The Friday Article Roundup
An extra edition of the best pop culture writing of the week.
This week, you will get the scoop on:
Send articles throughout the next week to magpiesmedia [at] gmail, post articles from the past week below for discussion and Have a Happy Friday!
Scott Tobias recalls the opportunity to learn criticism on the job at a student newspaper for The Reveal:
When you write for a student newspaper, especially one that’s focused on putting out a print edition every day, you learn things that self-publishing cannot teach you. You learn about the editorial process. You learn how to work for an editor. You learn about writing for a broad readership and thus thinking about the audience for your work. You learn about the hard limits of filling a news hole, when you’re required to hit a specific word count and need to write with economy and punch. (That last one is a problem for writers in the digital age, where space is unlimited and the work can be as borderless as, say, this essay you’re reading.) You learn that you’re not operating on an island but acting as part of a complex organism, with ongoing and ever-shifting relationships within the staff and with readers who are scrutinizing what you do.
At The Line of Best Fit, Joe Muggs argues that culture is not stagnating but thriving off the radar of the mainstream:
These communities are truly radically different in their sophistication, nature of their practice – and most crucially their globalism – from previous online music communities; they make MySpace look like paper fanzines. And that globalising is the first of the huge revolutions of the past decade. Szatan actually touches on this in his RA piece, admitting that “hell, everything coming out of Brazil” alone amounts to “incredible, future-facing music”. Like, YES? A nation BIGGER THAN WESTERN EUROPE has mind-blowing, innovative new sounds flowing like tap water, and that is constantly entering the global music bloodstream? That on its own IS new and revolutionary. And that’s just one country and one sub-section of music – there is infinitely more besides. Come on, think back to 2016: could you have imagined that the global AAA-list of pop stars would include Korean and Nigerian acts or a Puerto Rican singing almost solely in Spanish? Or that South African takes on house music and Punjabi trap would be established parts of the international sonic vocabulary? Be serious.
For the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, Olivia Deng examines an anti-opioid program that prescribes art instead:
“There isn’t a single path to healing, and part of my responsibility is to help create access points that might resonate with different people,” [Town of Franklin arts director Cory] Shea said. “That’s where art comes in. Creativity, meditative activities, and hands-on making experiences offer something universal—everyone benefits from having a moment to slow down, connect, and create.”
Filipe Furtado muses on Disclosure Day and late Spielberg for MUBI:
At its very best, Disclosure Day has a lot of earnest shots of the cast that are packed with emotion that set it apart from most current American movies, moments of privilege outside the mechanics of Koepp’s script. When it works, the film can balance the fascination and horror of its fantastical images. It is also full of awe-filled reaction shots of minor characters that feel far less successful. Shyamalan movies fully embody this belief in images, and at times Spielberg seems satisfied with only illustrating his. There is an initial set of ideas and emotions that needs to come through above anything that happens on set. Images for Spielberg matter in how they communicate, which isn’t wrong but can feel narrow—they don’t break from this more strict and functional need with the abandon that, for instance, Shyamalan does.
Craig D. Lindsey digs into the jazz soundtracks of Blaxploitation films for The AV Club:
Recorded during his experimental, early ’70s “Mwandishi” period—after Herbie Hancock had provided the music for Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup—The Spook Who Sat By The Door score sprinkles some aurally audacious moves throughout the mostly funkafied production. (Since the session players were never credited, it’s fair to assume he performed with his “Mwandishi” sextet, which included reed player Bennie Maupin, trumpeter Eddie Henderson, and bassist Buster Williams.) Interestingly, these moments happen during a couple of recruit-training sequences: one montage has Hancock playing with synths and backwards loops as CIA recruits show off their skills, while the other has rhythmic blips and sound effects going as Black men train in the field.
And for Rogerebert.com, Marya E. Gates speaks with the dirtiest man in Baltimore and beyond, John Waters, about his experiences with the site’s namesake:
It’s a little ironic: I’m doing this interview for the Roger Ebert website because Roger Ebert wrote some of the meanest reviews of my movies ever, but when I’d see him, he’d say, “Hi, John, want to be on my panel?” And I was always so confused. I thought, “Well, I’m a professional, but am I a masochist?” He did one great thing, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” which has one of the most brilliant soundtracks ever. I will say, he gave me a lot of bad reviews with his film criticism. But what did he leave behind? Thumbs up! That’s not enough. And the other one, Gene Siskel, he called me once and said, “John, take me to the set of a snuff movie, I know you know where a snuff movie is.” And he was really serious, and I just started laughing.
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Conversation
What did we watch?
Patrick Willems’ video essay on why streaming blockbusters are so bad is quite good, as he goes into not just the obvious evidence (streamers looking at data and trying to create action-comedies out of what’s popular rather than organic elements) but also material like Large Adult Son/movie producer David Ellison’s Skydance being behind many of these movies and Paramount/other companies selling them because they are shit. One insight is that the Soderbergh remake of Ocean’s 11 has been on Netflix for YEARS and created this very specific template for what Apple, Amazon, and Netflix want to do: competency porn with light tension, comedy, movie stars, and exotic locales, except they are trying to write formulas and not making movies for love of the game. Willems does end with a little hope, namely that mid-budget Netflix movies like Carry-On do extremely well (to their own surprise) and to that end, the new head of movies there is genuinely trying to make smaller, (maybe) better films without huge payouts for movie stars. K-Pop Demon Hunters even forced the company to (gasp) put a movie in theaters for an extended period of time. FYI, my sister and brother-in-law did watch Ghosted and were appalled at how fucking bad it was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6YvkbqAhAY&pp=ygUWc3RyZWFtaW5nIGJsb2NrYnVzdGVycw%3D%3D
The ‘oh of COURSE’ feeling I got when I found out that Ocean’s 11 had stayed on Netflix for years. They keep trying to make a new Ocean’s 11 happen! This explains everything!*
* not everything but a hell of a lot
Same! It sounds like a fringe theory at first and actually makes perfect sense – algorithm notices a particular set of films are popular, tries to ape them ad infinitum (same with Bond and Bourne I assume which is why we get Citadel, Gray Man, etc.)
The Third Alibi – I had never heard of this, nor can I say I knew any of the names here (outside of singer Cleo Laine, who performs a number written by the main character, an West End composer). But this 71 minute early 60s B movie noir mystery is quite good. The aforementioned composer is having an affair with his wife’s half-sister, and when the sister becomes pregnant, the wife refuses to grant a divorce. So naturally the composer plans the perfect murder. But of course that can’t happen. Some really good twists and turns here, and a great mood.
Elementary, “The Five Orange Pipz” – A corporate type responsible for allowing a toxic toy to come to market is murdered, as is his lawyer. Is it revenge by one of the parents who lost a child? Or something else entirely? The usual sort of smart mystery, based on an actual case where a toy was made of a plastic that when swallowed interacts with stomach acid to become a form of GHB (and the title and a small part of the plot taken from Conan Doyle’s “The Five Orange Pips”). Meanwhile, despite agreeing to work on cases separately, Sherlock and Joan are together again, and Joan starts to dig into who Sherlock’s apprentice Kitty is, and as ever human compassion rules the day. Guests include Sonya Walger (Penny on Lost).
Frasier, “Match Game” – Tired of being alone, Frasier agrees to pay for a matchmaker, only for all the matches to be awful. When he confronts the matchmaker, he soon learns that she is starting over from scratch, has a lot in common with him, and is dating someone. But that does not stop him from falling for her. So begins the final romance of the series, and so arrives Laura Linney as Charlotte. And while the set-up is not great, the scenes at the end of the episode are wonderful, as Linney’s chemistry with Grammer is amazing from the get-go. She might in fact have the best chemistry of anyone opposite Grammer since Bebe Neuwirth. Meanwhile, Niles has sympathetic pregnancy weight gain, leading to more unwelcome fat shaming, and he and Daphne hire a dula, but reject her as just a lot of new age crap, and reject natural childbirth as well. I know a dula. She is warm, friendly, loving…and as far from new agey as they come. So this portrayal of dulas as just empty attention seekers is a bit offensive, and I am surprised how readily natural childbirth is dismissed as well.
Doulas are cool, would say my one objection to a natural childbirth (and my sister, who is pregnant, agrees) is that it seems to often be done for the sake of “authenticity” rather than to avoid some really egregious pain and exhaustion.
Unfortunately natural childbirth sometimes takes a hard turn into woo, and I think it’s gotten worse in the past couple of decades as the weird crunchy right meets the weird crunchy left. (I did a lot of research, er, twenty-six years ago? That can’t be right.) I think a lot of women end up seeing unnecessary medicalization on one direction and ‘just trust your body’ nonsense on the other. Anyway, lots of doulas work closely with hospitals and did even when Frasier was being silly about them.
Yeah, plenty of doulas work in the medical field, idk. (I liked the appearance of the death doula on The Pitt and how the show didn’t really mock her, it’s more of a surprise to the other characters and then treated as normal.)
Live music — had a spontaneous night out in an area of town we don’t often get to and it houses a tiny venue that had live jazz so we stopped in. The Jim Repa and Friends Nonet is mostly (all?) Berklee folks and one of the fun things about seeing Berklee profs in the wild is how students come out for the show, a nice generational connection. The band was solid, lots of horns leading to some Latin/Afro-Cuban arrangements that really moved, but the slower stuff really worked for me, in particular a tune where upright bassist Greg Toro took the lead, a beautiful tone on a melancholy line that would’ve worked fine coming from a horn but had extra resonance in the low strings. Walk in off the street, get a gift.
Woo, live music! This sounds great.
Yeah, going to keep an eye out for them now.
What did we read?
I think I am in the middle of four books, as if I am still an English major reading four things for four classes. The only I am most likely to finish first is Those Angry Years by Lynne Olson, about the US between the start of WWII and Pearl Harbor and how various forms of isolationism and interventionism collided. It’s a bit of a messy book, with Olson somehow unsympathetic at first to the notion that no one wanted another pointless war and then suddenly more willing to consider that, and with her clear preference for interventionists who were not FDR (she likes Willkie and Churchill much more). An interesting book but I feel like I need another one to balance this one.
What did Churchill ever do wrong?! (Note, this is sarcastic.)
I have not yet found a balanced book about Churchill, and most say he’s the best thing since King Arthur.
Donald Writes No More – Found this tattered biography of Donald Goines outside a dingy thrift store in my Cobbs Creek neighborhood, which is arguably the most appropriate way to find a book about the great crime writer and documenter of violent, despairing crimes and vendetta in American Seventies ghettos. Eddie Stone doesn’t cite sources so there may be some sensationalizing and fabulization but it seems pretty accurate to Goines’ story – growing up in Detroit, getting into street life which included pimping and petty theft (Stone suggests Goines didn’t really have the heart for being a successful crook), his discovery of a talent for writing while in prison, success with Holloway House, relationship with Shirley Goines, and her and Goines’ still unresolved murder in Detroit. If Chester Himes’ Gravedigger Jones/Coffin Ed books made the ghettos a Boschian playground of greed and absurd madness, Goines’ were a massive cry of despair, empathetic but never pitying, all too aware of the material circumstances that fucked people over. This is all to say you should really read Donald Goines, much as he arguably needed a good editor.
Edmund Burke’s essay on the Sublime which is very good so far, one of those examples of an arch-conservative having real critical insight into art and human perception.
The Cartel by Don Winslow – Winslow’s Cold Six Thousand, a nightmare of violence and bloody ownage where the drug war costs several people their souls, including a psychotic child soldier and main character Art Keller. Some cliches – Keller is hilariously called back to action while living in a monastery, which is straight out of MacGruber – and they do not really matter; the most interesting part of the book might be where Winslow breaks out of machismo to depict Keller’s girlfriend Mariel becoming mayor of her small town and creating a matriarchy that try, sometimes in vain, to protect the place from the cartels that wreak havoc across Juarez and Mexico. It’s genuinely powerful and sad writing.
Man, I need to get on Winslow. And Goines, all I have is an odd proto-graphic novel adaptation of his. I really like the Bosch (painter) comparison with Himes, because while he spent a little time in Harlem he wrote his Harlem books abroad and was making a lot of stuff up, this creates an awesome urban phantasmagoria but it’s not the same as Goines being out there.
His books are awesome and I’d recommend Cry Revenge and Eldorado Red. Crime Partners too. Himes is much, much funnier than Goines too, they each have a sense of outrage about what’s happened to Black Americans, but Himes can look back and laugh as an expatriate living in Paris. Goines doesn’t have that sense of luxury (Stone notes that his Kenyatta character, a sort of Black Panther leftist militant figure, seems like the incarnation of Goines’ growing political consciousness, the recognition that material conditions have to change).
I need to hunt down the Goines biography. He’s a major figure in American crime writing whose legacy has been obscured by lack of availability.
I need to re-read the Cartel books and try to get Ellroy out of my head while doing so. There is such a grimness to the second book (particularly in terms of the journalist subplot) that creates more foreboding than suspense, which is something that Winslow can create very well.
It was grim as all hell, holy shit. Taking a break before hitting the third one.
Flashfire, by Richard Stark
People keep stealing from Parker, and they really shouldn’t! Here, some “gaudy” temporary partners reluctantly rip him off for stake money in their next job, and while they promise to pay him back from the proceeds–and seem to mean it–that’s obviously not good enough. He heads to Palm Beach to take their new score: a cache of jewelry obtained through a risky (and flashy) heist.
I could not remotely buy that Parker would be convincing as a helpless dandy, so I liked that his inability to completely sell the act became a plot point in the form of real estate agent Leslie (this book’s win for best supporting character), who picks up on the lie pretty quickly and offers her assistance in whatever he’s doing, if only it will give her an exit from the slog of the rat race that will never, ever make her as comfortable as the idle rich who surround her. (Leslie also has the great line about how “a place must be just a little déclassé if Donald Trump has even heard of it.”) There’s also another great “time marches on” detail here, in that for all Parker’s pretense and for all his fake IDs, a credit check is enough to dismantle his new identity.
Stark’s gift for deft characterization is as strong as ever here–Conor mentioned the quick portrait of the trophy husband last week, and it’s incredible, especially in the moment where the marriage (which was affectionate, if not fully “real”) collapses in one moment of oh-shit expression, and Leslie, again, is a great character. The plot doesn’t completely click for me, though (mostly because the resolution feels hasty and not up to par), and this is one where Parker himself feels off. I like the Parker/Claire relationship, but I don’t like Parker grinning at Claire and using a good and compelling romantic metaphor about her to Leslie; it doesn’t feel right.
Slightly weaker or not, though, I enjoyed the hell out of this. This is such a consistent series: I don’t think any of these books are worse than, say, a B+.
Firebreak, by Richard Stark
The most internet in any Parker novel so far! (Probably not entirely accurate internet, since it seems like Paul Brock manages to hack Larry Lloyd’s computer without specifically targeting it at all–he just picks up Lloyd’s private files in a general search–but I don’t care.) The setup here is unusually complex, with Parker agreeing to help two recurring players steal some already-stolen masterpieces in part so they can pay out their previous partners, who were picked up trying to pull a previous version of the same job. (Parker will still get a cut from this new robbery, of course.) Meanwhile, Paul Brock and Matt Rosenstein, whom he’d thought were dead or at least in prison, have sicced a hitman on him; that will have to be resolved before he can give his full attention to the job.
I’m lukewarm on that particular return–Stark really likes bringing back past antagonists Parker (erroneously, apparently) left alive, but I feel like I already had a better version of that with Uhl–but the odd relationship that’s developed between Brock and Pam almost makes it worth it, and Parker shrugging off Rosenstein at the end of that section because he’s not a threat without Brock to act on his behalf is a good moment. That’s what you get for murdering your boyfriend, Rosenstein.
Another familiar theme replayed here is Parker going to an organization and threatening his way out of a hit they have on him, and this works much better for me, both because the atmosphere and details of this beverage-shipping front business are fantastic and because it’s handled briefly and with aplomb: it takes one real phone call, delivered in impeccable and precise double-talk, for everyone to decide to let this go. Beautifully done.
Supporting character standout of the book is Larry Lloyd, a tech geek prone to fits of impulsive, emotional violence; he did time for nearly killing the partner who tried to screw him out of his share of their business profits (he’s a more unstable Eduardo Saverin, apparently), but he got out early because he also testified against said partner’s shady business practices. Now he’s trying to reinvent himself on Parker’s side of the law, and Parker takes a cautious interest in this: I get the feeling that he’s distantly intrigued by how someone with Lloyd’s particular skill-set will handle himself in the business, but of course that’s warring with his need to manage a potential threat (Lloyd’s instability makes him a risk, and, as Parker puts it, they know he’s talked before). This is a particularly strong plotline because it feels like it could end any number of ways, and Lloyd achieving self-actualization through murder (another one of Stark’s terrific scenes of sudden violence) and the total severing from his old life and achieving ongoing professional viability through a wild but workable last-minute plan lead to some incredible scenes. He successfully feels like a Stark variation on a Westlake character.
This has one of the best opening lines of any Parker book.
Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke
The ultimate resolution to what’s going on in this makes very, very little sense, but on the other hand, the structure was compulsively readable enough that it did keep me up until one in the morning, and it was nice to have that kind of “can’t put it down” reading experience. What this really excels at is the up-close, psychologically astute look at how a sharp-edged, unkind, smart, ambitious young woman from a rural and evangelical background gradually grows into–and grows herself into–a tradwife influencer, all through a well-realized and well-developed set of reactions and choices that are sometimes petty, sometimes desperate, and sometimes even moving. The family relationships here, all of which get increasingly fucked by Natalie’s decision to filter her home life through constant online performance, are really well-done. The book’s good at being vicious when it needs to be (the moment when Natalie realizes that the batshit homeschooling she’s offloaded to her nannies and her increasingly YouTube-pilled husband has led to her daughter not knowing what an ocean is; the downright horror movie part where she acts immediately to quash her then-sweet-and-not-YouTube-pilled husband’s realization that he would make a good kindergarten teacher) but isn’t satire and makes room for other characters to find their way out of the bullshit when they try (the subplot with Natalie’s sister and mom slowly finding happiness is great).
Basically, all the parts of this that are a realistic novel are very strong, and all the parts of it that are “time travel? a reality show? The Village?” are compelling in the moment but also nonsensical in retrospect and feel grafted on to make this buzzier; so it goes. But clearly I had a very good time nonetheless.
“When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man.” Eat your fucking heart out, Hemingway.
These are really where Parker enters the modern world I think — Comeback is shaking the rust off and Backflash is the flashback. As you note, he keeps getting stymied in new and harder to finesse ways, he needs allies like Leslie and Larry in a way he did not before. And I like the view of Larry as Westlakian, I think Leslie is even more so (she feels like a riff on Anne Marie, Kelp’s squeeze in the Dortmunder books). Multiple worlds are colliding here! And especially in Flashfire, where the Florida setting of the action (as opposed to just Parker chilling at a Miami hotel) feels weirdly off, it makes sense to a degree because it’s those bozos’ plan and not Parker but Stark doesn’t quite have the feel for Hiassen or Willeford territory — he’s better in the cold woods of Montana.
I also greatly prefer Firebreak and I read it before Sour Lemon Score, so the recurrence of Brock and Rosenfield was just another thing Parker had to deal with for me. It is an odd thing to bring back, particularly after the perfect implied ending of Lemon, but Stark does a really good job with following Pam down a different path. And I think it works best thematically — like you say, a big current here is Parker vs. The Internet and it makes sense that a long-forgotten enemy could resurface in this regard. And this leads us to Larry (and if Leslie is Anne Marie, Larry is very much a harder version of Wally Knurr), whose internet skills are undeniable but whose instincts need sharpening. I absolutely love the “self-actualization through murder” he goes through, one because his ex-partner is clearly a shit but mainly because it is commitment to a new way of being that he hasn’t recognized until now, to continue with the Westlake comparisons this is where he and Burke Devore, a man killing to reclaim instead of move on, diverge. And his big move at the end is very much a Parkeresque gambit of real-world verve, not internet trickery; the final scene where the rest of the gang is wary of what Parker will do is great but it is an echo not of Westlake but of Stark, when Parker has a similar moment post-heist in the woods with Anna, Grofield’s new dame. He can see when a person is real and accepts that.
Flashfire of course became the movie Parker, which is almost no one’s idea of a good time but probably looks better after last year’s epic fail of a Parker movie.
Westlake spent much of the 80s and 90s writing about how crime adapts to tech (and vice veraa) with an array of technically adept characters, some clueless around people, and with Andy Kelp’s constant obsession with the next big thing. (Sadly, Westlake didn’t live to show us Kelp trying to get Dortmunder to use an iPhone.) So it was a small step to retrofit one of those techies for a Parker book. (I suspect that as clueless as Dortmunder was with tech, he was actually ahead of Parker on this count. I bet Grofield, whatever became of him, learned all about it, and despised it more than he did TV.)
It is true — Parker the movie looks a lot better next to Play Dirty. But it suffers from the same flaw — I think Flashfire is probably the weakest Parker book but it’s also one of the easiest plots to adapt if you jettison Parker’s characteristics. Remove Claire from the film (and the fucking “code” shit) and it would be just fine, like The Split.
Hollywood cannot deal with the idea that crooks don’t have codes any more than the rest of us.
The Keeper, by Tana French — concluding a trilogy about an ex-pat Chicago cop who moves to a small rural town in Ireland and both affects and is affected by the place. The first book was uneven but the second really sang, this one is not quite as good but still satisfying. A little bit of irritation at a very obvious motive (not in specifics but in overall conceit) being overlooked by our guy for too long but the interactions of the town remain excellent, a haven and a trap, and the book more successfully frustrates on the level of the other lead character, a local who has tried to stay apart from things but is drawn back in and can’t find her way out of the damage. Across her Dublin Murder Squad books French has shown a real skill for tunnel vision, how her characters get trapped in their own assumptions and fears, and this is used to great effect here. Good stuff, I wonder where she’ll go next.