The Cook, Maylis de Kerangal, tr. Sam Taylor

 I was just talking to some friends last night about the restaurant industry world, and what a unique ecosystem it is. They were surprised to hear that I had never really been an industry worker, because my partner was one for 10+ years. As I explained, it helped a lot that I was in grad school at the time — one of the few other (bizarre) ecosystems that has an extremely variable schedule, such that, sure, I can meet you out for drinks at 1am, why not? 

So I got to know the industry over the years, sort of, but from the outside. I haven't lived it, but I've heard lots and lots and lots of stories, and learned a bit about how things work (and how messed up they are). And after a few years of that — and especially after starting to read various industry memoirs and other such things — I also started to realize that many people (most people!) don't know this stuff! And it's actually kind of amazing, just how unaware so much of our society is about the day-to-day realities of workers in this entire, massive portion of the economy. You see this, especially, in a lot of the conversation around AOC and her bartending experience. But the pandemic also lays bare, both how unbelievably difficult (and exploitative) the economics of restaurants are, and how clueless so many people (including lawmakers!) are about it. Why aren't they re-opening, they can now seat at 50% capacity? Because  they can't make enough of a profit to stay open at 50% capacity!!

Ok, but why am I on this soapbox about the industry? (I was intending it to be more meditation than rant, ooops) It's because this slim novella is the story of a chef named Mauro. And so it's (ostensibly) about the industry. I love reading about this world, because there are so many fascinating things to explore about how it works — not just the economic stuff I mentioned (though that is interesting, especially if you're the angry marxist type), but also the nature of the labor (grueling, repetitive, but also artistic), the characters (SUCH characters), the inter-personal dynamics — so much good material! Plus, it's an opportunity to have lots of descriptions of FOOD. What's not to love?

So this book is what happens if you write about the industry, and...don't do any of that.

I don't like being negative about books, especially literature in translation, unless it's already massively popular and really doesn't need more support, so I'm just going to stop there. Not a must-read!

Oscars 2021 round-up

 Ok, I'm clearly not going to watch any more of the Oscars nominees before the awards ceremony and I also really don't want to grade this stack of student papers, so here are some quick thoughts on the movies:

Sound of Metal 

...was my favorite. I love, love, loved this movie. It's a moving story about a man coping with hearing loss, but more than that, it's just a really profound meditation on impairment and disability (impairment being the functional limitation due to particular bodily constraints, disability being the restrictions caused by society that limits accessibility by not accommodating different needs*), and on sound, and hearing. And it uses the medium of cinema in really extraordinary ways to convey these ideas. I don't think it's very likely that Riz Ahmed or Paul Raci will win for their performances, though both are worthy (and I especially appreciated Linda Holmes' point, on Pop Culture Happy Hour, that Paul Raci is the only person nominated for Best Supporting Actor who is truly a supporting role — someone whose presence is there to support the main actor in telling the story. I don't think it will win Best Picture, but I think it should — of all the nominees that I've seen, it's the most creative, compelling, and interesting film.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

It seems obvious to me that Chadwick Boseman will win Best Actor, and I'm good with that. Not only because I'm just still so heartbroken by his passing, and this seems like a proper homage (that should have come so much earlier), but also, it is a terrific performance. Also on PCHH, Glen Weldon noted that his performance crucially captures the character's charm, and that the movie/play simply doesn't work without that, which is a really excellent point. In the wrong hands, his character could just seem like a sociopath, but he really powerfully brings together all the facets of the man's personality. 

I'm also rooting for Viola Davis to win Best Actress, because she is absolutely phenomenal. I think she is one of the greatest actresses of our time, frankly, but this role is particularly fascinating, and she is electrifying in it. Like Boseman, she really illuminates the complexities of the character — diva, rebel, hard-nosed pragmatist, woman wronged. It's so, so good. 

But though I thought they were both outstanding, I didn't love the movie. For one, it felt very much like a play that had been adapted into a movie — it had a static, set-piece quality, and the dialogue seemed theatrical to me. The emotional rhythms felt too abrupt and extreme for cinema — there was a manic quality to the way it rocketed from one intense eruption to another. And as a depiction of racial trauma, that makes sense — it escalates suddenly, unpredictably —but it made the movie feel off-kilter to me. 

Judas and the Black Messiah

I think Daniel Kaluuya will win Best Supporting Actor, and I think he deserves it. What most impressed me about his performance was the bodily aspect — Kaluuya disappears into the role. I literally forgot it was him, repeatedly. I haven't watched a ton of footage of Fred Hampton, so I don't know how true to life the performance is, but Kaluuya's body language and cadences of speech are unlike anything I've seen from him in other movies. It's fascinating.

As a movie, to be honest, I think it's fairly standard biopic fare. What sets it apart is that it tells a story I actually care about, and one that doesn't get enough attention, but I don't think it tells that story in a particularly innovative way, and it doesn't really delve that deeply into the emotional complexities. 

One Night in Miami

I don't know that this will win anything, but I'm holding out hope for Best Adapted screenplay. I'm really pissed that Regina King didn't get nominated for Best Director, because I think she should have been, and probably should have won it. I loved this movie, and thought it was an incredibly thought-provoking and fascinating meditation on social change and the relationship between iconic individuals and social movements. 4 men: a football player who becomes a movie star, a boxer, a singer, and an activist and religious leader. Forget for a moment who the people in the movie are, and consider: what structural role do the people in those positions play? Which does "the most" and how? Now think, too, of what those roles meant then, as opposed to today? And think, who are the emblematic figures of our own moment, and what roles do they play? And think: how are these different men remembered, and for what? I think the movie delves into all these questions, and in wonderfully nuanced ways. And it works, not just because the performances are all top-notch (of the four, actually, Leslie Odom Jr. was probably not the one I'd nominate, but that's really just a testament to how strong all of them were), but also because of Regina King's vision as a director in getting those performances, and getting the emotional register of the film exactly right. 

Minari

Uh... nobody warned me how grim this movie is. I can deal with grim! It's just surprising to me that I haven't seen any conversation about that in the discussion of this movie, which I was thinking was going to be more of a quirks-of-cross-cultural-adaptation story. I cried my eyes out. I thought it was a good movie, but I will confess that I wasn't particularly blown away by it. It was moving, and interesting, and good! I do not dislike it! But I am a little surprised by how much critical acclaim it's getting. I'm glad to see Steven Yeun and Youn Yuh-Jung nominated, and the latter is the only performance in the category I've seen so I'm rooting for it by default.

Nomadland

I am even more surprised by the adulation for Nomadland. It is a good movie, yes. But it's a total arthouse flick. It actually reminds me a lot of Kelly Reichardt's movies. Which I enjoy! But I tend to think of them as being somewhat niche. It's slow, and pretty plotless, and has that same kind of weary emotional tenor — and that same interest in the difficulties of working class people, which I appreciate, though I agree with critics who are frustrated that the movie doesn't really say much about Am@zon and its role in producing that hardship. But I also appreciated its understated quality. Frances McDormand is terrific, and I will only be a little bit mad if she beats Viola Davis. Chloe Zhao's direction is absolutely masterful, and I won't be mad if she wins. But I really have to wonder if this is a pandemic thing, that people are just more willing to sit still and watch and appreciate a slow movie? It seems kind of remarkable to me. Because this is very much a gay cowboys eating pudding kind of movie. 

Promising Young Woman

Loved it. I think Carey Mulligan is absolutely perfect, and I might even have given Bo Burnham a Best Supporting nomination. The performances are really excellent, and, I think, are crucially not too heavy-handed, because it would be easy for many of them to seem like caricatures, but they are just this side of not, while also reminded you that these caricatures exist and play specific roles in our cultural imagination. And that is thanks to Emerald Fennell, who I think absolutely deserves Best Director, and Best screenplay, because really, this movie has to strike such a fine balance, and it nails it. 

I don't want to say too much about the movie, because I think the constant surprises are crucial to its delicious pleasures, but I will mention one thing, which is that I think people who get frustrated because it's not more of a masculinist violent revenge movie are missing the point. There's a line from an excellent interview I read with Fennell that sums it up: "I think so often in these kinds of films, and particularly when it pertains to violence, it is not feasible that a woman commits acts of violence against men in the night. It's not a fair thing to expect. And I think this film is very clear about what happens if you were to try."

I think the movie is really an amazing meditation on rape culture today, and the idea of justice, and it's really fascinating, too, as a reflection on fantasy versus reality. I know some people didn't like it and I'm interested to hear why, but I thought it was brilliant.

Emma

I just saw that it was nominated for costume design and YES. I think they could've given Anya Taylor-Joy a Best Actress nomination too, honestly, she's so great. And it's such a fun adaptation. But having just rewatched it, for sure, the costumes are just so wonderful. A whole mood, as the kids say nowadays. 

That's it, that's all I've got. The only other movies that I really do want to see, actually, are Another Round, Soul, Better Days, The Man Who Sold His Skin, and Wolfwalkers. Point being, my opinions about most of the major categories aren't likely to change much anyhow, though I might have watched Trial of the Chicago 7 or Mank out of a sense of duty. 

Anyhow, we'll see what happens...

*I'm paraphrasing, drawing from an essay by Eli Clare, The Mountain.

Winter in Sokcho, Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated by Aneesa Higgins

Saturday morning I was feeling utterly drained, overwhelmed by all the things I need to do, the multiple books I'm partway through, everything. So, of course, I started reading another one... Winter in Sokcho turned out to be the perfect read for this kind of mood. It's short (yay short books!) but also utterly absorbing, deftly sketching out the emotional subtexts generating the tensions between characters. The novel follows the interactions between a young French Korean woman who works at a guest house,  and an older Frenchman, a cartoonist, who has come to draw Sokcho for his next book. It's not a thriller, exactly, but it feels like one sometimes: there is a clear sense of danger and ominousness, though you can't quite put your finger on why. Is it because of the ambiguities of their relationship? Does it come from her sense of ennui and aimlessness? Or is it because of her tortured relationship to her body?

The narrator's troubled relationship to food, and the way it mirrored aspects of the plot, reminded me of Han Kang's Vegetarian (which I didn't particularly love), and this novel, too, has a kind of detached and impersonal quality. But where that can be offputting in some novels, in this one it drew me in. I think part of what makes it work so well is that it gives you just enough of a sense of various currents of subtexts — the complexities of ethnic identity, food, tourism, historical trauma, family dynamics — which are elegantly figured by repeated, obsessive observations of the Frenchman's cartoons, the swirls of ink that evoke characters, desires, stories, but also drown them in clouds of ink. It's quite dazzling, formally.

For me, at least, it struck the perfect balance in terms of obliqueness; there's an open-ended, cryptic quality to it, but you nonetheless feel all the satisfactions (at least I did) of a plot-driven detective story.

Some Things I've Been Reading Lately (Ginzburg)

I'll spare you my renewed vows to revive this blog, and only mention that I realized that what I post to facebook after every book I finish would actually be enough for a blog post, which is to say, this really shouldn't be that hard. Then again, I just spent over an hour writing those last two posts, because once you get started, it's hard to stop. But whatever. More blog! 

I do want to say though, that a big part of what finally got me to get back to work on this is Rebecca Hussey's wonderful substack, Reading Indie. Rebecca and I have been getting to know each other via twitter (she tweets under @OfBooksandBikes), and our reading tastes are eerily, like really uncannily, similar. Not just what we enjoy, but what we read — I don't understand how it happens, but we are consistently reading the same books or authors. Yes, this is in part because we both like reading literature in translation and books from small presses, but still, it's weird. Anyways, I have so enjoyed reading her thoughts on the things she's reading that the idea that some people might enjoy reading my thoughts on the things that I'm reading started to seem less improbable. My facebook friends seem to enjoy them, anyhow, and it's really high time to start divesting from that platform... 

Yes, I know, blogs are quaint, get with the substack. I'm a dinosaur, sorry. I'm such a dinosaur that I still get dvds from Netflix! And I enjoy it! 

I don't read that many substacks, because so much email, but I have been reading Mining the Dalkey Archive, which is a fascinating story of the Dalkey Archive Press, written by Chad Post (he also runs Open Letter Books). It reminds me of S-Town (I don't listen to many podcasts either, but I did like that one), in that there are just so many wildly improbable, strange, wondrous things going on — but in this case, they're all connected to avant-garde literature and the vagaries of publishing. So it's pure catnip for me. 

Anyhow. I just finished Natalia Ginzburg's Valentino and Sagittarius, in an excellent translation by Avril Bardoni, published by NYRB. You'll rarely go wrong with a NYRB book,* and Ginzburg is always phenomenal. This is two novellas, and they are both wonderfully wry and blunt.

My brother was studying medicine and the expenses were never-ending: microscopes, books, fees...My father believed that he was destined to become a man of consequence. There was little enough reason to believe this, but he believed it all the same and had done ever since Valentino was a small boy and perhaps found it difficult to break the habit.

She's a great storyteller — her plots are full of unexpected swerves, not in a WOAH PLOT TWIST kind of way, more like a wait, what? But the real pleasure is the narrative voice. I inevitably find myself thinking of Elena Ferrante, but Ferrante never comes out ahead in the comparison. If you want it dark and anguished, yes, she's the place to go. Ginzburg explores some of those same dark places, but with less of the torment. If Ferrante is cranked up to a 12, Ginzburg is at a 7 or 8, and that's just right, if you ask me. 

But I don't want to turn this into a competition (good news! we can enjoy BOTH!). The real point is, Ginzburg is delightful: she has a marvelously light touch, and a wonderful sense of comedy.

*It's a strange feature of NYRB books that they always take longer to read than you expect them to. They're not as short as they look! I don't know why, it's not like the font is small or the prose is dense, but somehow, you don't get that thrill of finishing a book quickly. I love a short book. I was super stoked about this list of great short books. More short books please!

Favorite Things I Read in 2020

 I know, it's an embarrassment of riches! I even made *another* photo collage.

Why Art? Eleanor Davis

You should read absolutely everything by Eleanor Davis, but I think this one might be my favorite of her books. It starts off as a kind of lecture about art (with some thought-provoking and humorous meta-touches), and then shifts into this amazing parable that gathers together some of the ideas that animate a lot of her work, namely, a dialectic of dystopian fears and utopian hopes, and a rumination on human nature. Of all her books, it seems most explicit in the way that it sets up those questions while not providing an answer. It's brilliant.

Savage Conversations, Leanne Howe

When the pandemic hit, bookstores closed, and I can't bear to get into all the awfulness that went with that, but one of the things that resulted was that a group of booksellers got together and created a storefront on bookshop.org called The Bookstore at the End of the World. I learned about it from one of the booksellers, Jeff Waxman, who I got to know via internet when I was working at the Seminary Co-op, and who always has the best book recommendations. This one came from his list, and wowwww.
Loosely inspired by historical facts: the execution of 38 Dakhota Indians, ordered by Abraham Lincoln, and Mary Lincoln Todd's testimony, in the trial that subsequently led to her institutionalization, that a "savage Indian" visited her every night and removed her scalp. It's an incredible work of avant-garde theater, on the intimacy of enemies, and the vagaries of historical memory.

Plot, Claudia Rankine

I'm working my way through everything Rankine has written, and all of it is incredible. I bought this one knowing nothing about it, and it turns out to be an absolutely stunning book about gestation, of both art and people. One of the all-time greatest books about pregnancy, definitely.

Mean, Myriam Gurba

I learned about Myriam Gurba from an essay she wrote during the American Dirt controversy, which then led me to this fantastic essay of hers, and then I was at Women & Children First in Chicago and saw this book on display, so I grabbed it. And now I keep trying to make everyone I know read it. Part auto-theory about the queer art of meanness, part recounting of sexual assault and the eventual fate of the man who committed it, part ghost story. It's searing and melancholy and hilarious all at once.  

Welcome to America, Linda Bostrom Knausgaard

I wrote about this for the BTBA blog (and got an email from the translator, who wanted me to know that I was wrong. Yes, this happened!).

Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson

This took me completely by surprise. It's absolutely hilarious, but also emotionally astute. The plot is wonderfully wacky and the voice is spot on (and brilliantly narrated, in the audiobook). After you read (or listen to) it, go listen to this terrific interview with the author on my favorite podcast.

Księgi Jakubowe [Books of Jacob], Olga Tokarczuk

The English translation, by the inimitable Jennifer Croft, will be out this fall! And you're in for a treat. This is a fascinating, sprawling, deeply queer epic of 18th century Poland. Any day now, you can read my thoughts about the use of free indirect discourse in the novel (if you don't have access, email me and I'll send you a copy).

Red at the Bone, Jacqueline Woodson

Another author I'm trying to read all of, and once again, I think this one was my favorite. A story of family across generations, teen pregnancy, college life. Wrenchingly beautiful.

The City and the House, Natalia Ginzburg

I picked this up randomly at the Sem Co-op and felt like I'd made the world's greatest discovery, but now it seems like everyone is talking about Ginzburg. And they should be! She's amazing. I'm buying every book by her that I can find. And this is still my favorite. Who writes epistolary fiction in the 20th century?! Natalia Ginzburg, that's who. And it's terrific. 

Inland, Tea Obreht

I read this as part of a pandemic email bookclub, and those emails got published by the ASAP Journal. The emails are divided by sections of the book, so you could actually read it along with us, if you wanted...

Gorilla, My Love, Toni Cade Bambara

In the heavy days of summer 2020, a friend asked for recommendations of works that center Black joy, and that's how I learned about this book (how did I not know about it before?!). And it's perfect. Effervescent.

The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt

There's a reason this is a cult classic. It is absolutely worth the hype. The struggles of genius! And parenting. It's wonderful.

 

But what about the center box of boxes??? I hear you ask, if you improbably found your way to this post all by its lonesome. Read about it here.

Best of 2020

 My annual Best of list is usually not a "proper" Best of the year list, because it's just my favorites among the things I read that year, not an argument about the best things published that year. This is because I generally feel like I haven't done enough to keep up with current fiction to make those kinds of claims. But 2020 was weird, baby, and it emboldened me! No, actually, what happened is that, first, my consumption of contemporary fiction gradually increased — I mostly consume it via audiobook, using the Libby app — and second, most of the books I loved didn't make it onto any Best of lists, and it pissed me off. So here's mine, I even made you a nice photo collage!

A Silent Fury: The El Bordo Mine Fire, Yuri Herrera. 

I've pretty much committed to reading everything of Yuri Herrera's that gets published, so I dutifully bought this as soon as it came out, despite the fact that it seemed very different from his other books. And indeed — this is a work of non-fiction, a reconstruction of the events of the El Bordo mine fire of 1920, with a particular focus on the decision to seal up the mine while people were still inside. The claim was that there were less than 10 of them, and that they were surely dead already. Days later, when the mine was unsealed, 87 corpses were found — and 7 survivors. Herrera's book is a scathing look at how little the workers' lives are valued. The title is an apt one — the rage is astonishingly compressed in terse, bitter prose. The full horror of the various things he describes really only hit me two days later, when I was talking to my partner about the book. 

    As I read it, I kept thinking of the Soma mining disaster of 2014, in Turkey. The story is not so different (is it ever?) — over 300 people died; just weeks before, an effort to investigate working conditions and safety had been overturned by the government. It was utterly devastating, and everyone was grieving, but in the back of my mind there was also this sense of a weird disjunct with the rest of the world as I wondered, how many people outside of Turkey even know about this, or mourn it?

    I had never heard of the El Bordo mine, or the fire there. I know, there are many things like this that I am utterly unaware of. There is more to say about this, the Angel of History, etc etc. But for now all I really have to say is that I'm glad to have read this book.

 

Temporary, Hilary Leichter. 

This novel is incredibly difficult to describe: to say that it is a powerful meditation on work, what it is for and how it makes you feel, really doesn't capture the wonderful absurdity; the humor; the poignancy of it. It's a marvelous and strange book. I loved it.

 

Memorial, Bryan Washington.

This one made it onto plenty Best of lists, so you probably know the set-up:  two young gay men, one Black, the other Japanese, whose relationship is on the rocks, and suddenly, one of them leaves to go tend to his dying father — the day after his mother arrives for an extended visit. Hilarious hijinx ensue? Not exactly. It's a continuously surprising novel, and a wonderfully nuanced and complex story of relationships — with lovers, parents, friends, across race, across class difference, in the aftermath of hurt and harm, as a refuge and a solace. It's extremely understated, and yet, I was so fully in this world, I couldn't stop thinking about it.  

    I had a really odd experience, because somehow I was reading this at the same time as two other popular books from 2020: Mieko Kawakami's Breasts and Eggs and Michelle Gallen's Big Girl, Small Town, and I would not have expected those three to be anything like each other, but they turned out to overlap in such unexpected ways that I literally got confused, at moments, about whether a particular scene happened in one or the other. There was the vivid depiction of a small after-hours bar in Japan in two of them, which somehow merged, too, with stories of late-night drunken  crowds at the chipper; there were relationships between family members who were very different people, and whose closeness was in part a result of trauma; the presence of passive characters who were positioned as narrating observers, in contrast to the "bigger," more gregarious personalities around them; frank representations of bodies that subverted norms of gender/sexuality; and finally, all three were among the more compelling depictions of working-class life, and the difficulties of poverty, that I've read in a long time. 

 

Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid

I think this technically came out at the end of December 2019 but whatever. It's terrific. It reads like a guilty pleasure — soooo much cringe. But it's also a really smart and nuanced take on race and class, and on viral videos and social justice.

 

Feast Your Eyes, Myla Goldberg

I got so sucked into this book, I could hardly bear to to put it down. An incredible story about women, art, motherhood, ambition, and friendship. It’s told in the form of an exhibition catalogue, and the description of the photographs, and the way they are woven into the story, is so ingenious. I had a good long cry at the end, and just seeing the cover, I still feel a glimmer of that cathartic feeling. It is spectacular.

 

Birth Chart, Rachel Feder

If you were to make a Venn diagram of this book's various interests — motherhood, astrology, Romantic and Modernist literature, forgotten 90s hits — I would be right there at the middle of it. Plus, I'm friends with a lot of the author's friends who make occasional guest appearances. Which is to say, I am, like, the perfect target audience for this book, so OF COURSE I loved it. I loved it so much that I don't know if you will love it too, though I really think it is wonderfully creative, mesmerizing poetry. But if you're trying to decide whether it's right for you, you can start by following Rachel Feder on Twitter: you'll be convinced.

 

A Little Annihilation, Anna Janko

I wrote about this for the Asymptote blog — a really gripping meditation on second-generation memory.

 

Homie, Danez Smith

Beautiful, tender, funny, moving. 

 

Exciting Times, Naoise Dolan

This novel could almost have been co-written by Sally Rooney and Caitriona Lally, it seemed like such a perfect blend of their sensibilities. Is this an Irish Millenials thing? I don't usually make generalizations like that, but I do wonder, a little bit. What I really want to think about, and hopefully will at some point, is the interconnection between avowed Marxist ideals and the resistance to bourgeois heteronormative marriage plots, because there's something really interesting going on there.

    But anyhow. This novel follows the adventures of a young Irish woman who is teaching (British) English in Hong Kong, particularly her romantic entanglements with a British banker (male) and a Hong Kong lawyer (female). It wears its politics on its sleeves, and I couldn't quite decide how I felt about that — they were so closely aligned to my own that I couldn't help but enjoy it a little, even as I also felt somewhat wary of the way they were so openly presented. But given how much time I spend thinking about politics, or discussing them with my friends, why wouldn't characters in novels do the same? Sometimes realism is weird.