The Friday Article Roundup
A cowardly and superstitious lot? No, the best pop culture writing of the week.
This week, you will go batty over:
Send articles throughout the next week to magpiesmedia [at] gmail, post articles from the past week below for discussion and Have a Happy Friday!
Rhi Daneel Olivaw examines The Dark Knight Returns through the lens of television and the televised Batman for Shelf Dust:
This is an achingly metatextual text. This is not just an issue about almost-but-not-quite Adam West Batman finding that 1986 is too much to bear – it is, as the title suggests, ‘the Dark Knight’ returning, about not-Adam West Batman ‘rediscovering’ a long-forgotten ultraviolent mojo. [Frank] Miller plays all those lurid flashbacks precisely because he knows that the age of the brooding morbid Batman was forty years ago (at the time of publication). He’s not just throwing dirt in the face of the camp and kooky, he’s grabbing that dirt off the burial site of a kind of Batman he was absolutely too young to remember.
At POW Mag, DJ Short marks the passing of Nedra Talley and how her harmonizing helped define the Ronettes:
Nedra’s debut solo album, 1978’s Full Circle, is actually quite good. Her lifelong dedication to the three-part harmony is present to the extent that, if you tune out the overt religiosity, it conjures an idea of what a Ronettes record might have sounded like had the group survived to explore the world of ‘70s funk and pop-soul. The album is produced entirely by her husband, which further negates the notion that the brilliance of any of the Ronettes was due entirely to any Spector not named Ronnie.
Natalia Keogan reviews the hand-biting Gangsterism at Screen Slate
“I felt so rich of world when I had no budget,” says Clem (Marc Bacolol), the on-screen avatar for Gangsterism (2025) filmmaker Isiah Medina….Gangsterism, as a title, is both a description of the characters’ criminal activity and a prospective moniker for a newfound ideology. Medina paradoxically posits that a filmmaker who receives ample funding has less artistic integrity than one who creates in spite of their struggle. “As my filmmaking gets better, my vision will get worse,” Clem chants.
At 4 Columns, Rhoda Feng takes in a new production of Joe Turner’s Come And Gone:
The other residents gather as a shifting ensemble. Jeremy Furlow (Tripp Taylor) drifts in and out with his guitar, his sense of purpose only faintly detectable, like a teenage moustache. Mattie Campbell (Nimene Sierra Wureh), one of the women he woos, more out of propinquity than passion, arrives searching—for her husband, for stability—and finds herself suspended between hope and resignation. Her foil, the wily Molly Cunningham (Maya Boyd), has sharper angles: dressed like a wedding cake (Paul Tazewell designed the costumes), she sets her own terms and refuses to be carried along by anyone else’s plans. And then there is Bynum Walker (a magnetic Ruben Santiago-Hudson), the roots worker whom others describe fussing in the yard with pigeons, marking circles, speaking in tongues, and engaging in other superstitious practices. He speaks often of having found a song that allows him to “bind” people together. This claim hangs over the house like a plucked string, its vibration lingering longer than anyone can quite account for.
And the members of Los Campesinos! break down the dollars and cents (or more accurately, pounds and pence) of their latest tour:
The purpose of this piece is not to explain the situation for all touring bands, though doubtless a lot of the sums involved will be relevant to others. It’s certainly not intended to elicit any sympathy. It’s only to give an honest and accurate outline of the exact situation for Los Campesinos!. We publish this in our continued spirit of attempting to be transparent and honest about the music industry, and perhaps to outline to our own fans why we are unable to tour more frequently and widely. But I do hope that our continued forthrightness on these issues encourages other bands to speak more openly too.
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The Friday Article Roundup
No kings, of pop or otherwise, just the best pop culture writing of the week
The Friday Article Roundup
Out of the mists of history, the best pop culture writing of the week.
The Friday Article Roundup
Hold the phone for the best pop culture writing of the week.
A reference outside the expected frame of reference that stares you in the face, demanding you deal with it
Year Of The Month
A stand against forgetting the fight against fascism, with the clarity and starkness of a rifle jammed into the snow.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Babylon 5, Season Four, Episode Sixteen, “The Exercise of Vital Power”
This is a good demonstration of the show’s wide genre scope; space opera, obviously, but there’s also the obvious noir reference that opens and closes the episode, as well as a big soap opera scene in the middle (actor Jerry Doyle having acted on soaps before and clearly channelling that here), as well as the spy tropes driving his plot. It’s too bad I don’t give much of a shit about the soapy stuff; if Lis was a regular character maybe, or if Garibaldi had a more original backstory. I’m always a sucker for cliche but it has to be delivered in an interesting way, or by being wrapped around an original character.
I’m fascinated by how Garibaldi is divided with Sheridan partly because he believes military intervention is wrong and Clark needs to be undermined from his position through the proper channels as opposed to the military violence Sheridan is using. It’s an odd choice for the hawkish character – possibly indicating some kind of subversion on him.
The Hit
Not optional. In particular, if Dave Shutton and Conor haven’t seen this, it needs to shoot to the top of their shortlists. Terence Stamp is a surprisingly intellectual working class criminal who rats on all his old crew, feeling it’s the right thing to do. Ten years later, brutal hitman John Hurt and his partner, a shockingly young and even more shockingly blonde Tim Roth, show up to his place in Madrid and kidnap him to take him to Paris and kill him. Along the way, Hurt is forced to kidnap Laura Del Sol and drag her with them.
This is an entry in the ‘existentialist criminal’ genre, and it’s a very good one; agonisingly cool from the jump, with a plot that could be told in a few sentences but shots that extend for a lifetime – but, weirdly enough, every shot feels like it goes exactly as long as it should, and the actors are always doing things – Roth, very obviously, because he’s wired and has something to prove, but Stamp makes a meal out of a guy enthusiastically showing off how he’s not afraid of death by running his mouth as much as possible, with an amazing ending for him. Hurt has to sell that he’s a tough guy not to be fucked with and slowly reveal that this guy, too, is terrified of dying and even has something to learn from Stamp, and he pulls it off.
I’ve probably mentioned this here before but my local film festival planned to screen The Hit a few years ago when John Hurt was the guest of honour. They’d filled out all the paperwork to get a 35mm print from whoever it is that hires them out but when they tested it on arrival they’d received Hit! starring Richard Pryor instead. I’ve still not seen either!
Agreed on The Hit. Worth noting it’s an early-ish Stephen Frears film and also looks great.
The Hit rules and I am sure Conor and I have recommended it to you! The Roth aspect makes this very proto-Tarantino, except that’s not the word because this exists on its own, not just as an influence. But what’s really interesting is how this is an adaptation/reworking of another iconic author, the Ambrose Bierce short story Parker Adderson, Philosopher, which is online and worth your time: https://americanliterature.com/author/ambrose-bierce/short-story/parker-adderson-philosopher .
I never knew this. Guess what I’m reading for next week.
I concur on THE HIT. It’s both philosophically serious (and dramatically solemn when it needs to be), but it is also fiecely funny and ruefully bleak in the long run–about a decade ahead of its time.
Taskmaster, “I corroborate”
“And next to me, thirteen stone of meat that has been shaped into the rough approximation of a man by an easily distracted toddler.”
“Sharks predate trees. Surprising!”
“Can a man physically scarring himself for life be beaten by baguette legs?”
“Fall in love?”
“Mm. Not yet.”
[Kumail’s best smolder] “Is it happening now?”
“Ill Chris. Is he better now?”
“I haven’t heard from him much since then.”
“He’s dead now.”
“Of course he sang about antelopes! That’s the easiest bit!”
“No, the easiest bit would’ve been recording a video with sound.”
“Well, it was fascinating. In the context of this show, and medically.”
“I’m Scottish. Vets are Scottish. James Herriot.”
“Go away, American boy.”
“You make me hide. That’s the end of the game.”
“I feel like we’re searching for somewhere to have sex.”
“Does the crystal not help with any of this?”
“I sort of think I should start giving Joel half points every time he does a task that I think he’d be doing at home anyway.”
“You’re one more ring from me starting to chant ‘USA.’”
“It still sounds threatening to me when people chant that.” (Kumail gets the whole studio to chant “Pakistan” instead.)
Best running bit: Everyone riffing on Kumail making time run backwards, complete with faux-back-masking voice. Perfect callbacks all.
Best surprise: You’d think it would be Armando Iannucci making a sheep fart out an ostrich, but it’s actually the episode title coming from Kumail’s wife, who’s in the audience, backing up his story about a game of Sardines ending a friendship they had.
Best Joanna ramble: The neutered guinea pigs story.
Elementary, “The Woman”/”Heroine” – A two hour season finale, though essentially a two parter in terms of film crews and titles. The first half has Holmes opting out of looking for Moriarty so he can care for the broken Irene, but concludes that she cannot be trusted. He does not, however, realize that she IS Moriarty, and the second half of the story is him trying very hard to stop her next scheme. He fails to stop her but thanks to Watson coming into her own, he does catch her. The attempt to do something different with Moriarty is appreciated but it really doesn’t fit here, after a year of one off mysteries that don’t generally have world shaking repercussions. And it’s just not easy to write a character as smart, powerful, and hidden as Moriarty . Thankfully, Moriarty remains generally in the background over the run of the show. Natalie Dormer as Moriarty pretending to be Irene, both in flashbacks and in the present, is very good. She isn’t quire as interesting in her crime lord mode. And a bit of geopolitical weirndess: Moriarty’s plot involves trying to prevent Macedonia and Greece from making peace. Here, that is going to happen by the former taking on the name “New Macedonia.” Which seems utterly silly, but in 2019 the nation was renamed North Macedonia and peace did break out. Not quite “Simpsons predicts the future,” but close.
Frasier, “Analyzed Kiss” – Frasier, by still being nice to Julia (Felicity Huffman), finally wins her over enough that she kisses him. There just isn’t anything interesting here. More of note is that Roz gets a job at another station, or at least is supposed to. I think the season finale will address this. And Niles briefly decides he likes guns till he realizes his new friends are militia. Really no sense at all thst Niles would suddenly be that way but for the gag.
The International — more corporate garbage from Criterion! This has more arbitrage than Arbitrage at least, a giant bank is working deals on world conflicts and backing all involved, very bad of course, but is a pretty dopey movie overall. Clive Owen does what he can but this feels like a really shoddy consolation prize for not being Bond and the cynical financial matters backfire enormously when it turns out the only people with honor are … Italian arms dealers? OK. What this is most known for is a massive shootout in the Guggenheim, as in actually filmed in the Guggenheim, and that part is pretty rad! Very hilarious that a ton of art gets murked and a little disclaimer at the end of the movie ensures us that this was all fake shit not part of any exhibits, the Guggenheim would never. Criterion’s slow slide into TNT-caliber films is not without its pleasures but I need to use them for other stuff too.
Cloud — Criterion bringing the goods! Rewatch of the Kurosawa flick from last year, still weird and creepy and often very funny and surprisingly full of ownage at the end, more to come soon hopefully.
Live music — Pretty Great was pretty good! Boston indie rock, very solid stuff with nice solos, but also well placed as opener because Noun and Gladie were operating at much higher levels. Noun is Marissa Paternoster’s non-Screaming Females band, a power trio that gets noisy and bluesy (got some Laughing Hyenas vibes at points) and has a ton of power, not least in Paternoster’s incredible bellow. But also in structure, the highlight was a song riding a menacing vibe led by the standing drummer’s toms; she then shifted behind the kit and it was a clear “oh shit, explosion incoming” moment and BAM explosion incoming! So fucking rad. And Gladie came out swinging, tons of energy for more indie rock in the Superchunk vein, hooks for days and Augusta Koch’s lyrics of rough perseverance (a bit buried in the mix but oh well, loud rock is loud rock). A ton of fun on a Tuesday night.
Ballerina – The action is not as good as the John Wick films. It doesn’t expand the lore quite as much but does show some of these assassin societies aren’t all ‘good’ having a dark side and a negative impact on the innocent brought into them and the toll it takes, or maybe they should just follow the rules. I still liked this quite a bit, too bad there won’t be another one. The addition of flamethrowers to the arsenal was pretty neat.
Bodkin, season/miniseries finale. I earlier described this as merely solid Only Murders jn the Building plus Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But the finale brings everything together really nicely. Fully bumped it from like a 3/5 to 3.5.
Anyway, the first and last episodes were the strongest. It maybe would have worked better as a movie or even with a little more fluff (like only murders) as a full 10 episodes. I think I end up feeling this way about every netflix show. They should be tighter or longer, either more economical or more ruminative.
A local high school production of Once Upon a Mattress. I could very much see what a vehicle this would have been for Carol Burnett, and the lead in this version had an energy somewhere between Burnett and Vic Michaelis, which means the show was a blast. The poor Queen had her mic come off her chin midway through the first act, but she persevered, and fortunately she could project. The show’s a little dated but it was a lot of fun.
What did we read?
8 Bit Theater, Strips 0980-1010,
“What I hate most about talking to you jerks is that I always know what you’re going to say. Partly because I exist in six directions at once, but also because you’re all stupid.”
Part of this comic’s worldview is that life is predictable, and predictably annoying. There’s this elegant balance it tries to strike, where the plots have to resolve in ways that are both disappointing and surprising and predictable, in that we know characters always fail but don’t yet know why. The current run of strips is losing the balance, though also wobbling back.
“Why is that your answer for everything? How is that your answer for everything?”
This is where the character Warmech shows up, for revenge over the sky castle the Light Warriors blew up, and this always struck me as where Clevinger was getting really bored with the comic. It’s an unnecessary diversion even by the standards of this comic, and it slowed the story to a crawl.
As always, the fundamental four characters keep everything afloat.
“You find comfort in the idea of a sentient being?”
“We’ll land in a field because that is how the pros do it! Also, that’s how the autopilot does it and I’m afraid to turn it off.”
The characters return to the Temple of Fiends, definitively signaling the end is coming because of the whole “returning to the start” thing that’s a classic genre move.
“Could you rephrase your question in the form of not that question at all?”
“Blarghl! I’m a dragon! Or twelve!”
“Impossible! Only nine enemies may be displayed on screen at once!”
“Fuck you.”
“Run.”
“This tells me less than nothing. Do you understand? You’ve made me forget things I didn’t even know.
It’s also specifically what happens in Final Fantasy.
Moving briskly enough through The Secret Hours. But this is a book that after a while I need a break from. It can be intense. And also a bit icky, in that special way a certain character we know and love from Slow Horses can be. (Turns out he didn’t get slovenly and smelly in the 2010s.) Herron is very good at simultaneously satirizing all the things that make no sense about spycraft and governance and showing that the stakes of spycraft are still high and the risks to both agents and society are real (if maybe overstated).
Also starting a book about the Boxer Rebellion that is very good explaining the what but not the why. Especially why so many people believed the claims of the Boxers to have supernatural powers. I really feel like I need much more of an understanding of Chinese culture to get the events.
The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster
A reread of a childhood favorite, inspired by Tristan’s Hero’s Journey essay (since it’s always had one of my favorite examples of the hero’s return). This is as clever and sparkling as ever. It’s jam-packed with useful ideas embodied and expressed in funny, useful ways–the Terrible Trivium, a demon that distracts you with endless useless tasks, probably hits harder now than it did when I was a kid–but it also makes time for occasional great “pure” jokes:
“And now, [the policeman] continued, speaking to Milo, “where were you on the night of July 27?”
“What does that have to do with it?” asked Milo.
“It’s my birthday, that’s what,” said the policeman as he entered “Forgot my birthday” in his little book.
This is still delightful to revisit as an adult–and you get to appreciate Jules Feiffer’s scratchy, character-full drawings–but it remains an especially great book for a child: its enthusiasm for thinking and learning is so genuine and invigorating, and conveyed in such a creative, endlessly entertaining way.
Deadly Edge, by Richard Stark
Terrific. Long opening section here that’s all heist (and an unusual, clever heist that recalls The Seventh: Parker and Co. are knocking over a rock concert while the music’s still playing). This installment has a fair amount of Parker’s strong, utilitarian understanding of psychology, and we get that right from the start here, with him deliberately humoring a touchy wannabe-hero of a security guard. He’s almost always been good at this in a narrow way, but over the course of the series, we’ve gradually seen him grudgingly accept that sometimes he has to give people what they need to get them to do what he needs; it’s a a character evolution that works because it’s still focused on him pursuing his own goals, just leaning to choose expedience over his own irritation. (And when he knows he can skip it, he still does.)
This is all important groundwork for the later parts of the novel, where he has to do some pretty sophisticated on-the-fly analysis of what Jessup and Manny will do, and he needs to draw from both his own experience (he’s a planner, so he can use that to understand Jessup’s planning) and observation (he knows Jessup won’t do exactly what he does, though, because he wouldn’t have Manny along, and Jessup does–Jessup is loyal to an erratic man in a way Parker simply wouldn’t be). Even more than that, it leads to the fantastic moment where he realizes he doesn’t understand Claire’s attachment to the house and consciously figures out how he can relate to her feelings. It’s only about two paragraphs, but it’s an incredibly cool moment. This is a very, very good book for making their relationship feel real and workable, but that’s probably my favorite bit for it. It’s also a strong book for Claire in general, calibrating how much and how well she’s able to deal with Parker’s world when it inevitably intrudes on hers and also figuring out what she wants.
Some fantastic lines here. I’ll single out this one:
Briley had been two things earlier in his life–fat and a miner–but since the nine days he’d spend underground after a cave-in, he’d been neither.
“The Indigo Room,” by Stephen Graham Jones
Another standalone horror short story, wherein an office PowerPoint presentation incorporates some razzle-dazzle that gives one woman a brief glimpse of some of her coworkers suffering from uncanny, shadowy mutilations. Some effective images and a strong, ambiguous ending that packs a punch, but I’d start elsewhere with Jones’s short fiction.
A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939–1940, by Iris Origo
Origo has a much more famous WWII diary that was actually published first, but this one came first chronologically, so here we are. It’s interesting to read someone’s day-by-day experience in this context: one of the major throughlines is Italy’s anxiety about entering the war, and Origo watches as the strong anti-war, anti-German sentiment around her evolves, through a constant drip of propaganda (even though a lot of people claim to not really believe it) and some vaguely Jim Jones-like tactics from Mussolini, into an a dominating contempt for England and a weary, somewhat fatalistic acceptance of fighting alongside Germany. Her godfather is the American ambassador to Italy, so she gets occasional bits of insider info, including the brutal revelation at one point that Italy’s involvement is inevitable because Mussolini, whom many Italians believed was protecting them from war, was offered everything he officially claimed to want and turned it all down. “Is it possible to move a country to war, against its historical traditions, against the natural instincts and character of the majority of its inhabitants, and very possibly against its own interests? Apparently it is possible.”
Origo talks to Polish refugees, who tell of the younger, drunken, coked-up German officers being the worst of the lot, machine-gunning civilians and murdering an old man who let them steal his apples but dared to ask for the basket back for his livelihood. Other evicted Poles survive, but they have to leave almost their entire lives behind: “‘They’re glad to get rid of us,’ he remarked, ‘provided, of course, that we take nothing with us.'” A woman from Alsace-Lorraine lives on in confusion through the changing of national boundaries and tempers: “she was a German in the last war, and now a Frenchwoman, so that twice in the course of her obscure and blameless life she has been ‘an enemy alien’–on different sides! But in 1915, she cries, they let her stay in Italy, and now they have told her that she must go.”
Origo, meanwhile, as an Englishwoman raised in Italy, struggles to get visas so her aged relatives can get out in time as the official advice on when English citizens in Italy should leave goes from “no hurry” to “urgent.” She and her Italian husband go on a brief trip and come back home, only to be welcomed in with a chillingly friendly note about how they won’t be allowed to leave Italy again, not when there’s a risk they might take their money with them.
It’s all written primarily to record what’s happening on a political level, so there’s not much of Origo’s daily life here (she goes over 100 pages without revealing she’s pregnant), but bits of it sneak in, often in haunting juxtaposition, like her husband going to go check the wheat crop right after Mussolini’s announced their entry into the war. A lot of this feels more current than I would like it to.
According to The Westlake Review, Deadly Edge is the first Parker to come out in hardcover. And also the first to Mafia-ize the world of organized crime since The Godfather was on everyone’s bookshelves and the public knew mobsters were all Sicilian. More importantly is that this is the most we ever see of Claire, and pretty much the last we see of her altogether. Which kind of goes with Westlake’s overall career. There are of course women, many quite well written and capable, but I can’t think of any Westlake book where a woman is a lead or c0-lead. This might be as close as we get.
I’m a little saddened that Claire will be diminishing in page-time right after I’ve started being really fond of her. But you’re right–while Westlake writes good women, they’re not front-and-center very often. I think those country music biz books might be an exception, but I haven’t read those yet.
I’m partway through Slayground now (and enjoying it immensely), and we’re getting a lot of Mafia presence there.
I don’t think the country music books are in print. Haven’t seen one in a library in a very long time.
Trust Me on This and Baby, Would I Lie? are at least both in print as ebooks from Open Road (a bit overpriced for that format at the moment, but Open Road puts everything on sale fairly often, which I appreciate, because they have a huge catalog of older crime, mystery, SF, etc., so I’ve accumulated a lot from them over the years).
Claire comes back more towards the very end! But yeah, she’s pretty much out of the original run at this point.
Baby Would I Lie? is country music focused and definitely one of Westlake’s weaker books, the female protagonist isn’t really doing a lot but this is part of the book’s larger issue of being a sequel that feels half-assed, the milieu is the most interesting part. But! The book it is a sequel to, Trust Me On This, is about tabloid journalism and it rules, it is very funny and cynical and the female lead is a lot more interesting if still being generally at the level of a standard Westlake comic protagonist. I wouldn’t seek out Baby but Trust is worth hunting down.
Ideally, I want to read every last Westlake book including the bad ones. Though some of his bad ones are pretty bad. (Weirdly, the first Westlake I ever read was Kahawa, and while it was a good gateway, I don’t feel like I can recommend it since it’s nothing like anything else he ever did.)
I’ve never read a truly bad Westlake, generally his books with significant flaws also have significant good parts (thinking of Money For Nothing, which doesn’t fulfill a great premise but is still a decent read, or A Likely Story, which has a lot of solid humor in a book with some major blind spots). But Baby, Would I Lie is disappointing — it doesn’t just suffer from a sequel’s diminishing returns, it goes in the other direction of most sequels in that instead of amping up stuff that was previously good it actively disdains a lot of Trust’s previous characters and that feels very weird. Very sour stuff.
The real stuff to seek out would be his uncredited porno paperbacks — I bet there are some quality issues there.
“When the phone rang, she answered it in a breathless voice and asked if he missed her.”
Hahahahahahaha, nice.
Phantom Tolbooth is so great, I really love the Humbug in particular — a third wheel who does almost nothing to help out but whose unhelpfulness is never malicious and whose deflated pompousness is essential to the dynamic here. It’s really interesting how the fantasy world here is essentially based on a school curriculum — reading/writing, arithmetic, arts, detention — but instead of having the unsavory instructive whimsy of Schoolhouse Rock, where education is the point, it actually does educate and rely on education through story and character and language and all the stuff that makes reading pleasurable. I’m with you on it being one of the most satisfying examples of the Hero’s Return and under the surface of Milo ready for more adventures is the idea that they can be found in another great book.
And FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YEAH Deadly Edge! I re-read this earlier in the year for the first time in at least a decade and probably two, and I had forgotten how much it rules. That lengthy opening heist is not silent (Westlake’s cranky disdain for rock music is pretty funny) but it is Rififi-esque in detail and tone, incredible shit. And then the rest of the book maintains that high, one thing I had not forgotten is the “dinner” scene later on, where Stark veers hard into full on horror. I like the comparison to The Seventh, there are echoes here of a successful (and boss) heist undone by psychotic randos but where The Seventh opens with Parker’s lady of the moment killed Deadly Edge’s focus on Claire provides a different dynamic and a stronger pull on Parker. Rare Coin Score sets the terms of their joining but this is where their relationship is truly defined and Parker’s recognition of what he doesn’t understand and how it does matter to Claire is so good. Claire’s insistence on cleaning up at the end is her own intractable will in service of a place and her refusal to be moved is ultimately a complement to Parker’s refusal to be controlled. They are both claiming and giving up something here.
Hell yeah to the legitimate horror of the dinner scene. Manny repeatedly stabbing at Morris’s face with the fork (“I’m eating! I’m eating!”) could be straight out of Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Claire and Parker really do feel very well-balanced in this. He comes to recognize the ferocity with which she’s defending her territory, and he works with that–I like how it factors into why he deliberately leads Manny and Jessup so far from the house–and she comes to fully understand the risk while also defining what she’s going to go hold on to despite it. It makes sense that this is also the book where she starts being fine with hearing about his jobs after the fact.
As you know, Bob, there are no true Parker adaptations but I’ve come around to the idea that if they have to be altered for the screen, the Claire-heavy books offer stories that are more amenable to the movies. Not exactly Powell and Loy in the Thin Man movies (although speaking of rejiggered adaptations…) but “couple navigating relationship amid cool crimes” is pretty solid if not straight Parker. Rare Coin Score, Deadly Edge and a later book — or books, that last would need a fair amount of tweaking on the plot front while Coin and Edge could mostly stand as is with some general adaptive trimming — would make for a very solid trilogy of sorts.
As elementary school children, we built a cardboard Tollbooth just inside the door of our classroom. We all loved that book.
The Girl Who Was Plugged In, by James Tiptree Jr. – Proto-cyberpunk novella about a deformed and disabled woman recruited to remotely inhabit a manufactured body designed to be beautiful, famous and desirable in a world where megacorporations use influencers to push their products. Life and entertainment are commodities where bodies are brands, desire is manufactured and authenticity is sold at high prices. There is the image projected to the world and the person behind it living with the guilt and consequences. The big themes for Tiptree are identity, obsession and performance: who gets to be seen, who doesn’t, and the meatgrinder of society, entertainment and corporations chewing up and discarding both. The novella has the added layer of Alice B. Sheldon herself writing under a male pen name, hiding her identity to be taken seriously in the male-centric SF field. The narrator is very sarcastic and lurid talking directly to the reader while making the story very uncomfortable. The satire is vicious but also emotional and tragic. It feels current not because of the tech or that it feels like early cyberpunk, but because of the psychology. Tiptree understood decades early the humiliation, loneliness and the need to be wanted in the age of influencers and Tik-Tok.
This is a great one. I love Tiptree’s short fiction, and I was surprised but pleased to see this was getting an adaptation that will hopefully point more people towards it.
Oh, interesting. It does seem written for this time. Looking forward to that. Hopefully it’s from Apple.
I need to revisit this, I think it’s in that almost Beat-influenced breathless late 60s sci-fi style and that can be a bit much for me. But Tiptree is great in general, I know this from the Warm Worlds And Otherwise collection and that has some all-timers, and the original introduction by Robert Silverberg is essential in its own right for how wrong it is and how much it embodies the male-centric SF field.
I love Silver Bob, but that wasn’t a good look. When he learned the truth, “You didn’t fool me; I fooled myself, and so be it.”
Some Borges short stories, mostly from Labyrinths. A fun thing about latin american magic realism is that as a vulgar anglophone I keep expecting a turn to genre fiction. There’s enough fantasy, sci-fi, and horror that I keep waiting for the turn. In the next paragraph this guy’s going to reveal himself as lovecraft or king or bradbury. Coronel Aureliano Buendia is going to finally crack the secrets of Alchemy and summon Quetzalcoatl to defeat his enemies, or melchiades will reveal that actually he was a cosmic devil clown all along feeding on the psychic pain of Macondo.
In Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, our narrator discovers encyclopedias from another world, describing a country whose existence has been excised from our own. Or a conspiracy to hide that world. Or a conspiracy to make it real. It doesn’t take the turn to genre fiction though, leaving it as an exercise in grammar and memory and reality.
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote is hilarious, but also thought provoking. The idea here is that in fin de siecle france a guy gets the idea to rewrite Don Quixote. He’s not trying to improve it or edit or alter it. He just literally rewrites it exactly as Cervantes did, but the same words and ideas in a different context mean different things.
Tlon produced this reddit post, which is (unintentionally) hilarious about someone trying to track down a fake cite from a footnote in the story. https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueLit/s/elTlOplI7L
And this good reads review: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13481515-a-general-history-of-labyrinths Which reviews are in in the joke, and which are bots? An AI printer has not started selling it on amazon yet at least.
That Los Campesinos! breakdown was fascinating. I didn’t know how hard bands were hit by touring costs (but good on them for that ticket pricing), and it’s really interesting to see exact numbers + all the logistics that go into setting all this up.
They seem like such a laudable band for their stance on ticket pricing, accessibility, calling out unfair practices etc. I’m genuinely a bit annoyed that I don’t like their music very much because I really WANT to be a fan, haha. Although I’m seeing them support Super Furry Animals in July so maybe they’ll win me over yet.
As someone who has been going to shows for a long time, I’ve been surprised by how much clothes cost now — $35 may be cheap I suppose, but it’s sure not what I remember for T shirts back in the day. But it’s also a necessary moneymaker (and I loved his aside about how he could tell quality of shirt and thus profit margin immediately, I’d read an article on that alone). But yeah, this is essential reporting, as noted in the opening of the piece there are a lot of general handwringing articles about this but no one is sharing the actual numbers. Those transportation costs!