The Friday Article Roundup
A catty roundup of great pop culture writing from the past week.
Forgive a sleep-deprived FAR of being a little snide about:
No terse things to say about the wonderful Casper who contributes this week! Send articles throughout the next week to ploughmanplods [at] gmail, post articles from the past week in the comments for discussion, and Have a Happy Friday!
If you haven’t already, drop whatever you’re doing and read this charming as hell Hollywood Reporter actors roundtable where Magpie favorite Walton Goggins holds court with other favs Diego Luna, Adam Scott, Jeffrey Wright! Also Eddie Redmayne and someone named Cooper Koch:
GOGGINS Oh, I’m just leaning in to it with a childlike abandon. I suppose some people would take the opportunity to redefine how people see them and maybe become a little more aloof or a little more cool. I’m just leaning more in to who I am as a person, and I’m not walking into it, I’m fucking running straight at it. (Laughter.) And, yeah, I’m getting to read some really cool things now, but the work doesn’t change. The attitude doesn’t change. You don’t change. I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing for 30 years. And I’m still filled with anxiety and I can’t sleep the night before a job, but at this stage in my life, I know that once I’m there, I’ll figure it out. And that’s a place that all of us can get to, that we will get to.
None of you punks seems able to stop talking about Andor, so here’s an interview with costume designer Michael Wilkinson about the costuming by Maggie Lovitt at Collider:
I think what’s central to this idea of worldbuilding and establishing palettes for different planets is the idea of working with a production designer and really looking at what each of these cultures stand for. What are we saying from them in our entire story? And how is that different from another planet? So, Luke Hull, the production designer, and I sit down, we talk about what the planet represents, and then we go right down to basics. We’re like, “Well, what materials are available to these cultures to build their buildings, to make their clothing? Where do they come from? Is it very high tech? Is it very rustic? What are these people’s beliefs and cultures? How do they feel about each other? How do they want to portray themselves to other people? What climate do they live in?” So, all of these things affect textures, colors, and materials.
At Paste, Tim Grierson talks to Jonathan Gould about his new book about the Talking Heads with the oh-so-great title Burning Down the House:
I love the fact that while they were preparing to make [Stop Making Sense], Rob Reiner was preparing to release This Is Spinal Tap, which to my way of thinking put an end to that whole genre of rock performance documentaries. It’s very hard for me to watch a standard rock documentary in the aftermath of This Is Spinal Tap—it threw off all of the affectations. But the affectations that [Stop Making Sense] threw off were the affectations of authenticity. Talking Heads began with this commitment to throwing off all affectations—and then, at a certain point, as David Byrne got more deeply and deeply into performing, he came to understand that authenticity is a pose. It may be the greatest pose of them all. Stop Making Sense gives itself over totally to the idea “This is a performance, this is theater, this is a show. We’re not going to try to convince you who we are or what it’d be like to have a drink or a joint or a cup of coffee with us. This is just what we do.” There’s a kind of purity to the aesthetics of it, which has weathered extraordinarily well.
The staff of The Defector puts together a summer reading list, but one that doesn’t require the book to be new and categorizes recommendations very specifically. Also unlike other reading lists of major publications, all of the titles refer to books that actually exist:
When It’s So Hot You Can’t Leave Your House and Have to Sit in Front of the AC: Easy Riders, Raging Bulls – Peter Biskind What better way to ignore a hot summer day than to drown yourself in the X-rated exploits of the film industry at the end of the studio system and the beginning of a youth movement? Biskind’s book is full of great gossip, deplorable behavior, and egos absolutely run amok. And drugs, so many drugs. It’s the best kind of summer read.
What calms us down? Some nice Pride Month content, like Steve Erickson’s article at Crooked Marquee a-boot an unsung Canadian landmark of queer cinema, 1968’s Winter Kept Us Warm:
The first English-language Canadian film to screen at Cannes, Winter Kept Us Warm defies stereotypes about gay men’s lives before Stonewall. Depicting a college student who falls in love with his male friend, it does keep their exact relationship inexplicit, while expressing it as something larger than subtext. More surprisingly, it avoids the notes of desperation and tragedy still common in films about queer men. Its protagonist goes through a fairly manageable degree of loneliness and repression, without risking the destruction of their lives. Made for only 8,000 Canadian dollars by a 22-year-old director, Winter Kept Us Warm sticks to campus life, except for a few scenes at Toronto’s nightclubs and streets. Many scenes play out without dialogue, as the dancing vibraphones of Paul Hoffert’s score plays out over the images. The new 4K restoration looks crystal-clear, but the soundtrack remains muddy in places. Still, the film’s modest scale and meat-and-potatoes sensibility were a perfect fit for the resources with which it was made.
About the writer
C. D. Ploughman
The weary Ploughman is a writer and filmmaker, focusing these days on documentary and educational projects. He obsesses over movies with his very patient wife and children.
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The life and career of a man who found the extraordinary in the ordinary.
The Friday Article Roundup
An assembly line of this week's pop culture writing from around the Internet.
Lunch Links
State of the art special effects, little attention paid to plot - what's changed over the past 120 years?
And It is a material presenter of this week's pop culture writing from around the Internet.
A straightforward documentary introduces the Sally Ride we knew - and the one we didn’t.
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What Did We Watch?
Death Valley, episode 1 – another BBC “cosy crime” miniseries, figured I might as well give it a go after thoroughly enjoying Ludwig. This one has another unlikely crime-solver – Timothy Spall playing a retired actor whose famous role was as a Poirot-esque sleuth – getting enlisted by the real police force to help… well, solve crimes. It doesn’t seem as well set-up as Ludwig but Spall is having a lot of fun, and again it’s only six episodes so I’ll probably stick with it. This is the level my brain works on these days, apparently.
May have to check this out. As more people should say, “You had me at Timothy Spall.”
I internet-searched it just now just to make sure I was remembering the title right and apparently episode 3 was “very controversial” so now I’m excited for that!
Timothy Spall is definitely the highlight so far. I’m not sure the show is very interested in explaining why an actor who played a detective would be better at solving crimes than a trained policewoman – and I’m not sure it’s very fair on her character to suggest that she couldn’t do it without eccentric assistance? But I’m not averse to a slightly sillier take on the genre.
This has been in the top banner spot on BritBox for the past two weeks or so. I’ve been putting it off as I’ve been burned recently with a few “cozies”. I’ll give it a shot.
I’m only at “cautious recommendation” so far so definitely don’t want to overhype it. It’s really hot here at the moment and I’m happy with some fairly easy-going entertainment!
This sounds a lot like Lookwell!
Haha yeah, very similar premise!
Finished The Rehearsal S1 which gets increasingly personal and even bleak as hell, making a singular, emotional case against hiring child actors, or at least ones below a certain age. There’s a world of difference between 6-year-old Remy’s transparent, honest non-acting* and Liam’s 9-year old, Disney kid, plays the freaking violin style, and the “fictional” Nathan by the end is confronting the contrasts between authentic and inauthentic**, replicas and reality, in some of the weirdest ways possible, including one visual gag that made me laugh my ass off. As close as we’ll get to a TV version of Tom McCarthy’s novel Remainder, tapping into similar levels of social and narrative horror but with a slightly less frightening protagonist.
* Couldn’t decide if Amber is a horrible mother or a well-meaning one who has traumatized her son.
**Angela is an anti-Semite and kind of insane, even if she’s in stubborn denial about these facts, but correctly calls out “Nathan’s” rigorous control over the rehearsal which ultimately cut her out of the experience.
The X-Files, “Shadows” and “Ghost in the Machine”
“Shadows” is unremarkable but reasonably entertaining, with Mulder and Scully investigating a protective ghost safeguarding his former secretary (it amuses me that the episode goes out of its way to make it clear that it’s because she reminds him of his long-dead daughter: no hanky-panky here!) and, on the way, dealing with a corporation aiding international terrorists. When I spell it all out like that, it’s kind of remarkable that this episode coheres as much as it does. Some good process–I like Scully insisting they do the work to prove Howard Graves is actually dead–and a couple good jokes. Mulder support Elvis still being alive.
“Ghost in the Machine” is way too blatant in its 2001 and Demon Seed nods–I know HAL, COS, and you are no HAL–but Wilczek’s arc as a programming genius having to face down moral responsibility is very traditionally satisfying, with a little frisson of unease at the end when Deep Throat implies that under enough pressure, Wilczek may cave and recreate the program for the government after all. I like that better than the more obvious stinger of COS coming back online. Also, Mulder and Scully’s old pals at the FBI trying to use them to advance their careers apparently never goes well. At least Donal Logue got out alive!
Just looking back at the rating spreadsheet that I made when I went through the X-Files (I am so cool) and Jersey Devil and Shadows were two of my lowest scores of the whole run. My ratings are all over the place for season 1, I found the weakest early episodes to suck in a way that not much of the later stuff does, but at the same time the wild swings between early classics and “we’ve not quite figured it out yet” was more fun than the later seasons where they were reliably decent but rarely great.
I liked Shadows a bit more because I love dated computer nonsense.
An X-Files episode ratings spreadsheet, but assembled by someone with a band, feels like exactly the level of cool this website should aspire to, honestly. (Or at least the only kind we can hope to attain.)
I just wish I’d kept the comments for (most) episodes that I wrote for Solute comments, because my memory is awwwwwwful.
Andor, “Who Are You?”/”Welcome to the Rebellion” – More at length in Capt Nath’s Sunday TV Spectacular. But the former is as good as this sort of thing gets, on a par with “One Way Out” if more grim. The latter is quite good but was going to be a letdown after the former, plus there were some discussion related to character arcs that I don’t think are great.
The FIlm Crew, “Giant of Mararhon” – After MST3K came this attempt to resume riffing from Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy, that only lasted four installments before the move to RiffTrak. The gags are more off color, and unfortunately this French/Italian sandals and swords epic leads to way too many poorly considered gay jokes. But a lot of the riffs are solid. The movie itself, sorta kinda about the Battle of Marathon and starring Steve Reeves, is not good but it’s also a lot better than the examples of the genre we saw on MST3K. Probably because the initial director was Jacques Tourneur and the replacement was Mario Bava.
Kojak, “No License to Kill” – A hitman tries to kill someone at a Bronx golf course (yes, there are golf courses in the Bronx) and because this hitman once killed someone Kojak was protecting, he has himself foisted on the head detective in the Bronx, Kenneth McMillan. The plot is a bit jagged and contrived, but the interplay between Savalas and McMillan is great, and it’s really a fun idea to have Kojak play off a detective who is just as competent but more dogged than brilliant. And we get a nice finale set at the backlot version of the Feast of San Gennaro.
Frasier, “The Kid” – Roz copes with learning she’s pregnant. Which includes letting the 20 year old barista who is the father know. And feeling the weight of having to be a single mom. I am not entirely sure why the writers decided the dad would be so young other than to make sure that it made sense for us to never see him again. The last scene, with Frasier assuring Roz it’s going to be worth it, is quite touching. (And if you are wondering, Roz decides immediately she isn’t getting an abortion and there’s no discussion. I suppose this show would not the best place for that debate, but TV characters in general almost never have or even ponder abortions.)
I only watched a little of Parenthood but I liked that it was extremely matter of fact about one of the teen characters getting his girlfriend pregnant, his sister lends him the money, and she gets an abortion. It’s sad but also clearly the right choice and there isn’t much moral hand wringing in my memory.
Goldfinger (1964)</strong
My history with the Bond franchise is….limited. My first Bond was Die Another Day, and then I watched a few of the Craig films. I never went back, though I’ve seen the Oscar montages like everyone else. Well, an internet retailer had a box set of every Bond film (except No Time to Die) on blu ray for $65, which feels like as good an excuse as any to try the franchise for real. And I started with the most famous name of the bunch. The film is iconic for a reason. It manages to blend Q’s gadgetry with simple fisticuffs perfectly. It’s cute (shout out to the ticking clock stopping at 007), but not too cute. The opening scene of Bond planting a bomb on some mission we’ll never really know about without any dialogue being spoken is incredible. Director Guy Hamilton likes to hold a shot long enough to make me happy, and when there’s no need for dialogue, there’s no dialogue. I know they’re not all like this, but man this was a good entry point into a deep dive.
M*A*S*H, Season Two, Episode Four, “For the Good of the Outfit”
This is the first strong episode of this season – Hawkeye learns a town was bombed by the US and agitates for accountability. This is interesting in that we’re back to fighting the System, but with a little more nuance; Major Stoner, the agent who investigates, initially acts pleased that this has been brought to his attention so it can be fixed, pacifying Hawkeye until he discovers they’re blaming the enemy for it. Even the discovery that they’re spending millions to rebuild the town isn’t enough to quell his outrage; he wants accountability.
M*A*S*H is, famously, a leftist show, and I feel this is a basic expression of a specific element of leftist morality, reaching across the spectrum of anarcho-communism to the liberalism M*A*S*H sits in. It is explicitly not enough that the army spends millions to repair the town; Hawkeye wants a clear apology and admission of guilt. Obviously, there’s elements of responsibility in conservative thought, but especially in America, conservatism is generally about downplaying social responsibility to one another.
I wouldn’t quite put him on the level of thought police, but to Hawkeye, it’s not enough that things be pragmatically dealt with; a situation must be interpreted correctly. It’s interesting to square with his and the show’s general morality; it’s a fascination and delight with the way people can be and think – even people like Frank – coupled with a bullet-like intense focus on enforcing a good system. It’s actually not too far outside one element of NCIS, where a Good Cop can be anything so long as they’re a Good Cop.
Stoner in particular is one step closer to the show recognising that good people can exist with the System of the army; he at least initially comes off as a good guy, and indeed how most professionals I’ve met come off, where the existence of a problem or mistake isn’t grounds for anger or panic, but just a mechanical error to be rectified – even an opportunity. Meanwhile, Clayton comes off a sleazy paternalistic figure, but he does come off sincere in his convictions (he claims people are pressuring him just as much as he’s pressuring Hawk and Trap). To put it another way, we’re one step closer to Colonel Potter, the decent regular Army man.
McLean Stevenson is on fire this episode; I love that he actually tells as many jokes as Hawkeye, but it comes from nervousness rather than amused detachment. His high point is being drunk off his tits during the climactic meeting, dropping in smartass comments. This also has multiple examples of Hawkeye flirting with Frank – well, flirting with him once and chasing him down at the end, but the fluid sexuality is there. This also has the famous “Major. Major. Colonel. Major. Major. Major. Well, I think we’ve made a major breakthrough.” scene.
Biggest Laugh: Hawkeye has angrily stormed in and told off Henry for being spineless, accidentally breaking one arm of Henry’s collectible doll in the process. When Hawkeye manages to call in General Clayton, Henry starts yelling at him.
Henry (yelling): The General’s on his way!
Hawkeye (completely calmly): You broke the other arm.
Henry (yelling at exact same tone): And I broke the other arm!
Babylon 5, Season Two, Episode Fourteen, “There All the Honour Lies”
Or, “Lennier’s Owns Everybody’s Asses”. This is a rare case of the show chasing obvious thematic unity, and even then, it’s a fairly rich episode in ideas. The basic idea of a terrorism-like faked assassination attempt is right up this show’s alley and very well pulled off; Lennier seeming to cover up the whole thing owns hard, and somehow the exact opposite reveal owns just as hard, because he has a very clear motivation – protect the clan – and acts without fear to get it. Bill Mumy’s performance lives up to this – he’s almost callously indifferent to the motives and feelings of the guy he’s covering up for. Like, I’m doing your dirty work, dude, because someone has to.
Meanwhile, Vir gets a moment of sympathy, and I think it works – Steven Furst is not a good actor* but he’s at his best when Vir has just given up all pretense. Londo ends up protecting him out of honour, exactly as Lennier does for his people. Makes this a moment where I’m genuinely curious where the show is going to go with all this in the “sentient life is all one big family” thing – how do you square the difference between family and the universe?
*There’s a moment where he’s basically trying to do this moment from Always Sunny, and it doesn’t work at all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-KkrmmKj6w4
There’s also a great subplot with Kosh; he and Sheridan have bizarrely great chemistry, and the subplot is a rare case of mysticism-for-the-sake-of-mysticism that works for me, mainly because the imagery is genuinely eerie enough, right down to it taking place in a tunnel under Down Below. It reminds me of the tunnel towards the end of The Getaway, of all things, though of course it ends much happier.
Spiral
A fairly weak film; even by the standards of a Saw film, the plot is ludicrous and requires the villain to be omnipotent, and even by the standards of Saw, the characterisation is on-the-nose and dumb as hell (Chris Rock’s character is simply incapable of deescalation). Rock’s performance is borderline embarrassing – he is definitely in the hands of a director who isn’t bothering to rein him in. Most strange of all, the kills seem just about tossed off and indifferent, where even the faux-Jigsaw sounds like they’re going through the motions reading the puns. Still, this has the severe advantage of having something to say about police brutality, and it does look pretty snazzy.
The Accountant2 – The accounting doesn’t quite balance the books by the end resulting in a loss of net worth of the original investment. It works best at being a sociopathic Rain Main buddy comedy with its pro killer bros, the speed dating and adopting puppies in between hit jobs. But the human trafficking plot with no memorable villain and pedestrian action caused me to lose interest. Jon Bernthal has his usual Bernthal-isms that have started to grate on me. Also, it feels like Affleck has put on a heavier Affleck to his voice. It’s much more heightened here than the original. I liked how it expanded the universe with Affleck’s Barbara Gordon/Oracle partner assisting him more with her group of children with advanced computing skills. But the plot is so convoluted. I was as confused by the numbers at the end as I was in the busy first act. Nothing added up. Maybe a spreadsheet would have helped. But there isn’t one spreadsheet in the film, not one.
Singles – A grungy Pinterest board of a specific time and place. The music is still great. The screenplay is still smart as well with its story of thirtysomethings examining their dating habits and personal growth, with them coming to realize whether their relationships align with who they are—or who they used to be. I like how some of the conversations are edited parallelling or contradicting each other. There are some good subplots like Sheila Kelly’s that are quite funny. But Matt Dillion just doesn’t cut it as a member of Pearl Jam. He seems uncomfortable in the role. He would have fit better in Airheads. My crush on Bridget Fonda is still there.
Glengarry Glen Ross, Palace Theatre – Well, we had a great time. This particular cast certainly knows how to bring out the comedic side of the play. I have to cite Bill Burr here first because he’s a pitch-perfect choice for Dave Moss. (Wild to read the stories that Nathan Lane, who was originally set to star as Levine, insisted on casting Burr as Moss as part of his conditions for doing the play, even though they’d never met. He was right.) Bob Odenkirk’s desperate-salesman tone with Shelley Levine I would even say is more Mr. Show than Better Call Saul (the nervous chuckle is straight from Van Hammersly). One of the most interesting contrasts in performance is Kieran Culkin, who plays Roma very differently than Al Pacino did – he’s not an intense guy who’s promising to change your life; he’s a guy who doesn’t give a fuck, knows he can afford to not give a fuck, and knows that alone is enough to intrigue a mark who wishes he didn’t have to give a fuck. If Pacino’s Roma is a tornado, then Culkin’s is a beach.
I don’t want to shortchange the rest of the cast, either, but those are the main performances I wanted to highlight. (John Pirrucello – Barry, Twin Peaks: The Return – plays Lingk, which I didn’t realize and was a pleasant surprise.) All in all, we had a really good time, although I’m no theater expert.
I feel like I need to write a story now just to conceive of one character as a tornado and the other as a beach and see what happens.
Now I’m picturing Vincent Hanna giving Igby Slocumb the “she’s got a GREAT ASS!” speech.
Some bonus reading, since none of these are recent enough to merit the FAR but they’re all good reads with the GGR cast:
Odenkirk, Burr, and Culkin roundtable:
https://www.vulture.com/article/glengarry-glen-ross-bob-odenkirk-kieran-culkin-bill-burr-broadway-interview.html
Odenkirk and McKean:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2025-03-30/glengarry-glen-ross-revival-bob-odenkirk-michael-mckean
Burr:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/theater/bill-burr-broadway-glengarry-glen-ross.html
The Phoenician Scheme — Mrs. Miller really liked this and observed that she also really likes the often-divisive Life Aquatic; I think Aquatic is one of Anderson’s weaker movies and this one is too, unfortunately. There are some pretty basic similarities, like the father/estranged child team-up and the disaffected performance of the dad (del Toro is very funny when he yells, shades of Hackman in Tennenbaums, but is more frequently in deadpan mode), and in the bursts of action as well. But while Anderson often structures his movies in chapters the flow feels off here, this plods a lot more than a country-spanning adventure should, and I think part of the problem is how the country in question is an excuse, a series of settings with no real detail. And that goes for the Scheme itself, some financial manuevering that is an excuse for characters to yell at each other (a funny gag!) but has no real weight, i.e. we don’t see too much of those slaves and while they are backgrounded, background is all they are. This is more of an aesthetic complaint, Anderson thrives on details and care of details, he is clearly very interested in running a magazine or method acting in a way he is not with the plot here and that makes this a lot closer to the diorama he’s always accused of making. I don’t believe he does that and he’s clearly working in an interesting religious vein here, but it’s mainly surface, although one with lots of funny bits and a nice ending. I did really love the painting credits at the end though, while losers use midjourney to generate posters of background art and then whine about it when they’re caught Anderson is out there grabbing actual canvasses, that’s the detail he excels at.
What Did We Read?
Finally finished By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie. A bit of a slog by Christie standards, if I’m honest – the mystery is rambling and doesn’t really have enough early interest to care why Tuppence (and eventually Tommy) are fixated on it, and the pivot to darker themes in the closing chapters felt clunky to me. I did enjoy Tommy and Tuppence’s chemistry but this (their final outing) keeps them apart for most of the story which is a shame. Some really fun turns of phrase at times though, I particularly enjoyed a crazy person being described as “a bit wrong in the top storey”.
I think this one was written around the time Christie started suffering from Alzheimer’s–not as bad at this point as it would get before the end (and I rather like Hallowe’en Party, which came out around the same time, but the book may still be sadly marked by it.
Ah, that’s a sad reason for it not to be her best work, but obviously understandable.
A lot of things because I have an audiobook subscription now. This includes: Collapse by Vladislav Zubok, an engrossing history of the Soviet Union’s internal collapse that undercuts some of the West’s fatalism about the USSR as well as the notion of Gorbachev as achieving leader, his refusal to use violence to assert his power so far is commendable but he often comes off as weak, arrogant, and even incompetent (who the fuck bans alcohol in Russia); speaking of undercutting popular narratives, Robert Hillebrand’s Johnny Cash biography is excellent and I sped through it – Cash comes off as an incredibly pluralistic, complex human being, capable of great generosity and love (few human beings would ever empathize this much with the men who held him and his family hostage) and real cruelty and neglect; Dennis Etchinson’s The Dark Country, a strong 80’s horror collection though maybe not as good as the hype for it; and Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream, a truly eerie horror novella, something like “The Thing on the Doorstep” as told by Shirley Jackson or Clarice Lispector. Do not read if you’re a parent.
I’ll have to check out Fever Dream.
I have very fond memories of Etchison’s best-of collection, Talking in the Dark, and I should revisit it. (And check out the anthology he edited, Cutting Edge.)
Might check that out, there are at least three really good stories here, especially one that goes in the least expected place but builds and builds nicely to that.
Finished Lady Eve’s Last Con. The plot gets a bit muddy but the romance never does, and Ms. Fraimow writes sex scenes that are both sensual and tasteful.
Closing in on the end of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, and for all the charms of the romance here and seeing beloved characters, there really isn’t much here.
And started a bio of Bill Veeck, the maverick baseball executive who did more than any boss to make baseball as much entertainment as business, and was also a fearless advocate of integration. Who, unlike Branch Rickey, made at least some effort to compensate the Negro League team that he took Larry Doby from.
The Whisperer In Darkness, HP Lovecraft
Easily top-tier Lovecraft. This is fascinating as an example of Lovecraft’s brilliant imagination despite benign very different from the usual imagery associated with him – this is, in fact, an alien abduction conspiracy story roughly seventeen years before the first proper flying saucer story, twenty years before their heyday in film beginning with The Flying Saucer, and a good sixty years before The X-Files. This is a science fiction story about aliens invading Earth, abducting humans, performing surgical experiments on them, and sending doubles down to continue kidnapping more humans. It’s remarkable that a high-school dropout wrote this story in 1930.
It’s very well-structured on top of this; Lovecraft very carefully builds the narrative in compelling bits and pieces, giving just enough hints before revealing an utterly bonkers conspiracy at the centre, and even then leaving out so many details to spark the imagination, until the whole thing is running away from you. By this point, Lovecraft’s prose has become significantly more relaxed, too, so it never distracts from the narrative. Really, the only reason I rank Charles Dexter Ward higher is because the ideas and the horror of that narrative are more interesting to me.
It’s also amusingly specifically dated in that it came out shortly after the discovery of Pluto and Einstein’s theories, both of which are noted in the narrative and indeed drive it forward.
Odette, Jerrard Tickell
This is the biography of Odette Sansom, a French-English housewife who became a spy for Britain in Nazi Paris, only to be captured and held in a concentration camp. Tickell was a novelist, so despite largely drawing from personal interviews with Odette herself, he uses novelistic technique; sadly, I think the writing itself is kind of bleh and is largely held up by the narrative. To say that Odette thrived would be insulting, but it does base itself around the idea that she had a central core of character that carried her through the worst of it; when held in the camp, she repeatedly rejects any offer of kindness or hospitality from the Nazis, finding more dignity in living.
To suggest this helped her survive is, again, wrong – it helps in that her tenacity gets her some respect from the commander of the base, more on that in a second, but for the most part, it seems to be sheer luck that she’s not killed by disease or starvation. The core of character instead drives her to find ways of getting info out to the other prisoners, keeping track of necessary information, not giving out under brutal torture, and holding herself together under unimaginable circumstances.
There’s also characterisation of, amongst other people, the Nazis themselves, who are largely who you’d expect them to be – snotty, petty assholes who enjoy having power over someone (pretty much all of them get footnotes about being either executed or imprisoned after the war). The commandant himself is presented as a guy with some humanity, trying to preserve what he can under Nazi leadership. It’s hard to really respect that, obviously, and indeed Odette takes advantage of it at points to get info out.
Just a few pages from the end of Richard Stark’s Butcher’s Moon. The Outfit-lite has just been hit, the take totaled, and Grofield is being broken out. Ownage is in progress.
I wasn’t sure what a Parker epic would look like, but this has been a great ride. Flurry of thumbnail sketches of the old and new (including a barely-there fixer who manages to be one of the most intriguing single use characters). Didn’t expect Grofield to be co-lead for a bit–I’m pretty sure it was someone here who suggested that Alan Tudyk would have killed in that role a few years ago and I couldn’t not read those sections in his voice. It seems pretty well agreed upon that this would have made a great final book, as it seemed for a long time like it would be, and you won’t hear me argue. Parker wants his money, now and forever.
YES … HA HA HA … YES! Butcher’s Moon owns so goddamn hard. And I will take credit for the Tudyk casting! This is truly epic, taking Red Harvest and removing all pretence of law if not order, that makes it not as dark perhaps but more ruthless in its criminality. There is a very funny note of the Outfit heads telling the boss here that Parker is not someone they fuck with, even they can learn a thing or two. And while Parker working on Grofield’s behalf is odd in some ways it is also him going blood simple – he’d be fine with a dead Grofield but a live one being used against him crosses his pragmatism in an interesting way, it’s half measure bullshit he can’t stand and will take the fullest of measures against.
It’s insult on top of insult. They’re not just trying to use Grofield against him, they’re rubbing his nose in it, repeatedly trying to draw him back into a situation that he wants very badly to be out of, right down to the offer of letting them both go with an ambulance–you either think I’m the dumbest motherfucker born, or you’re laughing at me. I’d say Quittner didn’t know how right he was, saying “He was never the man for that” but we know that he knows exactly how right he was.
And holy crow, what a fascinating idea, bringing in, not an eviler version of Parker, but a corporate version of him? For all of, what, a dozen pages? None of which affect the plot? That’s a batshit choice, and I find myself fascinated all the more for knowing that he never reappears.
Man, I had to go home and grab a beer and reread a bunch of this after you hyped me up all over again. Great point about Quittner, I never really considered how weird his appearance so late in the game is (he absolutely could not exist for the book to conclude in the same way) but yeah, he adds a sense of “maybe not all of these guys are morons” in explicit contrast to Calesia, who thinks he is a Quittner and is emphatically not. Quittner has smart reads on the situation the entire time, and then the situation is ended in the bluntest way possible, I was cackling all over again. And fun bit about the ambulance — this is almost certainly Stark/Westlake tipping his cap to John Flynn’s adaptation of The Outfit, which has to deal with the standard softening of Parker as character and a to my mind miscast Robert Duvall, but is 100 percent accurate in its larger depiction of Parker’s world, it is seedy greatness. Part of that softening happens at the end and that’s where the ambulance comes in, it is clearly an inspiration here.
I like the second wave of Parker books a lot and part of the pleasure is the overriding theme of how does Parker exist now? — the world is moving on and as stubborn as he is he has to make moves along with it. But as much as I like them they are generally not as hard as the first run and my god was Stark on one with Butcher’s Moon, the breach in standard Parker structure does not stop him from throwing out ruthless character sketches and the heisting is just insanely good shit, but the buildup rules too. What a fucking book.
Always glad to facilitate the good times! I have to agree that Duvall wouldn’t have been the first guy I’d look to, and have no idea who else was considered, but Westlake apparently really liked what he did. 9:00 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bduNq_gMaio
Anyone who hasn’t read Erickson’s film-oriented novel Zeroville (speaking of New Hollywood) is missing out.
Hey Friends, What’s Up?
So last week I was anxiously but excitedly preparing for my first date since the end of my last long-term relationship (i.e. my first date in a VERY LONG TIME). It went really well and we ended up meeting up on Monday and Wednesday as well – which all sounds very positive, and all three meet-ups were an absolutely pleasure. But at the end of Wednesday we discussed our feelings a bit and she thinks it’s going to be a friendship rather than a romance – which is disappointing, not least because I feel like the perceived lack of romantic chemistry reflects back on my anxiety, I feel like I’ve been portraying myself more as a friend because it’s an additional barrier to push through to be more than that. I like that she was upfront and honest with me but also we have such a great time together (and so much in common) I kind of still want to believe that there could be potential for something more in future if I keep working on myself and getting more confident and relaxed about these things. Anyway we left it on a good note and will continue to see a lot of each other, I’m not going to be pushy about it obviously but I’m not totally giving up hope either. It was a pretty intense week.
Off to Manchester to see Pulp and stay with my cousin’s family which should be nice and a nice way to reset my brain a little.
I do not want to see Juneteenth moved to a Friday or a Monday. Maybe holidays should happen on the date they are commemorating. But it’s kind of weird to have off on a Thursday and then be working again Friday. But also too much to expect everything Thursday holiday to come with a Friday off as well. They do that for Thanksgiving and did it last year for July 4, but next winter New Year’s Day is a Thursday and we have to report for work for that Friday after a week off.
Assuming, of course, that all of us are still working for the company. The rescission bill is waiting for the Senate but there’s no time frame on that right now. Which means for the moment less agitation within the virtual offices since there’s nothing to say other than “pester your senator.”
Wife’s second week back on the higher dose of Trulicity was slightly better than the first. At least she didn’t hurl. But she’s unhappy and does not like adding an anti-nausea med to all her others.
School. Work. Family in town. Lots going on. Most of it good!
Have started doing some meditation with the help of a mindfulness book, so far so good, and I’m reading a poetry set tonight with a good friend. Should be fun!
I’ve been trying some meditation too, mostly guided stuff from apps etc.
Feels good to just stop and fully relax, give the brain a break. Wish I had tried a lot of this stuff years ago.
Good luck with the reading!
In New York City through the weekend!
I have it on good authority that if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. I assume this is referring to the many connecting flights through LaGuardia Airport.