The Friday Article Roundup
It's the best pop culture writing of the week, you darn whippersnappers.
This week, you (or your interest) will be piqued by:
Send articles throughout the next week to magpiesmedia [at] gmail, post articles from the past week below for discussion and Have a Happy Friday!
Eli Enis tries to get some perspective on meme metal performer Bilmuri:
Bilmuri is the apotheosis of the wider genre’s trend toward embracing pop over metal. Not just musically, although his songs are extremely pop-forward, but also visually and rhetorically, in terms of how his artistic persona is steeped in the pop culture of memes. He’s looking around at the rise of Jelly Roll, Morgan Wallen, and Post Malone’s country pivot; at the prominence of camo pants, trucker hats, and Nascar t-shirts; at the increased tolerance in metal for music that only qualifies as such by having a few djenty guitar riffs and occasional unclean screams in songs that could otherwise – and might anyways – play on mainstream rock or pop radio, and he’s correctly recognizing that there’s an untapped audience at this meme/music crossroads. One that consists of A Day to Remember fans who mostly listen to country and teenagers who think the word “hog” is funny, which sadly encompasses a lot of fucking people.
At Crooked Marquee, Kayleigh Donaldson looks at a florid adaptation of Wuthering Heights — Luis Buñuel’s Abismos de pasión:
“Like all surrealists, I was deeply moved by this novel,” wrote Buñuel. He was drawn to “its climate of passion, for l’amour fou that destroys everything.” His decision to cut out the childhood scenes is understandable – there’s a reason so few versions take on the entire text – but we could have used more backstory for Alejandro and Catalina. That lack of origin for these characters is compensated through sheer emotion, at least; Abismos de pasión certainly has a lot of passion. It feels like it could slot comfortably into Mexico’s history of heightened telenovelas and swoon-heavy romances where bosoms are heaving at a record pace. Outside of the control of the Hays Code, which left William Wyler’s Wuthering Heights feeling a tad inert, Buñuel gets to revel in some real messy heat with the doomed lovers.
For The AV Club, Jacob Oller makes a killing of How To Make A Killing and star Glen Powell:
At the center of it all is Powell, making the same face for an hour and 45 minutes, too unflappable to root for, too smug to magnetize as an inhuman American Psycho. And How To Make A Killing needed to pick a side, either of clownish class comedy or of bitter sociopathic satire. Its split-difference approach certainly racks up a sizable body count, but its most battered and bruised victim is the truism it keeps hitting: In America, there are no consequences for the rich, unless other rich people desire it. That’s almost funny, in an empty and respectable way, like how a New Yorker cartoon is almost funny, or how Glen Powell is almost a leading man.
Isaac Feldberg interviews Steven Soderbergh about his influences for Letterboxd:
When I’m on set or thinking about a story, making sure that the audience is engaged and that I’m also excited, I have to fight through the sensation of, “Oh my god, another fucking over-the-shoulder shot.” I have to push through that and go, “You’re building a sentence. Getting upset when you have to shoot an over-the-shoulder shot is like getting upset at using the word ‘and’ or ‘the’ in a sentence. It has to be done. It’s part of the grammar.” I thought about this as I was contemplating this series and what each of these filmmakers is contributing to cinema grammar—and the fact that I’ve never done anything first.
And Tom Meek memorializes Frederick Wiseman in his hometown paper, the Cambridge Day:
[Wiseman] didn’t need to or want to prove anything to anyone. I saw in him an innate refusal to simplify or conform. He trusted his viewers to sit inside the complexity of his films long enough to discover meaning themselves….In Cambridge, where debate and observation are civic habits, Wiseman was an institution himself — a quiet presence reminding us that attention is a form of respect.
Tags for this article
More articles by Dave Shutton
Double Features
Considering the comedy in The Phoenician Scheme and The Naked Gun.
The Friday Article Roundup
Going on the record with the best pop culture writing of the week.
The Friday Article Roundup
A cowardly and superstitious lot? No, the best pop culture writing of the week.
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.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Babylon 5, Season Four, Episode Five, “The Long Night”
Ownage. But, surprisingly, enough ownage. G’Kar finally sees the Narn people free and decides to focus on institution-building rather than revenge on the Centauri. Vyr, awesomely, kills the Emperor for Londo – one of those moments that’s shocking but makes sense when you think about it, because he’s always been that guy who does what needs to be done, just like Lennier, even if he’s less self-aware – and then collapses internally because of it. This feels like part-and-parcel of the show’s liberal politics; just enough violence to keep things going, then make a big speech about it. I joke, but I get it; certainly, Londo and G’Kar’s alliance is moving.
All Quiet On The Western Front
Intoxicatingly cinematic. It’s very funny to have this immediately after both Wings and The Broadway Melody in my Best Picture run – it has basically the same plot as the former but with exactly the opposite theme, being a brutal War Is Hell flick. The idea that there are no anti-war films strikes me as something only true if you’re stupid – or, at least, actively fighting text instead of trying to inhabit it. Like, guys die in this almost randomly and nobody’s having a good time. Meanwhile, it contrasts with TBM in that that movie blows while this movie is incredibly well-made; TBM had an oil-and-water quality where neither the sum nor the parts were any good, but this manages to swing together into a Movie Movie, where sound and image are in perfect alignment to convey emotions. I’m particularly struck by an early scene where the teacher monologues about the glory of war and we go into closeups on students before fading into what they’re thinking about, with the monologue continuing over the footage.
Fuck yeah Vyr! When he gets a dude that dude stays got. Vyr has an even better moment coming up soon that is his alone — “he’s always been that guy who does what needs to be done” is true but what has been developed so well is how this is almost always what Londo needs to be done, Londo is always giving Vyr shit but he needs him, and Vyr to a large degree needs Londo’s cunning and experience for that direction. I think a different show could focus entirely on them and be great, but what this show gives is plenty good itself.
The Empire
For Movie Club. Bizarre science fiction parody where a Jupiter Ascending-style clash between angelic and demonic figures who are also from space and also literally a moral binary fight it out in a remote, picturesque French village. Does have the correct number of horses, which is “loads.” I believe that this may well be doing something interesting, but it’s happening at a pitch I can’t hear.
Inside No. 9, “Wuthering Heist”
One of those genre mash-ups between Reservoir Dogs and Commedia dell’arte that you’re always hearing so much about. Bit old hat now that everyone’s done one. Fun, exuberant, and stylistically ambitious, with an incredible density of wordplay, fourth-wall-breaking hat tips, and gleeful theatricality (the spinning umbrellas forming the wheels of the getaway car in the requested montage pleased me greatly). There’s even a dash of pathos. Great masks.
Taskmaster, “Thompson”
Starting to realize that this game is actually unexpectedly well-balanced in terms of different tasks rewarding different kinds of skill-sets.
Re: the clump of asbestos Phil’s brought in:
“My flat is riddled with it, and as long as you don’t interfere with it, it’s quite safe. Now, I have caused a few issues by rambling around in my walls to pull it out.”
“Not least your own slow, painful demise.”
“So you think the mascot of a football team is a football.”
“Yeah. I see that it might not be.”
“Sanjeev’s made the mascot bigger and more racially hateful.”
“The main takeaway from the introduction of this is that Maisie and Reece think vowels are clever, and Reece is incredibly keen to point out that he knows them.”
“Ania thinks that if you cut a snake in half, it grows back.”
“It does.”
“No, it doesn’t. A worm, sure. If you cut a snake in half, it dies.”
“They’re basically the same sort of guy.”
“Whoever put a snake there is an absolute moron.”
“But the flaw is in this: it’s just a bouncy stupid thing with numbers on it.”
“Can we swap seats?”
“I believe we’ve learnt the very definition of victory. Is it the person with the most points? No. Is it the person who heads home with the prizes? No. The definition of victory is getting a fellow competitor to take home a vial of your own piss.”
Best multi-episode riffs: Maisie’s bad memory and Reece’s simmering rage.
Best physical comedy: Reece repeatedly falling in between the bleacher rows while taking thirty-odd tries to complete the giant Snakes and Ladders game.
Reverse task ownage: Phil accidentally blowing one of his questions with the twins with a reflexive “You all right?”
Out for Justice
Steven Seagal has multiple monologues in this. That should never be the case. He also led to William Forsythe’s scenes being trimmed. Is there anything this guy can’t ruin?
Dunno if you’ve heard Stephen Tobolowsky talking about trying to make an action movie with Seagal where his character kills Tobes’ evil serial killer – except Seagal was insisting that he no longer murdered people in his GIANT DUMB ACTION MOVIES – but it’s on YouTube and is very funny.
Caught up on The Pitt except damn it, another episode came out last night. But RIP Louie, centering this hour around the nurses and Louie’s passing – including Dana and the newbie cleaning his body – is smart. As in real life, the nurses in the Pitt are largely very competent and do a lot of the emotional and sometimes mental labor around the hospital, including Perla comforting Jayda when Javadi sets her off by casually saying something is “wrong” with her brother. I suspect there’s a certain kind of personality attracted to nursing as the ones I’ve known (including a few in my family) are very warm but rarely take any crap. Caring for people is hard and necessary, and it doesn’t offer rewards either.
The Practice, “Convictions” – Lindsay’s conviction is tossed out due to willful violations of her constitutional rights, but there has to be another trial. This is less about Lindsay and more about both Bobby’s determination to clear his wife even though they really don’t have a defense and the ADA whose judgement is clouded by how much he hates Bobby and friends. Really, after he screwed up badly enough for the verdict to be tossed, he should be off the case. Also, the appeal was heard in like a week. I don’t think it ever works that way for anything but emergencies, but everything here has always moved too fast. Anyway, the first and possibly last time we saw an appeal. They just aren’t that juicy. Meanwhile, Jimmy is still caught in the mess he made with the woman who actually kidnapped a baby 16 years ago, the woman accused of the crime then and now, and the real mother. And the new associate Jamie decides to take matters in her own hands. This is very far fetched but Jimmy cases are always engaging. Plus we have Holland Taylor back in her robes, so angry at one of Helen’s stunts that she makes Helen stand in the corner. And there is a very brief scene where Jimmy and the judge finally put their steamy past behind them.
Miss Marple, “Murder in the Vicarage” – A local rich asshole is found murdered at the desk of the vicar, who happens to live next door to Miss Marple. So she is a witness as well as a sleuth. The story, which basically has the killer confessing at the start so we can’t possibly think she’s the killer, is not particularly engaging. The best parts are Inspector Slack (seen before in the series premiere) trying very hard to cope with Marple’s (very effective) interference and Paul Eddington (already well known from Yes, Minister) as the vicar, trying very hard to find meaning in the crime committed in his home. Eddington plays befuddled well, but there is a bit of pathos here you never saw from him on Yes, Minister.
The Odyssey (1968) – After watching this I think Nolan has a lot to live up to. I don’t think he can attain this film’s poetry. A very faithful adaptation serialized for Italian television it uses documentary framing, off screen narration and ancient locations, it’s like an educational program. It looks and feels like ancient realism. That’s not to say it isn’t entertaining. There is a stark contrast between the earthly world and otherworldly moments. The more surreal costumes and sets appear in scenes that are narrated by Odysseus, they lie within legend and his story rather than earthly reality. The fantasy moments reminded me of the expressionism of Fellini’s Satyricon (which didn’t come out for another year.) Aeolus and his family with their giant perms and garish costumes look like a scene out of that later film. It runs seven hours in eight parts, but in small 40 to 50 minute chunks, like the Dunk and Egg show. The serialized format gives a more faithful rendering of the episodic nature of the poem and the length allows it time to breathe and for immersion in its world giving it an epic feel. The encounter with the cyclops is an entire episode. Like the ‘54 version with Kirk Douglas this episode is again directed by Mario Bava. He improves on his previous take – better effects, more world building, not as silly and he’s able to stretch out the suspense. A very young Barbara Bach is the only actor I recognized. I watched it on YT with sketchy auto subs, “lottery eaters.”
Small Prophets – hmm, this is definitely Good, although it’s good in a “really needs the story to continue to ensure that it remains good” kinda way, whereas each season of Detectorists felt satisfying in itself (give or take my issues with season 2). It’s definitely a little broader in places but there’s mostly a point to that. Some of the nosy-neighbour stuff made me a little uncomfortable but again I think that’s probably intentional. As ever with serialised storytelling like this, I just hope that they get to continue and conclude the story. Hopefully there’s a little more stability with it being a BBC production rather than (e.g.) Netflix where I could imagine this getting dumped on a cliffhanger forever.
What did we read?
The Last Man, Mary Shelley
The cover of this stresses two things: that Shelley wrote this after the deaths of her entire family, and that it’s the first dystopian novel. Both are intensely hanging over the entire book; this is definitely a meditation on grief and how to live in the world when you’ve lost everything that’s ever given you meaning. This actually shares an arc with Threads, starting with the life story of a lucky, if not well-off man, who goes from rags to riches as he ends up embedded with the former prince of England, only for his idyllic life to be interrupted by a terrible plague that kills people almost immediately.
From a genre perspective it’s fascinating because it avoids all the wish fulfillment aspects of it; the mechanics of it are quite well worked-out and plausible, with people genuinely working together to try and combat the plague, violent looting only lightly being touched upon (though there is a section where poor people move into rich mansions, if only because there’s nobody in there anymore), and a mad cult only showing up near the end when it’s become clear humanity isn’t gonna be a thing anymore. There’s a very strong socialist underpinning to the book, where resource distribution becomes fairly even because what else is there to do?
Instead, it’s largely concerned with the terrible loss. You see a fair bit of Shelley’s Romantic tendencies come in, but they’re intently controlled and expressed, with light but intense sections of feeling coming later. The sheer hopelessness that takes over the book is marvellous, with the death of major characters becoming both terrible and banal, dealt with in a few pages because we’re just so used to it at a certain point. This evolves into a kind of existentialism at the end, when the narrator is the only one left, wondering why he stays alive but still desperately wanting to live; he writes the book to keep himself sane, leaves graffiti for whoever comes after people, and eventually decides to explore the world just because he can. Ultimately it’s a very life-affirming book by exploring the worst that life has to offer.
The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business, Alfred D Chandler
This covers the rise of the salaried manager class, and specifically marks it as a logical product of capitalism, and thus a logical product of abundance. In Stalin and the Scientists, Robert Ing remarked that capitalism could only ever emerge in a country with abundant resources, and this book goes on to prove that. Chandler tracks how managerial structure was unnecessary for thousands of years simply because nobody was operating on a scale that required it; the rise of railroads specifically required a wide coordination, and itself mixed with mass production to create circumstances that required someone to specifically coordinate smaller production with larger goals of a business.
Honestly, reading this book clarified a lot of things that I’ve gotten through osmosis through satire of business, like Office Space – I can see how something that originally served one logical purpose has become a tradition people follow without thought, and also does have a specific context stripped away for a worker right down the bottom. For one thing, learning what ‘vertical integration’ actually is (expanding a business to encompass both the base elements that make up what’s being produced and the marketing to customers as opposed to seeking out a middle man).
This does mean being amused that central planning is the core of what makes big businesses successful; I’ve been seeing a lot of armchair capitalists argue central planning is inherently destructive and evil lately, so it’s very amusing that Chandler’s central argument is abundant resources require central planning for a business to last and be effective; he contrasts it with mergers, which tend not to survive nearly as long as those which vertically integrate. Once businesses gained a very clear organisational structure – helped significantly with the post-war government, although he stops his analysis there on the basis that the structures have been pretty much the same since then – in which product shifts from manufacturing to customer with a very clear process from one to the other (in fact, he attributes far more power to this process than he does to, say, initial capital).
They do it with Mirrors, Agatha Christie
A really strong book – written twenty years after the last Christie I read and feeling it, as she moves through different people’s perspectives very casually, and not only is the solution a banger, I like that it takes half the book to get to the murder in the first place, getting me to really care about everyone and hope the ones I like didn’t do it.
This was my first Miss Marple, and I enjoy that she’s basically the exact opposite of Poirot – where he is fastidious and controlling of his environment, she’s unassuming and polite, keeping her thoughts to herself to the point of being comfortable at being thought stupid when she’s figured everything out (extended to Carrie at the end of the book).
I’m also intrigued at this weird split in Christie’s worldview, where she’s capable of very powerful sympathy for all sorts of people and able to explore the pettiest and most banal of human emotion in a compelling way and occasionally capable of outright prejudice and dismissiveness of anything outside her personal life experience.
8 Bit Theater, Strips 0690-0720, Brian Clevinger
You know, one of the things about comedy is that after a while, you are telling the same joke over and over. It works for me here because each repetition is a little more artful and absurd, and also I enjoy being around these violent assholes on a weekly basis. It does make it hard from a critical perspective, when you’re going through beat-by-beat, but I can see that one writes a comedy by starting with a Truth.
There’s a great gag where Black Mage is stuck talking to locals for intel, and the locals simply recite NPC dialogue from Final Fantasy. This escalates twice: first, when BM just starts murdering people (signified by bloody handprints that increase in number behind him), then when he runs into White Mage.
“It, uh, speaks of the ugliness of violence and how we should all hug bunny rabbits. Or whatever it is that people who aren’t psychopaths do all day.” This is mainly funny because self-awareness is funny.
“Black Mage! Are you in there?” / “Gotta use my wits to get out of this one. No! Damn my wits!” One of my all-time favourite jokes from the comic.
“Don’t you tell me what won’t fit just because it isn’t physically possible. I’m old and possibly senile.” / “As you insist on telling me every few minutes, yes.”
“This place is a hole.” / “Then we know what we must do.” / “Leave because it sucks?”
I’ve been meaning to read The Visible Hand, am now adding The Last Man to my to-read list, and love They Do It with Mirrors. Your last line on Christie is one of my recurring points of fascination with her as well. Hope you read more of these.
Fair warning: parts of The Visible Hand can be incredibly dry, but it’s worth it. Grant assures me I’m now better informed than Noam Chomsky.
I actually have one left in the collection I found in a Little Free Library: Mrs McGinty’s Dead.
I think I read that in high school, but I have no memory of it, so I’ll see if I can revisit it to freshen up before you post about it.
The Last Man sounds excellent, and like an influence on Connie Willis’ great Doomsday Book in terms of plague grimness and how humans respond to it.
“Chandler tracks how managerial structure was unnecessary for thousands of years simply because nobody was operating on a scale that required it” *looks at pyramids* uhhhh
They weren’t selling the pyramids.
No one is selling railways either, not at the level of commercial products. If the argument is that commercial products supplanted physical networks and objects that’s a different story, but people were clearly operating on scales of complexity that required mid-level management for a long, long time.
I could see that – much of the crux of the book is the modern professional managerial class we’re dealing with as a matter of course. Chandler is contrasting these particular standards with the businesses people were running the five hundred years before.
Read Mirrors too! Good book and enjoyed the red herrings that come the readers’ way. I get the impression that one of Christie’s gifts is a real knack for procedure and how a murder could be carried out without seeming obvious.
The Outfit, by Richard Stark
Fuck yeah. If you want in-depth, procedural-but-brisk looks at how organized crime (could have) worked in the ’60s, look no further, and also, how do I get a job sitting by a phone waiting to place bets with someone else’s money? How do I get a job buying unevenly priced science fiction magazines with money inside? Why am I being denied these career opportunities? All of my criminal instincts are analog, yet I am stuck in a digital world.
Parker makes good on his previous threat to massively inconvenience the Outfit by contacting all his associates and letting them know it’s open season on the people trying to kill him, hence the disparate and beautifully executed heist vignettes we get here, and he also goes after the man in charge on the East Coast. This is the book that has the speech about “businessman” criminals vs. hardened professional crooks that was so artificially plopped down in Play Dirty (per Dave’s excellent article): here it’s beautifully handled, a warning delivered with exactness and clarity even as it comes too late and falls on the wrong ears. It doesn’t make a difference for the man who hears it, but it characterizes the man who delivers it swiftly enough that it’s rewarding to see him take the upheaval at the novel’s conclusion in stride and make it out alive.
As indelible a character as Parker himself is, one of my favorite things about these novels is how deftly Stark fills in the world around him: there’s a real gift for quick but vivid portraiture here. Not un-Christie-like in that one regard, actually.
God, the multiple heist section of this is so fucking good, isn’t it? There are like six full books that could’ve been written here, and Stark pares them down to short stories, the ruthless arrogance of the man. (And as always, highest possible recommendation for Darwyn Cooke’s graphic novel adaptations of select Parker books, he was a brilliant artist in his main heightened comic style but for each heist here he switches up to a different mode and it is a joy.) Like you say, the portraiture here is just phenomenal and our magazine guy/aspiring writer has haunted me for years, he does his rounds and then “sits down at his cold typewriter.” No greater damnation from a guy like Stark.
And this also continues the process of creating Parker’s world — the heist sections introduce some people who will pop up later and shows their general similarities with Parker in terms of ability and execution. The prior book had Handy but also Scramm, crime is full of Scramms but this book goes a long way to explaining how Parker can keep heisting because of the larger professionalism in the field. The lengthy sequence at the mechanic’s before the heist sets all this up, Chemy is a pro who also has amateur bullshit in his life and when Parker deals with said bullshit, Chemy rides with it. It’s seemingly superfluous — “Parker gets a car” is not something that always gets this much ink — but it also fleshes out the underworld and Parker’s place in it (and sets up that great little VW punchline letter).
Parker’s letters are not asking for favors, they are offering opportunities. He works with these men and can use their skills to his personal advantage, but is doing so openly (as opposed to that fucking Play Dirty reveal) and if other crooks don’t want to take that deal, no problem. Nobody does anything for free, except for Handy toward the end and Parker’s wariness verging on distaste for that comradely act sets up the most enduring line of the book: “Possessions tie a man down and friendships blind him.” This is something that Parker will deal with over and over, and he is not always consistent in this regard, but the series takes that line seriously and never shies away from the coldness needed to live like that. Bronson lives with his possessions and depends on relationships that are non-situational and look where it gets him, look where all the material and money and interconnectedness of the Outfit get it when unencumbered men come for them.
The gun dealer with the front of being a private eye is another person I’d read a whole novel about, by the way.
Including Handy’s offer to go along with Parker for the hell of it, just to help him out, and Parker’s discomfort with that and his insistence on splitting the take properly–surely one of the defining touches here.
Making my way through TJ Stiles’s bio of Jesse James, wherein James is barely a figure till a good way’s in, since for a long time he’s just another violent secessionist in a crowd of them in Missouri, until he and his brother more or less invent daring bank robbery and train robbery as a way to get back at those terrible abolitionists and N-word lovers. Or maybe just as a way to get a lot of money. Stiles emphasizes the political aspects to the near-exclusion so far of the monetary gain, which is fascinating, but it is really the truth? This is a well written and well researched book but I remain just a bit uncertain about Stiles, who genuinely does not like slavery and seems to like Reconstruction but doesn’t care for how unrepentant secessionists were treated after the war.
Also reading Death of a Racehorse, about the terrible state of affairs in thoroughbred racing. The author really cares about the horses, but a lot of the book is an apology for trainer Bob Baffert, who’s been suspended for abuse of this drug and that so many times that I can’t understand why anyone gives him the benefit of the doubt.
The Grass Is Singing, Doris Lessing – A really good novel about entitlement, racism, and isolation. Could see one of my non-white friends joking that this is a book about white women being awful and the insight isn’t far off given Lessing’s unorthodox feminism. Mary lives an incredibly comfortable life before she gets married, doing so because this is what other people expect of her, not because she’s truly lonely like Dick or even wants consistent sex. (There’s a dark joke early on when Mary complains about men having all the fun while partying it up.) Instead of not caring what other people think, something Lessing seemingly practiced, she goes along with white then-Rhodesia’s expectations, marrying a poor white farmer, and this decision slowly destroys her and husband Dick. This reminded me of my own pandemic breakup where being in isolation and a steady limitation of choices can destroy your mind and relationship. Much of this is Dick’s fault: there’s a moment here where Mary realizes she understands Dick’s incompetence and what’s wrong on the farm, and could change things. This is also Mary’s as well: she doesn’t want to give up even a little of her projected anger/racism towards the native men who work for him, and Dick won’t take out any more loans. The ending scenes where Mary collapses into madness reminded me of Shirley Jackson. Major critique would be Lessing gives little to no interiority to Moses, Samson or the other African workers. I suspect this was intentional, given Lessing’s exhaustive redrafting of the book, yet it also reads like her colonial upbringing bleeding into the text. It might have been something she simply could not do where she knows the weird contradictions of how white Rhodesians in the 40s and 50s thought about the people they abused and subjugated.
The bit around Mary recognising Dick’s incompetence and how she could turn the farm around is so awful, because of the moment of realisation that comes after that thought: even if she did, it wouldn’t change the fundamental problem of how incompatible they are. To make a success of it would mean to Dick that they could keep running it, while to Mary it would mean they can sell it and fund a totally different lifestyle.
Both are conformists to a system and don’t see how this punishes them. It’s a brutal book about making one bad, crucial decision that will ruin you. Lessing is I think crueler to Mary than Dick in this regard, perhaps because Dick wants to marry out of loneliness and Mary marries out of fear of judgment, and then projects her fury over the limits of her life onto those dubbed her inferiors. (Dick is also a huge racist but he knows how to, like, coexist with the Zimbabwe workers.)
I imagine Lessing is crueller to Mary because ‘Mary’ is making the choices that Lessing rejected in real life.
It is amazing how from just a few characters, Lessing is able to present studies in all the different varieties and expressions of white racism in Rhodesia.
“Dick’s incompetence”
If I recall correctly, isn’t part of the thing that while Dick has no head for efficiency, he does understand human nature well enough that much of Mary’s improvements also make it more miserable for everyone working there, sometimes counterintuitively making it less efficient simply because people need to rest and work through things. One of the canny things about the novel for me is how Lessing manages to craft this perfectly hellish situation where both the nature of these people and the circumstances they are in boils over into this miserable, unfixable situation.
That’s what broke me about this book – the total inescapability of the situation. Within this system there is effectively nothing they can do to escape – except go mad.
The Long Winter by John Christopher – British disaster novel or “cosy catastrophe”. The Brits really know how to keep a sense of civilization, making sure tea and toast is on hand as the world crumbles around them. The sun moves away from the Earth by just a few degrees causing a new ice age and the UK is frozen solid. Everyone moves to Lagos until they miss the comforts of home and decide to go back. Not as good as Christopher’s other disaster, The Death Of Grass, but still pretty good. It focuses a little too much on the relationship between the two main couples with them basically swapping wives. The aftermath and consequences of the disaster pick up in the last third. One thing I like about these is the author’s use of real locations around London and the English countryside. It’s kind of neat to look on a map and follow along. The War Of The Worlds and The Day of Triffids were like this, calling out towns and London landmarks.
Quag Keep by Andre Norton – I hate reading a book I loved as a kid and unable to feel that as an adult and realizing, “Oh, this isn’t very good.” This has the distinction of being the first novel based on D&D. Norton had sat in on the game a few times with Gary Gygax and friends and was asked to write a novel. It’s set up like the animated show with players being transported into Greyhawk with a “geas” placed on them being guided by some unknown hand (get it, a DM). It is a little meta in this way. Norton also places an unremovable leather wrist band on each character with polyhedral dice embedded in them that “roll” when they need to complete an action or are fighting. Great as a kid, it was all we had! But not so much as an adult.
Woof. I have struggled with Norton the couple times I read her original work.
I had a similar if less dramatic experience with the Hitchhikers’s books reading them again in my 40s after devouring them several times in my teens and early 20s.
It’s crazy how popular she was in her day. If you go to a used book store there are tons of her books on the shelf. Some of her books still get thousands of reviews on Goodreads without necessarily being in print but as ebooks. I’ve reread some of the Witch World books recently and those hold up I think. But she wrote so much some of it is bound to not be very good.
Baumgartner, Paul Auster — Critical opinion on this, Auster’s last novel, was mixed, but I thought it was a tour de force. Astounding to me how much he can fit in 200 pages even though each particular episode sees discursive and fully inhabited and explored. At Baumgartner is a 70-year-old professor and author who is, ten years later, just starting to emerge from the fog of grief imposed by the sudden death of his wife. It’s a meditation on grief and death (Auster’s son and his granddaughter both died in the year before this book, and Auster himself learned he had lung cancer which would kill him within another). But it’s not just that — it’s about making your reconciliation with death, and the power of community and the web of human connection that supports us even as it is sometimes invisible. Somehow the most hopeful of Auster’s works I’ve read.
Year of the Month update!
This March, you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, TV, etc. from 1980.
Mar. 2nd Tristan J Nankervis: Raging Bull
Mar. 5th: Cori Domschot: The Music Man
Mar. 16th: Tristan J Nankervis: 9 to 5
Mar. 19th: John Bruni: Gaucho
Mar. 23rd: Bridgett Taylor: Magnum PI
And this month, we’ll continue looking at 1957, including all these movies, albums, books, TV, yadda yadda.
Feb. 20th: Gillianren: Our Friend the Atom
Feb. 27th: Gillianren: Sleeping Beauty’s Castle