The Friday Article Roundup
This week's best pop culture writing is DTF! (Dropping This Friday)
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Thanks to Bridgett, Casper, Guillermo and Dave for contributing this week! As always, send articles throughout the next week to ploughmanplods [at] gmail, post articles from the past week below for discussion, and Have a Happy Friday!
Slate‘s Dan Koi writes about what makes Anora a revolutionary Best Picture winner at the Oscars:
Still, it was never a foregone conclusion. One enormous hurdle always stood in its lane to Best Picture: the sex. There’s never been a Best Picture winner so upfront about sex, so explicit in its portrayal of sex, so forthright about the woman at the center using sex as a tool. Anora isn’t a movie about a woman’s sexual pleasure, really—remember poor Ani trying to get Vanya to slow down for once?—but it is a movie about a woman’s sexual agency, and in that respect, its Best Picture victory is one for the ages. Best Pictures have contained war, gore, jokes, songs, fish-men, and birdmen. Comedies have won Best Picture, as have horror movies, fantasy movies, thrillers, science fiction, kitchen-sink realism, gay dramas, and Birdman. But you know what hasn’t ever won Best Picture? A movie about a woman and her sex life.
At The A.V. Club, Jesse Hassenger goes long on the b-movies of husband-and-wife team Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich:
That Anderson needs Jovovich more than vice versa cements her muse status. The movies he made before he married his favorite actress are often fun, but it’s also easy to see why critics and fans alike perceived them as crass, unpleasant exercises. It might be a stretch to call his Jovovich movies classier than the others, yet during those years in the aftermath of the first Resident Evil, Anderson does appear to either openly pine for her post-Ripley heroism (as in Alien Vs. Predator, where Sanaa Lathan does a capable job stepping into that role) or revert to a more adolescent sense of machismo where women are a tertiary concern (as in his remake of Death Race). His one non-Jovovich movie after they married, on the other hand, the sword-and-sandals-and-disaster epic Pompeii, has a full-on Titanic-style romance—nothing he had ever attempted before in the brusquely anti-romantic, barely-sexual worlds of Mortal Kombat or Soldier.
Time Out runs down the 50 most beautiful movie theaters on Earth – and they don’t just highlight the opulent:
5. The Electric, London: There’s no scientific way to prove it, but this Baroque one-screener nestled among the antiques shops and boutiques of Portobello Road may just be the comfiest cinema on the planet. The seats are heavenly – you’d pay just to sit in them – and for the terminally decadent (or sleep-deprived parents at a baby-friendly screening), there are even beds to luxuriate on. It’s next door to private members club Electric House, and some of those luxe vibes definitely rub off. Unusually, the concession stand is inside the main screen, which gives queuing for drinks and snacks the lovely sense of being in a kind of west London bazaar. […] It opened in 1911 with a screening of a 25-minute silent film, Henry VIII. It cost sixpence (about £7 in today’s money) and you got a bun and an orange with your ticket.
Tom Ley contributes to Nuisance Week at Defector with (extremely qualified) praise of the free cranky reactionary newspaper that gets thrown on his doorstep:
You won’t be surprised to learn that much of the Lincoln Eagle’s coverage over the last few years has been concerned with topics like the border crisis, critical race theory, and the looming threat of communism. But suffusing articles on these garden-variety reactionary fixations is an undeniable sense of style, as evidenced by the fact that I still regularly think about the first time I turned the page to see the headline “WHEN I FINALLY LEAVE THESE BONES” above a Glenn Chapman byline and a small photo of a hand resting on a black skull. The article is simply Chapman’s recounting of times in his life when he’s almost died, which include 1) getting hit by a car while riding his bike as a child and 2) stepping straight over the edge of a 25-foot cliff while walking in the woods at night with a girl. I was obviously drawn in by the headline and the accompanying art, and was shocked to discover traces of craft in the article. In describing the sense of inevitability he felt immediately after being struck by the car: “I felt no emotion towards what my body was about to go through. It was like I was kicking off an old ripped pair of jeans knowing I was never going to wear them again.” OK, Glenn, damn.
Special Women’s History Month bonus recommendation! Bridgett links video blonde’s video essay with a feminist reading on Sucker Punch:
I was well aware that Sucker Punch had a large cult following, but I’ve only been able to view the film through the lens of my own life and my own experiences and perhaps naively assumed that its fan base was primarily women and that they enjoyed the film for same reasons that I do. […] So I was a bit surprised by these comments from so many men and their extreme attachment to Emily by only seeing her as the character Baby Doll. I understand that it’s not that literal, and that these men do understand that she obviously isn’t actually the character, but the traits that they were associating with her seem more connected to the personality of Baby Doll instead of Emily’s personality.
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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What did we watch?
Don’t have access to Babylon 5 until next week, so here’s my regular rotation of shows that I put on on my phone while doing other things, as organised by the task I generally associate them with.
Exercise: 30 Rock. The constant flow of jokes gives me something to focus on other than how tired I am. Curb Your Enthusiasm works for this as well.
Cooking: generally, requires a new show that I’ve never seen before. But when I don’t feel like watching one, The Simpsons, where the emotional and visual substance is necessary while I’m half-paying attention.
Showering: Either 30 Rock (which pairs well with the exercise – I take fifteen minutes to work up a sweat and then hop in the shower still listening to the episode) or Futurama, and for the same reason – while both shows are very visual, they also constantly have verbal jokes going, and I’ve seen enough to remember what happens anyway.
Cleaning: For this, I put The Simpsons up on my projector, and then I potter about, cleaning as I can be bothered but allowing the show to catch my attention while I build up the motivation.
It’s interesting – I’ve always preferred my house be completely silent, and I grew up under people who needed sound at all times in order to clear their heads, and usually I find most people are like that. I definitely need silence when I’ve gotta use my brain for something, I use old music to block out the world when that’s impossible, and I generally put something on when I, you know, want to watch something. But this stuff is useful to get me through boring shit I don’t want to do.
The Shield, “Tapa Boca”
– First, though, a commentary highlight from the previous episode! Kenny Johnson being extremely well-informed about the choreography of the Shane/Mara sex scene: “Look, now he’s gonna roll towards the camera before he rolls the other way.” David Rees Snell: “…How many times have you watched this, Kenny?” Also, a bit later: “I especially like where he finishes and then talks about Lem.”
– Now back on-topic: in further proof that The Shield is two degrees away from being a comedy, how much coffee Ronnie needs to drink to get himself to go take a shit is now plot-relevant. I love how deadpan he is about it, too—first with “no, two should do it” and then, in a later scene, giving a little “yeah, we’re good” nod to signal that they can make the switch with Lem’s wire.
– Aceveda’s look when Kavanaugh seemingly pulls him in for the major update that Lem’s friends have forgotten his birthday is incredible. I need it as a reaction gif. It’s simultaneously bitterly incredulous that Kavanaugh’s even acting like Lem might flip because of this and “this is a meeting that could have been an email—no, actually, it shouldn’t even have been an email.” And Nath talked about this on my notes for last episode, but Kavanaugh falls so quickly for Vic’s (brilliant) “Aceveda’s been filling me in on a few things” ploy after disregarding Aceveda last episode and thinking he’s overestimating Vic! No, Kavanaugh! You guys talked about this!
– Really feeling for Corrine in this episode, with Kavanaugh intimidating her into believing she’s seconds away from going to jail for even telling Vic that Kavanaugh has been poking around (which cannot possibly be true, right? “There’s an unsettling man hanging out at our kids’ school and lying to me” is a legitimate thing to bring up when you didn’t tell her the actual situation earlier, Kavanaugh) and Dutch not actually doing that much to reassure her, in part because he’s so distracted by his worries about Claudette. Corrine and Dutch’s conversation here is sort of bittersweetly brutal by virtue of how different it could have been a universe over, but here—for very understandable reasons!—she gave up being the most important woman in his life, and now he’s moved on. She needs someone, and she has no one. And her raw vulnerability in that situation is a great contrast with …
– Claudette, with CCH Pounder playing her as a woman concentrating all her will on holding herself together. Claudette’s always needed to be, per “Invictus,” the master of her fate and the captain of her soul. She’s pinned a lot of her self-respect on a certain kind of unyielding strength of purpose, even when that hurts her relationship with her daughter or jeopardizes her career—and now her body’s crumbling without her permission, and she knows the grief and uncertainty could make her crumble too. I feel like when she refuses to explicitly tell Dutch what’s going on—”I was here yesterday, I’m here today, I’ll be here tomorrow”–it’s not out of privacy as much as an inability, right now, to face the full force of his love and concern, because him meeting her in her vulnerability would acknowledge her vulnerability and make her feel it even more, and she just can’t afford that right now.
– Vic hilariously guilt-trips Shane while interrogating a suspect: “I know if I had a friend in trouble, I’d do anything to help him out.” Lem: *significant look at Shane.* Shane’s face: “Oh, COME ON.” (He does instantly and emotionally commit to the “if anything happens, we’ll instantly bail you out” plan later, which is enough to mend his relationship with Lem via tender fist-bump.)
– Great stuff with Tina accidentally bringing a gun into the cage in her eagerness to prove herself by shutting down the fight—everyone looking shaken-up by realizing how narrowly they just avoided a potential massacre is perfect (Dutch, who would normally defend Tina, looks like his whole life is flashing before his eyes). Her running off to cry is very human, and I love how Danny’s initial instinct is to matter-of-factly console her before Tina—pivoting from humiliated to angry—lashes out and accuses her of being jealous.
– I feel like all the Emolia scenes are kneecapped by the fact that I think she’s the one of the weakest actresses the show ever has, but the confrontation between her and Vic overcomes that and is excellent anyway. I love how it all turns on a dime with a line that she intends to pacify him—”I didn’t know you then!”–and how brutal and terrifying Vic gets when he feels this thoroughly betrayed. He could forgive her for turning on him, but he can’t forgive—or even cope with—the realization that she’s played him, that his judgment of her was always missing something. Him holding a knife to her throat is incredibly tense, and the way he pivots with both a threat—”I found you once. I can do it again”–and an instant tactical move—”Oh, it’s you!” to Kavanaugh—is really peak in-control Vic, smart and forceful and convincing. Pure antihero clout: he was just terrifying me, but I want to watch this guy try to get out of situations.
– Good case stuff in this episode, but damn, accidentally crushing a baby during attempted CPR—to the point where people assume you stomped on it—is such a bleak, brutal detail. There’s a lot of out-and-out malice on The Shield, but this plotline shows how the series sometimes goes with carelessness and ineptitude as the source of horror instead, and it’s just as effective.
The baby subplot is the one I like to point to to explain how The Shield‘s edginess holds up – not only in the sense that it was edgy in 2005 or 06 and would be edgy if someone wrote this plot in 2025, but in that it holds up to repeat viewings, always being so incredibly fucked up and sad, and continuing to be with every awful detail we find out.
Kojak, “Be Careful What You Pray For” – A couple of amateur thieves steal a truck of plumbing supplies from outside a Catholic girls high school, and a priest is badly hurt. Before long, Captain McNeil has the brass, the press, the Catholic Church, and even a nun who taught him years ago on his case. And before long, we are caught in a complex weave of truckers and hijackers. Maybe too complex. But the shot of a convoy of trucks getting on the Major Deegan Expressway goes a bit outside the usual filming locations for the show. And this one has a very mordant sense of humor from Kojak.
Frasier, “Someone to Watch Over Me” – It’s Seabees time again, but Frasier is too wound up to celebrate as he is dealing with an intrusive fan. This one doesn’t quite land because we are not given any reason besides sitcom logic to not take the possibility of a threat from the fan seriously. Though perhaps Martin the ex cop refusing to take things seriously was a clue. A few funny bits along the way, though the best is a caller (John Lithgow) who turns his plea for help into an unpaid ad for his used car lot.
A New England Document — a short documentary that starts with footage of a family in New Hampshire and then goes elsewhere. This is about 15 minutes or so which is short enough to take a risk of going in cold, so I won’t say more, but it doesn’t have twists as much as slow reveals and perspective shifts that question documenting itself, in particular photography, and what the documenter brings. On Criterion, strong recommend in general but particularly for anyone who has been enjoying boundary-crossing docs lately.
Babylon 5 — first two episodes, we are looking for a new show after losing NYPD Blue and TUBI has this so why not. And so far it’s made me appreciate NYPD Blue more, the effects are fun to goof on a bit but they’re fine for when they were made, what is harder to square is the extremely square acting and writing. There is a lot of space in between dialogue and reaction and while that also may be the style of the times it is harder to adjust back to (it is easier in comedies when laughs are filling that space). In particular Michael O’Hare is bland, no Kirkish arrogance or Picardian wit, I guess he only lasts one season? That is promising but there is still a long way to go and I’m not sure we’ll get there.
A documentary about and actual document? The platonic ideal… will watch.
High Potential, “Obsessed” – I thought the mystery in this one was a little weak, but the more emotional background stuff was effective and also hell yeah, Dana Ashbrook guest star (although I wish he’d been more involved).
Justified S4, “Money Trap” and “Outlaw” – the first of these episodes picks up a plot thread from the start of the season and also offers a full return the series’ base plot, “everyone wants to fuck Raylan Givens”, which I always enjoy. The second one is about the fifth time this season that the show has hinted that Boyd has finally gotten in over his head only to reveal that in fact he was three steps ahead all along and I fucking love it every time. Also the loss of a major character!
Oh, man, “Outlaw” is a great one. This season fuuuuuucks.
It does! All the problems I had with season 3 have disappeared. Television is a strange beast.
Matlock, “Game Day”
Continuing from last week as we move into the Slamm’d class action case, which also continues with all the other complications of last week– Billy, Sarah, and Simone; Matty’s investigation into Julian’s keycard history; Matty’s sister Bitsy showing up unexpectedly. Plus, the actual case– it seems Slamm’d is covering up evidence they were marketing to minors before wide release. Hiding evidence, gee, that sounds like a familiar theme.
Did I mention Bitsy is played by the always-wonderful Julie Hagerty? Anyway, strong episode.
Elsbeth, “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant”
Thankfully, we have no Billy Joel or Long Island this episode. But Elsbeth takes Teddy and his boyfriend on a New York murder tour (an actual tour, I don’t mean she just brings them to murders), and the tour ends at Pupetta’s Restaurant, where a notable mob murder that sparked a war, Eddie Nova whacking Goldie Moresco, happened in 1998 (and they made a movie about it!)… but as Elsbeth listens to the recounting, she finds the story doesn’t add up. Pupetta (aka Lisette Del Ponte, played by Alyssa Milano) is still running the restaurant, and her husband Gene Gianetti was the only witness to the murder… and when he sneaks a message to Elsbeth to meet him later, Elsbeth shows up and he’s been hit by a car.
Of course, that gets Elsbeth even curiouser, and it was one of Detective Fleming’s earliest cases and he was never sold on the official story either, so he’s on board too. And as Elsbeth and Fleming pull at the threads of the hit-and-run and the murder story, they start to unwind what might be a coverup amidst a lot of complicated relationships, crime family and other family…
Also, we learn that Elsbeth’s maiden name is Gudmundsdottir. Just like Björk! (Well, I don’t think the American Elsbeth uses the same diacritics and such, but still.)
Anyway, I quite enjoyed this one, but then, I suppose it’s in my blood to.
Julie Hagerty? Dammit, time to break out the Werther’s Originals and join the bandwagon.
Not Werther’s Originals, butterscotch!
(This will make sense about three minutes into the first episode.)
Crime of Passion – Not the slam dunk Ken Russell/Kathleen Turner erotic thriller/giallo I wanted, but still a really provocative, interesting piece of work that didn’t deserve that many negative reviews (maybe the R-rated cut is just that different/incoherent). The Perkins and Turner scenes are the ones which come together the most in my mind, especially that Shayne has a certain maniacal purity: he’s right about Joanne/China’s dual identities even if his reaction is irrational and misogynistic.
Royal Crackers is a dumber, weirder Succession, which means its funnier and going to some already disturbing/hilarious/unexpected places. I also hate rap-metal so seeing the jabs at bad 90’s bands felt good.
Hey Friends, What’s Up?
My brother and sister in law were honored by his daughters’ high school for their volunteer work – he has been treasurer for a while but as his youngest is about to graduate, he’s stepping down – so off my mother and I went to New Jersey. (The tickets were pricey and we opted for my wife to stay home.) Sure enough, since one can’t mask while eating, I have a bug. Doesn’t seem to be any of the serious ones judging by how I feel (and my morning COVID test), but still a bit annoying. But that is how life used to be, right?
The stuff I heard about the approach to education was so different than I ever had in my high school days. Apparently the students have close relationships with each other and with all their teachers and are encouraged to live full lives now and later. For me, high school was a place I went to learn stuff, which I did, and that seemed sufficient. Was I shortchanged of a better experience? Have high schools changed that much? Or was I just so utterly self motivated to doing my school work that I missed anything and everything else?
That sounds like an exceptional high school to me, but I do see (most) buildings putting a stronger emphasis on personal wellness, so maybe its more common! Probably experiences vary throughout the student body – not sure there’s a whole lot a school can do if things are in bad shape at home. Was this a public or private school?
Private, as was mine but it was so long ago.
Finished the songwriting challenge, managed to get a few final ideas sorted on the final day including this collaboration with a friend that I think came out nicely: https://write.fawm.org/songs/316742
Now need to get some of those songs ready to play live as I have a couple of gigs coming up, ideally I’d also polish some of them up for release as well but I hate that part, so much tedious admin. But I have about 15 years of unreleased material kicking around at this point so I really need to start putting the extra work in.
Busy week since then, already mentioned that I entertained friends from out of town on Wednesday night but it was really enjoyable, not something I do all that often but we managed to get into a highly recommended taco restaurant and the food and service was great (and very tolerant of our various dietary issues). Feeling a little under the weather now after a bunch of nights out and too many drinks, hoping it’s not going to turn into yet another winter cold just as spring feels like it’s almost here.
Need to step up my efforts to buy a new car this weekend, got some longer trips planned from next month and I neither trust my current car beyond local trips nor want to spend more money on repairing it, so it is time. I do not like car shopping. But it’ll be really nice to have one that isn’t kinda falling apart.
Been a busy week since getting back from the festival. Nice to have a few days off and it went far too fast. Ended a little more abruptly than anticipated when the final show that we assumed we’d be able to get into (Sundays are usually lower attendance) had absolutely no room. One of the few instances of the festival miscalculating a film’s ticket sale potential by a wide margin! Federal work is still miserable, seeing some fighting back, but this is going to require a long view. I’m prepared to consider as far as the heat death of the universe, but today I’ll try focusing on the warming spring weather.
What did we read?
The Love Song of J Edgar Hoover, Kinky Friedman
A weird alternate riff on Sam Spade. That’s genuinely all this is – it’s the seventh book in the series, I think, and it’s genuinely just an exercise in cute lines for a hundred and seventy-odd pages. The author’s name is also the narrator’s name, and he’s a private investigator solving an odd crime and making observations. This kind of feels like the evil twin to Elmore Leonard – same kind of low-stakes crime story, but the action is oddly weightless and the narrator frequently irritatingly smug.
The Farthest Shore, Ursula K Le Guin
Le Guin continues to be a writer I admire rather than like. This has some cool sequences in it – the climax fucking rocks – and I get the philosophy but overall my emotional reaction is rather muted. I find my eye slides off her words – of all things, I think of The Sopranos, where characters are talking around the thing they’re talking about. Her view of the world is very ethereal and ephemeral, so I see the appeal but it’s not for me.
Most interesting part of the book (aside from the climax) is when the protagonist is taken as a slave, and he realises he’s going to get himself killed purely because he can’t handle being a slave, and he takes this in stride – like, yeah, birds fly, fish swim, and when I’m taken as a slave, I’m gonna argue and they’re gonna kill me.
My reaction to a lot of Le Guin’s novels is that they need more concrete nouns, so this “ethereal and ephemeral” bit really pinged with me–it’s often beautiful writing, but a tad too abstract for my taste. But reading Lavinia this week did give me a Le Guin novel that finally got me fully engaged in its world. (And it’s a world that’s explicitly only half-real in the novel’s own context, a kind of living poetry, but still somehow more prosaic and grounded than I’m used to with her.)
I have a lot of weirdly conflicted feelings about Elmore Leonard that I probably just need to write an essay about a some point, but “evil twin to Elmore Leonard” is a hilarious and awful image.
I was worried about saying this and coming off too man-ish, but every time I read Le Guin, I think “This is why we’re told to write in active voice”. Le Guin always feels like she’s talking around what’s happening. On the other hand, I suppose that must be the appeal to people who like her. I’m looking forward to Left Hand Of Darkness and The Dispossessed because they both sound more grounded.
I’m curious what you’ll think of those. They’re both more interesting to me intellectually than emotionally, but they almost hit what I’m looking for. (Unsurprisingly, I think Le Guin can be a really great nonfiction writer–I’m very fond of her essay collection on animals in fiction–and The Dispossessed, in particular, strikes me as really intriguing essay that doesn’t quite work for me as a novel.) They do both have some specific moments that have stuck with me.
That was near my experience of The Dispossesed as well, better ideas than story. Call it the Michael Schur Effect, she’s so close to exactly what I like that I spend more time considering where it comes up short (at ye olde site I think it was pointed out that the initial enthusiastic reactions to others reading Le Guin at some point starting drifting more toward “weeeeellll” the longer we discussed). I’ll second Simon though, in that I really liked The Lathe of Heaven.
We’ve very possibly/probably discussed this before, but have you read any Octavia E. Butler? I am also worried about sounding off in ignorance (“I am familiar with a second female titan of science fiction!”) but the similarity that brought her to mind isn’ that, it’s that she similarly has her favored ideas and themes but her details and action are really tangible, and it’s exhilarating reading. Considering your love for drama growing from concrete details and actions, I’d highly recommend anything I’ve read of hers.
Ooh, seconding the vote for Butler. Her writing always feels so visceral and so deeply engaged with the story.
Another vote for Butler, I believe her sense of action and drama was the source of a very good discussion somewhere a while back…
https://www.the-solute.com/the-solute-book-club-clays-ark-discussion-by-miller/
I do believe you brought her up when I first read A Wizard Of Earthsea like a year ago. Weirdly I’ve had her on the brain since reading an anecdote recently that said she preferred working shitty jobs before she got big because they gave her mental space to work on her stuff, just like me, which also attracts me to her writing.
I’m amusing myself imaging a restatement of this fashioned after a Calvin & Hobbes punchline (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c9/89/13/c9891375a03926438e346ee6f4d8b3ea.jpg)
“You know how Octavia Butler worked shitty jobs at first? Well mine are even shittier!”
The only LeGuin I’ve read is The Lathe of Heaven, which is quite good but the TV movie improved on it. I don’t really feel tempted to read more of her stuff, though.
I am not at all conflicted about Elmore Leonard. in a world with Donald Westlake, Leonard seems like a pale copy.
Please write that Elmore Leonard essay! I like him and he’s obviously written indelible work, but there is a certain remove that keeps him from “love” territory or even reread territory for the most part, and I think Stephen King is giving him a lot of cover in the “popular fiction with letdown endings” department.
“Ethereal” is interesting, to me Le Guin is so grounded in the physical world and sensation. The characters are not as action-based, true, but their existence is still very tangible to me.
I think a lot of her wordcount is spent describing the spirit of a person or thing – not a wrong choice, not even in the context of a plot-lite narrative, but one that makes it intangible to me.
Wait, Kinky Friedman wrote a bunch of detective books too? He’s kind of a cult Texas legend for a number of reasons.
Yeah, I looked him up when I finished reading and was like “Wow, this guy’s had an interesting life.”
Goddess of Yesterday, by Caroline B. Cooney
Usually at this point in my life, I avoid YA novels unless I’m revisiting an old favorite. I hadn’t read this before, but Cooney is an old favorite—she could be very uneven (and I loathe the one later-era book of hers I read to the point where I found a sanitary pad in the library copy and that’s not even what I hated most), but her best was fantastic, and it would probably be impossible to overstate how much some of her stuff influenced me. So when I find a classic-era Cooney I haven’t read yet, occasionally I’ll check it out.
And it paid off nicely here, because this is a very enjoyable and often impressively dark retelling of (part of) the Trojan War from a specific and intriguing perspective. Anaxandra goes from the beloved daughter of a minor pirate lord to the hostage companion of one princess to impersonating that princess … and on and on, experiencing sea changes in the level of worldliness, wealth, technology, and landscape around her, growing up, struggling to adapt, trying desperately to keep her story straight, and endeavoring to hold to some kind of ethos during all that even as she becomes sure she’s incurred the wrath of the gods. Good historical worldbuilding—I love how shocked she is at encountering a forest for the first time, when she grew up on an island with only occasional scattered trees, for example, and also how alien and magical glass feels. Deft characterization of supporting players. Great icily terrifying Helen, great clever and witchy Cassandra.
This can also get genuinely brutal at times, at least for something aimed at this audience: we have a sympathetic minor character casually hurled overboard to drown after her seasickness makes her vomit on a sailor, we have a man’s intestines falling out of him and getting eaten by dogs while he’s still alive, we have an elderly woman deformed by decades of merciless slavery, we have attempted child poisoning …. It all successfully makes the stakes feel high and the situation feel desperate. Cooney softens it towards the end—earlier, Anaxandra thinks, “When a god is angry, there is no end to it,” but then it turns out that there is, actually—but at least it comes with a kind of deftly employed trick. It would just be better if it were our protagonist’s trick. Still, I really enjoyed this, and either Cooney and I share a lot of the same ideas about morality in fiction or I imprinted on her early enough that some of those ideas became mine. I should do some write-ups on my favorites for next Intersectional Femivision.
Lavinia, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Last week, I said that I’d never quite clicked with any of Le Guin’s novels despite really loving some of her short stories. Then, after finishing Goddess of Yesterday–which features Aeneas in a minor role—I remembered that I had a copy of Le Guin’s semi-retelling of the Aeneid and decided to check it out.
And it turns out that this is the Le Guin novel I finally love! Most of my experience with the Aeneid comes from translating chunks of it in college, so there was a certain, “Oh, yeah, Turnus,” and, “Oh, yeah, pious Aeneas,” factor here where it was fun to run into characters and concepts I hadn’t thought about in years (and hadn’t encountered in English in the first place), but that’s not the main appeal. This is a gorgeous, gracefully written historical novel that trips along the border of fantasy—it’s from Lavinia’s perspective, and she has visions of Virgil that show her that she is essentially fictional, a fragment whose unformed shape gives her flexibility—but also offers a really solid, thoughtfully rendered world. You can believe that this is what it would feel like to live in the fabric of history and myth. Both the martial and the domestic are portrayed with equal understanding and care, and the characters feel both universally human and very specific to their time and place.
Totally loved this. If anyone has recommendations for Le Guin in this particular mode—very solidly realized setting and the concrete details of everyday life, empathetic portrayal of a wide range of people, interplay between the political and the personal—I’ll totally take them. (For context, I didn’t really connect with The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, or The Lathe of Heaven. I sort of liked Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, but I don’t remember it very well. Love “Solitude,” “Mountain Ways,” “The Matter of Seggri,” and “Paradises Lost.”)
Anyway, great literary double-feature of contemporary, female character-centric takes on these particular epics.
Not sure I’ll read a more damning review than the parenthetical in that first paragraph. I think the strangest thing I’ve found in a library or used book was somebody’s phone bill (this was back before online payments). Oops! Hope they got it paid.
“You can believe that this is what it would feel like to live in the fabric of history and myth” — yes! Lavinia is fantastic, more than any work I can think of she drills into the world and worldview of a lost (and in some ways fictional) world and morality, and her anthropological detail gels with her language (especially in the structure of her sentences and thoughts) to realize this. I think she does this to some degree in her works but in different modes — Left Hand Of Darkness is purposefully cold and reflective of its world in a way the earthier Laurentum is not — and Lavinia might be her best in this regard. As always, for the Le Guin skeptic I will recommend The Word For World Is Forest, which also has strong anthropological detail and personal/political interplay, but with significantly more action and anger than Le Guin generally brings to bear (it is her Vietnam novel and it is more ripped off by Avatar than A Wizard of Earthsea was ripped off by Harry Potter). But your description here — “very solidly realized setting and the concrete details of everyday life, empathetic portrayal of a wide range of people, interplay between the political and the personal” — is as good a summary of Guy Gavriel Kay’s novels as I’ve seen, so if you haven’t read him you should get on his stuff yesterday.
I’ve read the Fionavar books (which I think are overall considered not that characteristic of his work, potentially, but which I rather liked for the Arthuriana factor) and A Song for Arbonne, and I’ve always meant to read more.
Ah, I haven’t read those, I think what I’ve read is his mid-period to current stuff. It’s all good but Sailing To Sarantium/Lord Of Emperors (essentially the fall of the Byzantine Empire) and Under Heaven/River Of Stars (a broader scope but roughly 800s-1200s China) are his best. Lions Of Al-Rassan is also excellent.
I need to find myself this Caroline Cooney book – this sounds so my jam. I’m a sucker for any kind of Trojan war retelling (also did Aeneid translations at uni! “I sing of the man…”).
On that theme, Kerry Greenwood has a great couple of books doing the female character perspective angle – one series with Cassandra as protagonist (she then survives Agamemnon’s homecoming and goes on the run with Electra and Orestes), and I love her Medea. David Gemmell also does a great Trojan war trilogy.
I’d love to know what you think if you ever do read the Cooney! And I’m now instantly adding Greenwood and Gemmell to my list.
I think you’ll like Kerry Greenwood. I started on her Greek women books, but her best-known stuff is the Phryne Fisher series: fabulously wealthy and beautiful the Hon Phryne Fisher solves mysteries in 1929 Melbourne, in the course of which she will visit historical settings, hobnob with or at least namedrop historical figures, wear gorgeous tailored clothing, order and drink expensive and very specifically prepared food and drink, and most importantly, have hedonistic sex with at minimum two different lovers per book.
Earlier this week I finally finished White Gold Wielder, the sixth Thomas Covenant book by Stephen R. Donaldson (which was the final book in the series for 20 years before Donaldson returned to it several years ago). I’ve discussed the series in this space, and the finale (for now) did not disappoint. The emotional and moral crises that animate the books are just so powerful and full.
Most of the way through Sleeping Murder by Dame Agatha. This is the last Miss Marple, by which we mean Christie wrote it during WWII just in case, as she did with Curtain, and then it got held back and published as is in the 70s. The book does not have any sort of introduction to explain this, so it’s perplexing at first how un-technological things are, but that could be explained by “this is taking place in the English countryside” and I think the 70s there were still people who didn’t have TVs and didn’t have much use for phones. Anyway, it’s pretty readable and the way the mystery is built up is effective. Miss Marple, however, is just not as interesting to me as Poirot. She really does feel like a busybody too often.
It’s odd reading Sleeping Murder after Nemesis, which–while a bit baggy and weaker in the way of late Christie–does feel much more like it was deliberately constructed as a sendoff for the character.
Monday Starts on Saturday, Arkady & Boris Strugatsky – always enjoy the weird tales these guys weave, only a few chapters into this one but I’m enjoying the deadpan narrator being completely nonplussed by talking cats and witches, very curious where this is headed.
The Constant Gardener — back on Le Carre bullshit! I was trying to figure out who his American equivalent is, not in terms of spy stuff but in his utter hatred for certain aspects of his country/class/milieu, he is just withering on the diplomatic corps in Kenya here and why not considering their past, but it is bracing stuff. He also hates big pharma, with cause, but falters a bit here in terms of info dumping that his Cold War stuff did not need. This is structured as a mystery, as the titular CG looks into his activist wife’s brutal killing, but it’s pretty obvious who did it (big pharma) and why (big pharma is evil) and Le Carre knows this, so the other mystery is how his very internal and reserved lead is uncovering what his life has meant if this is where it ended up. I think there is a Candide reference in the title and tending one’s own garden — even if its flowers are shared — is still ignoring the larger world.
Hitman, by Garth Ennis and John McCrea — finally found the last TPB of this comic, goofy and grim and in some ways Ennis’ purest work? McCrea’s cartoony art might not hit the heights of Steve Dillon’s work but is perfect for a world where a screeching demon becomes a bartender and a drunk lunatic becomes a superhero, and a hitman with a body count in the thousands can still have honor. Ennis clearly loves John Woo and draws on him in some ways, but his own version of honor is how everyone matters and at the bar with your buddies is the best place to be, who says comics aren’t inspirational.
The Weapon Makers – A. E. Van Vogt throws us straight into the deep end of his fully thought-out and constructed world – technical development, time shenanigans, a despotic monarchy, and the Weapon Shops, run by science, which technically surpass the empire providing checks and balances for ordinary people, producing weapons accessible to everyone, firing only in self-defense. Hedrock, a Superman, is guided by philanthropic motives and sees to it that neither side gains an advantage. But when the interstellar engine is invented the balance of power between the Empire and the Weapon Shops is seriously upset. Its further unbalanced by the intervention of a super-intelligent alien race completely upsetting plans on both sides. The entire future rests in Hedrock’s hands. With a fate unknown even to himself can he meet his destiny? A dynamic Golden Age space opera with plenty of twists and more pulpy cliffhangers. Thought out as a complete novel it is not as choppy as the Weapon Shops of Isher. But it still has the dreamy incoherency to its reality, one where things do not quite add up, that would be a primary influence on PKD.
I finished Arrecife by Juan Villoro last week, a murder mystery told by a former drug addict rockstar now working as a hotel midmanager in not-Cancún. It’s fun story that uses the structure and language of a thriller swiftly but not very deeply. The central mystery is solved relatively easily and by the midway mark, giving way to Villoro’s deep love for rock music and several cynical observations about the turism industry and the vices and virtues of the men who run it. It does run into a problem where nearly every character talks in the same noir inflection, much like the main character’s narration. At least the dialogue is always engaging, and the character cast is quite interesting by the end, developing into a curious environment of people and a strange friendship at the core of it.
Started my first reading of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, plus another re-read of Pedro Páramo, my first since 2014.
Nfw there are 50 theaters on the planet more beautiful than the Akron Civic Theatre: https://coolcleveland.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/AkronCivic.jpg
Perhaps it was left off the list because it is now (as it has been for more than 50 years) primarily a performance venue, not a movie theater (which was its original purpose). But they do still show movies there.
I had no idea Milla Jovovich was married to The Other Paul Anderson
After she was married to Luc Besson! She is a very close collaborator.
I dunno how you resisted including Danny McBride interviewing Walton Goggins, especially with the number of shirtless photos of The Goggins therein. (The Righteous Gemstones‘ final season premieres Sunday!)
https://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/walton-goggins-and-danny-mcbride-on-nervous-breakdowns-and-spiritual-awakenings
That is an extremely endearing interview, and great one-two punch of laughter + awww at the end.
Happy Hour call
John and I have been talking about setting up the next one soon, since it’s been about three months since the last one. He’s working on reaching out to the people who aren’t on this site. He says the best day for him next week is the 13th, although I’m not sure if that’s too soon to set it up and we should wait until the week after.
Interested parties, let me know what dates and times work for you.
I have confirmed I can do the 13th ! I would not be able to do the following Thursday, so next week – at least as far as Thursdays – is better for me.
I think John can only do Thursday next week, but it doesn’t strictly have to be Thursday if we do it another week.
I’ll likely be able to show up, but I’ll be at work so I’ll be silently observing for thirty minutes.
Thursday works for me, and I think it gives us enough time to all find the largest pornography we can to display on our screens to get Tristan in trouble.
By what criteria are we determining “largest”?
A noble spirit embiggens the smallest pornography.