The Friday Article Roundup
You should be concerned about the week's best pop culture writing.
This week you will be be outraged at:
The opposite of outrage, appreciation, for the contributions of Bridgett Taylor! Send articles throughout the next week to magpiesfar [at] gmail, post articles from the past week in the comments for discussion, and have a Happy Friday!
Kelly Jensen at Well Sourced digs into the bigoted background of the animated reading advocate Lori the Librarian:
Lori the Librarian launched in late July of this year.+ The site claims Lori is “a devoted mom and defender of truth who protects young minds, preserves kids’ innocence, and promotes literature that celebrates life, liberty, and truth,” and she aims to “equip and empower parents to protect our kids.” (There’s that curious “our” again as it relates to children, as if Lori’s creator and sycophants actually care about my child, your child, or children more broadly). …Where the right has made it their mission to kill off actual educational tools like Sesame Street (it’s DEI), it’s not because they don’t want kids to have access to learning materials. It’s because they want to be the creators and purveyors of that material so they can cash in, too.
For New York Magazine, Sam Biddle takes a deep dive into Roblox and doesn’t like what he finds even as he recognizes its appeal to the children who use it:
The megapopular internet platform of my generation turned my peers and even our parents into screen junkies who spend their waking hours scrolling an infinite feed of slop and marketing that gets crappier and less useful by the day. What’s worrisome about Roblox is that the appeal of its universe — where slop and commerce and dopamine rushes are seamlessly blended — is that it’s intuitive. It’s the logical end point of the internet’s enshittification playing out before a younger generation’s eyes.
Matt Singer plumbs the ethical depths of the new Netflix documentary Unknown Number: The High School Catfish at ScreenCrush:
Reenactments are nothing new in documentary films, and while they are typically performed by actors, it’s not unheard of for a doc’s subjects to play themselves on camera. But I am not sure I have ever seen a doc take the additional step that Unknown Number did, which was to have the person who ultimately confessed to the crimes and pled guilty to two counts of stalking a minor — who (again, spoiler alert) turned out to be Kendra Licari, the mother of the female victim — actively participate in the creation of the film, not only as an interview subject but as one of the performers in the reenactments.
Cory Oldweiler Ellen Elias-Bursać’s translation of Croatian author Martina Vidaić’s novel “Bedbugs” for the Los Angeles Review of Books:
The opposition of island and mainland is apparent to [main character] Gorana as well, even professionally. While she and her fellow architects seek to craft urban spaces, islands are almost impregnable to such manipulation: “Though an island can also be shaped, arranged, and devastated, interventions into it are less serious, sometimes even ridiculous, because nothing can truly touch its finality. An island is about forgetting the future.”
And for Typebar Magazine, Matt Wolfbridge interviews Luke O’Neil about his new collection of writing:
O’Neil: So how did I manage? Well I don’t know if I did yet. I’ve mostly been coping by drinking and smoking too much, another theme that isn’t exactly subtle in the book. And not in a funny haha gotta have my drink! way. A way that has become a bit dark. Like, hm, someone ought to look into this. Also by telling myself the lie that maybe the things I write could make some sort of change. A small one, of course, I’m not an asshole, but still something. My readers write to me often to tell me about how this or that piece helped them or made them feel less alone or put something they had been feeling into words that they could not find and if that’s all I ever get out of this then that’s something too.
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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 Three, Episode Four, “Passing Through Gethsemane”
A solid episodic plot; the really obvious twist takes too long to get there and we don’t get much time with the consequences, but it’s still good, especially with Brad Dourif as the central character. If there’s a single point to it, it’s the way the reactionary nature of people screws up order, although I suppose Dourif’s place in the world was simply filled by another (a very Straczinskyesque note).
The twist is obvious but also pretty much the only place a story like this can go. I believe the conceit that drives this episode has come up before and it’s something I don’t think the show can handle — it is morally reprehensible but morally reprehensible stuff happens all the time, but it is part of the “this is how society is in the future” aspect of a show and it is too big to just be in the background for me (as opposed to the larger creeping fascism stuff that is handled well). I believe in Garibaldi being in favor of it because I have a good sense of his character, the rest of Earth being chill is harder to swallow. But Dourif carries everything, he is one of the greats and this is great even for him.
My complaint about the twist is mainly that it should have been revealed about a third of the episode earlier – all the best stuff ends up coming after it’s revealed. And you’re absolutely right about Garibaldi and especially Dourif – once he knows what he is, you see him fully committing to his fate, almost like Shane Vendrell in his more transcendent moments. It’s awful that he dies but you also see him get peace out of it.
“My complaint about the twist is mainly that it should have been revealed about a third of the episode earlier – all the best stuff ends up coming after it’s revealed” — the show will revisit this exact dynamic ten or so episodes from now, although in a somewhat lighter vein, and you can see that our understanding of drama and choices runs up against “we need to fill 43 minutes, time for another WILD HALLUCINATION OH WOW WHAT IS HAPPENING HOW MYSTERIOUS scene.”
Ah, The Others Syndrome.
Paterson – introducing a new partner to a personal favourite, always exciting. She liked it quite a bit although she had one complaint re: Marvin’s destructive act that was something I had not considered, haha. As always, made me want to write more, which is never a bad thing.
Joe Pera Talks With You – to the end of season 2. Back half of this season does a great job getting into deeply sad territory while still delivering some very funny stuff. Mike’s half-assed romantic gesture to get his wife back in particular is hilarious. The double-length fashion show episode is lovely too, Gene given a chance to shine.
Seinfeld, “The Note” and “The Truth” – kicking off season 3, I thought “The Note” was excellent and especially enjoyed how completely terrible George gets to be – always daunting when a 90s show gets into homophobic territory but George is so obviously the butt of the joke here and the way it all plays out is so wonderfully odd. “The Truth” a little messier, definitely not a classic episode although the “Kramer is dating Elaine’s roommate” subplot is pretty fun.
Fucking Marvin, man.
“We’re having quinoa, Marvin.”
“I don’t like you, Marvin.”
5 Fingers – True story: During WWII, the valet to the British ambassador to Turkiye (which was neutral) sold classified materials to the Nazis, entirely to make money. After the war, one of the German officials who bought the secrets wrote a book about it, and the book became the basis for this movie. I am not sure this should have worked that well since the valet got away with it and you don’t root for people who help Nazis, but James Mason makes the audience, if not sympathetic, at least engaged. The movie’s a bit long, but Mason manages to hold the pieces together, as does director Joseph Mankiewicz. Nice on location shots of Ankara (including a few of the local cats) and Istanbul help. A made up romance between Mason and a Polish countess doesn’t add much. And the real life twist ending – all the money he was paid with was counterfeit – is an effective final moment. (PS: the Nazis never trusted the valet, so the detail about D-Day were disbelieved. And it turns out that MI6 knew about him and fed him lies anyway.)
Slow Horses, “Negotiating with Tigers” – Turns out the whole kidnapping was part of a scheme by the Home Secretary to test MI5 internal security, and River was played, again. But it also turns out that the team of mercs hired to run the show has gone rogue and wants a book of conspiracies? Oh, and one of the Horses is a drug addict. Lots and lots of balls being juggled but so far none of them are very interesting, and there don’t seem to be many stakes besides “save Standish.”
I’ll have to check out 5 Fingers–mistyped that at first as 5 Gingers, which: sure–because I didn’t know anything about this bit of history, and I’m always up for some James Mason.
Don’t ask me why it’s called that. Might as well be 5 Gingers.
Tokyo Story (1953)
I’ve been watching a lot of Mikio Naruse films this summer because I could see them on the big screen. I find Naruse’s main point of comparison to be Ozu, because both specialize in family dramas that don’t give easy satisfying answers. But it’s been a while since I’ve seen an Ozu, so I decided to watch one of the all time great films. Tokyo Story still maintains its brilliance all these years later. Ozu’s focus on the domestic particularly shines through in his decision to keep the camera close to the ground as if sitting among family. Ozu’s style is much more distinct than Naruse’s, which is one reason I think Ozu is held up as one of the all time greats while Naruse is considered almost an also-ran. That said, Ozu’s work with his actors and his writing of complex and nuanced situations is magnificent enough to blow past any sort of accusation of style over substance. Ozu has both in spades. I am a big sucker for these sorts of slice of life dramas, and this one is immaculate.
I can rend my heart in two just thinking about this (last?) line: “Living alone like this, the days will get very long.” What a beautiful movie.
Babylon 5 — sometimes you get wrenching drama and conflict, sometimes you get a killer (or at least knocker-outer) ventriloquist dummy. One of the B-ist B plots imaginable and the main plot has Marcus, so this is not a particularly strong episode, but things are still moving along. And the show is fully the show at this point, my favorite part by far was a brief scene of Ivanova in a bar, in the background we see one of those squid alien guys sitting down with a beer and he is so clearly hungover and grabbing some hair of the dog — whoever is doing this is not overacting, it’s easy to miss if you’re not looking for it, but it’s a sublime bit of background business from a dude in a rubber mask.
The fascinating thing about Babylon 5 is how it rides this line between New Age geeky mysticism and working class attitudes, and the hungover alien guy sounds like he’s square in the middle.
It helps that he is a Squid Guy, I think they have had maybe one actual bit of characterization (as one of the minor alien groups looking for representation) and the rest of the time they’re just in the background, being Squid Guys — they make no fucking sense as a life form but they make me happy to see. Squid Guys forever, Marcus never!
The X-Files, “Syzygy”
“Sure. Fine. Whatever.”
Partway through this episode, we get the offhand revelation that Mulder and Scully’s atypical bickering is because of an astrological phenomenon: “Relationships are going to suck for a while,” Denalda Williams’s funny, likable psychic says.
This makes me less annoyed at all the out-of-character snippiness, but there’s a wasted opportunity here. It would be so much more fun to see Mulder and Scully grappling with the idea that their irritation has an outside cause and trying to overcome that. It’s good dramatic fuel for their usual split in approach, too: Mulder would believe his fault in the stars, but he’s sufficiently guided by emotion that he might have more trouble getting over his feelings; Scully wouldn’t buy the explanation, but if she started realizing her reactions weren’t logical, she’d be well-equipped to push back against them. I wanted to see them knowingly struggle with this!
Ah, well. It’s an okay episode once there’s a reason for all the testiness. The sub-Heathers, Tragedy Girls-esque manipulation and psychic shenanigans are fun, with the gradually more outre hair and the “Hate him.”/”Hate him. Wouldn’t want to date him” refrain. I enjoyed the world’s slowest, most easily avoided bleachers death, the Cherry Falls luring of a young Ryan Reynolds, and the big confrontation right before the clock strikes midnight. Darin Morgan’s jokes > Chris Carter’s jokes, though.
Someone’s Watching Me!
John Carpenter’s made-for-TV stalker thriller is finally on good terms with streaming services! (Tubi, of course.) I enjoy this one so much that I need to write it up in the next couple of weeks, so for now, I’ll just recommend it. Suspenseful, with highly specific characters who are all the better for that specificity. Also doing some things you wouldn’t expect from a 1978 NBC film.
One of the big conclusions I sadly came to over my watch was that Chris Carter was, somehow, the worst of the regular writers (this is particularly apparent when he dominates the final season). Vince Gilligan is the most consistent, James Wong and Glen Morgan are definitely up there, but Carter’s can be ambitious sludges.
Carter absolutely strikes me as one of those showrunners who should stick to coordinating the writers rather than trying to do their job himself.
I’d agree, especially as The X-Files movie from Carter is thin gruel as I remember, where Final Destination written by Wong and Morgan felt like a good, fun potential X-Files premise.
I love Someone’s Watching Me! so much, looking forward to the full write-up!
The Devils – Nothing can quite match seeing this at The Brattle and not even recognizing it was over til the credits rolled, hypnotized, but still an overwhelming movie, excessive but also intelligent and contemplative, a writer/director reckoning with the Kingdom of God within and also the hell we exist in now with its institutions and injustices. The last shot suggests you can at least walk away from that hellscape but where to next? “On the way to dusty death…”
Oh looool, I forgot to mention The Burnt Orange Heresy! Which should tell you what I thought of it. Giuseppe Capotondi directs with pedigree and no pulse and Scott Smith really biffs the screenplay and it’s been bugging me. Smith wrote A Simple Plan and The Ruins, I haven’t seen the film of the latter but both books are really excellent, the first is noir-inflected but they are both procedural in their escalating horror and action, he is a very good writer. But here he takes Charles Willeford’s book and removes the Willeford in favor of the basic plot bones and another quasi-noirish tone, but Willeford had no time for moral judgment. Just an inert misfire and yet another piece of evidence in the future lawsuit Elizabeth Debicki vs. Everyone In Fucking Hollywood, Debicki is such a unique presence in appearance and motion (she apparently studied ballet) and she is wasted in polished turds like this and Widows and Tenet. Mick Jagger at his leatheriest and feyest is having a lot of fun, though.
Ok, you might not like Widows, but she’s damn good in it! At least she was in The Crown and seemingly looks/sounds exactly like a taller Diana (a bit weird, wasn’t she a pretty small woman?)
I have no beef with her performance in Widows, what there is of it. It’s another underwritten role that she put more effort into portraying than the writer or director did. I am annoyed as hell that I might actually have to watch The Great Gatsby, despite not vibing At All with Baz Luhrman’s whole deal, just to watch her in a decent role.
Don’t risk it. Baz’s direction in that movie is pretty much just shouting, “No, MORE like a high school play!”
We got to go and see “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai” at the cinema as part of a film society screening. I’m not sure I’ve watched it since seeing it at its original cinema release. Man, this movie remains wonderful. I forgot how plot-forward this one is for a Jarmusch film. In my memory the movie was, like, pigeons, and Forest Whitaker walking and driving around to a great soundtrack, occasionally eating ice cream. But the whole thing with the two-bit gangsters is really most of the movie and not a subplot. I mean, I wouldn’t have minded it being pigeons and ice creams, but it’s lovely to have that plus a very funny crime plot. As with all Jarmusch movies, this one is a mood and I love it intensely.
Stray thought… does Jarmusch sometimes purposefully latch on to a trend to get funding? Not, like, in a cynical way, but just as a practical means to an end. “Ghost Dog” is such a riff on the post-Tarantino indie crime glut; “Only Lovers Left Alive” was during one of the vampire fads. They seem like they’re somewhat interrogating those fads, but also maybe it’s just easier to get those particular films made at that time.
Anyway, got to introduce my brother-in-law and a friend to the movie and they were both very happy with that.
Also, “Ghost Dog” made me think of the father character’s monologue in “Infinite Jest” about Marlon Brando: “…Marlon Brando was the archetypal new-type actor who ruined it looks like two whole generations’ relations with their own bodies and the everyday objects and bodies around them.” The rant being about how Brando’s expressive gestures inspired and presaged a kind of recklessness in our physical movement. Watching “Ghost Dog” makes me really want to move with the casual grace and purpose of Forest Whitaker here. Don’t be Marlon. Be Forest!
Oh wow, I haven’t read Infinite Jest in ages but I remember that rant! And I love the idea of Whitaker as being anti-Brando here, because he can definitely be Brando in reckless movement elsewhere (the Star Wars stuff). But one of my favorite Whitaker performances is The Color Of Money, where his physicality and actions are loose but precise, the real deal and absolutely owning Paul Newman’s ass while not appearing to at all. It feels like he was told not to be in the same scene as Cruise because as good as Cruise is during the Werewolves of London montage, that is still a montage and Whitaker would own his ass too head to head.
And hey, good to see you man!
What did we read?
8 Bit Theater, 0031 – 0060
Those first thirty strips managed to get us to the proper rhythm of the strip and, more importantly, the basic character of the protagonists, and these strips reach the level of ‘crude, but laying down the premises we’ll riff on for the next thousand strips’. These strips are consistently funny and generating individual classic one-liners. Thief in particular manages to get across the complete essense of his character in one of the first strips here, when he explains how worked out all the angles in seizing power over the group due to Fighter’s gross stupidity.
It also expands out with the remainder of the main cast; not only introducing Red Mage, but Garland, King Steve (though he lacks his deranged ideas and easy-going sociopathy), and Princess Sara. Admittedly, the latter two are more minor characters. Garland and Sara start out as jokes about the weird story choices in Final Fantasy, but it almost immediately evolves into two things about Garland’s character: one, he’s got the mentality of a stay-at-home mother (and as a result is wildly incompetent at the villainy thing), and two, in a comic full of precisely-chosen dialogue, Garland rambles and mutters thoughtlessly.
This is part of the characterisation settling. Black Mage will be a smartass, Fighter will misinterpret everything anyone says (great example here when he misunderstands the phrase “my stinkin’ hat”), Thief will present complex systems that will help him avoid any work, Red Mage speaks in references, and now Garland talks awkwardly.
On top of this, the way characters will automatically respond to things has settled; there’s a great example where Thief immediately reacts to a fainting Red Mage by trying to rob him and justifying it with specific language that sounds like he’s helping; there’s another where BM borrows a ladder off a guy and then, as we hear offscreen, starts brutally murdering him for no reason. There’s even another point where he responds to a simple moral conundrum with the worst possible answer. There’s even a rather extreme example of this when White Mage says they should all be adults about this, and three characters respond with their usual actions, with Fighter creating a button by responding to BM’s statement.
The thing is, the central joke of 8 Bit Theater is exactly the same as the central joke of Haruhi Suzumiya; it feints at using genre levers but is actually driven forward by drama. It gestures as foreshadowing, prophecy, and other basic genre elements, only to push itself forward with basic drama – characters having goals and obstacles and finding ways around them – and these happen to be predictable idiots who commit unnecessarily extreme actions (like brutal murder) that a) pushes the story forward and b) has either ridiculous consequences or ridiculous non-consequences, and both the basic action and the larger structure make the story feel ridiculous.
This means a lot of the foreshadowing for a much later joke has begun; BM runs into Onion Kid for the first time, White Mage accidentally reveals she’s part of a secret order, for example. The traditional genre understanding of story is essentially a misunderstanding of Chekhov’s Gun, where you set up the end by dropping clues around the start (both Harry Potter and Game Of Thrones trade heavily on this). 8 Bit Theater makes gags out of that mentality while really being a stupid drama.
There’s also an increased use of style as the joke. #31 has a gag where BM is foreground and his imagination is background; soon after that is a gag where the characters are sensibly discussing how to vote for whoever is in the party and BM is loudly insisting that Fighter be kicked out, where his ‘background’ status is emphasised by not giving his text a speech bubble and using a simpler sprite – very Police Squad! in principle if not in execution.
1984, George Orwell
Listening to this on audiobook, pulling off the double duty of refreshing myself before reading the book rewriting the story from Julia’s perspective and also listening to a book on audio. I’ve replaced listening to music on walks to/from work/D&D/etc with listening to books on audio, and it’s amazing how much it’s improved my mood. Listening to music was necessary but I could only ever bring myself to listen to music I’d already listened to, and it felt less like helping and more like numbing. Listening to great literature, on the other hand, is consistently fulfilling and makes me look forward to the journeys between places. I get to places feeling more focused and cheery, it’s amazing.
Just about done with The Great Air Race by John Lancaster. Turns out that why the coast to coast race in WWI biplanes made for great copy, it really didn’t do much to advance air travel. And cost many their lives. Lancaster tries at once not to glorify what was to a large degree a foolish endeavor and to make the men in these clunky planes out as heroic. In some ways, this is best seen as a reflection of Billy Mitchell, promoter of the race, who was at once the father of the modern air force and an arrogant cuss who earned his court martial.
Out On The Cutting Edge, A Ticket To The Boneyard and A Walk Among The Tombstones, by Lawrence Block — I have been fully Scudder-pilled! Just burning through these, which are all pretty dark and disturbing (I knew Walk already from the movie but was horrified again, and Boneyard pulls off the “invincible sadistic psycho” character unnervingly well) but have the core of Scudder’s character and Block’s casually masterful atmosphere of New York City. Cutting Edge’s mystery actually caught me off guard, it’s one of those solutions where the who should be fairly obvious based on structural stuff (and Ebert’s Law of Economy of Characters) and the why is cleverly laced throughout the book, but the plot and setting kept me off guard. Great shit. Boneyard has a runner with Scudder reading and not being super impressed with Meditations, and Block does a great job of letting this be real criticism (which I share!) while also letting Scudder deal with something Aurelius lays out in all its ugly truth, and in action makes Scudder a stoic of sorts who is living some of this without quite realizing it, and the living it is more important than the philosophizing about it.
The Ax, by Donald Westlake — re-read in advance of the film adaptation, which is getting good notices that are mentioning the film’s dark humor, and what stood out here is how this is the most humorless book Westlake ever wrote. Bleak and cold and lonely and quietly delusional, told in first person present that traps the reader in the main character’s head as he justifies mass murder so he can get a job after being laid off. You may notice the capitalist overtones here and they are there, what makes this tragic is not how capitalism chews this guy up and spits him out but how he adopts its rules of individual profit over all without even noticing, cutting himself off from his family (and Westlake drops very subtle notes that he was never truly connected in the first place, not a bad guy at all but just distant) for a stability that he has already seen is nonexistent. Westlake the eternal freelancer (and writer of eternal freelancers Parker and Dortmunder) sees this as a path not taken by him — the book is dedicated to his father and there is some very interesting family history buried in here — but as with all philosophies he is repelled by he is also fascinated by them and he goes all the way inside. Every time I revisit this book it becomes sadder and more dangerous, as I age (and have been on the demoralizing job hunt myself) I see how this isn’t a metaphor or fable but a story of a man going down a path, and how that path is real.
What’s the criticism of Meditations?
I am paraphrasing/likely misquoting, but a line about how everything that happens is right to happen. Which as you can imagine does not sit well with a guy who is currently chasing a murderer who is not just targeting people but sweeping up randos in his killings — a dude dies because someone the murderer hucked out a window landed on him, was said dude in the right place? I think there is a larger way to look at this; specifically the murderer is running around because of something Scudder did a long time ago and there is recognition of culpability in the end here. What happens is not without cause — to Scudder. That rando is still fucked.
So far the most effective advice from Meditations has been “Do not be shocked if you meet a shameless man, did you think there were no shameless men in this world or would never encounter them?” This has been helpful in Trumpian times, as has the above observation, both extremely ruthless, Shieldian observations.
Aurelius strikes me as a Dale Carnegie kind of guy — the things that got me to this room writing this book are not just right but universal, so I will be a mensch and tell you about them. Not sure about that, pal.
The Ax is probably one of my favorite books of all time. It’s also the first Westlake book I read, so I came across it before I encountered his “eternal freelancer” (love that) and knew how much he valued independence; seeing Burke as the ultimate contrast to that–a man who expends so much effort, and does so much evil, to chase after a position he won’t even control–is fascinating. Weirdly, this makes me compare the book to Stephen King’s Revival, purely because I feel like Revival is King overturning all the usual rules and values of his work, creating horror by deeply exploring what it would be like if all the things he thought were meaningful and consoling weren’t, not for this particular protagonist.
Oh wow, I love this comparison. Great read on why Revival hits so hard in its horror, King is a guy who has drawn from the Lovecraft well of course but I think he largely rejects the anti-meaning and anti-control at the heart of that work. Even incredibly horrific and sad works like Pet Sematary are grounded in individual choice and struggle — Cujo is bleak in its depiction of random pain and the Bachman books are all about being ground up but these are also (largely) non-supernatural and make a grim sense. I think Revival keeps King’s tone, his protagonist is a very typical King dude with a typical King voice, but like you say the things that have previously brought comfort (or maybe if not comfort an eerie indifference, like in From A Buick 8), are hateful, “overturning” is a great way to put it. The underneath of a deeply held belief, and that’s what’s in The Ax.
The Gospel Singer by Harry Crews – Not Optional and one of the finest novels I’ve read in a minute, like Flannery O’Connor on steroids and Baptist ideology. Just beautiful sentences throughout surrounding grotesque characters yet there’s a terrible humanity (The Foot is clearly the most stable, intelligent, and thoughtful person in the book) to the story about performative Christianity, hypocrisy, and ideals of purity and sanctity that will never actually be fulfilled. Already onto a second book by Crews, The Knockout Artist, something I rarely do with writers.
Started Chaos by Tom O’Neill and Dan Piepenbring, which is good, though I have heard enough descriptions of the Tate murders to last a lifetime, thankyouverymuch. Amused at how much Bugliosi comes off as an intimidating prick even if O’Neill himself says Helter Skelter is a compelling narrative.
Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand – Folk horror book about a 70’s folk band? Obviously made for me but also a surprisingly ambiguous and scary novel, using the unreliability of oral history to it’s own advantage. (For one, the characters all worship Julian on some level but his actions from the outside seem self-centered and cruel, even for a teenage musician.)
Added Crews to the wish list.
I’ve heard the audiobook for Wylding Hall is great, if you ever feel inclined to listen to it as well as read it; apparently the production gets different narrators to help out the oral history angle.
That is how I read it! Very strong use of the medium and it sent chills up my spine.
The three volumes of Injection, Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvey, Jordie Bellaire.
“The matter of Britain has a desperate, clawed gravity.”
Five specialists are called together into a think tank, decide the world needs to be kept weird, and the thing they create to do that punishes them for daring to presume that they knew best. I come back to this series again and again to work over some of the concepts in my mind, and I surely wouldn’t have minded it getting an ending. “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen prod the intersections of futurism and English folk horror” is entirely my shit, and it frustrates me that so little analysis of this series seems to exist. (Interesting coincidence, with both this and the actual LoEG books, Carnacki or his analogue are the ones who unknowingly make the threat possible). Something about it just works for me, flaws and all–having Shalvey, Bellaire, and Fonografiks holding down the visuals doesn’t hurt.
“Five specialists are called together into a think tank, decide the world needs to be kept weird, and the thing they create to do that punishes them for daring to presume that they knew best” — hmm, so is this a critical version of Planetary? I had a big Ellis phase when I was younger but started pulling away from him once his righteous torture fetish stuff started taking precedence in his writing and then his shitty manipulation stuff broke and I fell away pretty much completely. I’ve seen this kicking around and ignored it but if it’s Ellis examining some of his tics and beliefs it sounds interesting (and the art team does sound good too).
“Maybe I’m just showing you that your world was interesting enough all the time, all on its own. And now I’m punishing you.”
They use a blurb of Kieron Gillen calling it “A bleakly inverted Planetary” so I’ll say possible, as I’ve not yet read Planetary. And it’s looking backward, yes, but I don’t think it’s self-reflective. The characters may be versions of Quatermass, Holmes, The Doctor, Bond, and Carnacki, but they’re very much written by Ellis (though he apparently made a point of saying that he was taking pains to write a movie Bond, not the Bond of Fleming’s novels). On the other hand, what exists is at best three-fifths of a story, so there’s a lot of room for me to have been wrong. Given the amount of time that’s passed and Shalvey’s statement after word got out about Ellis, I don’t think we’re going to see any more of this.
. . . And I’m aware that this is a Me thing, but I don’t care how grave or how dangerous or sentimental a situation an author constructs, “piskie” is an inherently goofy word and it will knock me right out of the scene.
Lol, “piskie” as pixie? Like, fairie shit? Yes, goofy as hell. But whatever my criticisms of Ellis, Planetary is absolutely worth reading, the reason it came to mind here is how it is Ellis and John Cassady exploring an interesting world, as in treating various pop culture things (and specifically pulp fiction things) as real and interacting with “reality.” And the key concept, which I am going to mis-phrase, is something like “It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.” So the idea of that rebounding on people is very interesting!
That’s the one. I’m aware it’s the older term. I’m aware that dangerous capriciousness is their whole deal. I’ll be chortling as they turn me into a pig.
“So the idea of that rebounding on people is very interesting!”
That’s what I’m sayin’.
I’ll be checking my local library for Planetary, then. Looking at the basics, raiding a different genre with the same crew, yeah, I see why the comparisons. Each volume features a different character and a take that’s slightly more of their baliwick; One is a Quatermass adventure, Two is a take on Holmes, Three is a Doctor Who horror.
If you like the sound of Injection, by all means check it out, the art is probably justification enough. I’m told Ellis’ Department of Midnight wanders similar territory, but I’ve yet to put in the effort to pirate it.
Ooh, that’s going in my queue. Also, intriguingly, from the around the same time as his Karnak series for Marvel, where the title character is forced in the end to confront that his very Ellis-ian philosophy — cynical, deeply suspicious of utopian projects — isn’t a philosophy so much as a flaw and a coping mechanism.
Among many books read recently: Anthony Trollope’s “Barchester Towers” and Sheri S. Tepper’s “Raising the Stones.” I’ll speak more on them another time but I just want to publicly thank Casper for them – I liked them a lot, and would not have read them otherwise.
I am reading it weekly, as that’s when it comes out, but Cinderella Boy is now well into Season 2 and it’s fucking awesome. Comedy! Romance! Suspense! Wild costumes!
Just finished Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, which I had paused for a bit because it was getting to me. It still cut close to home in ways I didn’t always like but I made it through. The ending was fine, though I saw the strings of what she was doing a little bit. It’s okay to have a definitive ending sometimes, litfic writers. Really.
Bonus article: An interview with Steve Coogan about the upcoming Alan Partridge series in this morning’s Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/sep/12/alan-partridge-is-more-popular-than-me-steve-coogan-interview
Reading about Unknown Number, the number of times I wanted to know what the fuck was going on in that woman’s mind was well more than zero, but it certainly doesn’t seem like asking her actually shed any light (which doesn’t particularly surprise me). The zeal for re-enactments has generally escaped me anyway, though.
Year of the Month update!
This September, we’re covering these movies, albums, books, from 1938!
TBD: Cori Domschot: Bringing Up Baby/Holiday
Sept. 15th: Bridgett Taylor: Rebecca
And here’s a primer on some of the movies, albums, books and TVwe’ll be covering for 1973 in October!
Oct. 7th: Lauren James: Working
Oct. 22nd: Lauren James: The Wicker Man
Oct. 29th: Lauren James: Don’t Look Now