Stuff I’ve been reading

Books

Doing a deep dive into the work of Ellen Willis. She was the first “rock critic” hired by The New Yorker, and one of the only women writing seriously about rock music at that time. At least in a major publication. Her music stuff is so good, so interesting. Her career began with a lengthy essay on Bob Dylan – written in 1967 for a small magazine. It got a lot of attention though (and rightly so), and it was this essay that made The New Yorker hire her. But music wasn’t her only beat. A radical feminist – with some quirks, one of the main ones being her love of Freud – she wrote for decades after the 60s about politics, culture, feminism, everything from the rise of the religious right to her deep love of The Sopranos (see again her love of Freud). She attacked class and racial biases, particularly in feminist circles, which tended towards upper-middle-class white girls. Willis came from a lower-middle-class background (her dad was a cop, she grew up in Queens), which gave her a unique point of view. She didn’t quite “fit.” She went on to found the department of Cultural Reporting at Columbia. I am reading two collections of hers, simultaneously:

— The Essential Ellen Willis: This is a collection that starts off with some of her more famous music writing: the Dylan essay, her essay on the Velvet Underground, her essay on Janis Joplin, her essay on admitting she loved the Sex Pistols, her famous essay on Woodstock, but the collection takes us up to her death (in 2006). So there are essays on 9/11, on the Salman Rushdie fatwa, on the rise of the religious right, on her frustrations with the moralistic left. Her work is not easily categorized, and that’s what makes it so great.

— Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music. LONG overdue. There are people out there who – when “music criticism” is mentioned, immediately think Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau, Dave Marsh. Maybe a couple of others. All male. And please: words can’t even express how much I love all of those guys, how much their writing means to me. But she belongs in that pantheon. THEY all think she belongs there (they all knew her, Christgau and she dated for 3 years, they all were in awe of her). She had a wider audience in The New Yorker than the Triumvirate combined. The fact that The New Yorker was giving its stamp of approval to (merciful heavens) pop culture by covering it at all was also radical. At any rate, the obliteration of her reputation (except for those in the know) may have something to do with the fact that she didn’t spend her entire career writing about rock music. Once the 80s hit, she switched mostly to politics and women’s issues. This book is a wonderful correction of the record, putting her into the cultural conversation of music once and for all. Like all excellent critics, you get a sense of her personal taste. The Rolling Stones are her favorite. She grew up on Elvis and Little Richard. She’s okay with the powerhouse female singers of the folk movement, but she gets frustrated with their pacifist-goddess-earth-mother personae. She also wishes they weren’t so self-serious. She wants rock and roll. She wants tough girls, aggressive, electric guitars, sexual ownership. She loved the riot grrrls who came later, loved their irony, reclamation of sexual symbols (babydoll dresses, etc.), all that, but mostly she loved that these women weren’t strumming acoustic guitars or autoharps. They were LOUD. They were filled with sexual drive. (Willis was big on sexual freedom, and the anti-sex strain in feminist circles really alarmed her, and it alarmed her early.) She went to a women’s musical festival in the mid-70s, and pointed out what was good, but also pointed out what was bad (her work is filled with moments when she “breaks ranks” like that, and I say, good for her. Orthodoxy is damaging, no matter what orthodoxy it is.) The collection includes wonderful essays on Creedence Clearwater Revival, David Bowie, the New York Dolls, lots of stuff on Lou Reed (she was fascinated), lots of stuff on her main obsession – Bob Dylan, two awesome essays about seeing Elvis live (once in Vegas, and once at Madison Square Garden), lots of stuff on bands who have now been lost in the mists of time. I adore her.

— Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI, by Robert Ressler. He was a mentor of the dudes who came after, the dudes who “star” in Mindhunter (now the David Fincher series). This is a re-read. It’s about his development of the art (not a science, as he reminds us again and again) of profiling. The murders are so gruesome. Total depravity. But he was heavily involved in profiling some famous killers – John Hinckley, John Wayne Gacy. He interviewed many notorious serial killers, like Manson, Edward Kemper, Sirhan Sirhan. Pretty bleak shit, but right up my alley.

— Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce. I read this a million years ago. I picked it up again in January. I have 100 pages to go. I have decided to read it without any help. No cheat sheets, no Venn Diagrams prepared for me by others, no explanatory essays. Maybe it’s a dumb choice, but I decided this go-around to not worry about “understanding” – and instead dive completely into the SOUND. It’s the language that matters, not the story – there IS a story buried there, but it’s not really important. The “sense” – whatever sense there might be – is in the sound. James Joyce was nearly blind. He had eye trouble all his life. It makes sense that sound would be more important to him than sight. That how one HEARS things is what really matters. Anyway, I’ve been reading about 10, sometimes 15 – depending on how difficult the sequences are (sometimes I only manage 3 or 4) – pages every morning. It’s a book that lends itself to the early morning hours. Like, 1st cup of coffee early. It’s a book about the subconscious. About the consciousness waking, rising with the sun. About going to sleep. And then waking up. I’m re-reading it for a project coming up. I hadn’t planned on picking it up again, but once the assignment came to me (gotta love it when you don’t have to hustle for work. I’m grateful), I was like, “Okey doke, Finnegans Wake re-read comin’ right up.”) It’s been wonderful.

Online

— A beautifully researched essay on Hattie Wilson Tabourne, an African-American woman with an extraordinary career as a hairdresser, under contract with one of the studios during the silent era. There’s even a photograph of her doing Rudolph Valentino’s hair. Hopefully there will be further parts to this essay – the hope is that family members may come forward with more information and context. (Grandkids, great-grandkids, obvi, since she died in 1925). At any rate: I applaud the amount of research done here.

— I would call this essay required reading. It’s by Anna Biller, director of the wonderful film The Love Witch (and also the earlier Viva), and it’s called Let’s Stop Calling Movies Feminist. She put into words some inchoate uneasy feelings I’ve had about the tendency to go back in time and label stuff we love as “feminist” in order to justify loving them. She makes a powerful case and I am in violent agreement with her. I love her take on things in general. If you’re on Twitter, and you don’t follow her, do yourself a favor and Follow. She’s a wonderful historian of Hollywood, and a humorous and smart woman. Also see her films! She walks the walk! I referenced her essay in a piece of mine coming out next week – a piece that has been literally years in the making – I’ve been wanting to write it for 7 years, almost exactly. Why have I never written it before? Too daunting? I don’t know. But Anna Biller’s essay dovetailed into the points I was trying to make perfectly. I know I will reference it often.

— I really enjoyed this essay by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi in The Paris Review, about what watching The Phantom of the Opera meant to her, as a child growing up in Iran.

— I also really enjoyed Priscilla Page’s essay on Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky – which I loved – I saw it TWICE in the movie theatre (almost unheard of nowadays): The Hee-Haw Heroism of Logan Lucky. I’m not sure I agree that Hilary Swank’s return in the final sequence meant she was still circling her prey (although I may be misunderstanding Page’s point). The way I took her return was that she decided to let her hair down and hang out with the Luckys, in particular Adam Driver, because she was feeling sexual curiosity/the possibility of pure pleasure – for the first time in her life. No more Mr. Bad Girl. Anyway, I really loved this piece.

— My good pals Odie Henderson and Steven Boone have a new entry up in their ongoing Black Man Talk series. This has been going on for over 10 years now, and I look forward to every new installment. Their “takes” are often so different, and yet they intersect on so many things. The main thing I love about BMTs is the love of conversation. Discussion. Not just point/counterpoint. Not annoying “debates” where everyone’s opinion is so set that all you hear is “Blah blah blah blah.” They really wrestle with things, and it’s always very lively. Their discussions are all around films with African-American themes and concerns. Or, a discussion on an important and sometimes divisive figure like Tyler Perry. Their latest BMT is about Black Panther. Which I haven’t seen yet – and therefore, I haven’t read their BMT about it. I will see the film eventually. I’ve had 3 rather major deadlines wrestling for dominance over the past month and it’s been hard to keep up with my own work. But I know Odie and Steven’s discussion will be worth it, so here it is: Black Man Talk: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, or Please, T’Challa Don’t Hurt ‘Em