It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. Here are some of the things I’ve read recently – or am in the process of reading.
— I love Imogen Sara Smith’s writing, and I’m not just saying that because I know her. I look forward to everything she writes. Her latest for Film Comment is an insightful review of The White Crow (directed by Ralph Fiennes). I haven’t seen the film yet but now I am very much looking forward to it. It’s about Rudolf Nureyev’s defection from Russia, while performing with the Kirov in Paris. Imogen also reviews a documentary from last year about Nureyev, which I now have to catch up with. I love how she loops in a critique of biopics and their normal failings (I agree with her completely), as well as her critique of how dance scenes are filmed nowadays, with all those frustrating quick cuts. At any rate, it’s a wonderful piece, putting two films on my radar which weren’t there before. Ghost Dance: The White Crow and Nureyev
— I have had David Foster Wallace’s gigantic tome, Infinite Jest
, on my shelf for literally years. I haven’t cracked it until now. I “came to” David Foster Wallace through his journalism, much of which I read as it came out, in real time (in Premiere, and other places). His “diary” of visiting the set of David Lynch’s Lost Highway is, in my opinion, one of the greatest pieces of film criticism ever written. I go back to it again and again, especially if I’m feeling “stuck.” It helps me get un-stuck. If you haven’t read it, all I can say is … DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND READ IT IMMEDIATELY. So I have always loved his journalism, but never really thrilled to his short fiction. Just not my thing. However, Infinite Jest has always been a horse of a different color. Like many other great TOMES of literature, I keep them on a list in my head, as “stuff I must read one day.” I am well-read, obviously, but it’s important to remember that I was not an English major, I did not study literature, I have no background in academic reading. My love of books came from my parents, and then I had a couple of great English teachers in high school. That’s it. Outside of the “canon” books I read in high school (Catcher, Moby Dick, Wuthering Heights, The Scarlet Letter), any other book I’ve read since then has been because of my own self-imposed ever-expanding reading list. For example: Russian literature. I caught up with that all on my own. You could call me an iconoclast. So Infinite Jest sat on the shelf. And finally, about 5 months ago, I started it. It’s so highly absorbing I can only do a couple pages at a time. I had somehow managed to avoid all critique of it, so I am coming to it fresh (or at least sort of fresh: I recognize his style and love his style from his journalism and his personal-ish essays, like “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” and other classics). I knew it was about tennis and AA. Because that makes sense. But other than that: tabula rasa. There are sections I love so much I am laughing out loud, not because they are funny but because of his pure AUDACITY. (Like the lengthy “catalog” in the footnotes of James Incandenza’s entire filmography. It is completely dazzling.) His long section on what AA is like, what Boston AA is like in particular, is a masterpiece. I’m not an alcoholic, although I’ve been to a couple of AA meetings with friends in recovery, and so their commentary on AA is my only real context. The long section on the made-up tennis-war-game Eschaton is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read and it goes on for 20 pages. It gets funnier and funnier with each accumulating detail. I am so glad I’m finally reading it, even though it’s taking me forever.
— God, how I love Dan Callahan’s essay on Jack Benny in Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, a film that has to be seen to be believed. How does Lubitsch pull it off?? You’ll have to read the piece to grok what I’m talking about. Callahan gives good context for Jack Benny, and why his role here is so surprising and effective. Love in Bloom: Jack Benny in To Be or Not to Be
— The fact that a book about grammar and spelling is on the New York Times Bestseller List gives me hope for humanity. Benjamin Dreyer is the copyediting chief at Random House. I follow him on Twitter. And he follows me, but that’s neither here nor there. He has one of the most entertaining Twitter feeds around. His book, Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
, was published a couple of months ago. I had read an excerpt somewhere and it was so compulsively readable I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy. This is an indispensable book for writers, although regular people – not just “grammar Nazis” (ugh, terrible terrible phrase) – will enjoy it too. Clarity in writing is more important than ever now. This is even more true since newspapers/magazines have been laying off their copyediting desks en masse.
— Another piece by Imogen Sara Smith, this time for Criterion. She writes about Harry Dean Morgan’s performance in Frank Borzage’s haunting film Moonrise (I saw it MoMA last year: it’s very difficult to see, so when it was screened there I made sure to go). Morgan is mostly known for playing Colonel Potter on M*A*S*H, of course, but his career goes way back and is a perfect example of what it means to be a good and reliable character actor (the bread-and-butter of the industry, as I’ve often said). Morgan is so touching in Moonrise. If you have TCM, keep your eyes peeled for a screening of this one. Here’s Imogen on Morgan’s performance: Least Wanted—Film Noir’s Character Actors: Harry Morgan
— Anna Burns’ novel Milkman: A Novel
won the Man Booker Prize in 2018, and rightly so. It’s one of the best political novels I’ve ever read. This continues my theme that women are kicking male writers’ asses in taking on Important Topics right now. Think of Hilary Mantel, and her Thomas Cromwell trilogy (still waiting on the third installment!). There isn’t a male novelist right now who can top what Mantel is doing. Or Rachel Kushner’s astonishing novel The Flamethrowers, about … so many things, but also about political upheaval and the rise of homegrown terrorist groups in Italy in the 1970s. I only frame it this way because I get very frustrated in the narrative of “men write about politics and Important Things” and “women write novels about romance and domestic life”. I mean, maybe there’s some truth in that cliche? And I love books about love too. But someone like Don De Lillo has never accomplished what Mantel has accomplished. And I get frustrated on how he is perceived as this important pontificator. He WISHES he has written something as urgently relevant as Stephen King’s 11/22/63. (Yes, King is a man, but still: that’s the book Don De Lillo has been TRYING to write for 30 years. Sorry, I know De Lillo is adored. I am not part of his fan club, though, except for the first 52 pages of Underworld, which I think is his masterpiece. But that’s it.) Much of Milkman‘s power is in its first-person narration. The voice is distinct. You’ve never heard a voice like it. Trust me. Or … don’t trust me. Just read the book. Without ever mentioning Belfast, this is one of the greatest books about The Troubles ever written. The situation in Northern Ireland can be so confusing for an outsider. I am aware of all of the subtleties because … well, I’m Irish and I grew up in a household where these things were talked about constantly, and we would light candles in church for Bobby Sands, back in the day. (I was in Ireland as a child during the hunger strikes. I absorbed the fear of that time through family osmosis. We were very very aware of what was going on. And clearly I’m biased. Welcome to the freakin’ club. I also have good friends who live in Belfast, one of whom is ex-IRA, and spent 18 years in prison, and is now a dissident republican. When I visited my friends in Belfast, he took us to Bobby Sands’ grave, in that hugely politicized cemetery, an extraordinary experience. I linked to Anthony’s stuff recently in my post about Lyra McKee, who was just shot and killed at a riot in Derry.) But what Anna Burns does is give a feeling of the atmosphere of total paranoia, of rigid ideological thinking, particularly in the “republican” side of the conflict. But remember: she never says Ireland, or IRA, or Belfast or Derry. She never names anything. In so doing, she helps universalize this conflict. It reads like a bat out of hell, too. I TORE through it. I couldn’t put it down. Hats off.
— Second from Dan Callahan: I was so pleased to see he had written about Theresa Russell in Bad Timing. I had just immersed myself in Nicolas Roeg’s work for the tribute piece I wrote for Film Comment and part of the pleasure in that project was digging into Theresa Russell’s extraordinary gift as an actress. She’s wild. She’s in the realm of Gena Rowlands, Anna Magnani, Bibi Andersson – actresses who LIVE on the razor’s edge. If you have not seen Bad Timing (Dan’s piece is about that film), you really MUST. Dan is one of our greatest analyzers of acting and performance, and here, he turns his gaze onto Russell. Not to be missed: Too Close for Comfort: Theresa Russell in Bad Timing
