The Friday Article Roundup
Out of the mists of history, the best pop culture writing of the week.
This week, you will dig into:
Send articles throughout the next week to magpiesmedia [at] gmail, post articles from the past week below for discussion and Have a Happy Friday!
Hanif Abdurraqib muses on old entertainment technology, nostalgia and inconvenience at the New Yorker:
When I see people pining for the materials of the eighties and nineties I don’t find myself especially nostalgic for the same. In doing my cost-benefit analysis around inconvenience, I’ve started to think about the difference between what the heart desires and what the brain and body can manage. The world that we live in now has not equipped most people for a return to the small and repeated nuisances of past technologies. Yet, at the same time, relentless convenience (or being sold the idea of relentless convenience) warps the brain in ways that make nostalgic cravings somewhat inevitable.
Jeremy Herbert examines the state of the VHS market for Crooked Marquee:
Collecting VHS tapes is no longer about collecting their contents. The only copies that earn top marks and five-digit sales are sealed, meaning the dubiously qualified appraisers can’t even guarantee the tape inside isn’t blank. They are worth their packaging now, steering the market away from vinyl and other media toward toy collectors who mortgage homes to fill them with unopenable boxes of plastic memory. The wayward souls with dusty VCRs and a little petty cash may not be paying luxury-car prices for Back to the Future, but that vintage shop is expecting $15 for something that McDonald’s gave away for less than half with the purchase of every Big Mac. Why? Because nostalgia is the only commodity that goes up when everything else goes down, and yesterday’s business is booming.
In Oxford American, Emily Hilliard examines how country music embraced wine in the mid-20th Century:
My hunch is that [wine sellers’ patriotic] messaging, intentionally or not, found its way into country songwriters’ consciousnesses, especially considering how country music has historically represented itself as a uniquely American symbol and product. Attempts to appeal to white middle-class consumers through alignments with American values might explain why a company like Mogen David, whose wine had achieved popularity with urban African American populations in the company’s hometown of Chicago and in other Midwestern cities, chose to advertise in a national country music special commemorating The Grand Ole Opry.
Jon Greenaway takes aim at the hellish specter of Jimmy Fallon for Current Affairs:
Fallon acts as the high priest of a terrified optimism, his rictus grin serving as a shield against the encroaching silence of the real. Here, in the sanitized, over-lit heart of the American culture industry, there is an inescapable horror. But it isn’t a monster lurking in the shadows; it is the manic, unblinking insistence that actually, there are no shadows at all. If the Gothic tradition of fear teaches us that the ruins of the past haunt the present, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon offers the inverse: a present so forcefully flattened, so aggressively “fun,” that it has exorcised history entirely, leaving us trapped in a sterile, eternal loop of viral games and celebrity lip-syncing while the world slides into climate collapse and fascist politics.
For Aftermath, Gita Jackson breaks down how “unc” has been stripped of its complimentary context:
Though I love the writing of both MacDonald and Maiberg, they are both doing something that I have observed in the online fandom for video games for some time. Black people who play video games talk about the games in the terms that they are familiar with, then other, non-black people who play games pick up these terms and run with them. Suddenly, these slang terms become “gamer slang” rather than African American Vernacular English, and these false etymologies get reinforced through incurious reporting.
And Zach Rabiroff interviews Rick Veitch about the long-suppressed comic where Swamp Thing meets Jesus at Gizmodo:
“And I like to blame Bissette for this, because I originally drew the cover with [a crucified] Swamp Thing kind of looking like this”—here Veitch leans forward in his chair with a mild expression on his face—”and I was showing him the pencils to Steve, and he was like, ‘No, you’ve got to have Swamp Thing leaning back like this‘”—and here he mimes a gruesome expression. “And I did that, and it totally came together. But I got a feeling—and I had nothing to back it up—that when it went through production at DC, it set off the red flags that got the bad response going.”
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What did we watch?
Babylon 5, Season Four, Episode Fourteen, “Moments of Transition”
This episode weighs heavily on some themes I either don’t care about – in the case of the Minbari – or find frustrating in execution – the Garibaldi plot would be amazing if I had any impression it would turn out any way other than Garibaldi crawling back to Sheridan in apology. The Minbari plot is kind of saved by Delenn being forced to put up or shut up when it comes to the self-sacrifice, and I deeply enjoy her managing to pull off a ‘publicly shame an official’ story, but my god, is it way too invested in its invented lore to have any real emotional impact. I may have an essay in this.
The Garibaldi plot does manage to be saved by having Bester walk into it. I think part of the reason it works is because Koenig genuinely enjoys saying Straczinsky’s mouthful of dialogue in a way no other actor on the show does; Mira Furin also does well, but in a self-serious self-serious and self-righteous kind of way. Bester enjoys that nobody likes him and that he can still talk as long as he pleases.
Bob’s Burgers, Season Three
My initial issues have been fixed. Gene has settled into a specific groove as the Tracey Jordan/Roger Sterling of the dynamic who says the strangest possible thing while Louise carries the sadism. Now I’m fully on board.
Damn it! We were gonna pick on Bob’s Burgers together, Tristan! That was the plan!
Fully imagining you screaming this in a Ronnie Gardocki voice as you’re brutally pulled out of the room.
WHAT ABOUT THE SNARK, TRISTAN?! WHAT ABOUT THE SNARK?!
I don’t really hate Bob’s Burgers but I do find the show’s forgettable quality and how overhyped it was annoying.
I basically like it but I find it “consistently quite good” rather than ever exceptional, if somebody asked me to recommend an episode I’d struggle to pick a stand out.
See, I’m noticing what a Bob line it was and can only respond with a Gene-like I can only follow my heart!!!
Oh, I do relate to Bob’s lack of folly (and have the baritone for a good Bob impression).
My only request for your “why the Minbari and their lore suck” essay is that it is 5,000 words. No, 10,000. A full week! Anyway, at least Koenig is here to balance that shit out and you’re absolutely right about his way with dialogue and position. The immediate gag of his casting is “Star Trek, but evil!” but this actually plays out very thoroughly — he has an authority and scope of power that most other people on the show, even other authority figures, do not.
What made me come to love Gene as the character developed is realising that his nonsense statements and his musical inclinations are entwined. He says things for the love of the sound of words. Meaning is secondary to cadence.
So he’ll parrot and regurgitate found phrases as a means of making art in everyday life. And it works!
Oh, I love that.
Dinner Rush – Just another night at a trendy restaurant in Tribeca: a brownout, a love triangle, a food critic, mobsters, and “stump the bartender.” A fun and well made indie film directed by Bob Giraldi (best know for the “Beat It” video), filmed at a restaurant he actually owned, that perhaps loses a bit for me since I am not much of a foodie. (Also, it wears its heart on its sleeve a bit much.) The cast is a lot of familiar character actors, fronted by Danny Aiello, with Mark Margolis, Sandra Bernhard, John Corbett, and Kirk Acevedo among others. The camera work in the cramped spaces is great, and the sound production capturing the noise of the kitchen is about as good as possible. Interesting to watch this a week after seeing The Plot Against Harry. We move ahead forty years, trade Jewish NYC for Italian NYC, trade catering for a restaurant, but we keep the same sort of low level crook who had to navigate between his past, his family, and his desire to make things right.
Elementary, “The Deductionist” – The title refers to an article a noted FBI profiler wrote about Holmes (without giving his name). When he met her, they were working on a case together, and also sharing a bed. Now they are teamed again as she tries to find an escaped serial killer she put away once, and he at once loathes her for being full of herself and loathes her for being right about him. This personal spin adds to a fairly good chase as the killer both eludes the cops and plots revenge against the profiler for some terrible and untrue things she said about his father. We’re also getting a bit more of the heart of darkness inside Holmes, who all his desire to serve the common good fully expects to fall apart again someday. Guests include Terry Kinney as the serial killer, Kari Matchett as the profiler, and a familiar face to an earlier generation of cop show viewers, Roger Robinson, once a semi-regular on Kojak.
Dinner Rush is pretty fun, I think I found it on a list of “the best restaurant movies” or something like that, and it feels like enough of a hidden gem to always turn up at about #12 or something on a list like that without ever being anyone’s favourite.
Slow Horses, “Bad Dates”
Hey, we’ve got all our regulars properly credited now! That’s nice!
This is the series start that feels most tied to the series before: Shirley is still struggling with the immense pain of Marcus’s death, and it’s made her (correctly, as it turns out) hypervigilant about any threat to any member of the team, even Roddy; River’s entire S4 journey has left him mired in a kind of bristling, angry depression, one that’s surely only going to get worse now that Louisa’s leaving Slough House, ostensibly for good, and he’s badly misread their goodbye conversation, potentially contributing to their friendship going on life support. Grim stuff. I remember seeing an interview with the showrunner talking about this season being funnier and lighter than S4, but one episode in, I’m not sure I agree! These people are not doing great! Although at least Shirley is about to get some major vindication, and Aimee-Ffion Edwards did some especially great work in that bathroom scene, with all of her raw grief coming out before she forcibly backs away from it–probably not wanting to be vulnerable in general, and especially not wanting to be that vulnerable with a guy she’s really, really pissed off at right now.
A honeypotted Roddy exuberantly dancing his way through the city should be the best laugh moment, but I’m actually going to give it to Nick Mohammed’s Mayor Jaffrey, who packs an entire episode of Veep into a single facial expression when he finds out that a mass shooter was a big supporter of his obnoxious populist opponent. The unadulterated glee that he’s trying to professionally keep locked down made me howl. (Said obnoxious populist opponent also gets in a good quip about Jaffrey’s obviously canned line about the shooting: “Why are you talking like that? There are no cameras here.”) Very excited to see more of Mohammed.
Love Lamb stealing the entire cake from Louisa’s party and walking off with it.
May
The fact that Angela Bettis hasn’t gotten more work is a scathing indictment of Hollywood. She absolutely burns through the screen here: vulnerable, fucked-up, and terrifying.
Going to recommend this article on May as neurodiverse cinema yet again:
https://www.room207press.com/2021/04/the-question-in-bodies-32-neurodiverse.html
That’s a great article and explains why I start crying hard right at the end. “SEE ME!” Ebert aptly compared Bettis to Lady Macbeth here and also correctly gave the film four stars.
Seinfeld, S7, “The Friar’s Club” – an unusually zany episode, I enjoyed George’s desperate attempts to pull Jerry into his relationship so that he doesn’t actually have to spend time alone with his fiancee and Kramer’s subplot goes to some unexpectedly dark places but the stuff about Jerry’s jacket and Elaine’s deaf coworker (played by the never-welcome Rob Schneider) fell a little flat.
I haven’t posted in forever. Also have not watched much of interest. However:
Scrubs and Malcom in the Middle revivals.
I’m between Malcom and JD in age and identify pretty closely with both of them. These revivals work really well because they aged with the target audience. It was like checking in on old friends, but things had changed and they weren’t just coasting on nostalgia. They also did just enough with the new residents and Malcolm’s kid to have space to continue if it works out. This is pure tv. Using years of good will like this is tv’s strength as a medium, something that’s getting g lost.
What did we read?
8 Bit Theater, Strips 0920-0950,
“They can only be considered slow if you completely ignore objective reality.”
“Besides, anything I do is justified by me wanting to do it.”
“Hey, yeah, that’s true! You told me so yourself!”
“Exactly.”
“Hey, I got some bad news and some bad news.”
“Sounds like we’re safe forever.”
“This doesn’t really shed any light on how we escaped though. Or anything that has happened ever.”
“Hmm. The cannon fodder aspect. I can get behind that.”
“It’s certainly no good being in front of it.”
“Okay, ignoring you.”
“It’s the sincerity with which you maintain these ideas that depresses me the most.”
“Don’t say that. You’re the only other here besides me who remotely makes sense. Don’t take that away from me. I have so little.”
“And yet I have so much.”
The comic is still capable of really funny lines and even whole pages of funny dialogue at this point, but we’re definitely getting closer to the weakest point of the comic. It’s also starting to run low on inspiration, with a few rote lines of comic misery. That said, it does have a big turning point, where Black Mage double-crosses the party openly, which will factor into the climax.
Sped through the first three Jeff Vandermeer Southern Reach/Area X books on audio (with Bronson Pinchot performing part of them) and am pretty stunned. This is some of the best weird fiction I’ve read in a minute (and I read A LOT of capital-W weird fiction) as it feels very much of the 21st century, reflecting the alien energy of an ecology and environment beyond human understanding, let alone control, with a force whose motivations are at best opaque to the scientists and bureaucrats at the Southern Reach agency. The second book Absolution in this regard is hilarious, a very Burroughsian take on the control society and a government agent increasingly in over his head.
I also started A Mystery Beyond Mysteries, a biography of Edgar Allen Poe looking at his life through the prism of his very strange and still unexplained death. Clearly trying to reevaluate Poe’s morose image in pop culture, noting his sense of humor – which can be found in the very silly story “The Spectacles” – and gregariousness with friends.
Deeper into Marc Morris’s history of the Anglo-Saxons, and the 10th century brings Danes and other “vikings” all over the place, monastic reform and Church in fighting, and most importantly a lot more primary and secondary sources, so the narrative really picks up as 1066 races towards us.
Started Mick Herron’s The Secret Hours (inspired in equal parts by reading stuff by and about Le Carre, and also Lauren watching Slow Horses). The book is a standalone but apparently connected to the Slow Horses series, but I don’t think I mind spoilers. So far, it’s about a government attempt to root out malfeasance in the security services that of course is doing no such thing, and obviously it will connect to something no one wants discovered. As much as the TV show presents a cynical view of things, it is missing Herron’s utter acidity, but also his sharp sense of humor and his really great skill with words. He seems to land somewhere between Pratchett’s mix of anger and sheer wit and Hornby’s observational skill, but is very much his own writer. Be aware that Herron spares nothing and no one in the system, with some utter disgust for the Boris Johnson era (earner) and even an aside suggesting work from home is a bad idea (which of course a novelist is qualified to judge). Cannot wait to see how this gets from point A to point B.
Sweet! This, as well as all the other Herron books, are on my to-read list now. (I may have picked up the Slough House series in bulk. I admit to nothing.) Even just from flipping through them, I love how distinct and funny and present Herron’s voice is.
even an aside suggesting work from home is a bad idea
I like the idea of Herron realizing that everyone universally practicing work from home would have torpedoed his most successful series and breaking out in a cold sweat.
I suspect Jackson Lamb was probably never happier than those months when he didn’t have to see a single solitary person.
Herron clearly hates most contemporary British politicians and while he’ll zing everyone he despises the Johnson/Brexit/conservative side most of all. I would not have thought to compare him to Pratchett but I think that works (particularly in the opening section of each Slow Horse book, very Pratchettian in a “starting with the Great Turtle A’Tuin and zooming into our setting” way), what separates the two is that Pratchett largely worked in types as opposed to actual figures and sometimes that makes Herron’s scope a bit limited. But his style is strong and his action is superb. I need to check this one out.
Thérèse Raquin, by Émile Zola
I picked this up for the most on-brand reason ever: I read a description of this nineteenth century French classic that made it sound a bit Shieldian. (Local woman when no one mentions The Shield: “Hmm, getting some Shield vibes from this.”)
Despite being a pioneering work of dark naturalism, it is not, alas, that Shield-like, and I wound up having a more tumultuous relationship with it than you’d expect for a novel that barely cracks 200 pages. My Oxford World Classics edition starts off with the translator throwing an immense and very entertaining amount of shade at Zola for repetitious and overheated prose that leaves no room for stylistic escalation as his situation intensifies; it’s then followed by a second edition preface where Zola, less entertainingly, throws a lot of shade at his critics and gets very huffy about how people are animals and he wrote this novel as a kind of vivisection of temperaments, and any criticism that doesn’t take that into account is wrong. He then provides–this was entertaining–an example of prospective criticism that would not be wrong. Okay, here we go.
The novel begins okay, goes on to become excellent, turns dire, and then rescues itself in the last forty pages or so. It centers on Thérèse and her lover Laurent, two amoral losers who fall into a torrid affair and plot to kill Thérèse’s sickly husband, Camille. Zola’s strength here lies in the fields of horror and crime fiction, because so much about the eventual murder is superb and brutally effective. There’s a picnic scene with a bit of violence that doesn’t even happen–Camille is sleeping on the grass, and Laurent stands above him and lifts his foot above his face, ready to bring his boot down full-force and stomp his head open, while Thérèse turn away in anticipation of the blood–that is so vivid even as a possibility that it feels embedded in my mind for good. Zola’s cynicism also comes in handy in evoking bitterly funny true crime-style details, like the boating party that doesn’t witness Camille’s drowning but instantly convinces itself it has (and supports Laurent’s false version of it) and winds up eating the lunch Camille ordered before he died.
But while Thérèse and Laurent falling for other people during their enforced time apart–they can’t marry too soon after the murder without looking suspicious–is another strong, cynical development, it makes it feel unbelievably forced when their eventual reunion results in both of them being plagued by life-ruining guilt. I don’t believe it for a second, no matter how much Zola tries to sell it as more of a physiological response than anything else. This section is populated with occasional indelible horror details, especially re: the bite-mark Camille left in Laurent’s throat, but it bogs down in how utterly unconvincing it is. It’s unbearably static–I could probably get over having committed a murder better than these people, and I’ve never gotten over anything in my life–and so I kept putting the book down because it was such a slog.
Luckily, it picks up again as Camille’s poor mother, now paralyzed, finds out that her caretakers–her source of peace and contentment as her life dwindles–are also her son’s killers. Zola’s horror instincts come back here as he convincingly portrays this woman’s life as a living nightmare devoted to a revenge she can’t achieve (the Vantablack comedy of her trying in vain to spell out the truth only to exhaust herself and have everyone conclude she was trying to sweetly thank them instead is so cruel) but can only hope to witness as life achieves it for her.
This book has one of the most brutal cat deaths I’ve ever seen. I don’t even want to think about it.
So–parts of this are excellent, albeit in a “the world is shallow and vile” way (of course there’s an aside about many young Parisians developing their first sexual interests while touring the morgue), but it’s so unrelenting in that tone that it fails to feel like a convincing portrait of human behavior. And while I’d assume from this that Zola doesn’t believe in God, he plays God to his characters to an obnoxious degree, to the point where it feels like Thérèse and Laurent have their debilitating guilt inflicted on them as a living hell, when you’d think Zola’s animalistic, temperamental philosophy would be more open to the frankly more shocking, in traditional terms, idea that they could commit this murder and go on to be happy and unbothered.
The Green Eagle Score, by Richard Stark
I said last week that Parker also didn’t feel quite like himself at the start of this, but hot damn, this really redeemed itself as we went on. This has one of my favorite heists of the series thus far, as Parker and Co. steal an Air Force base’s payroll–it has exactly the right level of complexity and detail (and gold outfits!)–and also one of my favorite complications, as a woman peripherally involved in the crime (via being the ex-wife of one heister and the current lover of another) confides it all to her therapist, who decides he wouldn’t mind getting a piece of the action himself. His involvement takes it to some off-screen operatic places that Parker has little interest in but that are fascinating to me. You could easily get five hundred pages out of this, but only by neglecting Parker himself; Stark unsurprisingly makes the correct choice for his series.
Devers, the payroll clerk who’s been a cheerful embezzler and is now awakening to his nature as a dedicated and professional crook rather than a part-time opportunist, is an incredible addition: my second-favorite Parker supporting character after Grofield. He feels more overtly Westlakian, maybe because his role reminds me a little of the one Judson Blint will eventually assume in the Dortmunder books. It’ a new and interesting move to have Parker and Fusco take Devers under their wing to some extent (Parker is still Parker, and not looking to play the mentor full-time–sending the guy off to Handy at the end makes perfect sense), recognizing his qualities and training him up.
Parker is settling into his relationship with Claire here, and it’s a nice touch that you can tell what a different relationship this is for him simply by him thinking about her during some of the downtime during the job.
The Blanks, by Grady Hendrix
Horror short that’s implicitly about what people are willing to risk for a comfortable, privileged life: all you have to do is ignore the horror in front of you. Noticing contaminates you, and makes you vulnerable. It’s not a bad metaphor, but it’s both a tad obvious and a tad underbaked, and I think it would hit more deeply if I didn’t feel like I understood much more about the symbolism than the symbol. Still, this has some good, eerie images, and the choice the protagonist makes at the end feels non-obvious, revealing, and horrifying all in its own right. The part that will stay with me, though, are the faux-causally cancelled plans that make the protagonist realize that she and her family are being cut off from the social herd.
Hee hee, I didn’t want to say anything last week about Green Eagle ramping it back up, what a great heist that is. And then it’s immediately and brutally undone. During the other POV section there’s a great little bit about the heister who is selling door to door encyclopedias and how the opportunity for this score is a lifeline, it’s harder-edged and more vital than something like “last score before retiring” or “this will save my family,” the cliches that you know are setting up a fall — but it still sets up a fall that is offscreen and unmemorialized. Stark’s still got it! And I love the comparison of Devers to Judson Blint, guys who are smart enough to see a scheme and get involved but still have a ways to go before being true pros. The chapter where Parker sounds Devers out and gets mostly good answers is so great – yes, he’s not going to actually mentor the guy but part of being a professional yourself is understanding that it is something to be attained, and if you want a field of professionals to work with they’re going to have to come from somewhere.
This is another Stark that would make a good movie (although it really would have to be a period piece, not a lot of cash setups like this anymore), if only for Parker and crew in their band costumes.
The almost instant transition from the high of getting away with it to the discovery of the dead bodies and missing cash is so sharply done: magnificent stuff. And hell yeah to what you say here about Parker and Devers and Parker implicitly recognizing the need to create more professionals.
Still haven’t read Zola and your recap makes me wonder if the novel contributed more to culture by creating the excellent setup of two lovers committing murder/regretting it which has been adapted into a lot of crime and horror at this point, including Thirst.
I like that theory! It’s interesting, too, because while it’s the bedrock here, it’s not handled all that well, which is exactly the kind of thing writers like to steal to tackle more convincingly.
One of the main Parker fan sites speculates if the use of an Air Force base reflects anything about Westlake’s time in the USAF in the 50s, but lacking any evidence avoids deeper speculation. (He was pretty closed mouthed about it.) The use of small towns in upstate New York, OTOH, might go with his eventual move to such a place in 1990, as well as the use of other, nicer small upstate towns in the Dortmunder novel Drowned Hopes and the standalone Help I Am Being Held Prisoner.
I saw that about his time in the USAF! Interesting, and I’m sure it did affect it somewhat.
Even seeing this mention of Help I Am Being Held Prisoner has made me want to reread it.
Zola is on my list of authors to check out someday. He was important in the Dreyfus Affair, which of course is a major topic in my beloved Proust.
Katabasis, by R.F. Kuang — two grad students who study magic “accidentally” kill their professor and journey into Hell to get him back. Hell is explicitly laid out like Dante’s Inferno, except it also resembles a college at points, in particular the Oxford the characters and Kuang herself attended. If this was more overt satire it would be perhaps limited but more pointed, instead it feels like massive cope, a big novel full of strong fantastical conceits (the magic, er, magick, is logic-based and interestingly reasoned out) that nonetheless revolves around how exploited grad students are. Join a union! There is also an extremely annoying bit where a student discovers something that “can only mean one thing,” the reader can immediately see that is not true and waiting for a supposedly intelligent character to figure that out is obnoxious. Perhaps I am not very tolerant of academia-based fiction, but this could’ve been better.
A Likely Story, by Donald Westlake — a comic novel about divorced author managing multiple families tries to navigate the publishing industry in New York City as he puts together his latest book. A change in subject from the crime-focused Westlake, who was *checks notes* a divorced author managing multiple families navigating the publishing industry in New York City. This is better than grad student fan fiction and the best parts involve Westlake riffing on other writers — the in-novel book is an anthology of Christmas writing and its author solicits pieces from real-life people, in a foreword Westlake says he is purposefully goofing on their public personas and not making any larger digs (perhaps warding off lawsuits here) and he has a lot of fun here, he cracks on Stephen King and John Irving and Joyce Carol Oates and many, many others (a running gag about Isaac Asimov refusing to stop sending submissions is great).
But Westlake’s closeness to his lead is less good — in some ways, this is a gentler version of Two Much, a funny turned curdled (purposefully so) study of a comic writer and rake who fucks his way into nihilism. Westlake was a fairly conservative guy in writerly temperament and this usually serves him well, in this case it leads to a default appreciation of the nuclear family instead of the more interesting juggling of multiple roles the book spends the most time in, and more concerningly an exclusion of things that deviate from this norm. Westlake wrote this in the 80s and his 70s opus Dancing Aztecs is much more problematic in what he tries to pull off character-wise but it’s trying even as it fails; here the only black people in NYC are two off-screen muggers and the gay people are caricatures; Westlake would bristle at being called a bigot and surely despised the Schlaflys of the world but his observational tone here is acceptance without bothering to understand or even consider why there may be a difference from his “norm.” At one point his author gets a submission from William F. Buckley about Christmas on a cruise ship and he likes it a lot because of what it unintentionally reveals about the author — “Buckley writes about ‘the darkys singing carols as the sun sets over the water,’ and he thinks the subject is the sunset” is an approximation of the line. Well, Westlake thinks he’s writing about the sunset for good chunks of this book.
Every Kuang novel sounds relevant to my interests until I hear more about it, whereupon it promptly starts sounding like something that would annoy me.
This is a great breakdown of the strengths and weaknesses of A Likely Story. I read it a couple years ago and am very fond of parts of it, especially the gentle writerly satire–Asimov’s cascading submissions is a delightful running gag–but everything in this second paragraph is true, and it kneecaps the book to an extent.
I don’t know any John Irving but his piece being about “a bear who is blinded by feminists” is 1. clearly riffing on stuff about the guy and 2. funny on its own, and the kicker of it clearly inserting “this took place on Christmas Eve by the way” in order to qualify for the anthology is hilarious. All of that stuff rules and the nuts and bolts of publishing is good too. And there is some grade A Westlakian comic writing in other places, the scene where the author and the ex-husband of the author’s new partner are talking with one of the gay characters and having a Who’s On First conversation regarding the Met and the Mets is great, a collision of worlds that finds comedy in these differing perspectives. But later that ex-husband has to find new living quarters and winds up with a different gay guy in the Village and Westlake’s tone describing how this dude picks up other dudes, to have sex with in his apartment, is very “no THANK you” and it just sucks. And the way the book ends with an ode to the family neuters any potential ironic read of this.
Look, I saw the whole “unc” discussion when it happened and even before the article was written, and I just have to say, I still think I am unc.
Hahaha I was not expecting to write the sentence “country music embraced wine thanks to MD 20/20,” but here we are.
The Tonight Show nowadays is what you’d expect from hiring the SNL cast member whose most famous character is “guy who breaks.” Jimmy Fallon is so boring that the 30 Rock character based on him left after a couple of seasons because there was literally nothing for him to do. (I don’t think I’ve seen the actor in anything since aside from Sonic commercials, which is about where I feel Jimmy Fallon would be if not for Lorne Michaels’ influence.)
Tracy Morgan not even disguising his contempt for Fallon corpsing during sketches in recent interviews was rather satisfying.
I wonder if Lonny on 30 Rock was there not so much as a Fallon riff (which he obviously was) but as a way to acknowledge that The Girly Show had more cast members than just Tracy and Jenna. Which is understandable, especially in the show’s beginning where TGS’ workings are more important, but that show’s reality became besides the point pretty quickly. Although the number and relative prominence of the writers remained constant, which is pretty funny now that I think about it.
WORLD’S LOUDEST KLAXON GOES OFF IN THE CAPTAIN NATH HOUSEHOLD: https://defector.com/lena-dunham-cant-help-herself
“There are two separate comparisons to Frankenstein’s monster. She directly addresses the audience as “ladies and gentlebeans.” And she employs a gratuitous, perhaps even pathological use of simile throughout her descriptions, sometimes three to a page.”