal. I realize I'm basically summarizing the book here, but I feel like I can't not mention the parts I especially adored, and that turns out to be pretty much the whole thing. So I might as well continue now.

The penultimate section, about politics, was probably my least favorite, and even that was really very good. But the section after it, on becoming a Baby Daddy, as he puts it, is phenomenal. "10 Ways I Killed My Daughter Within the First 72 Hours of Life" made me laugh so hard I cried. I mean, tears were streaming down my face I was laughing so hard. I can't even remember the last time I laughed that much, let alone when reading a book. It is touching and irreverent and one of the funniest pieces of writing I have ever encountered. It's a hard act to follow, but I appreciated that the publishers didn't conclude the book with it, because I think I would have felt somehow manipulated. Instead, the final piece is a piece about Judaism and holiday traditions. It's thoughtful and interesting, not exactly mind-blowing but worthwhile, and hits the right emotional notes.

Not to be a dick or anything, but come to think of it, this is the book Michael Chabon wishes he had written, what I think he was trying to do in Manhood for Amateurs. Anyways, point being - it's a terrific book. I want to buy a copy for everyone I know.

Oedipus Mayor

2011-12-05T00:19:00.001-06:00

Did you know that Gabriel Garcia Marquez co-wrote a 1996 film adaptation of Oedipus Rex? Me neither, but I just watched it. I am very sorry to report that it's not very good. You might even say it's bad.

The movie is set in a war-torn Columbian village. Oedipus has come to help negotiate a peace agreement with the guerillas. Upon his arrival, he discovers that Laius - who was apparently a local leader, though his exact title is not totally clear - has been killed. He meets Laius' wife Jocasta (whom he jumps into bed with pretty much instantly, in some of the most unsexy scenes you could imagine) and her shady brother Creon. He meets a blind guy who keeps telling him he's doomed. And a priest. Not entirely sure what the priest's deal is, to be honest, but he seems important.

The end result is the same as the Oedipus story, but it packs very little emotional punch, partly because you already know what's coming, and partly because... it's just not a very good movie.

All the modern day stuff is basically padding. Nothing about the new context adds anything to the story, other than length and violence. I think it's partly meant to add some kind of credibility (this really could happen!) but it doesn't, at all. The bizarre parts are still bizarre, and what is more, you are very conscious of them as being the Oedipus story - they don't feel like an organic part of the setting. The guerilla conflict initially gives a sense of a seething underworld of political turmoil, which could be useful for the story, but it rapidly becomes arbitrary. A massive firefight kills a lot of the characters, which only highlights how unnecessary they were to the story in the first place. Maybe it's callous of me, or maybe I have a hard time getting emotionally hooked during movies with cheesy special effects, or maybe the fact that I have a terrible cold made me muddled and irritable.

...but it wasn't a very good movie.

Edit:
I just discovered that this post is in a weird darker font. Here's the thing - that Blogpress app that I was so into? It mysteriously stopped working. Crashes constantly. I emailed Support, they say they have a new update but the iTunes app store isn't releasing it for some reason. I dunno. The blogger mobile version is so-so - if you pause while writing and forget to hit save, you can kiss your entry goodbye (also, it doesn't acknowledge paragraph breaks, it just produces this massive block of text). I've submitted "feedback," maybe it will improve. In the meantime, if I want to compose my posts on iPad, from the comforts of my own bed, I do it in gmail, and send it to myself, then copy-paste it onto here when I next sit down at my computer (which is kind of annoying). Apparently, sometimes that leads to wonky color changes. Who knew?

Play it as it Lays, by Joan Didion

2011-12-03T01:33:00.001-06:00

I had the whole day to myself yesterday, and I spent it reading. This book I picked up just as I was going to bed, and ended up reading the whole thing. Which is not to say that I loved it, but it does have a certain momentum, despite having very little plot.

I love Joan Didion's essays, so I was excited to try a novel. But this is not really my kind of book. If you like Bret Easton Ellis novels, you'll probably love this. If you like reading about rich people wandering aimlessly through their lives and shuddering through the death throes of their emotional lives, this is the book for you. It's one of those stories where a suicide attempt or other such self-destructive act serves to remind you that the character does have some kind of feelings. I'm not saying that to be snide - I think there is something impressive about novels like that, and they are often a really skillful portrayal of affect, or rather, its lack. You might argue that they are an investigation into what it means to be human, that takes a kind of extreme as its entry point, and I will totally grant you that there is something really interesting going on there. It's just that I just don't especially enjoy reading it, these days.

Didion is, however, an incredible writer. Like I said already, the book has momentum. The pacing is especially clever, with chapters ranging in length from a few pages to a paragraph. The language is unadorned but powerful. I was completely absorbed.

I guess the take away message here is, if you're going to read one 'emotionally-vacant-character-making-a-mess-of-herself' novel this year, it might as well be this one.

Vathek, by William Beckford

2011-12-02T15:17:00.001-06:00

I should have read this ages ago, but for some reason I always suspected it would be dry and dull. How wrong I was! It's a blast. Totally bizarre, and lots of fun. It's been described as a combination of Arabian Nights and Voltaire, which makes sense, but doesn't give enough credit to the fascinating interplay of literary forms in the novel - particularly its engagement with romance as a genre. What struck me were the echoes of medieval quest narratives, transported into an "eastern" setting, and actually curiously inverted into a quest for sin rather than redemption.

One curious aspect of the book is Vathek's mother, who is in some ways the unacknowledged star, way more evil and sadistic than her son, and also way more invested in this whole pathway to doom. But for some reason, it seems, she needs Vathek to get her in the door. I don't know why this aspect of the book particularly struck me, but there is something really interesting about the way she functions as a character.

The overall tenor of the novel, despite its occasional attempts at moralizing, is unabashed glee and a kind of delight in the sheer evil of it all. In the Introduction to the edition I read, Mario Praz mentions Marquis de Sade, and it's an apt reference. Although Beckford doesn't go into that kind of detail, the cheerful accounts of horror definitely have a merry sadism about them.

It's also interesting to read a European account of a Muslim straying from faith. The novel doesn't exactly inhabit the eastern world, it's clearly more of a tourist, which allows, I think, for some level of indifference about the fates of the characters, but it doesn't explicitly describe them as barbaric or deluded either, the way other such works do.

It's a short book - just over 100 pages - and it's great fun, if you're into weird 18th century type stuff. Maybe even if you're not.

The Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, by Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes

2011-12-02T07:11:00.001-06:00

Apparently I have never explained my fascination with Zora Neale Hurston on this blog, because a search only turned up this post on Seraph on the Suwanee. This is weird, because I could have sworn I wrote a post on Mules and Men, but... I guess not. Anyhow. A few years back, Luke Gibbons gave a lecture at the Irish Seminar where he talked about Zora Neale Hurston as this incredible writer who presents an interesting comparison to J.M. Synge, both of them being ethnographer-artists of sorts who transform folk dialect into lyrical modernist prose. I was really intrigued by this idea, and have been (very) gradually working my way through Hurston's work ever since. And let me tell you - it's a rewarding thing to do. She is incredible.

So I had heard about this play, the only extant collaboration between Hurston and Langston Hughes, and was of course intrigued. To my great surprise, it was free to download on Amazon (along with quite a few other plays of Hurston's). So last night I decided to take a lil' break from Saramago's Baltasar and Blimunda (a gorgeous book but it's like a sumptuous dessert: fabulous but almost too rich, it gets a little overwhelming) and see about these short plays. I read one called Poker! which was aight, extremely short and kind of amusing (the basic gist is: everybody cheats) but not especially satisfying, and then started this one, which I got totally sucked into... only to discover this morning that the amazon version is incomplete. Gah! Thankfully, it turned out the library here has it (and several other Hurston books, which I promptly loaded up on), so I was in fact able to finish it today. Actually, the print version has the added bonus of also having the original short story it's based on (I skipped it; it's in a short story collection of hers I'm planning on reading soon anyhow), an intro by Henry Louis Gates Jr (skimmed, meh), the story of the 'controversy' surrounding the play, and the complete correspondence associated with it. That last bit turned out to be really interesting, especially the correspondence. There's a lot to be said here about the vague misogyny Hurston was subjected to, which is entirely separate from the fact that she did seem to be a little bit, erm, "difficult." It's unfortunate, how things went down with this play (it basically ended Hurston and Hughes' friendship), and it's kind of fascinating to learn about all the crazy politics and drama that went into the situation (and gives you a really powerful look at the kinds of difficulties African American authors were dealing with at the time), but ultimately, the most interesting aspect of the book is the play itself.

Which is great. And really brings home the Synge comparison I mentioned before. This isn't Playboy of the Western World, but it practically begs to be compared to it. It's a similar kind of ethnography-turned-literature work, with a similar humor and beauty, and a similar set of problems in terms of how it presents its own people in ways that arguably compound harmful stereotypes, etc. Perhaps the most delightful example is this exchange in a scene in the courthouse:

HAMBO: (frowns across the aisle at MRS. LUCAS, who is standing) Whut you doing standing up for a witness? I know you wuzn't there.

SISTER LUCAS: I got just as much right to testify as you is. I don't keer if I wasn't there. Any man that treats they wife bad as you can't tell nobody else they eye is black. You clean round yo' own door before you go sweeping round other folks. (pg 116)

The whole courthouse scene is riotously funny, and subtly brings up various questions about institutionalized justice versus local law. But it could also be seen as a negative stereotype, a bunch of lawless barbarians, etc - just like the characters in Synge. The fact that The Mule Bone was explicitly written as part of a project to develop African American theater, and especially comedy, makes the Synge question even more interesting, I think. I don't remember if Luke mentioned any explicit links/influence, I should ask him about that. Point being, there is an article to be written on the topic. Someday, perhaps, I will write it, if no one else (more qualified) has by then.

Anyhow! The play is really clever and entertaining. It's the story of 2 guys, Jim and Dave, best friends until a woman, Daisy, threatens to come between them. They get into a fight, Jim clocks Dave in the face with a mule bone, and the local townsfolk put Jim on trial. There's also an underlying tension in the story between the Baptists and Methodists in the town, which is milked for extra humor value. It's a simple story, but a highly satisfying one.

The real star of the play though, is the language. While Hughes was apparently responsible for plotting and structuring the play, Hurston's job was to craft the dialogue and give it that local flavor. And it's fantastic. The insults are especially wonderful, but the love language is pretty gorgeous too ("I'd buy you a great big ole ship... and then, baby, I'd buy you a ocean to sail yo' ship on." (145)). It takes the play from simple story to work of art, and a wonderful way to spend an afternoon. Definitely recommended.

The Devil's Elixirs, by ETA Hoffman

2011-11-30T16:05:00.001-06:00

This novel is maximally whacked out. I'm talking Book of Revelations style freakiness. There are visions, and Satan, and Jesus (complete with bloody wounds), and sin and saints and monks and repentance and all that good stuff. The story is phenomenally convoluted - to the point that I pulled out a pen and paper and tried to map out plot lines and relationships at one point and ultimately had to give up because if you're talking about 4 generations of tangled sexual affairs where everyone has the same name, there's no way you're going to be able to sort through it all, and really, it's not that important. Which is all another way of saying that despite getting off to a somewhat slow start, it's a really entertaining book.

The novel details the adventures of Medardus, a young monk, and his travels in the sinful world. He is very quickly plunged into a mistaken identity/doppelganger situation, and that's when things get fun. Hoffman does a terrific job with this - the confusion over who does what is so profound that even the protagonist himself occasionally gets it mixed up, not least because oftentimes, he's so busy trying to pin everything on the doppelganger that he starts believing his own lies. Throughout the text, various characters attempt to straighten out who's who, which means you're constantly hearing different versions of the same story, and it never really makes sense. To complicate it even further, people who seemed to be dead turn out to have miraculously survived, and other people who you thought were living turn out to be ghosts. WHAT FUN.

To add to the mix, there's a complex notion of some kind of curse or fate, a "tangled web" that draws various characters together, generating an unbelievable series of coincidences that result in a relatively small cast of characters that is constantly bumping into each other. To top it all off, there are also a few paintings that look like some of the characters and likewise resurface, which always seems portentous. The relationship between art and life is highly fluid and unstable, and definitely something I need to spend more time thinking about.

The 'elixirs' of the title, though indeed genuinely gifts from the devil, are basically a red herring. They exist, yes, and they serve as a catalyst in some ways perhaps, but they also seem entirely beside the point, because fated doomy doom is kind of a trump card. Initially, the novel seems to be interested in playing with the idea of whether or not they're genuine or psychosomatic, but it quickly moves on to other things. The elixirs do lead to some interesting conversations about sin and free will though. Actually, there are plenty of random philosophical interludes in the novel, the most delightful of which come from a guy named Belcampo (or Peter), a highly artistic barber with multiple personality disorder, who has a tenuous grasp on reality. He's a hoot. Hoffman clearly adores him, and therefore shoehorns him into the plot whenever he can, and while it makes very little sense, you're always glad to see him.

Overall, highly entertaining, in that 19th century kind of way.

EDIT:
I was just reading Freud's essay, 'On the Uncanny,' and came across this:

Hoffman is the unrivalled master of the uncanny in literature. His novel, Die Elixire des Teufel's [The Devil's Elixir], contains a whole mass of themes to which one is tempted to ascribe the uncanny effect of narrative; but it is too obscure and intricate a story for us to venture upon a summary of it. Toward the end of the book the reader is told the facts, hitherto concealed from him, from which the action springs; with the result, not that he is at last enlightened, but that he falls into a state of complete bewilderment.

Indeed!

A Dangerous Method

2011-11-29T06:16:00.001-06:00

Awhile back I gave my students an optional extra credit assignment - write a brief paper comparing the Iliad to Troy. A few days ago, at the end of class, some students came up to me and asked if they could do another extra credit assignment: "Teacher! There is a new movie about Freud! Can we write an extra credit paper on it?" I expressed my doubts that the movie could genuinely further our understandings of Civilization and its Discontents, but I promised I'd go see it to make sure. I did check it out online, but once I saw that Keira Knightley was in it, I closed my browser - what else you do you need to know? Which means that I didn't realize it was a David Cronenberg movie until the opening credits started. Or that it is allegedly a fantastic film, one that has received quite a bit of praise from A. O. Scott at the NYTimes (I love reading his reviews, but I'm coming to realize that I rarely agree with them). Honestly? I don't get what all the fuss is about. I thought it kinda sucked.

To start with the praise, Keira Knightley is pretty fantastic as a crazy Russian lady. Her accent is consistent, her jaw juts out further than you ever thought possible when she's having fits, and boy can she take a spanking. Viggo Mortensen is practically unrecognizable as Freud - no seriously, I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out if it was him. The brown contacts and beard really threw me off. And does a pretty good job as a kind of bemused guy who is simultaneously very worried about the future of the field he is inventing. Vince Cassel is pretty awesome as a lech. Michael Fassbender is the weakest link, giving an utterly wooden performance as Jung, at turns angsty, determined, or indignant, but always dull.

Cronenberg's touch is pretty visible, but it's kind of hard to explain how. The aesthetic of the film, the way the shots were framed, the shot-reverse-shot-and-now-another-angle way of filming conversations, and the color palette were all somehow very familiar. The keen interest in the various tools and machines and restraints associated with psychiatry was unsurprising. The racy bits (which I guess should qualify as shocking, but they somehow...weren't. I don't know if that says more about me or the film. They just weren't especially thrilling or titillating moments, what can I say), same.

The problem with the movie was the story. You got the sense that the movie couldn't decide what kind of story it wanted to tell - was it the love story between Sabrina and Jung? Was it the relationship between Jung and Freud? Was it the birth of psychiatry? Was it Sabrina's cure? Because it tried to do all of those, and none of them worked out that well. As per usual, the main thing I'd complain about is the utter lack of explanation of or engagement with these peoples' actual ideas, which to my mind is obviously the most interesting thing about them. What did Freud and Jung really disagree about? What was Spielrein's intellectual contribution? She actually gets to discuss sexuality and the death drive with Freud at one point in the film, and intellectually speaking, it's definitely the most rewarding moment in the movie. We also learn at the end that she brought psychiatry to the Soviet Union, which I would LOVE to know more about. Otherwise, it's all vague general stuff. Yes, Jung wants to explore paranormal phenomenon. Ok, tell us more! And what about Freud? We get a glimpse of the ideas that will go into Moses and Monotheism, and of course we get the critique that he's obsessed with sex, but all the reflections on the discovery of consciousness and how to navigate it that A. O. Scott seems to find in the film are the ones that I desperately missed. The first half of the story was somewhat interesting, but the post-intermission stretch* was bo-ring. As it moved into its final moments, it tried to pull out the stops emotionally speaking, which really hammered in just how little I cared about the story and the characters.

*I'm realizing that Turkish cinemas do a bit of a disservice to the films they show, because an intermission gives you the opportunity to actually think about what you're watching, and it's rarely to the film's benefit.

In Praise of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays, by Anais Nin

2011-11-27T06:53:00.001-06:00

I love Anais Nin's erotic fiction and the parts of her diaries that I've read, so when I saw this essay collection at a used bookstore a year ago for $5, I grabbed it. I finally got around to reading it the other day, and I have to say, it was somewhat disappointing. The book hasn't aged too well. It's interesting, perhaps, as a time capsule of feminism in the 1970s, but to a modern day reader, Nin comes off sounding like your typical 70s kooky-lady hippy (I'm sorry, whenever someone talks about women and men discovering their masculine and feminine qualities and how doing so will make the world a better place I kind of die inside). Which is kind of depressing, if you love her other work as much as I do.

It's not that the essays in this collection are bad, actually, the first few are quite lovely. The second one, The New Woman, is a particularly enjoyable discussion of female artists. But even by the end of that, you're starting to feel the sense of a voice from the past. For example, "A woman can be courageous, can be adventurous, she can be all these things. And this woman who is coming up is very inspiring, very wonderful. And I love her." (19) Reading lines like this, I, who flatter myself into thinking that I am in fact an adventurous, courageous woman, kind of feel like I'm being cooed over by an elderly aunt. I love her, and I'm proud of being the person I am, and I'm proud that she's proud of me, but I also can't help but see her as somewhat out of touch. It's definitely a punch to the gut to realize that when Nin was writing, sentences like those were somewhat radical in nature. But they don't really give me much to work with in terms of the world I live in.

The later pieces in the collection, book reviews and excerpts from her diaries (mostly travel writing) are more successful, but not especially amazing. The final piece, My Turkish Grandmother, is really sweet, a wonderful random encounters kind of story that I loved. Overall though, the collection is pretty skip-able.

Tower Heist

2011-11-26T01:57:00.001-06:00

Hmph. The Blogpress app I was so delighted with mysteriously crashed and will not restart, devouring the entry I had written about this movie. So here we go again.

It is quite possible - even highly probable - that my standards have been considerably lowered. But I quite enjoyed this movie. It's not a masterpiece, but it's entertaining, and actually kind of interesting, when you think about it. The star-studded cast - Ben Stiller, Tea Leoni (I love her!), Alan Alda, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick, Michael Pena, Gabourey Sidibe, Casey Affleck - do a great job making the characters three dimensional and sympathetic. It's a welcome pleasure to see Eddie Murphy and Matthew Broderick getting worthwhile employment, and both of them are much more interesting to watch than they have been in recent years (though Matthew Broderick is looking aged, damn). The only real flaw in terms of performance is Gabourey Sidibe's Jamaican accent, which is seriously awful. I mean, you wince every time she speaks. It's unfortunate, because she is otherwise totally beguiling. Point being though, that the cast makes this movie. They transform what could very easily be a somewhat bland run-of-the-mill heist flick into a pleasurable ensemble comedy.

The plot occasionally feels a bit paint-by-numbers, but for all that, it does have some twists and surprises. Or maybe they were only surprising to me. Talking to my friend during the intermission (thank you Turkish cinema for providing us with this moment for reflection, heh heh) I realized that I genuinely don't know what to expect in heist flicks. I mean, it is not obvious to me that the robbers will succeed. Maybe it really is the standard, and I just happen to have seen the few movies where they don't (not gonna name them for the sake of spoiler prevention), but I don't expect a straightforward triumph at the end. Partly, I think, because of the moral ambiguity. I mean, when you think about it, there's a moral tension at play in most heist movies, especially in ones (like this one) where you also have likable characters on the law enforcement side, and that muddies things up in terms of who you're cheering for. I think we no longer straightforwardly root for vigilante justice over the rule of law, so the characters are in a bit of a gray area. And actually, without giving it away I will say that the ending is kind of an interesting compromise, morally speaking.

In this movie, the dynamic is especially weird because it's about a wall street type who has defrauded lots and lots of people, so while you may be cheering for the cast of the building to steal his rainy day fund, you also can't help but be aware that there are other people just like them who deserve their money back (how can this be done legally? what if our heroes, instead of getting stupid rich off his money, were to share it with some of the other people he's ripped off?), and you want Tea Leoni the FBI agent to send his ass to jail.

The emotional undertones of the movie, thanks to the wall street part, are a lot stronger than they would be otherwise. The basic premise is that the staff of this building has lost their pensions because the manager gave it to Alan Alda to invest, thinking they'd make more money that way. The movie pushes the anti-wall street angle pretty hard, particularly in the character of Lester, an 100% likable guy who has worked his entire life and now lost all of his savings because he chose to invest them (this is curiously complimented by a moment where Gabourey Sidibe points out that nobody asked for their savings to be invested, implying that such things should not be subjected to the risks of the market. Ahem.). The close-ups of his face almost remind you of a Walker Evans photograph or something. He is also the moral fulcrum of the film; the outrage over what has happened to him (and his abject misery over it) is what tips the balance in favor of crime for the other characters.

I've gone on long enough about this movie, but one final thing that seems worth pointing out - actually, two. One is that there are some action-type sequences in this movie that blew me away. There is some intense, scary stunt type shit. Way more high tech than I expected, and also genuinely made my stomach flipflop a little. Impressive. The second is that there's a seen in the movie where two characters get really, really wasted, and it was so well done (and well acted) that I was cringing the entire time watching it. For no real reason other than the basic discomfort you feel around someone really wasted - you're on edge, thinking they're about to do something mortifying. And generally being uncomfortable with their boozy honesty. It's not an especially important scene, it just made an impression on me because it's that realistic.

Anyways, overall, I dunno if this is even still playing (or maybe it's due out on video soon, heh heh) but it's not a bad movie. Perfectly entertaining mindless pleasure, and not even totally mindless, if you wanna think about the moral mechanics.

Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin

2011-11-20T08:56:00.002-06:00

This is a thundering, intense sort of book about God and sin and race and misery. It's framed as the story of a 14 year old kid and his spiritual awakening (or rather, un-awakening?), but interpollates the stories of other people in his life and their pasts. Curiously enough, that central story wasn't especially interesting to me - the character, Johnny, was strangely hollow, and the scenes of his (awful) family life weren't all that engaging. I was starting to wonder why people love this book so much, and then the perspective shifted to his aunt's story - and I was spellbound.

Perhaps it's uncharitable of me, but I was astonished at how well Baldwin wrote the women in this book. The stories of Johnny's aunt and mother and other women they knew were unbelievably powerful and somewhat devastating. For its bitterly insightful portrayal of black women's experience, the novel deserves to be a feminist classic.

Although the book often, I think, gets read as an indictment of Christianity, I don't think that's quite right. Certainly, it's a pretty harsh critique of the church - especially as institution, but also as this force that essentially serves to further humiliate and degrade people who already have it pretty rough - but I don't think that's the entire story. There's also a kind of acknowledgement of its ability to raise people up, a transformative power of faith. What is more, a large part of the novel's force derives from a rhetoric that is undeniably indebted to religion.

Overall - pretty intense stuff. Baldwin hasn't let me down yet.

Eline Vere, by Louis Couperus

2011-11-18T05:40:00.003-06:00

I had never heard of this novel before a friend recommended it to me, and that is a crime, because it deserves to be one of the great classics of the Realist tradition. Seriously, I'd rank it right up there with Tolstoy and Eliot - it's that good. Ok, it's not Anna Karenina or Middlemarch, but it definitely stands up to Daniel Deronda and The Death of Ivan Ilyich. More than anything, actually, it reminded me of Flaubert, especially in the skillful use of indirect discourse. And apparently Couperus wrote it when he was 26! It's a tightly crafted, marvelous drawing room novel, with gorgeous prose (I read the new translation, by Ina Rilke) and really insightful depictions of human psychology.

One of the pleasures of the book is how the characters mirror each other in these very complex ways, so you have these delicate similarities and contrasts that are wonderfully subtle. It's the best kind of Realism, in my mind - one that manages to evoke all of human nature in this intricate tapestry of a specific cast of characters. People are constantly misreading or misunderstanding each other, and are mostly pretty miserable. It's de-lightful. You have to enjoy torrid romance and handwringing and descriptions like "Her wardrobe, too, was the object of long and earnest meditation, involving the effects and harmonies of the cold sheen of satin, the warmer, changeable shades of silk plush, the froth of tulle and gauze, and the sheerness of mousseline and lace,"* but like I said, the real joy of the book is in the psychological insights. Come for the tulle, stay for the personalities!

I will definitely be reading more Couperus. Incidentally, perhaps worth mentioning that this was my first time reading a book - that I paid for - on my iPad. I'd read some stuff on iPhone before, but all free downloads of old classics, and mostly only when I was working a slow shift at a bakery and not allowed to have a book in front of me, but able to get away with a seemingly innocuous phone. This was my first proper, sit-down-and-read-an-ebook experience. I have to say - it's pretty nice. The Kindle app includes a pretty handy highlighting and note-taking feature, which I begrudgingly admit might even be superior to my usual pencil underlining, particularly given that it's searchable. It turns out that amazon has several other Couperus books available in electronic form (especially key, because the Bilkent library has nothing but the copy of Eline Vere that I ordered two months ago which - of course - arrived today).

*Re-reading those lines, I realize that the pleasure I take in them is purely literary. They don't really conjure up an image so much as a kind of sensation, a vague impression of fabrics that I'm not even terribly familiar with, but have learned to love from novels like this one.

The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman

2011-11-14T10:52:00.002-06:00

I had never heard of this book until a friend lent it to me, but thanks to giving my students in-class midterms, I read the whole thing today, and it was de-lightful. Warm, clever, and highly enjoyable. What made it especially interesting to me is the way it is a kind of bridge between the short story and the novel - it's basically a series of interconnected vignettes about a newspaper in Rome, and the people who work there. The stories essentially stand alone (as one reviewer on the back cover gushes, each is worthy of publication in the New Yorker on its own merits - an exaggeration, but only a slight one, really), and what weaves them together is less that various characters resurface here and there, but the overall framing of a single newspaper - whose history is interwoven amongst the various tales in a kind of longer story broken into pieces and sammiched between the rest, forming a kind of giant narrative hoagie (sorry, couldn't resist). At the same time, it's not a novel, and it's kind of interesting to think about why. I think it's because the vignettes are so very short story like - they really only give you the middle of the action, and often end with sudden twists or cliffhangers. It's on the verge of feeling gimmicky, but it's used just this side of sparingly to make it work, not to mention, some real human feeling behind it, rather than the cheekiness of a writer pleased with his own cleverness.

Overall, a really enjoyable book, much recommended.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell

2011-11-12T21:43:00.002-06:00

I feel like me and David Mitchell can't get our relationship off the ground. It's like we go on a date, and at first it's amazing and we're having a great time, and then it starts to get kind of meh, and by the end I really just wanna go home and not talk to this dude anymore. Then a few weeks later, I'm like oh yeah, that guy, he was kind of fun, and I call him again, and the same thing happens. Granted, I'm saying this on the basis of only two books, this one and Cloud Atlas, which I read awhile back, but I can feel it becoming a pattern.

The first two thirds of this book were fantastic. Mitchell clearly did a lot of research, and it shows, or rather, it doesn't - the historical milieu (Dutch traders in Japan in the 1790s) is convincingly evoked in what I suspect is highly accurate fashion, but in a subtle, not overly expository way. The characters are life-like, sympathetic, and believable. There's not too much going on in the way of plot, but you're enjoying being there, so you don't mind. But Mitchell wants to have a plot, so by golly, around page 300, the book rumbles to life and gets to work. Suddenly the perspective starts jumping around, and there's all kinds of excitement and intrigue and lots of complicated stuff to keep track of. You went from dinner date to dodgeball and you're not wearing the right shoes. On a different occasion, this could have been fun, but right now, you're not in the mood. By the end you really don't care who wins, you just want it to end. And right when you think it is, you're in the car, you're on the way home and suddenly he's like Oh wait let's just make one more quick stop... No goddamnit. Take me home. I'm done with this book.

This sounds really harsh, so I want to remind you that I did really love the first 2/3 of the book. It was awesome. 1790s Japan is a fascinating setting, and I do feel like I learned a lot more about it. I want to love David Mitchell, because a lot of his writing - like a good 70% - is fantastic. But the other 30% really isn't working for me.

The Appointment, by Herta Müller

2011-11-08T14:44:00.002-06:00

I can't really say this was an enjoyable read. Which is not to say it isn't a good book, because it is, but it's rather relentlessly grim. Every time I put it down, I kind of had to force myself to pick it back up again. The story is of a woman on her way to a meeting with the secret police (the story is set in totalitarian Romania). As she rides the tram, she thinks back on her life. A lot of the prose is actually quite beautiful, but the overall atmosphere is pretty miserable. One has to appreciate how skillfully the author manages to put an entire life, and world, into a tram ride, but gosh, it's not much fun.

The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean

2011-11-07T13:21:00.003-06:00

I had the opposite experience with this book than I did with The Professor and the Madman. It was kind of a rambling sort of work without much of an overarching narrative, written on a topic I wasn't all that interested in - but I enjoyed it. Susan Orlean is a good writer, is what it comes down to, and she has a lot of interesting reflections on the material (and a lot of really fantastic turns of phrase - the prose is excellent). The book had just the right amount of introspection, where the personal notes actually helped you see why she found the story interesting, or added some drama (she has to face the swamp again! And she's really scared!) without seeming self-indulgent or narcissistic.

Actually, the most interesting thing about the book, to me, was that more than any other non-fiction I've read, this one gave me a kind of glimpse into how books like this come about. You get the sense that she had read some articles about the court case that the book is ostensibly centered around, and then just sort of got into her car and went to find out more. She wrote a New Yorker article, and then developed it into a book. A nice job, if you can get it...

Though I will say that it occasionally seemed a bit... problematic, the way she wrote about people. I mean, there are some pretty unflattering portrayals in there. I wonder if those people read the book and how they felt. And I guess I wonder whether that should Matter, in some grand sense.

I did not end up with some kind of new fascination with orchids or the people who cultivate them, and to be honest, I also didn't find myself caring all that much about the people being described, but the book was definitely interesting, and merited the full length treatment it got. I wouldn't say it's a must-read, but it's certainly not a waste of time.

Young Goethe in Love

2011-10-13T15:12:00.001-05:00

My love for seeing movies on the big screen is being sorely tested by this city. I swear, it's like they scour American offerings for the worst garbage available. Is it just that those are cheaper? Easier to subtitle? What's the deal? Why is every theatre in town playing movie about Hugh Jackman training fighting robots? Have you heard of this movie? I hadn't. And the trailer is so bad that I am not even sure if I'll go. It was so bad, in fact, that tonight I went to a movie IN GERMAN, despite the fact that the only subtitles were in Turkish! Now, to be fair: my German is pretty good. So I was fairly confident I'd understand a reasonable amount. And as it turned out, I actually understood the vast majority, which made me feel pretty damn good about myself. Also, to be clear, I didn't just go see a random German movie. I had heard of this film before; it played at the Chicago International Film Fest last year, and I was vaguely curious about it then. The internetz told me it was picked up by Music Box Films, and I am always thrilled to support them. Finally, it turns out that the movie was written and directed by the same guy who made North Face (which apparently I didn't blog about? What? It is well worth watching. One of the better mountain climbing movies I've ever seen, really intensely scary stuff. Melodramatic love story, meh, but if you wanna see some seriously sick frost bite, rent it.),which was an added draw. I figured this was gonna be a fluffy, ridiculous period piece/biopic. Which it kind of was, but you know, it was better than I'd thought.

The plot is is strangely matter-of-fact - I mean, it's a somewhat cheesy love story, struggling artist tale, but it moves at a fairly brisk pace, without really lingering in the drama. Not that it's fast-paced or suspenseful, it just seems to kind of march on pretty efficiently. The acting was much, much better than I expected. Although the characters are pretty straightforward and functional, they're not entirely one-dimensional. Ketzler, for instance, though required to be a dullard (poor Moritz Bleibtreu is gradually becoming typecast) is oddly sympathetic. And the acting is surprisingly good. Maybe I was noticing the subtleties of gesture more than usual because I didn't understand all the language, but I do think there's some real convincing feeling in some of the scenes. The plot is kind of silly and whatever, but Lotte is pretty hot, and it's a reasonably entertaining film, even if you don't live in Turkey.

Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard, by Isak Dinesen

2011-10-08T10:36:00.002-05:00

Isak Dinesen (or Karen Blixen) is becoming one of my favorite writers. Her writing is just incredible. This is a collection of dense, fairy tale-like of stories, and they are absolutely marvelous. Each is intricate and complex, with these incredible twists and turns. None of the stories ever went the way you expected, but by the end you felt like all the pieces had fallen perfectly into place. Really masterful composition. And so beautiful!

I have a few other books of her waiting on the shelf, Out of Africa, Shadows on the Grass, and Winter's Tales - when I was packing my books for the move, I half wondered whether it was really wise to bring so many works by the same author, but now I'm so glad I did. I'm looking forward to slowly working my way through them all.

The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of his Friend Marilyn Monroe, by Andrew O'Hagan

2011-10-02T07:11:00.002-05:00

A lot of research must have gone into this book. That's what I kept thinking as I was reading. So many reference to other pieces of literature or philosophy (especially to moments in philosophy that reference animals), so many scenes with various celebrities of the time... I almost wondered if O'Hagan wasn't a former grad student. The thing is though, aside from a few moments, most of those references always seem like just that - clever references. They don't really bring the characters or the time period to life at all. This is particularly true, unfortunately, of Monroe herself (who was my motive for reading the book). She never becomes an actual person, though there are a few moments that come close.

The idea of having her dog narrate her story is an interesting one, and the dog is an entertaining character, but there's no overarching plot. The book feels like a vignette of scenes, most of which are of cocktail parties. Your interest ebbs and flows as you read; when one party ends, you don't especially want to hear about the next one. To be fair, there are some lovely moments - mostly in the form of clever observations - but overall, the books never really gets off the ground.

Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson

2011-10-01T05:51:00.002-05:00

I was reading something that mentioned this novel (well, more of a novella really) as a parody of the island adventure novel. I was intrigued by the notion, so I checked it out of the library and pounded through it in an evening. It was, I have to say, a bit disappointing. But still kind of irresistible, in a way.

To begin with, I dunno about that whole parody argument. Seems a bit thin to me. The only part that maybe stands up to that kind of reading is the fact that pirates turn out to be completely incompetent on land. They can't ration effectively, they suck at hunting, and they're drunk most of the time. Come to think of it, they're apparently rather useless on the ship too, at least this bunch is - they suck at navigation, and seem to have no idea what's going on. They're vicious mercenaries who act completely based on their own self-interest, but they're too dumb to recognize what that is half the time.

The writing is somewhat dry, and the story isn't that great. But as the above paragraph hopefully indicates - the pirates are entertaining anyways. The weakest parts of the text are, basically, all the ones the pirates aren't in - Jim, the Doctor, the Squire, who cares. The Doctor gets some funny lines, but their story isn't that compelling. Long John Silver, on the other hand, is a fascinating character, and more complex than everyone else put together. Ruthless and greedy but also capable of planning and saving money, he leads a pirate's life but also purportedly has set aside a nest-egg to retire on with his wife. Tricksy but generally honest, you find yourself rooting for him no matter which side he's on.

One minor thing that intrigued me were a few throw-away lines about blacks - I'm not all that familiar with Stevenson; was he a big supporter of black causes? Because aside from generally being positive, there are a few moments that seem to go out of their way to say nice things about black people. Which I thought was really neat, but you do kind of wonder what the deal is, because they're pretty clearly tangential insertions. For example, "The sight of all those good-natured faces (especially the blacks) (...) made a cheerful contrast to (etc etc)" (p290 in Google Books) - why especially? You know? It just seems like a kind of added emphasis for no apparent reason.

Is Treasure Island a must-read? Definitely not. In fact, your time is probably better spent watching the Muppets movie version (which, by the by, has a different ending, and a rather less satisfying one, if you ask me). Great as the pirates are, if you really want good pirate fiction, read Sabatini.

Glover's Mistake, by Nick Laird

2011-09-24T04:06:00.001-05:00

I adore Nick Laird's prose. It's charming: expressive and friendly but somehow also elegant. It has that British quality of slightly goofy, self-deprecation, but also its sophistication. It's a pleasure to read. With this novel, however, he's set himself the very difficult task of starting with a likable character and chronicling his transformation into a bit of a monster. It's not a very pleasant experience. In fact, everyone in the book becomes less likable, increasingly petty and trivial and thoughtlessly cruel.

The book is told entirely from the main character's perspective, except for a bit at the end that seemingly randomly switches to someone else's. I think that the purpose of the switch is to somewhat redeem that other character, who was starting to look like a complete jerk, and to make you aware of how much your view of the events was con trained by the increasingly limited and small minded vision of the protagonist. It's an interesting move, but it's not entirely successful, precisely because our outlook has already been so poisoned. I suppose, then, that one could see the novel as a kind of cautionary tale about, well, not being a jerk.

Actually, one could go further and say that it's a reflection on how spending too much time on the internet, anonymously blogging your toxic views, can turn you into an asshole. It's not necessarily that your vicious posts will come back around and have hurtful consequences, though sometimes they do. It's more that it affirms you in your viciousness. The novel illustrates this in a sublimely subtle way - it's actually quite masterful.

Thinking about it, then, it's a much more interesting novel than I initially gave it credit for. At the same time, I can't say it was an entirely enjoyable read. I guess I didn't fully realize what I was in for - I picked it up thinking it would be a light-hearted leisure read, like his other novel, Utterly Monkey (which I really enjoyed). And it started off so warm and likable that I kept waiting for it to get back to that. So I guess at the end of the day, I think it's a pretty good book, just be forewarned - it's a pretty dark sort of read.

Cowboys vs Aliens

2011-09-23T17:01:00.001-05:00

My big screen cinema options have been dramatically reduced, and I am learning new things about my self as a result. It turns out that I will no longer go see anything. I will not go see some movie where Kate Hudson plays a woman who finds love as she's dying of cancer, even if Gael Garcia Bernal is in it. No. I will also not see Sarah Jessica Parker in, well, pretty much anything really, but definitely not in some movie where she plays a woman who "can't have it all". I just can't do it. I'd rather stay home and stare at the wall. Nonetheless, I can reliably be counted on to spend 13TL on pretty much any action movie. Hell, I was excited for it. What seemed not worth my time and money in Chicago can appear a lot more exciting when you're new in town, have only a few friends, and don't know the language.

Cowboys vs Aliens did not disappoint. It was actually exactly what I thought it'd be. A plot that clung to whatever scraps of sense it could muster, some melodramatic sentimental treacle, some nasty nasty aliens, and of course, lots of punching and splosions. I noticed, during the opening credits, that there were like ten screenwriters involved in the creation of this masterpiece. I think they may have been slightly at odds with each other. Because the movie is an odd collage of Hollywood tropes, and it only takes about half of them seriously. The script is supremely functional - every character has a purpose. Daniel Craig, of course, is the (anti)hero. He will be badass. He will also be somewhat mysterious because of his amnesia, the main function of which is to move the plot forward via his gradually remembering things. He will also shoulder the burden of romance, but only so that there can be one make-out scene and lots of brooding. Harrison Ford, aka angry cowboy grampa, will be the gruff man who turns out to be a good guy. He will also enact the drama of the broken family that is mended over the course of the film, and that of the greedy rich guy who becomes a benevolent industrious capitalist. Sam Rockwell is there to love his wife and provide comic effect. Etc. The music, too, was ungodly rote and simplistic. I think whoever wrote it hates his/her job.

Sam Rockwell's comic effect is where the movie shines, because it's where it actually plays with Western tropes rather than simply emulating them. Basically, it's where the movie allows itself to have fun. Because Daniel Craig is no fun at all, and Harrison Ford has grown too curmudgeonly to have fun either.

The other big plus of the film are the aliens, who are really, really gross.

Overall, I can't really recommend the movie. I was reasonably entertained, yes. But I'm pretty easy to entertain at the moment. Honestly, this could have been a much better made film if it could just lighten up a little and not take itself so seriously.

Wolf Hall, by Hillary Mantel

2011-09-21T04:28:00.002-05:00

I knew quite little about Henry VIII (aside from the whole lots of wives, religion run amok thing), and basically nothing about Thomas Cromwell, his right hand man, before starting this book. And to be honest, I can't say that I learned that much about them. Wolf Hall lacks the astonishing density of A Place of Greater Safety, Mantel's novel about the French Revolution. You don't have as clear a sense of the overall historical moment. This kind of frustrated me, because it's such a fascinating historical period, and I'd LIKE to learn more about it. On the other hand, the characters in Wolf Hall are much more vivid and alive than those of Greater Safety. Cromwell, the centerpiece of the novel, is just wonderful. As my friend Ruchama said, you really just want to keep reading because he's so interesting and likeable. Not even really as a historical figure - just as a person. Meditative, sharp, ethical and fierce. He's a really fantastic character, and the main reason to read the book.

The plot arc of the novel, however, is decidedly less satisfying. About 2/3 of the way in, it seems, Mantel decides to make Thomas More into a counterfoil to Cromwell - he's been there all along, but suddenly he seems to be way, way more important. The ending is somewhat abrupt - the book is massively long, but it doesn't really have a plot arc, so there's no compelling reason why it should end at one moment instead of another. There are all kinds of people you know will turn out to be historically important, and are dying to spend more time with - this is where Mantel's skill in characterization sort of works against her - but you don't get to.

The big scandal around this book was that it won the Booker Prize over A.S. Byatt's Little Children. I haven't read the Byatt yet - it's on my shelf - but honestly, I don't think Wolf Hall is quite that spectacular. It's wonderful as a character study, but rather too long to be recommended solely on those grounds.

The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver

2011-09-18T16:07:00.000-05:00

Barbara Kingsolver is a wonderful writer, so even her less fantastic books are a pleasure to read. The Lacuna is a meandering sort of novel, partly because of its form; it's ostensibly a collection of diaries, letters, news articles, and some commentary. But it successfully collates all of this into an overarching narrative, the story of one man's life. When we meet him, Harrison Shephard is a young boy living in Mexico with his mother. He finds himself working for Diego Rivera, mixing plaster, and from there, Forrest Gump like, he becomes a kind of screen onto which various historical forces are projected.

Lukacs argued that the main character of a historical novel ought to be a somewhat mediocre character, so that he could more effectively be the conduit for history, a passive leaf floating on a river, illustrating the currents. I guess the problem with this novel is, perhaps, that Shephard is a bit too interesting. The book can't really make up its mind, whether it wants to be the truth of this man, or the truth of history, and it's not entirely successful at being both. The parts that are more geared towards exploring his own character are the most compelling; the parts where history looms large are decidedly less so. To me at least. A lot of the historical aspect seemed gimmicky and melodramatic. While it's in some ways refreshing to see the supposedly idyllic 50s being painted as a kind of dark ages of hysteria (mostly through the Red Scare), I can't say that I completely buy the paranoid image of life Kingsolver paints. I suppose we are meant to be drawing parallels to our own historical moment, which makes me find it all the more irritating.

Still, it was a pleasant enough read. The diary portions are quite effective in presenting the image of everyday life. I really appreciated the delicate and subtle handling of the more intimate aspects of the main character's life, particularly sex. I read the book over a period of 3 days, but it definitely felt like it dragged at moments. Overall, it's not an especially rewarding book, and definitely not nearly as good as some of her others.

The Professor and the Madman, by Simon Winchester

2011-09-13T16:45:00.001-05:00

Oh wow. I was feeling guilty about not updating, and then I realized I hadn't posted this, which I wrote like 2 weeks ago, and felt really guilty. In my defense, I did just move to Turkey. So I've been kinda busy.

I felt the same way about this book as I do about a lot of non-fiction - it would have been great as a New Yorker article. Yes, it was interesting enough, decently written, and a worthwhile topic, but there really wasn't enough material to sustain my interest for 242 pages. The basic hook - that the OED was compiled from submissions from volunteers, and one of the prime contributors was a dude in an insane asylum - isn't quite as juicy as the author seems to think. I mean, the stuff about how it was compiled is interesting. The lunatic stuff, not all that much. Honestly, I don't find it at all surprising. Think about it. Who else would have the time and drive to do something like that, other than a well-educated loon?

The descriptions of the guy's insanity are interesting enough, but after awhile, they start to seem kind of gratuitous, like theyre being milked for thrills. That's when you really start to feel like the book has run out of steam and the author is just trying to fill pages. It gets wordy and repetitive and just not that good.

Actually, one of the things that I found most interesting - as did the author apparently, because he spends some time on it, even though it's kind of tangential - is what he has to say about the Civil War. He makes this claim that the Civil War was the first war where military technology vastly outstripped medical technology, meaning that people could inflict particularly heinous physical suffering on one another. Now, I don't think he's right about that, entirely. I mean, I'd say that claim probably holds true for pretty much every war leading up to that point - shit, and maybe even since. Think of gunpowder. And land mines. And nuclear fallout. But I do believe that the Civil War may have been somewhat unique in the particular moment medicine was at, namely, where somewhat more complex medical operations were becoming more standard, but there wasn't any kind of advanced technology for anesthesia or pain control. But I am also basically speculating on that, so someone who knows more about history and medicine should correct me.

Anyways, overall, not at all a must read. I actually left my copy on the el, in hopes that it'd find it's way into the hands of someone who enjoyed it, because I didn't feel like giving it to any of my friends.

Erasure, by Percival Everett

2011-08-10T14:56:00.001-05:00

I was somewhat put-off by this novel fairly early on, when the narrator gives a lecture on Roland Barthes' S/Z wherein he basically does a kind of meta-reading of the text by it's own methods - and the text actually provides the text of the lecture. I almost quit right there. I have increasingly less patience for that kind of thing. It's neat if you're just discovering Barthes, and makes you feel cool if you "get" it, but the joys wear off, and what you're left with is the sense that this idea really didn't need to be taken to it's logical conclusion (kind of how I feel reading S/Z actually, badum-tsh!). But I persevered, and the novel did in fact get more interesting. But it also never really rose above that sense of cleverness. It doesn't really get you on an emotional level. It feels like a well executed mfa thesis, where the author has shown that he's conversant with the tools of the craft.

One aspect is that the novel tries to cram in way too much stuff. The central character is a novelist who pens largely unread, experimental postmodern types of works. Then he becomes aware of a bestselling book called We Lives in da Ghetto. I should pause here and say that the protagonist is a black guy who doesn't find race central to his identity, and is regularly accused of not being "black" enough. He is annoyed by We Lives in da Ghetto, and especially with the way it's received as an authentic African American voice. Meanwhile, his agent wishes he wrote books like that, instead of these weird high brow parodies that no one reads. So what does our protagonist do? He writes (using a pen name) a weird high brow parody of "ghetto fiction" - the full text of which is also included in the novel. Of course, it's a runaway hit, and the predictable hijinks ensue. That alone would make for a relatively interesting novel. The predictable hijinks part is just that, but the parody itself is really well done, and the discussion related to it is worthwhile.

The problem is, Everett apparently decided that wasn't enough. So there's also a subplot about his mom's rapidly progressing Alzheimer's, the secrets of his dad's past, his relationship with his gay brother and his doctor sister... All of these story lines individually are fine, though none is all that exciting, but taken together, it's just too much to care about, and feels soap operatic.

Like I said, some interesting ideas here, but that's it really. Some clever ideas that are partly fleshed out. You always sense the constructedness of it; you never really enter the world of the text.

Manhood for Amateurs, by Michael Chabon

2011-08-04T21:00:00.001-05:00

I do not love Chabon's fiction, but I am generally interested in people's ideas about manhood, and I heard an interview with Chabon on Fresh Air that I really enjoyed, so... I bought this book for my boyfriend for Christmas, and then borrowed it. I've been reading it slowly, every so often enjoying a chapter before bed (they're very short, so it works quite well), and that may be the best way to do it. Some parts are much less compelling than others; occasionally he comes across as somewhat angsty or just not that interesting, but others are kind of heartwarming and nice, and overall, it's an enjoyable series of brief pieces about life, relationships, parenting, etc. I particularly appreciated the reflections on gender, probably because they line up with my own, but they also tended to be the funnier moments in the book. There were also some really lovely discussions of love, relationships, and marriage. Nothing in this book was especially mind-blowing, or really changed the way I see the world - at it's best, it articulated things I agree with in appealing, sometimes thought-provoking ways. I'd guess that it would appeal most to people over 25, but not too much older. Probably (hopefully) by the time you hit your mid-30s, you've figured most of this out already. It's a good book to be reading when you're kind of still processing various aspects of adulthood, but have already understood enough about the world to enjoy his perspective.

Uncle Silas, by Sheridan LeFanu

2011-07-31T16:22:00.001-05:00

This is a classic of Gothic fiction, so I'd been feeling obliged to read it for awhile. Gothic novels are especially appealing in the summer - the heat pairs really well with dark, "chilling" fiction. Stifling heat seems just right for reading books densely packed with trauma and ghosts and tension. The best is to read southern Gothic, where you get all of it pre-mixed for you. But the Irish do a pretty good job of it too, and reading about rain is very pleasant when it's 38C outside.

It's an odd book. It's all atmosphere and suspense, but it's quite convoluted. A large part of the suspense would appear to be whether or not the main character (Maud) survives, but given that she's the narrator of the book, it seems pretty clear that she will. The other aspects, whether or not certain characters are villainous or not, would be interesting, if not for the fact that a. They are SO many ambiguous characters that you can't really care about all of them. b. Maud repeatedly tells us that she's of a nervous disposition and overreacts to things - ie, she's somewhat unreliable.

The writing is good, the characters are sympathetic, it's just that the overall plot is kind of meandering and somehow not compelling, despite being strange and mysterious. There are plenty of references to Radcliffe, and it's honestly hard to tell if they're meant to be parodies or not.

Overall, meh. Not a must-read, sad to say.

Transformers 3

2011-07-23T18:09:00.001-05:00

If you want to read something entertaining about Michael Bay, go read this. It's absolute genius. In fact, the whole blog is quality.

I genuinely enjoy Michael Bay movies. I am perfectly happy to watch a 3 hour long movie that is largely incoherent but has lots of splosions and plenty of cheesy jokes. And regardless of how you feel about Michael Bay, you must admit that the man has a flair for blowing shit up in epic fashion. So I was really excited about Transformers 3. As a bonus, a lot of it was filmed in Chicago, so there's the pleasure of seeing how it turned out after having walked by the filming a few times, and the general enjoyment of seeing my city on screen. And seeing it get blown up*. The trailers made me gasp, they were so thrilling. Then, I read A. O. Scott's review in the NYTimes and got even more excited! This movie was gonna be AWESOME!

Well, it was not awesome. Not at all. Like all Bay movies, it clocks in at almost 3 hours. Unlike his other movies, however, there is basically no action at all until the last hour, at which point I was quite literally struggling to stay awake. This was no hyper caffeinated, adrenaline rush thrill ride. This was a painful slog through a preposterous plot with lame characters and nothing to hold your interest. It was so bad that I started thinking about what was so bad about it, when the whole joy of Michael Bay movies is they allow you to stop thinking and not care about how bad it is because you're having so much fun. Shia the Beef spends the entire movie basically whining about how no one appreciates him, and negotiating his relationship with his ridiculously hot girlfriend**. The relationship is a chaotic jumble of various tropes. He's jealous of other men who hit on her! He's insecure about the fact that she makes more money than him! She doesn't mind, except when she maybe does? She is sympathetic and supportive, but maybe not? She is proud of him for being a hero! She is freaked out by the idea of him doing anything remotely dangerous because she lost a brother in the war! She is cute and kind of ditsy! She is highly capable and a raging badass! Omg stop the ride and let me off. The fact that the relationship is a garbled mess really shouldn't matter, but unfortunately, the movie has so little else of interest doing on that you actually find yourself thinking about how bizarre and incoherent her character is. I suppose you could think about the plot instead, but really? You think that's gonna be more rewarding?

The highlight is indeed the Chicago stuff, but honestly, I was strangely aware of it being computer generated. Maybe because it's a familiar landscape. But maybe because it seemed like they mostly just superimposed large burning holes onto buildings. My bf was like "well, now we know how Chicago will look when the Happening comes", but... I don't think it will look like that? I can't explain really. It just looked kind of fake. Like I said though, I did actually doze of a few times. I was really bummed with myself, because it was clearly the best part of the movie, but I just couldn't keep my eyes open. Though I really don't think missed much.

Finally, despite what people have told me, the 3D really didn't add much. I mean, sure, it was nice, because 3D is generally neat. But a friend of mine told me it was better than Avatar, and this is not true at all. I think seeing it regular style would be fine, but really, I think there's no point in seeing it at all. It's seriously terrible.

*Though I have to say, there is a part of me that finds it really weird to enjoy that. There's a lot to be said about this - I went to a really fascinating lecture by Joe Cleary a few years back where he wondered if Americans enjoy this sort of thing more because they a. have never actually experienced historical trauma on the home front the way Europeans have (the exception being Oklahoma and 9-11) and b. have some kind of weird fascination with the apocalypse as a seen of rebirth, which does in a weird way echo the dawn of the nation. It's a line of thought I frequently return to, actually. Joe Cleary is an incredibly smart guy. If you don't believe me, check out his book, Outrageous Fortune. It's so smart and well written, it's a real pleasure.

** I actually don't think she's that hot. But I was kind of amused by the fact that a lot of her scenes actually look like Victoria's Secret commercials. The lighting, the make-up - all the same.

The Illusionist

2011-07-21T13:59:00.002-05:00

(I'm talking about the animated one that came out last year)

I was looking forward to this one. I figured the director of Triplets of Belleville directing a Jacques Tati scripted film was bound to be lovely. And indeed, there are a lot of lovely things about it. The animation is beautiful (I'm still unclear as to whether the original script was for animation or live action, and I'm really curious). The film moves at a languid pace, with almost no dialogue (I'm not sure if the subtitles weren't turned on or there just weren't any), but it's a pleasurable sort of experience, for the most part. Unfortunately, the plot isn't all that compelling. And because it's so sparse, a lot of the nuance was lost on me.

There are basically two major "stories" here. One is that the illusionist is gradually becoming obsolete, along with other circus performers. The other is that a young woman sort of attaches herself to him (the wiki entry on the film says that it's because she believes he has supernatural powers. I don't think that was at all clear in the film), and he buys her presents and has this odd sort of friendship with her. It's hardly a spoiler to tell you that they ultimately part ways for the exact reason you would guess they do. The first of the two plots, I have a lot of sympathy for, and I appreciated, but it's not really enough to carry a film. The second, I enjoyed less. The relationship between the two of them is nice enough - there's something really appealing to me about the kind of companionship that develops between older men and younger women - but its gradual dissolution is too hastily sketched, and somewhat cliche. Apparently, the movie is a kind of love letter from Tati to his estranged daughter. If that's true, it's odd, because you definitely start to resent the young woman in this movie.

Overall, I do not regret having seen it, it wasn't wasted time, but I did feel a bit let down. It's very pretty, but in the grand scheme of things, there are better versions of this kind of movie out there.

Bridesmaids/Bad Teacher

2011-07-03T13:38:00.001-05:00

I had read a fair amount about how I, as a good feminist, should be going to see Bridesmaids. It's the female answer to The Hangover! It's proof that women can be funny! It's a movie about female friendships and experience and we should support it because there are so few movies that show what its really like to be a woman. Ok, you know what? If this is what movies about women are like, then I'm totally ok with there not being very many of them. Because despite its humor - and let me pause to assure you that there are a lot of very, very funny scenes - this movie sucks. Why am I bringing it up alongside Bad Teacher? Because in some ways, Bad Teacher is actually a much more compelling movie about what it's like to be a woman. It is unfortunately not quite as funny, I think, but it lacks all the things I hated about Bridesmaids, which gives it a distinct advantage.

Let me substantiate this somewhat. Bridesmaids is about a women whose life sucks - her business has gone bust, she's broke and working a job she hates, her roommates are insane - shes basically treading water, and now her best friend is getting married and she is a bridesmaid, forced to share her friend's affections with some new bitch she's never met before and doesn't like at all. Side plot: lacking even ONE other friend she can talk to about all this, she ends up befriending/romancing the cop who pulls her over. That was really my biggest gripe about the movie. A. What woman has only one friend??? One! Not even a co-worker or acquaintance she can grab a drink with? Seriously? B. The cop is of course a saint, pretty much, and is wildly attracted to her despite the fact that she treats him like crap. When he finally calls her out on it, she basically acts cute to get him to forgive her,without ever acknowledging how totally narcissistic and inconsiderate she's been. That kind of thing drives me nuts. The rest, the friendship and jealousy and bla bla bla, ok, sure, whatever, it was fine, though one could complain about the fact that the only time women are apparently entertaining is when they have each other. The jokes were indeed very funny for the most part, and I appreciated that they didn't all look airbrushed all the time. But I don't like melodramatic sob stories about self-centered swine that I'm supposed to feel sorry for. If you want a crude movie about female friendships, rent The Sweetest Thing. I don't actually remember it that well, but I'm pretty sure that it's better than this.

The case for Bad Teacher as more honest evocation of female experience is obviously tricky. To be honest, the female part is pretty irrelevant (as it arguably is in Bridesmaids, except that it's written by women and really only has one dude in it). But on a basic level, the reason that I liked Bad Teacher is because the main character (played by Cameron Diaz) was pretty heinous bitch who realized that she was and got better. Also, despite doing some pretty awful things, she was never 100% vile. There was always something redeemable about her. Even though she's not very nice to her dweeby co-worker, you can see that she does actually care about her on some level, and occasionally wants to help her. And its this good side, it is made clear, that partly attracts Jason Segel, along with her looks of course, and also her devil-may-care attitude. In other words - we understand why he likes her. And although he's in some ways too good to be true and perseveres in pursuing her for way longer than is warranted, he's not an utter doormat.

Do I want to claim a woman who is doing what it takes to make enough money to get a boob job so that she can hook a rich man and never work again as a paragon of femininity? Not really. But if you liked Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, you'll like Cameron Diaz in this. It's an enduring trope, the character whose enormous skill is only leveraged towards avoiding work. It's not necessarily a female one, but I am tempted to say it's more frequent among women than men, and related to using sexuality to getting what you want? But it requires that the protagonist be somehow a good person underneath their scheming - and this movie pulls that off.

I want to add that the movie is assisted by Jason Segel and Justin Timberlake, both of whom are just great. The plot is silly, but who cares. One only wishes it were a bit funnier. I will admit that I felt slightly squeamish about the premise of this movie - a teacher who could hardly give less of a shit, and who manages to whip her students into shape when she has to - at a moment when funding for education is so contested. Though I guess it's implicitly arguing for increasing funding - motivate teachers properly and they'll be great?

Anyways, if you enjoy raunchy humor, rent Bridesmaids and fast forward through the emo stuff. Actually, I don't know if that's possible. They might be somewhat inextricable. Ugh. So annoying. The humor is crude but pretty hilarious, but I can't quite bring myself to recommend the movie because it annoyed me SO much. Bad Teacher, watch on video on a lazy night at home when your standards aren't too high. It's reasonably entertaining. Personally, I'm edging towards seeing anything Justin Timberlake puts out, because I find him mesmerizing.

The Aquarium, by Aleksandar Hemon

2011-06-20T17:37:00.001-05:00

I don't generally write about a single short story but I just read this piece* in the New Yorker and was totally blown away. It's pretty heartrending, but it's really powerful. It's about a man (I guess Hemon himself, because it's in the Personal History section, implying that it's non-fiction) whose 9 month old daughter is diagnosed with a brain tumor. This, Wit and The Year of Magical Thinking are the best works about the experience of physical illness, hospitals, and grief that I have ever encountered. None of them are especially upbeat or cheerful, but they are all pretty amazing.

The interesting thing about this essay though, is that the illness of the daughter is happening at the same time as his other, older daughter is inventing an imaginary friend. That in itself would seem like a fairly common trope, but what made it so memorable is that he describes this invisible friend as a symptom of an excess of language: "She has to construct imaginary narratives in order to try out the words that she suddenly possesses (...) The words demanded the story." This, in and of itself, is a fascinating idea to me. But it becomes particularly resonant when coupled with the man's relationship to language, especially as regards this particular situation. The problem is not that he doesn't have words to describe it: it's that "there were far too many words, and they were too heavy and specific to be inflicted on others." There are some other twists to this series of reflections, but to me it's that basic idea of the interplay between language and experience, of language exceeding experience and forcing you to create fictional ones, or of reality being such as to make words painful, that I find kind of fascinating.

It's definitely a story that will stick with you for a long time. Pretty intense stuff. And probably not like other narratives of illness you may have read before - I'd say the aforementioned triumvirate this work has been a part of in my mind is relatively unique in many ways (and I've actually read quite a few narratives of illness - I did an independent study on illness and life writing in college and basically read everything I could get my hands on, which amounted to like 80 autobiographies plus various critical works). Anyways - recommended

*Dude, I can do hyperlinks with this app? Awesome! Also, apologies if you're not a subscriber. But the summer fiction issue of the New Yorker is probably worth buying at the newsstand anyways. Or just subscribe to the magazine. I held out for years, and scoffed at people who said "oh I just read this piece in the New Yorker", and then I randomly caved and became one of those people.

Return of a Soldier, by Rebecca West

2011-06-20T17:15:00.001-05:00

(Note: apologies if this entry looks weird. I recently received an iPad as a graduation gift so I'm trying out my new Blogpress app to see if I can post directly from this thing. I'm hoping it will lead to more frequent updates. Though I must say, the whole touchscreen keyboard thing is pretty annoying. I got pretty fast and typing on the iPhone when I still had one, but this is bigger, and is actually a lot more awkward. We shall see.)

This novel reminded me how lovely modernist writing tends to be. The prose is so gorgeous, you could get lost in it for days. "But tonight, there was nothing anywhere but beauty." It's like a warm summer evening in a lush garden. It's a delight to read. Plot wise, however, it's also a really fascinating book, especially from the perspective of questions of identity.

The novel describes a WW1 soldier's return home. I don't want to say too much about the plot, because it's such a pleasure to watch it unfold, but it's hard to discuss what's so fascinating about the book without getting into it at all, and I'm trying to get back into more analytical posts, so basically, if you haven't read the book, you should seriously consider skipping the rest of this entry, getting a copy of the book, and checking back when you're done reading it.

SPOILERS. But not too terribly many.
Basically, the guy has forgotten his current life - including his current wife - and is stuck in a past where he's still in love with someone else. That someone else is coming by to hang out with him while his family tries to figure out how to cope with the situation, cure him, etc. There's an interesting class dynamic involved; the former flame is decidedly lower class, and the current family is pretty rich and fancy. The story is narrated by his sister, who is kind of ambivalent about the situation. So there's the kind of predictable issue of what does it mean to forget part of your life, does it change who you are, etc. There's also the question of what makes a person happy, and what are their obligations towards other people who see part of their life. And then there's the whole World War One and war trauma angle, which is fantastically understated in a really interesting way. I'm not going to say anything else, because you might still reading this, even if you haven't read the book, and I just can't spoil it for you. It's a really wonderful book, definitely recommended.

Forgotten Bookmarks

2011-06-14T15:30:00.002-05:00

This is a really neat blog. Have you ever found an old bookmark, plane ticket, note, picture, etc, in a book you got used, or from the library? I love it when that happens. I have even started leaving things in books to find when I read them next.

Autobiography of Red, by Anne Carson

2011-06-09T15:33:00.002-05:00

This is a really interesting book, a fascinating modern take on the epic*. There are several pieces; a collection of verse fragments (the story of Geryon) seemingly written by an Ancient Greek poet, a few bits dealing with the life of that poet, and then a longer poem about Geryon that seems set in the present day, though it's hard to say where. Geryon is gay, red and has wings. It's slightly confusing. It's definitely not a realistic work, but it's not exactly fantastical either. It sort of trades on the ambiguities of poetic language and does it very skillfully, particularly as concerns the relationship between these various pieces, between the ancient and the modern, and different styles of writing. I read it in one sitting, and I feel like I could easily read it 5 more times and learn something new every time. The language, by the way, is just gorgeous, particularly when describing desire. It's one of the few works I can think of where the descriptions of desire are better than the ones of love-making. I generally am not so into poetry, but this book was the perfect blend of narrative and poetic language. Very much recommended.

*It thus called to mind both Derek Walcott's Omeros and Bożena Keff's Utwór o Matce i Ojczyźnie (which I apparently neglected to write posts on. Huh. Well, they're great. I really hope someone gifted translated Keff into English, because it is one of the most incredible books I've ever read).

Coup de Grace, by Marguerite Youcenar

2011-06-07T17:18:00.002-05:00

This is one of those somewhat vague, dry, dark novels, with a narrator who seems basically incapable of feeling. It was recommended to me as a good book to consider for the class I'm teaching this summer, on concepts of identity as considered through relationships between people, how one person can know another, etc. It doesn't quite fit with that theme, I think, but it would be great in a class on literary portrayals of love (I taught one last summer, is why I think of it). The novel describes the relationship between the narrator and a young woman who loves him. When I checked it out of the library, I noticed that one of the subject keywords was Gay Men, but the book never actually mentions this explicitly, though it's certainly alluded to. Basically, it's the story of unrequited love and the awful things people do because of it - an interesting companion piece to all the romanticized love stories out there...

Carnet de Voyage, by Craig Thompson

2011-06-03T00:36:00.002-05:00

I think that I appreciated the drawings in this book more than I have appreciated the art in pretty much any graphic novel I've ever read. They are really, really wonderful. Just gorgeous sketches. The book is a kind of travel diary - a carnet de voyage - of the artist as he travels through France, Morocco, and Spain. The text isn't all that interesting, to be honest. He doesn't really have a lot to say, and most of what he does say is complaints about being lonely or generally depressed, though he is self-aware about how annoying this is, and seems to be working to improve it. In this, I could actually relate, being a depressive person myself, so I actually kind of appreciated the work for the way it shows you what it's like to be depressive. But if you're looking for reflections on the places he goes, or the culture or history there (a la Guy Delisle's Burma Chronicle, which, you may recall, I loved), you're in for a disappointment. Nonetheless, Thompson expresses a lot about the places he travels to through his drawings. At one point, actually, he has a brief aside about preferring drawings of nude women to photographs of them, and the former as being more expressive, and I think the same could be said of places. I would not be as interested in paging through the photographs of all the things Thompson sees, but I really enjoyed his drawings of them. A very pleasant visual experience overall, definitely recommended.

On Tremendous Trifles, by G.K. Chesterton

2011-06-02T16:29:00.003-05:00

I love Chesterton's writing so unsurprisingly, I very much enjoyed this collection, a series of essays originally written for the Daily News between 1902 and 1909. He has this marvelous dry and witty sense of humor that's coupled with a genuine appreciate of beauty which manifests itself in lovely, elegant prose. There's a certain mysticism in his way of approaching the world, but it's matched by a very English style of common sense (that is refreshingly matched with a strong moral and ethical backbone, and a keen sense of empathy for others). It is a belief - one that I share - that intellectual inquiry can produce a kind of spiritual appreciation of the world: "The world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder."

Some of the essays are absolutely phenomenal, others are simply pleasant, but they're all enjoyable reads, best when savored slowly over an extended amount of time. I particularly recommend reading one or two in the evening, with a glass of something tasty close to hand.

Hadji Murat, by Leo Tolstoy

2011-06-01T21:13:00.002-05:00

You know, even when Tolstoy is mediocre, he's still pretty good. Hadji Murat reads almost like a sketch for a longer novel, a War and Peace of the Caucuses. One wishes he'd actually written it, instead of this somewhat disappointing, meandering yet brief work. Although the main focus is Hadji Murat, various other characters appear and occasionally resurface, as though the narrator's attention has temporarily strayed. Shifts in behavior happen over a few lines instead of the 40 pages you might expect (from Tolstoy at least). Nonetheless, there is something interesting and somewhat compelling about the characters - even half baked, they still exert a certain power. There's not enough historical information to give you both the feel and the understanding of what's going on, unfortunately. All the more the pity, because he's dealing with conflict within the Russian Empire, which would be really fascinating to explore further, particularly because he doesn't seem all that sympathetic to the (ethnic) Russians. What an incredible novel this could have been! But alas, it didn't become one, and as is, honestly, you can definitely give it a miss.

Everything Must Go

2011-05-31T19:08:00.003-05:00

I continue to be terrible about updates, so just to get back into the swing of it, there might be some short and not all that interesting entries for a minute until I get my groove back.

So let me say this: Will Ferrell is fantastic in this movie. Really. He's tremendous. I was extremely impressed. Little Biggie (Christopher Wallace) is also quite good, as are basically all the other actors in this movie, except for Michael Pena. It might not be Pena's fault though, because his character is also just not very believable or well written, which makes it harder for him. In any case, the acting is excellent, and generates, for the most part, a very believable emotional atmosphere. Unfortunately, this is not enough to make the movie good.

The thing is, there's not much narrative. An alcoholic loses his wife and job, and, locked out of his house, settles on his front lawn with all of his worldly possessions, ultimately deciding to sell them. The whole film happens over the three days that his yard sale permit (which permits him to spend so much time on the lawn) is good for. So there's not much action, aside from some interactions with other people, namely, a new neighbor, a random kid around the neighborhood, a girl he knew in high school, and his AA sponsor. Pena, as the AA sponsor, doesn't add much to the movie, aside from some basic plot stuff, but he just isn't all that compelling or interesting, and Pena makes him so wooden that we really can't figure out what his deal is anyhow. The other characters/interactions are interesting, and I suppose one could mine them for truths about the human condition, but they don't entirely hold up. They're so brief that we don't really engage with them strongly enough to make them part of the plot. While I appreciate that the movie doesn't make them overdetermined, or hyperbolize them into epiphanies - basically, that it lets them be generally realistic, if somewhat idealized - it also means that there's not really any development to track. So you get kind of bored. The movie ends without any real sense of what will happen next, or even if anything has changed in a meaningful way. So really, all you get from the whole experience is the atmosphere. And like I said - that's fairly effectively done. But it's not really enough to make the whole thing satisfying.

The White Castle, by Orhan Pamuk

2011-05-21T16:22:00.002-05:00

I suspect that the only way I can read Pamuk's books is quickly. If it takes me more than a day, I will probably get bored and quit. The thing is, there's something grindingly monotonous about his prose. I have a really hard time with it. It seems utterly flat, and I find myself really alienated from the story. I tried reading The New Life awhile ago and gave up, and was kind of ready to give up on Pamuk altogether. But I'm scouting books for a class I'm teaching this summer, and this one was recommended to me, so I figured I'd give him another try. Luckily, the book was on 24 hour reserve at the library, so I was forced to get through it quickly. And as it turned out, by the end I did find the story incredibly compelling, and it sort of changed the way I perceived the entire book (I had the same experience with Michel Houellebecq's Elementary Particles).

The novel is the story of an Italian who is taken captive by Turks, and ultimately becomes the property of a man he called Hoja (master). Mysteriously, he and Hoja look so much alike as to be twins. This is an important underlying aspect of the novel - you could even say it's the point of the book - and perhaps this is what makes Pamuk so difficult, is that while it comes up frequently, it's almost in passing. In so many scenes, the ostensible focus is something that is almost palpably uninteresting, and meanwhile there are a few scattered sentences that imply that the real point is just under the surface. It makes the prose seem incredibly dense, as though you needed to read it at least twice, and slowly, to actually understand what's going on. And you can't help but wonder if there actually is something going on, or whether it adds up to anything coherent. I think one would need to achieve the perfect balance of pace in reading this book to get the full benefit; fast enough that you don't lose interest, but slow enough that you can actually absorb it.

So the jury is still out on Pamuk, as far as I'm concerned. I did ultimately find this book rewarding, but I'm still skeptical. I'm planning to read Snow soon, so we'll see how I feel after that.

The Blind Side, by Michael Lewis

2011-05-16T01:26:00.003-05:00

My boyfriend read this recently and really enjoyed it, and said that it was less about Michael Oher than it was about football itself, and the increased interest in the left tackle position. This was enough to get me interested, so I picked it up this afternoon. It's a quick read, and a pleasant one. It is indeed very much about the changes in football over the past 30 years, but the Michael Oher story is a major aspect too, and despite my skepticism (largely based on having seen trailers for the movie), I ended up finding it kind of fascinating as well. Not just the story itself, but also the complications that arise from telling it.

The thing is, it's kind of a weird story. I mean, here's this rich white family who takes in a poor black kid and basically invests tons of money into fixing his life - and succeeds at it. Now, in some ways, that's a very inspiring tale about a good deed. In other ways, it's a kind of astonishing account of just how much money can buy. I mean sure, hard work and a certain body type are necessary components, but money is a major, major factor here. Then there's the fact that you could also argue that their investment in the kid payed off in a pretty major way - and there are critics of the book who claim that the pay-off was the primary motive all along. Added to all of that is the fact that the kid is being groomed for life as an athlete, which anyone who's watched Hoop Dreams (and you really should - I think it's an incredible movie) is bound to have mixed feelings about. Lewis is very careful, I think, in the way he tells this tale. He really doesn't push any kind of angle on it, and I think it's a crucial part of what makes the book work. He registers various aspects of the tale, notes the hypocrisies of some of the key players, and is generally careful to avoid sentimentalizing it. But he gives you just enough to invite you to reflect on the questions this kind of story raises, and an afterword emphasizes the point by detailing some of the controversies in the book's reception.

Then there's the football side. Here Lewis is clearly on much more comfortable ground. I haven't read his other books, but you can imagine exactly what they're like - it's basically intelligent journalism. History and analysis written in an eminently readable and easy to understand format. You don't have to know much about football to appreciate what he's saying or why it's interesting - he lays it all out for you. It's not the most elegant writing you've ever encountered, but it's full of very interesting information that is presented clearly and effectively. There's a bit in the early part of the book where his editor must have dozed off, because certain key phrases get repeated way too many times (especially the Japanese automotive factory metaphor), but overall, it's pretty solid, if somewhat formulaic.

And Lewis does have some really interesting things to say about football. What struck me the most, perhaps, was the idea of the emotional versus intellectual play. And the claim that effective strategy could basically overcome any weaknesses of the players - if you plan your game correctly, it doesn't matter if your quarterback is weak, for instance. The integral aspect of the left tackle ascendancy, it seems, is not just a new strategy of play, but the fact of its coinciding with a new way of paying players - basically, the market value of the left tackle shot up as people started to realize their importance, which resulted in everyone realizing their importance. This, incidentally, again makes you think about how much pro sports are really just about money. But it also led me to wonder if five or ten years from now, a new strategy will emerge that will once again change all of this.

The aspect of the book that seemed to resonate with my boyfriend was the idea of a person being, in a sense, fated to do a certain thing. Michael Oher, by virtue of his physique and ability, seemed in some ways "born" to be a left tackle. My reading of the book was actually very different. To begin with, there's the fact that Oher himself actually wanted to be a basketball player. Then there's the fact that the same skill set seems naturally adapted to throwing shot put - but that doesn't pay as much. To my mind, there were a lot of external factors that led Oher to the position he now occupies. At the same time, the book puts a lot of emphasis on the idea of a particular build the position requires, and the fact that it's a rare one, but that pro football has basically devised a fairly effective system for sussing out the people who can do it.

A somewhat intriguing but largely unexplored aspect of the book was a comparison between football and baseball. Lewis, author of Moneyball, probably has a lot of interesting things to say on the topic, and unfortunately, he doesn't get to develop it. He has a few footnotes on that mention, for instance, the huge difference in the kinds of stats and quantitative analysis done in baseball as opposed to football, but doesn't say much more. I'd love to read an essay of his on the topic.

Overall, an interesting book, definitely worth reading.

War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy

2011-05-10T15:24:00.002-05:00

Once again faced with a long plane flight, I decided that I'd had so much fun with Anna Karenina that I should give War and Peace a try. Oh man. Unlike AK, W+P is not at all a quick read. The first 400 or so pages are frankly pretty dull. You don't care much about the characters or the action, and despite the occasional bright spot, it's rough work. What kept me somewhat interested was the auto-ethnographic side of it, this constant "We Russians do things like this", which was kind of intriguing. Also, having devoted a good 6 hours to it I was determined to slog through. The good news is, around page 500 or so, it picks up. The second invasion is where the real action is - from like 550-950, the book is an absolute thrill. Then it starts to wane, and the last 100 pages - basically an essay on the philosophy of history - are pretty turgid.

A few things to say - one, the characters are not nearly as compelling as the ones in Anna Karenina. Curiously, the most exciting personage in the book is actually Napoleon, who is genuinely fascinating and brilliantly drawn. The ostensible heroes, Prince Andrei and Pierre Bezukhov are ok, somewhat interesting, but somehow not fully accessible. The heroines are mostly just irritating - especially Natasha, who is almost unbearable. I did actually really like Andrei's first wife, who was never mentioned without reference to her moustache (!), but she didn't get much airtime, unfortunately. But in any case, as far as social drama goes, the novel is kind of a failure.

What is really curious to me is that while the characters are generally kind of noble, lofty personages, the Afterword kind of knocks them off their pedestals. Marriage seems to turn them into crabby, petty, self-centered, uninteresting people. It's a depressingly accurate portrayal, actually, but it's sort of jarring. It also reminds you that Tolstoy is a genius. After all these completely bland dramas between largely flat and uninteresting characters, suddenly you're plunged into completely mundane everyday life and you're reading it like holy shit this is so well written. Why oh why isn't the whole novel - the "peace" parts I mean - like that?

The portrayal of war, however, is thrilling. And while the concluding essay on the philosophy of history at the end of the book is pretty dull, the reflections on history sprinkled throughout the novel are fascinating. Overall, it's what makes the book a masterpiece - it is jaw-droppingly incredible. It is so detailed and well researched and yet so vividly alive, both giving you the feel of actually being there AND the bird's eye view AND theoretical reflection on why things happen the way they do - it is just mind-blowing. That, my friends, is why the book is a classic. Is it a must-read? Not really. I mean, if you have the time, it's worth doing, and maybe you could kind of skim large portions of it, but I suspect there may be other, equally rewarding portrayals of Napoleonic war, so if you're gonna go Tolstoy, do a different one.

My friends make neat things

2011-05-02T16:04:00.002-05:00

Ok, so I know it's been a long time since I've updated, but guess what: I finished my dissertation. So I think that's a decent excuse. But in any case, hopefully it means I will be posting more ramblings about books and movies soon. I'm more than halfway through War and Peace, so you know, it might take me awhile to finish it, but yeah.

Anyways, in the meantime, allow me to share with you two awesome sites that some friends of mine are doing. One is a web-comic:

I Hate Travel Photos

and the other is a year of cephalopods.

http://thedailyinkfish.tumblr.com/

They are both wonderful.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, by David Sedaris

2011-03-24T23:27:00.002-05:00

This isn't as immediately delightful as a lot of Sedaris' other stuff. If you mostly love him for Me Talk Pretty One Day, or Dress Your Family etc etc - ie, the stuff about himself and his family - you may find yourself a bit put off. If, however, you think that Barrel Fever is one of his best works, then you're probably in good shape. Because this lacks the affectionate, albeit snarky, warmth of the other books, and to my mind, much of the humor as well. It's pretty astonishingly grim. The fact that it's about animals exacerbates this effect; not least because they are, for the most part, so horrifically repugnant in their behavior.

But the book also has a lot of really poignant observations about the world. Not in the touchy-feely sort of way, more in the David-Foster-Wallace-irremediably-depressing kind of way. This is where the use of animals is key - I honestly think the book might just be too devastating if it was about people.

The use of animals is, ultimately, what's made the book stick with me (I finished it a few days ago). The thing is, the fact that it's animals he's writing about initially seems kind of gimmicky or pointless, but then you realize how much less palpable these stories would be if they were about humans, and then you start thinking, but wait, I mean, aren't they basically about humans? And it gets you into this kind of interesting contemplation of the human-animal divide and how it relates to literary representation. Is it the "animal" side of the characters that makes them so horrifically brutal, or is that actually the most human thing about them? I mean, only the most extreme kind of human would actually pluck out someone else's eyes, but on the other hand, the appallingly narcissistic behavior of some of the creatures is in some ways more brutal, and is definitely more human. Probably, you'll say I'm overthinking all this, and maybe I am, but in any case, it redeemed the book for me in a major way, because otherwise, I think I might've been too traumatized by the whole thing.

The Lover's Dictionary, by David Levithan

2011-03-21T21:18:00.002-05:00

I was intrigued by the idea; it's kind of like Barthes' Lover's Discourse, except in dictionary form. Each page is a word, and then a little anecdote that defines the word in the context of the narrator's relationship with his girlfriend (who, as we learn, cheats on him, apparently leading to their break-up). It's a clever idea, and some of the entries are apt and even poignant observations about love/relationships, but overall, the book didn't do much for me. I think it's mostly that too much of it seemed cliche or just not all that compelling. Also, it doesn't really bring the relationship to life, or give you a good sense of the characters, aside from the narrator being somewhat insecure and his girlfriend being a bit of a drunk. It's a quick read - I completed it in an hour - but overall, not really worth it, sad to say.

My Dog Tulip

2011-02-26T18:24:00.002-06:00

I meant to write about this when I saw it, but I guess I didn't. Huh. I went to see it somewhat randomly at my campus theatre, knowing nothing about it in advance. I was surprised to discover upon arrival that it is an animated film - very nicely done, incidental, a kind of wavering, colored-in ink drawing look. I was less surprised to discover that it's a movie about a man and his dog. So I settled in expecting a perhaps vaguely bland albeit pleasant exploration of the relationship between man and canine, and that's basically what you get, but with some surprises.

The movie is based on J.R. Ackerley's memoir by the same name. So the film is essentially an animated monologue (with Christopher Plummer providing the voice) by Ackerley about his life with Tulip. What makes this interesting is that Ackerley is a pretty strange guy. I mean, the dry wit and vaguely vicious contempt towards the world, you sort of expect, but what makes this movie in particular so intriguing is the sexual aspect. A large portion of the movie is about Ackerley's attempts to get Tulip pregnant (not personally, but to arrange and facilitate the process). This turns out to be highly a somewhat complicated process, and comes to involve more and more lascivious observations about both dogs and people. It's not exactly perverse, but it is a bit surprising to hear such candid - not to mention eloquent - descriptions of a dog's vagina. It's also kind of great in a liberating, celebratory sort of way.

The movie is ultimately not that great - there are plenty of nice observations about dogs and companionship and life, and the animation is nice, but it does drag a bit, and there's not really much narrative to latch on to, and the charm sort of wears off. Still, not an unenjoyable viewing experience.

The Social Network

2011-02-17T12:17:00.004-06:00

Zadie Smith* wrote a review of this movie that, I think, nailed one of its central problems, namely, that the filmmakers don't really seem to understand their main character - what is his motivation? As she says, the movie ultimately makes it about a girl, which is not only cliche and annoying, but also seems completely untrue, given what we know of the real Zuckerberg (who has been in a relationship with the same girl since 2003). The money is also clearly not the point, fun as it is. I think you can broaden Smith's musings on how to make programming cinematic and comprehensible into an overall question of how a character like Zuckerberg (or any other "2.0 Person") can be captured in film/narrative. To my mind, this is kind of exciting and fascinating - it's undeniably true that things like facebook have changed the way a lot of people conceptualize themselves and their relationship with the world, and I look forward to seeing how new forms of narrative emerge to capture that. But this movie isn't it.

Honestly, for the most part, I just thought the movie was boring. It's two hours long, and 80 minutes into it, you're kind of groaning and wanting it to be over. The Henley Regatta scene that Smith found so ravishing actually made me yell "Oh my god why is this movie so LONG" to my boyfriend (who was in the kitchen making oxtail soup). The characters are for the most part flat and uninteresting, pretty faces experiencing various degrees of outrage and self-righteousness. Yawn. The highlight is definitely Justin Timberlake, who is kind of always fun to watch, I think, and who is definitely the most interesting character in this movie. The soundtrack is unmistakably Trent Reznor's, which I found kind of touching, because no offense, to my mind Trent Reznor is kind of a dinosaur, and there's something vaguely pathetic about the fact that he's courting younger viewers with what is largely the same schtick now that most of his target audience has outgrown him.

No, the real problem with the movie is the hollowness at its center. Zuckerberg, as portrayed in this movie, is an asshole. Not even an interesting villain, just a vaguely obnoxious jerk. Sure, he's misunderstood and he wants friends and bla bla bla, but who cares? The fact that there's no clear reason for why he does what he does robs him of any chance at redemption - lacking motive, he's being a jerk just because. Likewise, facebook's development doesn't seem all that compelling - the aha! moment where Zuckerberg decides to add relationship status, pontificating about the epiphany that ultimately people are always searching for "a girl" seems both bland and obvious. There's no real reflection on how facebook both tapped into and ultimately changed various social energies and forms of identification (Sorkin apparently had never been on facebook before writing the script, which may account for some of this).

I suspect that it's getting all this buzz and acclaim purely because people are trying to find a way to express the fact that the world IS different that it was in 2003, and a large part of that is because of facebook, and they think this movie somehow expresses it for them. But that's not actually what the movie is about. It's about a guy who screwed some people over. But it's not a heist film, or a corporate thriller. I'm wracking my brains to think of what genre it really falls under. But anyways, point being - meh. You can certainly give this one a miss.

*I have really mixed feelings about Zadie Smith. I think her prose is generally elegant and appealing, and she has some really fascinating ideas and observations, but I also find her vaguely smug and melodramatic and just kind of annoying a lot of the time. This piece is a case in point - as mentioned above, I think she identifies some really fascinating aspects of the movie, but there are also a lot of annoyingly self-indulgent moment (like the squirrels in the first paragraph, come on) and a kind of passive-aggressive smugness ("I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate." - really? Because for most of this piece, it seems like you feel superior to what you call the so-called 2.0 People) that irks me.

Seraph on the Suwanee, by Zora Neale Hurston

2011-02-14T19:07:00.003-06:00

This is, on some levels, a really messed up and troubling book. But it is also an irresistably beautiful love story, with such aptly drawn, persuasive psychology, that you kind of overlook how awful it is. If you like Taming of the Shrew, you'll love this as well. The novel is the story of Jim and Arvay, their marriage and life together. More concretely, it's the story of how Jim teaches Arvay to overcome her insecurities and be a good wife. That probably puts you off, and indeed, there are plenty of moments that make you squirm, where Jim bosses Arvay around, or rapes her. But honestly, brutal though these moments are, the narrative also tips the balance strongly in Jim's favor by making it clear that Arvay not only benefits from, but also somewhat enjoys this kind of treatment, for the most part. Her misery comes from herself, for the most part, and Jim is the greatest joy in her life. It's actually a pretty incredible portrayal of insecurity and how it warps a person's mind. But it's also just a beautiful, beautiful portrayal of love. I was so utterly drawn into this novel; I actually stayed up until 3am reading the last third of it because I didn't want to put it down.

Incidentally, there's also an interesting racial dynamic at play, which I hadn't really thought about until after I finished and went back and read the introduction. Zora Neale Hurston is well known for her portrayals of African American life, but this novel, for the most part, is about poor white people. Apparently Hurston wanted to show that what is known as Black English is actually just the language of the South. I think you could extend that further and say that she wanted to show how similar black and white culture were overall. As the introduction points out, this is most explicit in her decision to make one of the children a successful blues musician. To quote Hurston:

There is no more Negro music in the U.S. It has been fused and merged and become the national expression, and displaced the worship of European expression (...) what has evolved here is something American.

There are relatively subtle racial undertones in the novel - for the most part, Hurston avoids giving her characters any really nasty racist thoughts, though they do clearly feel themselves superior to the black people in their lives. There is one moment where lynching is mentioned, and casual though it is, it cannot fail to induce a shudder and a reminder that this was a reality of those times. But her focus is more on the class divide between the poor "crackers" and the more affluent whites.

All in all, it's a pretty incredible book, one that deserves a lot more attention.

Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself

2011-02-11T12:13:00.003-06:00

I'm generally interested in Tyler Perry as a phenomenon. I'm not really in the mood to rehash all that controversy and debate, so if you're not hip to it, dear reader, get on the google and InvestiHate. Or check this, this and maybe also this out for a general idea. [Edit: This is an especially good one, thanks to Max for helping me track it down] What it comes down to is, Tyler Perry creates massively popular movies about black life. He provides work for a lot of black actresses who should be getting more work. He writes movies that are striving to "better" people. But his idea of what that bettering involves is pretty controversial, and arguably pretty sexist. That he gives black actresses work is great, but that these talented women have to struggle to convincingly deliver his cliche, self-help psycho-babble lines is less great. That these movies are, often as not, formulaic, melodramatic, schlocky garbage is almost the icing on the cake. So, now that you're up to speed somewhat, and we can move on to: I Can Do Bad All By Myself.

Fascinating, in that it basically makes all this controversy completely visible. It is a schlocky, formulaic movie with plenty of stock, one-dimensional characters. It is incredibly problematic in the way it basically seems to demand utter self-abasement from its female protagonist as a path to virtue, not to mention surrendering agency rather than claiming it. The underlying sub-text about morality and vice is, as a friend of mine put it, pro-ble-ma-tic!!!

But I was also totally sucked in and emotionally engaged (sometimes you just wanna watch a trashy movie, of course). I used to get angry at movies that blatantly pushed my emotional buttons, and this one totally did, but what can I say, it worked. And I think the reason why, and what makes this movie actually worth watching in general, and not just when you're feeling like an evening on the couch with kleenex, is the music. The music is un-believable. Oh my GOD. Mary J Blige, Gladys Knight, and Marvin Winnans are amazing. I think I actually stopped breathing while Mary J Blige was singing. You can find the clip on youtube, but it's not the same. The musical numbers in this movie are like those in any musical - they derive depth from being placed in the context of the story*. Simultaneously, however, they also carry a lot of the emotional - and moral - weight of the film. Rather than preaching at our fallen protagonist, Gladys Knight sings to her, and it's so much more persuasive than anything else could be. In that sense, it's kind of a meta-reflection of what the film as a whole is trying to do, modeling the art of conversion via media. But really, it's just good cinema, too, in those moments at least.

It's a deeply problematic, and kind of crappy movie. There are a lot of things to dislike Tyler Perry for. But what this movie has going for it is not just one hell of a soundtrack, but an amazing collection of musical performances, and that raises it a cut above.

*This is something I came to realize about how musicals work when I was thinking about why I hated Sweeney Todd.

Blue Valentine

2011-02-07T12:53:00.001-06:00

To be honest, this movie wasn’t as good as I thought it’d be. Yes, the performances are amazing, and the pairing of the early and final stages of the relationship is effective and well done (even if it’s been done many times before). But I left the movie feeling somewhat unsatisfied, like something was missing. I think that something is a sense of why the relationship is falling apart in the first place. The movie is a skillful portrayal of what it looks like when a relationship is ending, but it’s all surface, with hints of things stirring beneath.

What’s intriguing about this, to me, is that reviewers of the film seem so eager to praise the film that they rush to fill in the blanks. The problem, they all seem to agree, is Ryan Gosling’s character, a “man-child” whose lack of ambition and contentedness in various dead-end jobs has caused his wife to fall out of love with him*. My reaction to the film was totally different. What I find intriguing about this disjunct is that I think that in real life, that probably is what a compelling explanation for why a relationship might end. But I think that in this movie, that's not what causes it. In fact, I think the movie tells you what the problem is early on, when it has Gosling's character remark that men are more romantic than women, they marry for love, whereas women marry when they find a suitable guy who will be a good provider. To me, the problem in this movie seemed to be Michelle Williams' character, who was an emotionally troubled, unhappy sort of woman who was incapable of communicating with others. Here we add that her family life was obviously nightmarish, and the only other relationship of hers that we see wasn't all that great either. She leaves her previous boyfriend with no explanation, no willingness to talk things over, just dumps him flat when he does something that upsets her. Granted, he seems to be a jerk anyhow, for the most part, but still, she isn't exactly being reasonable either. Meanwhile, Ryan Gosling's character is verging on saintliness. Yes, he lacks ambition, and is content to work crappy jobs and basically be a husband and dad (which he in fact explicitly says). And he's willing to do that because he is head-over-heels for his wife, and their family life is his number one priority. Yes, he drinks in the morning, but the movie is careful not to portray him as a drunken mess, or a jerk. This, I think, is a mis-step - like I said, in real life, I think he would have been a lot more difficult to live with, and that would be a problem. But I think the movie emphatically refuses to make him that. There is one scene where he shows up drunk and unreasonable and is generally a nightmare, but your sympathy clearly lies with him even at that moment, because his wife is completely impossible to talk to, and this is his desperate last ditch effort to save their relationship. She gives him no chance at all, drives him to that awful scene, and then uses it as justification to leave him. Or at least, that's how it seemed to me.

So I guess this is less a review of the movie overall than a response to what I think is a total misinterpretation of the film. I kind of hated Michelle Williams' character. And it bugs me that even in reviews, she gets to be the good guy. She is not the good guy. She's a seriously messed up woman who, I think, is basically incapable of having an adult relationship. SO THERE.

*I’m quoting an imagined aggregate of reviews here, so I may be misrepresenting them, or the ones I read may not be representative of all the reviews out there.

Lottery Ticket

2011-01-13T11:05:00.004-06:00

I'm not entirely sure why I had such high hopes for this movie. But I did. I really thought it would be pretty good overall. Funny dialogue, enjoyable story, an affable sort of film with moments of hilarity. And you know what? I was disappointed.

Let me begin by saying there are some hilarious moments in the movie. T-Pain is surprisingly phenomenal - he's probably the best thing in the entire film*. There are some really funny lines, and general laugh-out-loud moments. And after all, that's what you're watching the movie for.

Unfortunately, the movie is also really slow and kind of incoherent. Bow Wow wins the lottery, and that's great, but then he can't collect for the next three days, so he has to deal with the world and guard the ticket until he can get the money. Fair enough. The plot goes through some awfully convoluted twists and turns just to keep things alive - a vicious thug type (played by Chris from The Wire, who is surprisingly terrible) who had wanted to kill Bow Wow and now wants to kill him AND take his lottery ticket, a creepy mob boss type guy, a crazy shut-in who lives in his basement - they're all a bit random and not especially well done. Meanwhile, there are also the stock lottery movie plot points: a gold digger who suddenly takes interest! a cherished female friend who gets pushed aside for aforementioned gold digger! creeping paranoia evinced by two best friends having an argument (gasp! the money is coming between them!), and of course, a scene with money being thrown in the air. This last is what necessitates the mob guy plot point, because we have to have the money scene, but given that he doesn't have the money yet, he has to get it somehow: enter mob guy. Actually, the movie does a pretty good job motivating this aspect and integrating him into the overall plot. It's when he stands alone that he gets cliche - the old "if you don't have my money I'll saw off your legs and feed them to dogs" bit. Incidentally, there is something really fascinating about that whole maffia subplot, namely, that the movie refuses to make them heroic. They seem really tough, but they are repeatedly unmasked as wimps, or guys who only have one good hit in them. It's really kind of strange, but goes back to what I find kind of intriguing about the film, namely...

THE MESSAGE. This is something I find really fascinating - almost every African American movie you see has a MESSAGE. There are long pauses where the film basically lectures you about being a good person. Even a seemingly just-for-fun movie like House Party has these weird clunky moments where characters ostentatiously say no to drugs or alcohol or insist on using condoms. There's a sense of moral responsibility palpably felt by the makers of the film in these movies that I find kind of incredible. Ice Cube feels it more so than others, I think. In this case though, it's especially interesting, because one of the central dynamics of the film is whether or not Bow Wow is gonna use his winnings to help out the 'hood (I'll give you three guesses what he decides). So a part of you kind of has to wonder, how many 'hoods are Bow Wow and his co-stars helping? You know?

Anyway, to return to the plot. It's clunky and occasionally just too much. The tone of the film veers between irreverent humor and sap thicker than maple syrup. And just straight up boredom. Ice Cube's character manages to be totally preposterous and gratingly cliche all at once. A lot of the plot feels tacked on or mechanical. The best example of this is the fight between the two friends - it happens completely out of nowhere, with no real motivation, and is resolved a few scenes later, making it clear that the sole purpose of it is to have a scene where the money threatens to come between two friends. And it's not even a good scene.

Basically, it's a highly uneven, often dull film with flashes of entertainment. Alas.

*People who say that Mike Epps (playing the reverend) is the best part are wrong. The whole preacher-who's-actually-greedy-and-lascivious thing has been done a bazillion times, and there's nothing particularly great about this rendition. For a better version, see: David Alan Grier, Season 1 of Martin. Actually, the best part of the Mike Epps scene is the deacon sitting off to the side - he's kind of great. Also, while we're at it, Charlie Murphy (CHARLIE MURPHY!) isn't all that great either.

Consider the Lobster And Other Essays, by David Foster Wallace

2011-01-05T18:32:00.002-06:00

I didn't read the entire thing - I skipped Authority and American Usage (which I probably would've enjoyed, actually, but by the time I realized that I was just glad to be done with the book), Host, and Up, Simba, and only skimmed How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart (though I did enjoy my skimming thereof - just read the last three pages, starting with the paragraph "Maybe what keeps us buying in the face of constant disappointment" - it's a nice few paragraphs). If one of the things you find difficult in David Foster Wallace's writing is the occasional unbelievably awful scene that leaves you shaken and somewhat traumatized, skip the first essay, Big Red Son, which is about the porn industry. Other than that, I don't have any particular comments. I'm not really going to get into the specifics of the remainder, because I don't think I am a fair judge of it.

So I will say this instead: I respect David Foster Wallace. I recognize that he is an extremely intelligent person with some genuinely fascinating observations about the world. I think he's a good writer, for the most part, and an interesting one, though there are aspects of his style that I find grating. I also recognize that he is a deeply moral human being, with an unwavering engagement with the question of how to do the right thing.

But at the end of the day, I really, REALLY don't like him. I just don't. Not just because I find his worldview devastating - though that's a huge part of it - I don't like him the way I don't like some people. Because I just don't. I recognize those people may not be Bad people, and that spending time with them is enjoyable for other people that I like. But to me, it is trying, even if I have to admit that the day was largely pleasant.

The Gastronomical Me, by MFK Fisher

2010-12-30T18:34:00.003-06:00

I'd heard that Fisher was one of the all-time greats of food writing, so I was really excited to receive this book from Santa (and my parents). I had extremely high hopes for it, and I wasn't let down - the book was every bit as wonderful as I'd expected. Fisher's prose reminded me somewhat of August Kleinzahler's (Cutty, One Rock is still one of my favorite books) - there's this lyrical, simple beuty to her writing that is just so wonderful. Here's a bit from the foreword, for example:

People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way others do?

(...)

The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mingled and mixed and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it... and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied... and it is all one.

I tell about myself, and how I ate bread on a lasting hillside, or drank red wine in a room now blown to bits, and it happens without my willing it that I am telling too about people with me then, and their other deeper needs for love and happiness.

I am stopping myself, because otherwise I'd just type out the rest of the foreword, and maybe the rest of the book too. It's such a wonderful, beautiful work. There is such passion in it, but also a sense of privacy and restraint, where you don't get every sordid detail, but a really elegant contouring of the world. The descriptions of food are not especially flowery, but they're tremendously evocative ("The solid honesty" of a borscht, for instance - can't you just taste it?), and there's such feeling in the book, a kind of intensity that hums through the pages, with a touch of wistfulness as well. I can't wait to read more of her books.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

2010-12-30T17:52:00.002-06:00

I only got through half of this book. I'd been switching back and forth between wanting to read it and thinking it might be kind of terrible. Sometimes you're in the mood for zombies and sometimes you're really not. And I really love Jane Austen, so I was worried that my response would mostly be a kind of peevishness over any modifications to the original. But I was also kind of curious to see what happened when you combined Austen and zombies. So I finally launched into it, and was actually quite amused at first.

When Elizabeth stood, she saw Mrs. Long struggling to free herself as two female dreadfuls bit into her head, cracking her skull like a walnut and sending a shower of dark blood spouting as high as the chandeliers.

You kind of find yourself giggling over moments of extreme gore in Austen's generally well-manicured world. And you sort of suspect that Austen herself might have gotten a kick out of it. But as the book wears on, you get sort of inured to it, and it becomes a lot less entertaining. Austen's sparse descriptive style doesn't really let you get too detailed on zombie attacks without clearly deviating from the overall tone of the original, but zombie attacks are really pretty bland if not described in detail.

Meanwhile, the constant, droning reiteration of how important combat is to Elizabeth, how she was trained by the Shaolin, bla bla bla... oh man, does that get annoying. I GET IT ALREADY. Her violent fantasies of beheading the Bingley girls seems like a clanging hyperbole of her willful character, making her seem more like a petulant child than a high spirited young woman. She's unbelievably contemptuous of everyone, and really smug about her fighting abilities, and it makes her really annoying - which basically destroys your sympathy for her as a character, and makes the book completely ineffective.

So I plowed halfway through the book, and then gave up - not worth my time.

Shower

2010-12-27T10:07:00.003-06:00

This is kind of a simple film, in a way - it's about a guy who goes home to visit his father and retarded brother, who run a bathhouse together. The main character is a businessman, so there's the somewhat predictable contrast of his high-powered way of life and the more placid everyday workings of the bathhouse. Which is fine, but the movie really isn't about narrative at all. It's more in the characters themselves. I think there must be some kind of name for this sub-genre of films, generally foreign, that are like vignettes about various characters and their woes. There's a kind of anecdotal quality to it - so-and-so is having marriage problems, so-and-so has self-esteem issues, and the central space/character of the film is usually a kind of therapeutic figure who helps all these people in clever ways. You know what I mean? Shower is definitely in that category.

But it's also, I thought, just a beautiful film. There are a couple scenes that, I dunno, just got to me. Though I guess anyone singing O Sole Mio, even (and maybe especially) badly kind of gets me. The guy who plays the retarded brother emanates a kind of warmth and joy that resonates with me on some deeper level. And I think, in terms of portraying characters with disabilities, the movie does a pretty good job? Though perhaps someone could disagree with me, and I'm be curious what they had to say.

Anyhow, overall - a lovely film. Definitely worth watching.

Lipstick Jihad, by Azadeh Moaveni

2010-12-17T16:48:00.002-06:00

I got this book from a free box*, purely because it looked kind of interesting. I was a little skeptical, expecting a book tailor-made for a Western audience eager to hear about the "realities" of Iran, ie, how much better the US is. What a pleasant surprise this book was. The author is an Iranian-American woman who is raised in California, then moves to Iran. She writes about her bi-cultural upbringing with surprising subtlety and insight, acknowledging, for instance, how skewed her image of Iran has been, and how she continues to feel a sense of insecurity about her Iranian-ness. She's surprisingly open to self-criticism, and willing to admit somewhat unflattering things about herself. And she's a good writer, whose prose is enjoyable, if slightly self-indulgent/melodramatic at times.

Overall, there's this weird double bind to reading books like this one - on the one hand, I think people should know about different parts of the world and what life is like there. I especially think Americans should know about life in places they're at war with. And I think they should be confronted with why people don't like them (there's a really impressive moment where Moaveni talks about being shocked by her friends in Iran who were indifferent to 9/11. It's a bit diplomatic on her part, because it allows her to be outraged - not to say that she wasn't - while also presenting their rather seething critique, namely, that Americans have led to the death of thousands in the Middle East and not cared, so why should people in the Middle East care when lots of Americans die?). So anyways, yes, on the one hand, this book is a refreshingly bracing perspective on life in other places, with a bi-cultural narrator who can sort of present both sides of the equation, and I think that's great. On the other hand though, I am slightly uncomfortable with the presentation of the "exotic" Middle East as feel-good reading for a western audience. There's really nothing to be done about this dilemma, and I should add that Moaveni is, in a way, a book you can feel good about precisely because she IS on both sides of the coin, and is very self-aware of what that implies. And she seems careful to avoid the exoticizing tendency or the overly simplistic emotional draws (the kind that make Reading Lolita in Tehran feel so... gross). Overall - a very interesting book. Definitely worth reading.

*Ok, ok, ok. It wasn't a free box. It was a box collecting books for underprivileged children. I've been feeling so guilty about this that I feel compelled to announce my crime to all who will listen. If it helps at all, the only things I took were this and Bernard Williams' Shame and Necessity, and I attempted to compensate for it by giving the children a big bag of books in return. One of them was an A.A. Milne book I've owned since childhood - that was the real penance.

Tiny Furniture

2010-12-15T16:18:00.003-06:00

I was utterly charmed by this movie. The path had been paved already by the New Yorker piece on Lena Dunham, which gave me the sense that she's a precocious, quirky, slightly self-absorbed young woman who makes movies with lovable, interesting characters. So perhaps that's why I saw the movie in those exact terms. I know I come back to this often, but once again - I couldn't help thinking of Funny Ha Ha, which I hated. Because this is another one of those movies about an angsty, confused recent college graduate, where there's no real plot or change in the character. Yet it turns out to be highly entertaining, wildly funny, and often quite touching. I don't know if it's because it's set in New York, so life is just more interesting, but I don't think that's it. I think that what makes Funny Ha Ha fail and Tiny Furniture succeed is realism - the thing about Funny Ha Ha is that the characters are annoying and self-absorbed - and I really don't think most people are quite as awful as the people in that movie are. The characters in Tiny Furniture are occasionally annoying, often self-absorbed, sometimes wildly immature and melodramatic - but they're also warm and human and kind of great, even when they're not. You have this sense of recognition - like, oh man, that's EXACTLY what a guy like that would do in that moment. She really nails it, even on minor details. It's so satisfying.

Some things I really liked about the movie:

One, the fact that Dunham, who does not have, shall we say, a supermodel's body, regularly appears in her underwear, or with somewhat blotchy skin, or greasy hair. And has scenes in the movie where she explicitly confronts the fact that people refer to her as fat. And she says it makes her feel bad, but she also doesn't make a big deal out of it. The scenes of her half naked in the movie are there, it seems, for the purposes of realism, not to make some kind of statement. And man, it's nice to see thighs on the big screen.

Two, the characters, who are over the top and ridiculous, but still completely believable. There's a degree of restraint in how larger-than-life she lets them be, and it's brilliantly balanced.

Three, spoiler alert, the whole thing with the jerk chef. He's a jerk, you know it and Lena knows it, but you also both know that she's going to sleep with him (and the film does a great job portraying the lead-up to that, the sense of slight excitement that always accompanies seduction), and that it's not going to work out well. And indeed, they have sex, lousy sex, albeit with some adventure involved, and she feels crappy afterwards. Not traumatized, not raped, not my-life-is-ruined, just crappy. It's so wonderfully true to life, in the sometimes you do dumb things even though you know they're dumb, and you feel kind of wretched about it, but in the grand scheme of things, it's ok. It's not the central plot point of the film, even though it's positioned as if it were a climax - it's just kind of another thing that happens.

Four, her relationship with her mother, especially the physical side of it. I feel like it's pretty rare that parents and children are really physically affectionate on screen, and maybe the world would be a better place if they would.

Overall - it's great. Check it out. And then read the New Yorker piece, because you'll come to love Lena Dunham even more. But don't read it beforehand (though I did), because you'll probably appreciate the movie more if you don't know most of the plot beforehand.

The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin

2010-12-06T14:41:00.002-06:00

A short, fascinating book containing two essays, one a letter to his nephew, the other a kind of biographical reflection on Christianity's role in African American life that opens out onto broader thoughts on the civil rights movement. I read the entire book in less than two hours, and have been thinking about it ever since. The most powerful aspect of the book, I think, is its reflection on love. To quote:

And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what it must become.

Baldwin argues that the root of racism is white delusion, an inability of white Americans to see themselves as they truly are. They project their fears and anxieties onto black people in order to avoid facing them within themselves. Thus, Baldwin argues, what is necessary is not only for blacks to realize that what they are taught about themselves is untrue - they must also make whites see the world as it really is, and they must do this with love. He doesn't really explicitly spell out how this will work (the love part), but in a way, this is what I liked about the book - that it lays the groundwork for all these really complex philosophical reflections in extremely plain, but enormously suggestive, terms. It's also quite radical in its insistence that blacks and whites must learn to live together, and stop seeing themselves as different. There's also a really fascinating moment where he discusses the wisdom that comes from suffering, and the way in which black music can be both joyful and melancholy at the same time.

Almost 50 years later, the book is still a classic, and still, I think, relevant and worth reading, with insights that remain valuable and even timely. Check it out.

White Material

2010-11-27T13:11:00.002-06:00

In a fictional war-torn African country, a white woman insists on staying on her coffee plantation and harvesting the crop as everyone around her flees. This is the subject of Claire Denis' new movie, White Material, but that's about as much of a narrative as you get. The movie is a fascinating evocation of atmosphere, strangely gripping despite its opacity. Denis (or her director of photography) has an incredible eye for detail - painted toenails and earrings somehow jump out at you. There's something terrifyingly compelling - and tactile - about objects in this film, and I'm not sure why, or what effect that has on what the movie is trying to convey. Another thing that gets thematized is hair; the protagonist's ponytail and the wispy locks framing her face, boy soldiers hacking off a bit of her son's fair hair, a man noting that blonde hair means bad luck. It's chilling, but you're not really sure why. Isabelle Huppert does an incredible job as the lead, a strange blend of steeliness, determination, and tunnel vision so acute that it borders on insanity. Overall, it's hard to say what exactly the film is trying to convey. The fact that it's set in an unnamed place in Africa tempts you to see it as some kind of broader allegory, and it obviously indexes various colonial tensions, but to what end, exactly, I don't know. But it's definitely gripping, and visually striking, and, I think, worth watching.

Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger

2010-11-26T16:15:00.002-06:00

I decided to make a holiday of the holiday, take a break from work and read something purely for leisure. Ideally something light and somewhat fluffy but still compelling. Let me tell you now, anytime you're in that kind of mood, Audrey Niffenegger is a good bet - airplane, beach, or couch. Her books are page-turners, definitely not great works of art, but nonetheless quite satisfying. This wasn't, perhaps, quite as gripping as The Time Traveler's Wife, but overall it was quite similar - a somewhat odd but quite clever idea bolstered by adequately amiable, though not exactly lyrical, prose. This was better than TTTW in that it didn't have quite as much science in it, so you didn't have to be annoyed by things trying to sound scientific instead of impossible.

As for the plot - a woman dies, and leaves her apartment to the twin daughters of her twin sister. Hilarious hijinx ensue! Kinda. At first, there's a lot of mopiness and failed attempts at haunting, which is not so compelling, but as the relationships between the characters develop, you find yourself increasingly absorbed into the story. I don't want to say much more about it, because honestly, it's not that great of a book, so the less you know about it the better, if you intend to read it. And it really is an entirely pleasant read - not a bad way to spend a gray winter day at all.

Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, translated by Lydia Davis

2010-11-20T17:54:00.002-06:00

I have really mixed feelings about Lydia Davis - I really liked Samuel Johnson is Indignant, and I HATED End of Story, to such an extent that I kind of started hating Lydia Davis. But now that some time has passed, I'm feeling less hostile. Not to the extent that I want to read any of her fiction, but to the point that I see her as a skilled prosaist who happens to be an annoying person. So I was actually quite excited to read her new translation of Madame Bovary, which I had read in college and not really appreciated, but suspected I would enjoy more now. There's been a fair amount of hubbub surrounding this new version, both as a reconsideration of the original work and as a translation. Julian Barnes has a rather whiny review of the translation that is, however, useful because it actually compares sentences from numerous versions. Barnes intends this to serve as evidence of the flaws in Davis' work, but honestly, in pretty much every case I disagree with him. I haven't read the original, but I'll tell you this - I think this translation is phenomenal. I think Davis' slightly sterile, cold yet ornate prose is perfectly suited to this work. I was completely bowled over by the beauty of the language in the novel, which I did not remember at all in my earlier reading. It's exquisite.

As for the novel itself, it's a masterpiece. Very interesting contrast to Anna Karenina, which I read not so long ago. I think it might require, as a prerequisite, a certain amount of pre-existing appreciation for 19th century fiction. But it's a really gorgeous novel, and incredibly dense and fascinating. I could talk about it for days, but I think I'm going to refrain and get back to work. I'll just say this - it's a fascinating study in irony and narration (which its deservedly famous for), but also in happiness, illusions, emotion, and habit. Very much worth reading.

Room in Rome

2010-11-18T22:34:00.002-06:00

I'm gonna be up front - I basically went to see this because I figured it'd be a hot lesbian movie. It's the same director as Sex and Lucia, which I seem to remember not liking very much but thinking was very sexy. This turned out to be much the same. The sex scenes are great, the dialogue is, mmmph, ok, and overall, the movie is just so-so. But the sex scenes are great.

The movie is about a one night stand; when we first meet the two women, they're already past the initial phases of the operation and one is persuading the other to come to her room. We have Alba, a sexy Spaniard, and Natasha, a sexy Russian who has apparently never been with a woman before. Over the course of the film, they tell each other stories about their lives, some clearly lies, some that might be. They have lots of very sexy sex and, maybe, they fall in love.

Initially, the dialogue struck me as hollow, the acting as terrible, and the whole thing as rather disastrous, but brightened by nudity. As it progressed, however, I found myself drawn into it. What is ultimately really fascinating about the movie is that it makes you realize how astonishing love really is, and how much trust it entails. It's made more vivid in this case because the two women are constantly lying to each other, and catching each other at it, so that by the end, you really still have no idea if they are who they say they are. So the question of whether or not they're actually in love, or whether they're simply living out a fantasy, becomes completely nebulous - and this makes you (well, me at least) think that actually, it always is. And it takes an incredible leap of faith to trust another person enough to set off down that road. The movie does a really good job of illuminating that, but then it sort of loses steam and towards the end it drags.

Worth watching though, especially if you like seeing pretty ladies get it on.

On a different note, I don't generally say much about music, but isn't this cover of Baby Be Mine incredible? The video is nice too. Quadron, check 'em out.

Dispatches from the International Film Fest

2010-11-02T16:34:00.002-05:00

I know, it's long overdue, and these movies deserve more than a brief mention, but hey, I'm busy. And I went to a lot of movies. So, in brief:

Love Translated

A fantastic and extremely entertaining documentary about men who use an internet service to find wives in the Ukraine. The service sends them on a group field trip where they get to meet women (and judge a local pageant), and the film chronicles the adventure from both sides. It's really, really interesting, and quite well done. Definitely watch it if you get the chance.

Red Hill

Meh. An Australian Western that wants to be No Country for Old Men, but kinda drags.

Cold Weather

Indie flick about a guy and his sister who find themselves involved in a mystery when the guy's girlfriend disappears. It's fairly standard Generation Q type stuff, though better than usual. It was a little on the slow side, but I liked it a lot more than most movies of this kind, because it didn't have quite the rampant self-indulgence and angst that these things tend to. The director wants it to be a Portland movie, but honestly, there wasn't much Portland in it to me, aside from a scene at the Montage. But it was cute and kind of charming.

Besouro

A Brazilian martial arts myth type film, except with capoiera instead of kung fu. Not great, but I dug it. The main flaw was occasional jarringly cheesy music. Also, the politics of it were kind of... I dunno, odd.

All That I Love

A lovely Polish coming of age paean to punk rock. Not mindblowingly good, but sweet and definitely worth watching.

King's Road

Totally bizarre but lots of fun, albeit slightly on the long side. Daniel Brühl is in it. I love Daniel Brühl. I dunno if it's him or his agent, but he tends to star in great, quirky films. Anyways, yeah, loaded with dark humor, but strangely touching. Reinforces my suspicion that people from Iceland are insane.

My Joy

Oh man. People HATED this movie. I kind of loved it. Definitely for advanced art film viewers only, heh heh. Totally impressionistic, non-narrative style, basically a series of vignettes of encounters between strangers, most of which end in extremely brutal violence. The cinematography is breathtaking, and I thought it was kind of a fascinating reflection on storytelling overall. Like, there was this great moment where there's a scene in a crowded marketplace, and you're following the main character, and then suddenly the camera randomly starts following some other woman who walks off into the woods, then shifts to some random dude, then kinda seems to say "well, I guess they're not doing anything interesting", and goes back to the main character. There are also completely inexplicable jumps in time. I was tickled. The audience was enraged.

Faith

I have very little patience for movies that feature a large cast of characters and interwoven stories, because I find that the attempt to basically tell 5 stories instead of one leads to cliches as shorthand to make up for the lack of character development. This movie does exactly that. And to make it more annoying (to me) they're mostly cliches about Muslims.

Asleep in the Sun

The description said the movie was about a guy who has his wife committed so as to treat her depression, and she comes back different. Attention to the everyday, they said, was what made this movie stand out. I expected a thoughtful film about depression. What I got was a bizarre, quasi-sci-fi slow-paced thriller. But I dug it.

Bitter Feast

2010-10-13T23:55:00.002-05:00

I had heard about this awhile back and was intrigued, so when I saw that it was playing at the International Film Fest, I was stoked. The premise of the movie is that a chef loses his job because of a vicious review written by a food blogger (and also because, well, he's kind of a douche) and he then takes his revenge by kidnapping the blogger, torturing him and making him cook. Intriguing, right? You kinda wanna see it, don't you?

Well, so it's not great (yes, I'm mindful of the irony of writing a not-entirely-glowing review of a movie whose premise is that a vicious blogger gets tormented). It's not bad, but it's not quite as fantastic as I wanted it to be. This is partly because the the guy who plays the chef is somewhat wooden, but also because the movie overall feels kind of amateurish, like a first time film. Which is not a deadly sin, but, well, you do notice it. There's a sense that the movie is trying to do too many things with various sideplots - a private detective (although here there was one clever aspect, I don't want to give it away, but basically, something that I expected to be formulaic and predictable actually wasn't, and I appreciated that), a cooking show with an annoying hostess (who you fully expect will become a victim, which by the way is a sign that you see the chef as actually a psycho killer) who sort of dilutes the villainy that the chef is confronted with in a not-particularly-productive-way, and just, I dunno, a lot of stuff that you don't really care about. But if you cut all of it, you wouldn't have enough movie. So I dunno.

But, to prove that I'm not just writing negative things about it because I'm a narcissistic blogger (like the monsters on Yelp - have I mentioned lately how much I hate yelp?), I'm going to share some of my thoughts about the film. SPOILERS ABOUND.

The movie is actually framed by a kind of scene of originary trauma. Namely, the chef's older brother is some kind of bizarre, vicious child who quotes William Blake (I asked what the text was in the Q&A). The chosen quote is about two kinds of people, creators and destroyers. It's a little heavy handed for a movie that sets a chef against a blogger, but also slightly raised my hackles, because I resent the implication that criticism is purely parasitical or destructive. But that's my own beef, I suppose.

What's kind of fascinating about the movie is the way your sympathy is essentially flip-flopped over the course of the film, from chef to blogger. Now, this is apparently not what the director had in mind - he wanted the chef to be sympathetic throughout, he claimed in the Q&A. If so, well, sorry. But it's more interesting the way it is, I think. It is arguably also somewhat heavy handed - though the chef is not 100% sympathetic at the outset (like I said, he's sort of a douche), the blogger is an absolute monster - much more than he needed to be. He's an arrogant, hateful jerk, not only via blog, but also in his personal life, as evidenced by his unbelievably callous treatment of his wife. He sort of makes up for it with a cute apology, but it hardly redeems him. By the end of the movie, however, it's the chef who's a monster, and the blogger who you're cheering for. This is not purely because one is a killer and the other is a victim. Actually, at first, you're kind of enjoying watching the blogger suffer, despite the fact that it's pretty grisly stuff. What's interesting is how the shift happens. My boyfriend and I disagreed on when the chef became more evil, and thinking back on it, I'm really not sure. But there's a point at which his vengeance begins to seem more self-serving than reasonable, like he's starting to just enjoy sadism for the sake of it. What I found fascinating, however, is that the blogger, for me, was redeemed in a moment when, upon eating the chef's star dish spiked with poison, he gives it a bad review. This is interesting, because it's exactly the behavior that made me dislike him in the first place, but in this new context, it seems like some kind of triumphant affirmation of humanity, the ability to say fuck you in the face of death. By far the best scene in the movie.

The final scene, I have to say, was overdetermined and somewhat groan inducing. It's not the original ending, I learned, but from what I heard, it's better than the original ending - it's just not that good.

Anyways, overall - would I go see it in theatres? No. But it's definitely worth renting, especially if you're a foodie.

Tuesday, After Christmas

2010-10-10T17:01:00.001-05:00

So, I saw 4 Months, 3 weeks, etc etc, and yes, it was a great movie. I also saw Police, Adjective, and while the premise was interesting, man, it was sloooooow. I haven't seen 12:08 East of Bucharest or Death of Mr Lazarescu, but from what I've heard, they conform to my gradually developing sense of what is typical of Romanian cinema. Ie, slow, gray, and a bit of a downer. So I wasn't exactly rushing to see this at Chicago's International Film Fest, but somehow, my friend and I decided to go, so I attempted to shelve my somewhat snarky attitude about what the movie was likely to involve, and off we went. And wow. I'm so glad we did, because the movie is dynamite. Yes, it is kind of gray, and somewhat gloomy. But despite its emotional intensity, it doesn't feel like a downer. And it's not as relentlessly gray as a lot of Eastern European movies - maybe partly because the characters are upper middle class (which, my friend pointed out, is a nice change). They have macbooks and iphones. And a sporty car.

So, the movie is basically about a guy who is cheating on his wife. Sounds grim, and yes, the movie definitely does an incredible job making you conscious of how painful affairs are, for everyone. At the same time, what's impressive about the movie is that every single character is sympathetic and likeable. Even when they're being somewhat less-likeable - they're flawed, yes, but not in the narcissistic, inconsiderate way that most people mean when they say flawed, but in some kind of normal and not (to me) immoral way. In other words, at no point in the movie do you really blame anyone, nor do you have a clear sense of what should be done, or a notion that someone isn't doing it. The movie is oddly suspenseful, in that you really don't know what will happen next, and you're not really sure what you want to happen either.

As my friend pointed out, the success of the movie is partly dependent on its first scene - right from the opening, you're completely drawn into the world. It's so compelling (though I can't really say why), and that pull never lets up for the entire film, and does some really important work in terms of establishing both the characters' personalities, and they way you respond to them.

Seriously - it's a fantastic movie. Do not miss the chance to see it, should it come up.

City Island/ The Kids Are All Right

2010-09-27T14:19:00.003-05:00

I saw The Kids Are All Right awhile back and never wrote about it, but was inspired to return to it because in a way, it belongs in the same category as City Island - both are basically mainstream, fairly standard "wacky family" movies, except they're not, because mainstream movies these days are such crap. So both of them mostly played at "artsy" theatres, despite the fact that they're not particularly challenging or highbrow. They're just a little more candid and open about certain things that "mainstream" America is prudish about. Of the two, I actually liked City Island a lot more - it's a clever, sweet movie, and well constructed. The Kids Are all Right was a little harder for me to love, because of the politics involved. But we'll return to that.

City Island is a movie about secrets. It stars Andy Garcia as a correctional officer who's covertly enrolled in an acting class (predictably leading his wife to suspect that he's having an affair). At the opening of the film, he's just discovered his son is in jail, but can be freed on the responsibility of a family member - so he brings him home, but of course, without revealing their connection. Everyone in the movie has a secret, be it big or small, and of course, the work of the movie is to ultimately bring them out into the open or somehow resolve them. It's pretty predictable, but nonetheless quite enjoyable. It's also pleasantly restrained in its drama, resisting the impulse to veer into catastrophe, ultimately espousing a kind of live-and-let-live mentality. This includes the seemingly "devious" proclivities of its cast, and in that, it comes to seem like a progressive or liberatory work, though it's a sad state of affairs that one would even think of it that way. It's not great, but it's fun and has plenty of laughs, a very pleasant way to spend an evening.

The Kids Are All Right is a little touchier, because there's the baggage of being an indie movie about a lesbian couple and their kids that's clamouring for mainstream attention in a moment when gay marriage is such a fraught issue. So of course, you can't help but be disappointed that one of the women has a fling with a guy - I respect the reviews that celebrate the film's fluid depiction of sexuality, and I agree with them to a great extent, but that doesn't stop me from rolling my eyes and kind of wishing it didn't go down that way. More than that though, I was annoyed by the fact that the lesbian sex scenes in the movie were SO unappealing, and the hetero ones were so hot. I understand that it's also a married/illicit sex difference, and that given how hypersexualized girl-on-girl action is anyhow, it's arguably a smart move to make it seem mundane and downright sterile, but still. I also would've liked Annette Bening's character to be a little more likeable - she was by the end of the movie, but man, she's an uptight, hypercontrolling jerk for most of the film.

I don't, however, begrudge the movie it's strictly normative ideology when it comes to the family unit. In a way, I like that the movie kind of writes off any possibility for a healthy alternative family structure, and thereby slyly smuggles lesbian couples into the normative family category (where they belong). Politically speaking, I can understand the utility of a seemingly extreme group professing its conservative impulses. But I wouldn't have minded if the movie made it a little more clear that the ultimate resolution it came to was a concrete, individual one, not a template. I dunno.

In any case, in terms of all the buzz about the movie - overrated. It's not bad, it definitely had its charm and there were a lot of things I liked about it. It's unfortunate that my opinion of it was so strongly tinted by the political context, because there are a lot of aspects of general family dynamics that were well captured.

Still, of the two, I'd rather watch City Island again.

Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy

2010-09-26T13:45:00.002-05:00

I was going on vacation to Belize with my family, ie was about to spend a lot of time on airplanes, so I decided it was time to tackle the monster. To my surprise, it was a quick, light read - I made it through all 817 pages in 4 days. And for the first 600 pages or so, I thought it was one of the most fantastic books I'd ever read. But as it started to wind down, I found myself a little less taken with it, and started thinking over the whole thing and being a little more dubious. My friend Ruchama put it very well - she said that in general, reading the great Russians, she finds that the agony and angst are very compelling and well described, but the resolutions are invariably unsatisfying. I think I agree, kind of, but that's not really what my problem was. It was more that, thinking back on it, the changes in the characters are actually pretty extreme, and not sufficiently motivated, or rather, kind of skimmed over. I know it seems strange to want more development in an 800+ page novel, but seriously, what happened to Karenin? You know?

What's odd about this feeling is that it's exactly the opposite of my initial sense of the work, where I was enthralled by the way the characters were drawn. It's absolutely incredible, the way Tolstoy seems to know exactly what it's like to be all these different people, and how skillfully he manages to convey it, sometimes with just a few small details. The plot sort of progresses through vignettes, and each of them is worthy of being a short story of its own; they're so vivid, and seem to index so much more than what they concretely describe.

Another thing I appreciated was how un-melodramatic it was, in contrast to what I was expecting. While it's ultimately a novel about passions, it allows the characters some margin of self-awareness, such that they're never on a complete tailspin - even when their actions are. I really, really valued that - the moments when they questioned their thoughts and feelings, even though their behavior was totally hostage to them. Thus, for instance, Levin finds himself jealous, and knows that he's being unreasonable, but just can't really help himself - which is EXACTLY what it's like to be jealous, unlike the usual portrayals where the person seems completely irrational and unaware of it.

The historico-political aspect of the novel was also fascinating, and really well drawn. It was the spiritual side I found rather less compelling, and it's kind of hard to say why. Unfortunately, that's what the culmination of the novel really hitched its wagon to, so the book ended on more of a whimper than I would have liked.

Still though, it's a great, great book.

An Experiment in Love, by Hilary Mantel

2010-09-13T13:00:00.003-05:00

I guess I never wrote a review for Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety, which I read in the late-winter/early-spring. A friend of mine had absolutely loved Mantel's Wolf Hall (many people did) and when I bought it from amazon, I discovered Greater Safety, a novel about the French Revolution. I was trying to learn more about the French Revolution at the time, and the novel seemed like a good way to do it. It was not a revelatory book, but it was quite good. Amazingly dense with historical information - I can't imagine how much research went into it - but also wonderful, lively prose and well-drawn characters. It was, however, quite long. It needed to be, but still, I was reading it for weeks, and it kind of wore me out.

So I was happy to see An Experiment in Love at Costco, a nice short Mantel novel about British women in the 60s. The back implied that it would be all about the struggles of feminism and femininity and academia, which sounded just great to me. There was also some kind of suspense and/or gradual buildup to an explosive climax promised, which seemed iffy but ok.

But you know what? It wasn't very good. There was a climax. It was not very explosive or exciting. And there wasn't much of a build-up to it. In a way, I suppose, one could appreciate the subtlety of the book; the way it allows most of its characters their privacy. Unfortunately, they have so much privacy that they're basically shrouded in mystery - you have no idea what's going on with them, and you never really find out. Couple this with the main character's lack of self-awareness, and you get a novel where everything is kind of chaotic and unclear, but not in a particularly compelling way. Thinking back on it - and I only finished reading it a few hours ago - it's hard to say what even happens in the book, what occupies the pages and keeps the story moving. There's a lot about food (the main character, rather annoyingly, gradually becomes anorexic, except that she doesn't seem to do it consciously - at first she's just broke, then she seems to want to be thin, but the transition happens in a single paragraph). The whole reflection on feminism in the 60s part that I was so looking forward to was more like an afterthought, a bland generalizing sentence here and there.

Overall, a great disappointment - I like Mantel's prose style, but I barely kept reading this book, and if it wasn't so short, I would never have carried on.

What's Your Rashee?

2010-08-23T18:09:00.002-05:00

Bollywood is kind of like a guilty pleasure for me, but this movie seemed worth writing about because a few days later, I find myself still thinking of it and what it says about love. The movie is in many ways fairly standard bollywood - long, with a somewhat bizarre, convoluted plot, some pleasing song and dance routines (more song than dance), etc, but there was something intriguing about it, namely, the way it took on the question of tensions between models of arranged marriage and romantic love.

The main character, because of plot machinations we don't really need to go into, needs to get married, quick. For somewhat random reasons, he decides to meet one girl of every astrological sign and pick one as a wife. This is explained by him saying that he had always thought he would marry for love, so he wants to at least make some attempt to find it - if each astrological sign represents one type of woman, he can at least take a sampling of the lot. Curiously, all the girls are played by the same actress (the beautiful and charismatic Priyanka Chopra), a perhaps unnecessary bit of randomness that seems to be done just for fun, and is half-heartedly justified when someone tells the protagonist that they all look the same because they all have the face of the true love he seeks. Why not.

So, what's intriguing about it is that the protagonist is committed to getting married - he WILL pick one of these women. He also wants to find love, but he's ready to marry even if he doesn't. So with every meeting, he seems to be sort of juggling two questions: how do you go about picking a wife (in the practical sense) and how do you go about figuring out if you're in love with someone whom you've just met? The women seem to be wrestling with a similar set of questions, and while it isn't really something explicitly discussed in the movie (though you get moments where they say to each other "Jeeze, what should we talk about?" and one great scene where the girl basically makes him act out various scenarios playing the role of someone who is in love with her - especially interesting because she tells him exactly what to do, and then seems to fall for him when he deviates from the script), the film nonetheless provides plenty of occasions to contemplate it. What's so interesting to me about it is that in some ways these questions overlap, and in some ways they don't. I mean, on a basic level, there's a kind of tension between romantic love and practicality. But at the same time, in a sense we identify "true" love by its ability to survive and overcome (practical) obstacles. But we're also aware that it's easily confused with plain old lust, or some kind of delusion, and we suspect that maybe the best relationships are ones with a more practical foundation. Then, of course, there are the more mythical dimensions of love, the sense of fate or a cosmic connection between two people who are "meant" to be together. Our protagonist pretty straightforwardly seems to reject those. Lust he wrestles with a bit more. But he's also a bit put off by the sheerly practical side as well. The neat thing about the movie is that by having 12 girls, it gets to model a bunch of different aspects of the issue. It's really cool. And you genuinely don't know who he will (or should) pick. And while the ending is satisfying (or was to me), it doesn't foreclose the possibility of alternatives, or try to insist that this is the best possible ending, thus guaranteeing for itself that this is REAL true love of the one and only variety.

On a more idiosyncratic level, I also enjoyed all the Chicago in the movie. Although it's set in India, the protagonist lives in Chicago, so there are some lovely shots of the city (including one of the new Trump Tower - I believe it's the first time I've seen it on film, and testifies to the incredible speed at which Bollywood films are made. Obama gets mentioned too. And the University of Chicago makes an appearance - they have some gorgeous footage of the Business School building). Incidentally, there is an understated reflection on immigration as well. There's a great rant from one character about Indians who leave home, come back, and suddenly develop stomachs "too sensitive" for the local water, which is kind of fascinating. Also, a subtle critique of people who leave purely to make money - as one character suggests, perhaps there are more important things?

Overall, it's also just an entertaining movie to watch. It's not perfect, and a lot of plot points don't really work. But what makes it really worthwhile is all this stuff going on just below the surface, in really fascinating ways.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

2010-08-20T19:23:00.002-05:00

Ok. There are gonna be some spoilers here, I'm telling you now. Sorry. I am going to talk about the ending of the movie, so if you haven't seen it, you should probably stop reading.

So, for the most part, I found Scott Pilgrim vs. the World to be a highly entertaining, delightful film. It's a lovely homage to old school video games, and a lot of fun. I was amused. All was well. But as it progressed, I felt a growing sense of impatience. Then, at the end, there was a brief moment where it looked like salvation was on the way... only to be cruelly disappointed.

Here's the thing. The movie is about Scott fighting off his love interest's exes. That's all well and good, but the problem is - you're not really sold on why he's so interested in this girl Ramona in the first place. And the more you get to know her, the less you like her. And you start to think about who these people are, and what their deal is, and you start to feel a little... uncomfortable.

(What follows is basically a plot summary with running commentary. I realize I said at the outset of this post that you shouldn't be reading it if you haven't seen the movie, which means that if you're reading this, you've probably seen it and have no need of plot summary, and in fact, this kind of summarizing with commentary is exactly what I'm constantly telling my students not to do, but you know what? It's an easy way to work out what you think about something. That's why they do it. If I were turning this into a paper that I'd be handing in to myself, I'd use what follows as fodder and distill it into an argument about the film. In fact, if I were writing a professional review, that's what I'd do. But I'm writing a blog post, and I have less than 10 minutes to finish this before going to play poker, so if it's gonna be posted today, this is what it's gonna be. Sorry.)

So, at the opening of the movie, we meet Scott, played by the wonderful Micheal Cera in typical fashion. He's been brutally dumped by a girl named Envy, and has just started dating a girl named Knives. This is suspect to his friends, because Scott is 22, and Knives is 18. We also find out that Scott might have left a trail of wounded women in his wake. But we don't really think about this too much, we just sort of enjoy the humor of his interactions with Knives and wonder, albeit slightly uneasily, what's coming next. Then, he has a dream about a girl he's never met. And the next day, bam, he meets her. Ramona. She is literally the girl of his dreams. He starts pursuing her like mad. We're kind of sympathetic, because he's so pathetic, and also because Knives has always seemed like kind of a joke anyhow. Besides, Ramona seems so cool.

Next thing we know, Scott is dueling Ramona's exes. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but whatever, it's entertaining. Things are going pretty well, overall. But this is when the movie starts to imperceptibly shift. First off, Scott starts getting annoyed at having to fight these exes. Why in the hell was she dating these jerks anyhow? Hey, good point, we think. What's the deal? Then Ramona starts getting kind of... angsty. Oh, woe is me, my past that hangs over me. Meanwhile, Knives is still in the scene, which is initially milked for awkward humor, etc, and then an apparently absurd revenge quest that you start to realize, isn't that absurd after all. He jilted her. The movie initially tries to play this off as amusing, like how on Earth could Knives presume to challenge Ramona? But you start thinking, gosh, you know, Knives is pretty cool. And Ramona is kind of a flake. Huh.

Then we get to the denouement, which happens twice, and seems to involve a kind of epiphany where both Ramona and Scott realize that when it comes to relationships, they've both been selfish jerks in some ways. This is sort of interesting, but ultimately not all that compelling, not least because it seems so hollow. But then, when the dust settles, Ramona does this whole self-sacrificing, you can do better than me, and besides Knives loves you act, and walks away. And Scott does actually turn to Knives, who he's been seeming a big more snuggly with. And you think, hey! YES! This is awesome! This is totally how this movie should end! And then Knives unloads the SAME self-sacrificing bullshit and tells him to go with Ramona, and he DOES! GODDAMNIT!!! I was SO pissed. And you know what? I honestly do feel like there is a subtle racism to it, of him picking the goth white girl over the badass Asian chick. And then I started thinking about how throughout the whole film, Knives was basically a caricature, more so than any of the other characters. And I found myself liking the movie less and less. And realizing how closely it adheres to basic stock plots of hollywood cinema, albeit dressed up in a cute way.

So yes, I was entertained, for the most part. But still, ultimately, I'm disappointed. In other words, I'm not saying don't see it - it's a fun movie, worth checking out. But I invite you to share my disappointment. SHARE IT. Join me in bemoaning the stupid cliche of the stupid mainstream, and in yearning for something more interesting. I want to say more true to life, but the thing is, I have this suspicion that movies like this ultimately serve to reinforce the mainstream, and to keep guys believing that they're right in picking Ramonas instead of Knives. And I guess that's a step forward from the days when they were supposed to pick the cheerleaders who had no ostensible personality whatsoever, but still, lame. So I guess, I want movies that are more true to life as it should be (what can I say, I read Marcuse's Aesthetic Dimension a few years ago and it changed my life.).

I will say though, that Kieran Culkin was absolutely fabulous as the deadpan gay roommate. A real treat. His career has been following an interesting path. While I wasn't really a huge fan of Igby Goes Down or The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, they're certainly interesting choices of roles. It'll be interesting to see what he does next - I bet this performance will get him some positive attention.

Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

2010-08-11T10:36:00.002-05:00

I had heard of this novel quite awhile ago, and then someone posted this video on facebook, which I thought was riveting, and I connected the dots and went out and bought the book the next day. It took another week or two for me to actually start reading it, but once I started, I could hardly put it down - I flew through the book in just a few days. To be simplistic, one could say this is the Nigerian Kite-Runner - ie, a gripping novel about politics and war that reels you in with its characters and imparts a bit of a history lesson along the way. But ultimately, the thing about this book is that the writing style is just... readable. It's not the most amazing piece of literature you've ever read, but it is absorbing and heart-wrenching. Definitely recommended.

Tokyo!

2010-08-05T22:10:00.002-05:00

Of all the city movies (Paris Je T'aime, New York I Love You), this one seemed to have the least to do with the city itself. But it was by far the best. It's 3 short films, one by Michel Gondry (who I have very mixed feelings about), one by Leos Carax, and one by Joon-ho Bong. And all of them are just great.

The first, the Gondry movie, follows a young couple who has just moved to Tokyo. It's a well done portrayal of a relationship slowly falling apart under pressure, but then (I don't want to say too much) it takes a turn for the wonderful. The second, the Carax movie, is about a swamp monster who terrorizes the city and his subsequent court case - not as good as the other two, I think, but interesting, in that it made me think about what it means to be a prophet. The final film is about a hikikomori, a recluse, and it's just kind of beautiful. It also though, makes you think about the whole hikikomori phenomenon, which is absolutely fascinating (and terrifying).

Overall, the movies were lovely and strange and I was totally charmed. Much recommended.

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel

2010-08-05T12:45:00.002-05:00

This is certainly a very clever book, but it somehow failed to really engage me emotionally. Bechdel writes about her childhood, focusing mostly on her relationship with her father. Her father was a closeted homosexual with a penchant for younger men. Alison is a lesbian. Her father killed himself when she was in college. These are the three main issues the book orbits, and the thing is, after awhile, you start to feel like everything comes back to one of those three things, and it starts to feel kind of ponderous.

You know what? I think I might be tired of stories about closeted homosexuals who have a penchant for younger men. The shame, the guilt, the nastiness, I dunno, it just seems like I've been over it so many times that I just don't find it all that gripping anymore. Isn't that strange?

Likewise, the whole torturous figuring-out-that-you're-gay thing. I should have more sympathy for this, but gosh, it gets kind of self-indulgent and boring after awhile. Not to mention, cliche.

Meanwhile, however, there's a nice use of old letters and interspersed literature. Of course I enjoyed the literary interpellations (one of those things a graphic novel can do very well, that other genres would have a hard time with) though Bechdel's own commentary on them often left something to be desired.

One of the reviewers on goodreads.com points out there's more narration than dialogue in terms of moving the plot, and that's true, I guess. The same reviewer complains that the intertextual references make the protagonist seem like a character, and that overall the whole thing seems too abstract rather than like you're actually accessing emotion. I dunno about that. But the point about narration is a good one. Most of the text is basically narration - like a voice-over - with scenes that sort of illustrate the point, but don't really add to it. Only rarely does the comic actually stand alone without that - there's very little dialogue. Which probably contributes to the sense of distance that aforementioned reviewer feels, and indeed, that I feel.