MS 11/10/09: Ribbons
A very thin young Hassid arrived at the exercise area next to the running track, and shed his black coat and cap. In his vest, shirtsleeves, slacks and tendrils, he spent some time in a standing position, swinging his thin legs in nearly complete circles, dancers’ arcs, with much enthusiasm. People on nearby benches stared.
On my next revolution, he was bent over backwards walking his hands down the spindly trunk of a tiny yellow-flowered tree, attempting to get into a full backbend (I guess). He got about halfway.
On my next revolution, he was hanging by his knees from the overhead bars, with his tendrils hanging straight down, and also his thin thighs and arms, and also the four long strings of his special penile guard (which was also hanging upside down, abandoning its post). He appeared to be a collection of strands and ribbons, and his limbs were like ribbons he was pitching in all directions.
On my next revolution, he was sitting in half-lotus on the grass, holding a cigarette in a fancy way – with his hand extended palm up.
MS 11/9/09: Wall Street
I had to go all the way down to the Financial District today, which hasn’t happened since…ever. Now that I think about it, it was the first time I’d been down in that particular area, and I was sad I didn’t have time to linger. I saw the Stock Exchange, with a massive security cordon out front and tons of tourists snapping shots, and Trinity Church, and Federal Hall, with the big bronze statue of George Washington out front. He had a little cardboard sign in his hand, which read ‘Free Bonuses!’ Several of the streets (which are narrow and cobbled, in an oddly quaint way) were shut down as pedestrian walkways, which was nice. The tourists were all in tight clumps, so they were easy to circumnavigate. I didn’t pass the Wall Street bull statue, but I did see a vendor selling mini Wall Street bulls decorated in different patterns for “only” $10, which I thought was stupidly high. Although I only walked around down there for about ten minutes total, during that time, not one, but two older men came up to me, despite my headphones and lack of eye contact, to ask hopefully if I might need some directions, miss. (New Yorkers really love to give directions, particularly to young women.) And there was a man wearing a sandwich board, which said something about corporate greed and American capitalist repression, but what I really noticed was the young man interviewing the sandwich-board wearer and taking notes on a little pad. Undoubtedly sourcing local color in hopes of selling a freelance article somewhere. Everything down there looked as overall gray as Dorothy’s Kansas, but that might have just been the weather, or possibly my psychological response to anywhere money is actually made.
I’ve Been Reading: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Oscar Cabral is a doughy, sci-fi loving virgin. His sister, Lola, is a tough, pragmatic survivor of her own rebellious youth, and his mother, Beli, is an even tougher survivor of her own romantic past and of the brutal and repressive Trujillo regime. The women are as resilient and capable as Oscar isn’t. Lola reinvents herself as the traditional American success story; Beli survives brutal violence and comes back kicking; but Oscar can’t even manage to kill himself effectively. The Carbral family has its origins in the restive Dominican Republic, and has since resettled in New Jersey, bringing with them plenty of baggage and a possible curse from their ancestral land. The Cabrals love hard, lastingly and disastrously, and the unlikely Oscar exemplifies this family trait most of all.
Narrated primarily by Yunior, Lola’s well-meaning but hopeless playboy suitor, the novel’s energetic and entertaining voice is perhaps its strongest element. Diaz writes with enthusiasm, sweeping the reader along through multiple generations, from the DR to Brooklyn to Jersey and back, with quick jumps down to footnotes which ground the reader in the Dominican history of which the narrator candidly assumes our ignorance. Junot Diaz is a solid writer, whose future work I won’t hesitate to pick up, but I wouldn’t number his book among my favorites, and I doubt it will stay with me long. Diaz has original voice down and handles his material with skill and authority…but I’m not sure the material he’s handling is anything much, and his characters are cartoonish types (particularly the women). The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a fun read, but for me, it doesn’t get at anything that resonates, and I’m unconvinced it has much real depth despite the accolades it has received.
Mulberry Street 11/6/09
A painfully awkward-looking guy in skinny jeans, and a precise-looking girl in tights and ankle boots shopped for fruit at the corner store. I would guess they were on about a fourth date. They blocked the entryway.
Girl: ‘Should we get fruit and other stuff, or…do you think…’
Guy: ‘I mean…I don’t really…’
(Long pause, during which other shoppers pushed them further into the store.)
Girl: ‘Ok, well, let’s just get fruit then, and that’s it.’
Guy: ‘Ok! Yeah!’
Girl: ‘Oh, God, I don’t even know. Do we need something for like a base, like juice, or…’
Guy: ‘…’
Girl: ‘Well, I guess we should get apples, yeah?’
Guy: ‘…’
Girl: ‘Should we, do you like red delicious apples?’
Guy: ‘Sure. Oh, sorry.’
Me: ‘Excuse me.’
Girl: ‘These are my favorite kind of apples, actually!’
Guy: ‘Yeah?!’
(Another long pause.)
Girl: ‘What? What are you laughing at?’
Guy: ‘Nothing! I just think it’s really funny that we’re making smoothies.’
Girl: ‘We are not making smoothies!’
Guy: ‘Yeah, I know. But like (mumble) funny if we were.’
Girl: ‘Should we get a mango? Excuse me.’
Me: ‘Oh, sorry.’
Girl: ‘Mango?’
Guy: ‘…’
Girl: ‘These are hard, though. It would need to be soft. Um…’
Guy: ‘…’
Girl: ‘Well, I’m going to get a carrot.’
Mulberry Street 11/5/09
On the G-train, a middle-aged white guy in construction clothes with a push-broom mustache and summerteeth screamed at his copy of the New York Post.
‘Oh, Jesus! That’s what you get for hanging with Giuliani!!’
I’m guessing he was perhaps remarking on this story?
It’s been a big week for NYC – Halloween, marathon, election, and I think there was some sort of sports thing that got people all wound up. Also, my roommate and I conducted (and concluded) a successful apartment search this week — no mean feat, I assure you. TGIF.
Mulberry Street 11/4/09
A quiet day along my route – I looked high and low, but saw nothing of interest.
However, entering the subway tunnel for my commute home, I immediately spotted a large gold-colored teardrop earring with a black stone in the center lying on the ground. I looked around a little, and sure enough, a bit to my left was a woman in a matching earring. I handed her the one I found, and went back to my position. Another woman, who was standing in between me and the woman with the lost earring, said something to lost-earring woman, who laughed. And then the woman who’d spoken said something to me.
‘Huh?’ I said, removing my headphones (I can’t hear a thing with them on).
‘I said, you are very observant,’ she repeated.
So, I suppose this blog series is already having the intended effect!
Mulberry Street 11/3/09
There is a cat that watches me from the other side of the fence behind my house. It is small and black-and-white, with green eyes and lots of whiskers, like a catfish. This morning, it was watching another black-and-white cat make its way slowly across our back patio. This strange cat was huge and fat and slow moving. It walked over to a bunch of stuff covered in blue tarp, and sniffed and licked all along the edges, slowly. Then, it disappeared behind the tarp. The little cat jumped in concern, and leapt over the fence. It ran over to the tarp, and started meowing. The big cat stuck its head out and looked at the little cat. The little cat’s meows turned to screams. Slowly, and by degrees, the big cat emerged from the tarp, all while the little cat kept yowling at it. They moved into the center of the patio and sat down facing each other. The little cat yowled repeatedly while the big cat silently considered him. Eventually, I banged on the window.
Later, on a busy street corner, a pinched-looking blond woman in a quilted jacket bawled out a nicely dressed little girl. ‘That’s disgusting!’ screamed the woman. ‘How dare you!?! Do you think that man on the train was (unintelligible), is that what you think?’ The little girl was methodically eating candy stickers off a large sheet of wax paper from Dylan’s Candy Shop. She said nothing, and ignored the screaming woman as best she could. So did a swarm of humiliated-looking business men trying to squeeze past them.
Mulberry Street 11/2/09
In an attempt to combat my habitual blindness to my everyday surroundings (and to give me something more positive to focus on than how irritating everyone around me is), I am going to try to take note of at least one interesting thing per day and describe it on this blog.
G-train conductor: “We are approaching the final stop on this G-train. When you exit the train, please be sure to take all your belongings with you, as well as any refuse, plastic drink receptacles, food containers and etc. On behalf of the train crew, we would like to thank you for riding with MTA, New York’s premier choice in public transportation.”
Lots of people all around Midtown East today wearing marathon completion medals.
Outside my office building, I saw an elderly man with a long, snowy beard, wearing a hunter green windbreaker and bike chain as if he were a bike messenger. He was too old to be a bike messenger, however, and was standing sadly astride his bike, which was painted black and had odd, red streamers coming out of the handle bars, and which had fallen over in the street. He stood there for a bit, looking around him mournfully, then remounted and wobbled up Madison Ave.
I’ve Been Watching: Where the Wild Things Are
Max (newcomer Max Records, who looks for all the world like Ellen Page) is pissed off. His sister has outgrown him, and, while his mother pays attention to him, is affectionate and always takes his side in things, still, she’s dating a guy, and she has money troubles. So Max runs off into the streets in a temper fit and crawls around in a storm drain, during which cooling-off period he visits the wonderful island of the Wild Things, which every American child will surely recognize from Maurice Sendak’s picture book.
Life on the island is…really, really emo. The Wild Things have got, like, mad conflict, but it’s conflict of the vaguest sort. The type of conflict an author might inject into a story if that author knows plot is traditionally driven by interesting characters with interpersonal “issues,” but isn’t entirely sure what those issues might be about, or what form they might take (hi again, Dave Eggers!). So, we have the main couple of Wild Things – Carol (James Gandolfini) feels abandoned, because KW (Lauren Ambrose) has made new friends and keeps moving away, because she’s really unhappy with Carol, for some reason. And these new friends just really get Carol’s goat…again, for some reason. Meanwhile, the rest of the Wild Things either cower in sulky despair or cynically comment on the inevitability of all this once again turning out poorly (“all this” being the rumpus, a dirt clod fight, building a giant fort). The Wild Things are clearly aspects of Max’s world, but it’s impossible to keep tabs on who represents what. Carol starts out as father figure, then becomes Max, sort of, and KW at first seems to represent Max’s sister, but then becomes very much a mother figure. The other Wild Things seem a little extraneous – there is the tart-tongued skeptic (Catherine O’Hara) and her boyfriend, and the timid one, and one that doesn’t speak until the end, probably because nothing could be thought up for him. You can read whatever you like into any of them. Max seems to like them, most of the time. They kind of like him, except when they don’t, and they sort of like each other, then they don’t. They are by turns threatening and harmless. They have eaten all of the ‘kings’ that came before Max, but for some reason, they are ultimately affectionate toward him.
Apparently, the Wild Things suffer from loneliness and sadness…although, again, why that is isn’t at all clear. All of this nothingness is discussed at length in the vaguest of terms, punctuated by even lengthier weighty, significant pauses, wherein Max and the Wild Things stare deeply into each other’s eyes for seriously about twenty-five-freaking minutes, pondering some point that hasn’t just been made. Then the soundtrack swoops up – Karen O vocalizing in a distractingly jarring way – and everybody runs around and screams for ten minutes or so, until it’s time to have a Very Important Talk again.
Granted, all of this happens against lovely backdrops of landscapes in moody, autumnal colors, but don’t get too attached to the scenery, folks: this world is on its way out. Carol gives Max a tour of the island, and as he points out each dessert and forest, he explains how things used to be lusher, bigger, more reliable. Max repeats a bit of doomsaying earlier imparted by his science teacher, that the sun is dying, which Carol thinks can’t possibly be true. Throughout the whole movie, there’s an overarching tone of ‘well, we’re all just about done here, right?’ As if, whether in real life or in fantasies, whether on Earth or on Max’s island, in familial relationships or community building (or, for that matter, script writing and adaptation), nobody is really even trying anymore. Which is part of what makes this movie seem particularly current – it is a movie that, in my opinion, could only have been made in the late 00’s.
WTWTA has been a long time in coming, partly because Sendak’s book is so thin on plot, dialogue, character and premise. It could be fleshed out in any direction, so long as the basic heart and beloved details are preserved. And so, Eggers and Jonze could have taken this any which way, and they don’t seem to have conclusively picked a definite direction. But the few themes they did settle on – the sun is dying, we can’t talk to each other, we need a ‘king’ to take away the sadness – are telling. The prevailing mood in Max’s world is the prevailing mood in contemporary American letters. This version of WTWTA isn’t interesting as a movie, but it is very interesting as flypaper for the themes in vogue at the present time, and if a screenwriter were to make a version of Sendak’s tale every ten years or so, it would be a cool barometer for seeing where we are and what we’re concerned with.
Apparently right now, it’s environmentalism and personal estrangement. And boredom.
I’ve Been Reading: Wetlands
Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands is a novel about a girl and her asshole. No, really – exhaustively and all the way through, this novel centers on 18-year-old Helen Memel’s butchered asshole. Having nicked something major during her regular and highly involved shaving routine, Helen is lying in a hospital bed “with my skirt hiked up and my underpants pulled down, ass toward the door.” But she’s not embarrassed about that, or anything else. While she lies there in recovery, Helen ruminates obsessively on her favorite themes – her body, its byproducts and the fun she can have with them. All of this is shockingly explicit, but if you ask yourself why it’s shocking, being (as it is) so utterly everyday and banal a subject (essentially, a long version of ‘everybody poops’), you get closer to Roche’s ultimate purpose.
Wetlands is essentially a protest novel. Helen is merely particularly interested in her body; Roche, on the other hand, is furious that Helen’s interests and comfort with herself could be as rare and shocking as they (to many) are. True, all bodily functions are hidden, but some are more hidden than others – specifically, women’s. Roche’s target here is the sanitized woman: society’s obsession with hair removal, its primitive taboos about menstruation and vaginal cleanliness, its commercial tendency to tiptoe around women’s genitalia with cutesy, pink crap, as though vaginas themselves are an inside joke.
Undoubtedly, bodily secretions are nothing to be ashamed of; whether or not they are interesting is another question altogether. As Helen prods, picks at and wipes herself continuously, the book becomes tedious. Other people’s fluids, like their dreams and their college photo albums, are ultimately of no interest to anyone but themselves. Helen also has family drama and a new love interest, and she is scared and alone and putting on a brave face, but these plot points were clearly thought up after Roche settled on her theme. They feel tacked on, and the ending takes a leap into the surreal that is entirely unjustified by the chapters leading up to it.
Which isn’t to say Wetlands doesn’t have something to offer. Helen is an endearing and original character. And as a feminist howl, the book succeeds – Roche’s point is certainly a valid one that needs to be made more often. Still, she probably could have made it just as well in a ten-page short story.
I’ve Been Reading: Atmospheric Disturbances
Rivka Galchen’s surreal tale of psychiatrist Leo Liebenstein’s search for his missing wife, Rema, is an absolute joy to read. In fact, it’s probably one of my favorite books I’ve read this year.
One day, Rema comes home with a puppy, and Leo immediately realizes that his wife has been replaced by a nearly identical simulacrum. But where did she go, and why, and who is this new person bent on impersonating her? Leo’s determination to recover his true love and crack the mystery of his disappearance takes him to Argentina, to the home of Rema’s estranged mother, Magda, and then to remote Patagonia, with the Doppelganger dogging his every step. Behind all of these strange happenings lurks Tzvi Gal-Chen, the mysterious research meteorologist of the Royal Academy of Meteorology, who has possibly hired Leo to battle the evil 49 Quantum Fathers.
The novel charts one man’s struggle to retain his grip on reality, but really, it is about love — its subjectiveness, its inexplicableness, the ways in which we make it up and find it and lose it and manufacture it again. Galchen’s novel brings to mind Borges and Kafka, but it also reminded me of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Atmospheric Disturbances is hilarious and involving with not a single boring passage, and I highly recommend it.
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(By the way, Galchen is one of those entirely hateable people – she’s an M.D. with an MFA from Columbia, and she looks stunning [and about 25] in her book jacket photo. Fuck her, am I right?)
I’ve Been Reading: Netherland
Shortly after 9/11, Hans van den Broek’s wife leaves him alone in New York City – in the Chelsea Hotel, no less – and returns to England with their young son. For the next two years, Hans commutes to London every other weekend, and spends the rest of his time aimlessly distracting himself in post-disaster New York. He becomes involved with a cricket league composed of various immigrants and enjoys thinking back to his youthful days of playing cricket in The Hague, where he was born. One player is Chuck Ramkissoon, a charismatic and eccentric Trinidadian mover-and-shaker, who has his fingers in all sorts of pies. Hans finds himself more and more involved with Chuck, drawn into his mysterious world.
Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland is largely about cricket, which is something I can’t get a mental picture of at all. Hans himself admits that:
The uninitiated onlooker at a cricket game is . . . puzzled by the alternation of two batsmen and two bowlers and two sets of stumps. . . . It can take a while before the puzzle is sufficiently solved, particularly for the American viewer. I can’t count the number of times I, in New York, fruitlessly tried to explain to a baffled passerby the basics of the game taking place in front of him, a failure of explanation and comprehension that soon irritated me and led me to give up.
As elusive as the cricket descriptions, however, the various illustrations of New York City neighborhoods, landmarks and institutions are lovely, from the Herald’s Square DMV to the Greenwood Cemetery. O’Neill has a knack for setting, and his brief descriptions cut right to the essence of a place. And in Netherland, O’Neill is expansive on the subject of New York. Critics have compared this book to Gatsby, and indeed the mapping is unavoidable: Chuck Ramkissoon is found floating in the Gowanus Canal at the beginning of the novel, and the comparisons only start there. The book spends time on the American dream, the idea that any hard-working dreamer can go rags-to-riches, and Chuck is the ultimate schemer. When Rachel asks Hans about Chuck’s politics, Hans realizes he has no idea:
The decisive item, if I’m going to be honest about this, was that Chuck was making a go of things. The sushi, the mistress, the marriage, the real estate dealings, and, almost inconceivably, Bald Eagle Field: it was all happening in front of my eyes. While the country floundered in Iraq, Chuck was running. That was political enough for me, a man having trouble putting one foot in front of the other.
And yet, for all its Gatsbyish notes, Netherland is not really about America, precisely because it is such a love song to New York City, and any American who spends upwards of a minute in NYC knows that it’s not remotely representative of the 50 states proper (not that any one location really is). But then, in another sense, the quintessential American dream is realistically centered in NYC, because so many immigrants arrive here, join communities of immigrants from their own countries, and live and work here for generations. I’ve met people who’ve lived here for years and have never been anywhere else in the country. This city is more of an international crossroads than a fixed location; it is the most international place I have ever been, which is one big reason why I love it.* In this respect (the gathering of the teeming masses), New York is the ultimate representation of an American ideal – albeit America as it never really was, and most emphatically is not now. But somewhere back there, in between the Puritans and the ’50s, there was a time when New York was thought to be representative of the country itself. Later, after relocating to London, Hans observes:
Although it’s not a secret that I lived for some time in [New York], I’m not accorded any unusual atuhority. This isn’t because I’ve been back for awhile but, rather, because I’m precluded by nationality from commenting on any place other than Holland – one of those parochialisms, I am pissed off to rediscover, that remind me that as a foreign person I’m essentially of some mildly buffoonish interest to the English and deprived, certainly, of the nativity New York encourages even its most fleeting visitor to imagine for himself. And it’s true: my secret, almost shameful feeling is that I am out of New York – that New York interposed itself, once nad for all, between me and all other places of origin.
But commenting on the American dream is not the main thrust of Netherland – this is primarily a book about Hans, and Hans is intrigued by Chuck, but in a removed, and not overly involved way. Whereas Carraway’s raison d’etre as narrator was to observe and describe Gatsby, Hans’s relationship with Chuck is a take-it-or-leave-it sort of friendship, as is everything in Hans’s life at that time. In fact, the motivations of all of the characters in Netherland are fuzzy at best. We don’t really know why Rachel leaves Hans – mostly because Hans, a rather unreliable narrator, will not admit to having any idea himself. We don’t really know why Hans stays obediently behind in New York for as long as he does (again, he doesn’t spend much mental time on it himself), or why everyone in the novel seems to suffer from a confusing and painful ennui (“I wasn’t especially troubled by the hours spent flat on my face,” says Hans, of his habit of lying for hours with his head under the armchair in his hotel room). Perhaps it has something to do with 9/11 itself, which, while mercifully not focused on in much outrageous detail, bookends the story of these people, looms slightly behind them without their ever looking straight at it, just as the actual event framed New York itself and everything that happened here for some time. Hans: “We were trying to understand, that is, whether we were in a preapocalyptic situation, like the European Jews in the thirties or the last citizens of Pompeii, or whether our situation was merely near-apocalyptic, like that of the Cold War inhabitants of New York, London, Washington, and, for that matter, Moscow.” But Hans’s mourning has far less to do with 9/11, and more with the fracturing of his family, and his lack of ability to shake off his own inertia:
The difficulty was not merely that I couldn’t think of an alternative to the program of traveling to London once or twice a month. No, my difficulty was that I could not disarrange the boundless, freezing dismay that undermined every personal motion I attempted. It was as if, in my inability to produce a movement in my life, I had fallen victim to the paralysis that confounds actors in dreams as they vainly try to run or talk or make love.
Perhaps Netherland is more about the time it takes to shake off a tragedy – something unreasonable and inexplicable happens, and people totter away from its epicenter, where, stunned and confused, they distractedly go on with their lives.
At any rate, I didn’t care. Nobody could call this a bad book – it won the PEN/Faulkner, after all – and I paged through it readily enough, but it left no deep impression on me, and I wouldn’t ever urge it on someone.
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*Oh, yes, by the by – I love NY now, for those of you I haven’t spoken to in awhile. I had my reservations for the first couple years, but now I’m like a googly-eyed newlywed, and am currently entirely convinced this is the only place to be (in the US, anyway).
I’ve Been Reading: All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well
Burt Hecker thinks he was born in the wrong century. He believes that true progress stopped in the Middle Ages, and devotes himself fully to that era, wearing medieval robes, drinking home-brewed mead, and doing nothing OOP – out of period. He is the founder of the Confraternity of Times Lost Regained (think Renn Fair circuit, pre-Renn), which meets at his wife Kitty’s Mansion Inn. Tod Wodicka’s novel opens in Germany, where Burt has journeyed with a chant group that celebrates the life of Hildegard von Bingen, a medieval anchoress and mystic. Ordered by the Court to join the chant group as an anger management alternative (after being arrested for DWI), Burt at the novel’s opening is widowed, estranged from both of his grown children, depressed, and has secretly purchased a one-way ticket to Germany. He has sold his wife’s Inn, and does not plan on returning to the US; rather, he hopes to search for his long missing son, Tristan, who is living in Prague.
As the novel unfolds, Burt’s past is slowly unraveled through flashbacks, while in the present day, he travels to Prague in search of his son. We learn how he met his wife, the crucial role his mother-in-law played in their relationship, of his wife’s excruciating death from cancer, and the circumstances that led to both Burt’s children disowning him entirely. Or, well, we sort of learn that. Burt is the very definition of an unreliable narrator, and seems unable to admit to himself in the retelling what it was about him and his lifestyle that caused his children to find him detestable, rather than merely eccentric and pitiable. Wodicka has stuffed this novel with fantastic, original characters – too many to recount here, in fact; each character, no matter how minor, is well drawn and compelling. But these characters spend the majority of the novel expressing their intense anger and frustration at a high volume, but with no conviction – I could never quite determine why everybody was so very pissed.
ASBW is original, interesting and entertaining, but ultimately, I found it tedious. It’s as if Wodicka came up with a fantastic hero, and then couldn’t quite figure out what to do with him – Burt keeps leading up to an insight he is ultimately unable or unwilling to express.
I’ve Been Reading: Cheating at Canasta
These short stories by William Trevor are mostly sad, still and contemplative in tone, reminiscent even when the action is unfolding in the present. They involve a cast of characters mostly pressing anxiously into their golden years, seemingly hoping for nothing more than the healing hand of time to make all their past pains and sorrows remote and irrelevant. In “Cheating at Canasta”, a man visits an old Venetian haunt of his and his recently deceased wife, and hears newlyweds arguing about trivialities at the next table; in “At Olivehill”, grown siblings try to convince their aging mother to turn the family forest into a golf course; in “Old Flame”, an elderly woman surreptitiously reads a letter from her husband’s former mistress that the mistress’s companion of many years has died. Other stories concern crimes, many of which are concealed or ambiguous, and whether or not actual guilt matters when you know in your heart you are guilty. In “The Dressmaker’s Child”, a man runs over the child of a social outcast late at night; in “Men of Ireland”, a man visits his boyhood priest and successfully blackmails him by accusing him of molestation that never occurred; in “Bravado”, a young girl watches her boyfriend beat up and kill another boy, and seizes on a thinly offered possible explanation that makes the act seem somewhat less heinous.
If the characters in Cheating at Canasta are praying for time to pass in order to heal their wounds, it is possibly because those wounds fester far longer than they should. Trevor seems particularly interested in how long it takes varying people to get over pain, and the duty of other people to honor their loved ones’ mourning periods, to respect the time it takes. In “The Children”, a couple breaks their engagement when the man’s daughter feels her deceased mother is being forgotten; in “Folie a Deux”, a man runs into a childhood friend who had never recovered his equilibrium after the two carelessly drowned the family dog.
But the characters of Trevor’s stories also know that every wound, however deep and festering, can eventually result in greater strength and knowledge. As the protagonist of “Cheating at Canasta” thinks to himself: “Shame isn’t bad . . . Nor the humility that is its gift.”
I’ve Been Watching: The Dark Knight
I’m unable to appreciate comic-book genre movies or books. I have tried, again and again, but (other than my weird obsession with TMNT) I wasn’t into superheroes or comics as a kid, and so I have no nostalgia for them and don’t understand the appeal. The dialogue is overblown, the plot nonsensical, the characters predictable and repetitive. What’s the draw?
I never saw Batman Begins, so it’s possible I missed some stuff essential for understanding The Dark Knight (for one thing, Gotham is pretty widely agreed to be New York City, yes? Why is this movie set in Chicago?), although it all seems pretty cut-and-dried. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is a millionaire playboy who secretly fights crime with the aid of many (admittedly very cool – particularly the motorcycle) complicated gadgets. When he’s Batman, he speaks in a really stupid sounding low, growly voice that makes you want to punch him in the throat. Heath Ledger plays the Joker in his Oscar-winning farewell role. He is great – although, it’s a really odd casting choice (particularly, they should never have put the Joker in a nurse’s outfit, as Ledger’s tanned, healthy young limbs entirely broke the visual). The Joker wants to fuck shit up for no real reason, other than that chaos is entertaining. Meanwhile, Aaron Eckhart is Harvey Dent, the fresh-faced young white hope (I think they actually refer to him as precisely that) DA, who is good, then turns bad, and Maggie Gyllenhaal (who is usually awesome, but sucks in this movie) is Rachel Dawes, Dent’s girlfriend and Wayne’s great love.
This movie, basically, was not nearly as good as it thought it was. It felt as if the entire movie was in italics, which I realize might be a stylistic choice, and that’s just one of the examples of how comic-book genre things don’t resonate with me. There was a certain image (that I won’t mention, because it’s kind of a spoiler) that was meant to be disturbing, and so was slowly revealed and then filmed continuously, but it just looked cheesy to me. All the various tics and motifs, from the Joker’s tongue flick to Dent’s coin toss, were repeated over and over to the point of chafing – this movie would be tops for a drinking game. Worst of all was the long, ponderous ending sequence, in which a voiceover (or some character; I don’t remember) goes on and on and on, elaborating on the thin, obvious symbolism and cliched platitudes that make up the “substance” of the movie, and introducing the inevitable sequel – I half expected it to sell me a souvenir T-shirt while it was at it.
I’ve Been Watching: 3:10 to Yuma
If unrealized sexual tension is sexier than explicit sex scenes, 3:10 to Yuma is gayer than Brokeback Mountain. I fully expected Russell Crowe and Christian Bale to begin making out with abandon at several points in this movie (not that I wouldn’t have been fully in favor of such a plot development). Plenty of people get shot to shit in this movie, and it’s pretty much constant gun-slinging Western testosterone-drenched action, but frankly, the ending is as sappy, unrealistic and vomit-inducing as any RomCom. I don’t understand the scoffing at chick flicks, really – surround them with a scrim of gunfire and eruptions of fake blood, and they’d suddenly make perfectly respectable Westerns.
Which is not to say that 3:10 to Yuma isn’t an enjoyable film. It’s tension-filled and fast moving, and there’s Christian Bale there, as a struggling rancher whose cheekbones could cut jerky. Bale plays struggling rancher, Dan Evans, who’s in debt to the town’s rich guy, who is himself plagued by famous outlaw Ben Wade (Crowe), who holds up the rich guy’s stagecoaches full of money before they arrive safely. When Wade is captured, easily and unbelievably by staying around town a smidge too long to bag a bartender, Dan volunteers to help escort the dangerous prisoner to the nearest town, where the prison train to guess where will be coming through at guess when. The journey is long, and fraught, and Wade’s posse is supposedly hot on the trail to liberate their leader, although really they don’t catch up with Dan’s group until the end. The leader of this posse is Charlie Prince, played by Ben Foster, who previously played Claire’s bisexual spineless boyfriend, Russell, in Six Feet Under. He was disgusting as Russell, in a sniveling weasel way, and as Prince, he is equally disgusting in an irredeemable, soulless bad-ass way (by the way, if there is indeed honor among thieves, his character was cruelly wronged by Wade – Prince was super loyal and was only doing as he thought he should). I now admire Foster as an accomplished and interesting actor, and hope to see him in more films.
So, the movie has its plusses, but man, I have to say, the ending is just stupider than all get out. I don’t want to put a spoiler in here, but when I laugh out loud at the dramatic climax of a film, I feel it’s failed in its overall artistic mission.
I’ve Been Watching: Happy-Go-Lucky
Bubbly Poppy Cross can’t be slowed down, shut up or upset. She’s a font of positivity, an energy cannon flattening everyone around her with relentless, exhausting musketballs of pure, thoughtless, giggly joy. She’s obnoxious as hell. For the first twenty minutes of the movie, or so. And then, suddenly, she’s charismatic, thoughtful, strong and intuitive.
This is apparently how director Mike Leigh wanted audiences to experience Poppy – he has said that he wanted to create a character that was incredibly irritating at first pass, but then managed to win audiences back over, to become sympathetic. A tough challenge, and a risky one, particularly as those predisposed to dislike Happy-Go-Lucky (as I, for some reason, was) are likely to be sold on a first impression, but given the critical acclaim this movie has garnered pretty much across the boards, Leigh seems to have pulled it off. At any rate, he did with me – I loved this movie.
Poppy (the perfect Sally Hawkins) is a kindergarten teacher, who lives with her best friend and long-term roommate, and divides her time pretty equally between work and play. She has an older sister with a persecution complex, and a younger sister who’s rather whiny. At the beginning of the movie, Poppy’s bike is stolen, so she decides to get her driver’s license. To this end, she employs a private driving instructor, Scott (the perfect Eddie Marsan), a racist, sexist, paranoid, didactic, insane ball of fury, and this odd couple spends a great deal of the movie in the tiny interior of a car, pushing each other’s buttons. Scott’s constant fury and long pseudo-philosophical rants on proper behavior and life outlook are both fascinating and incredibly grating, just as Poppy’s constant puns, bits and asides, giggles, snorts and squeals are both charming and incredibly tiresome.
The movie doesn’t have a great deal of plot, although a lot happens in it. Poppy takes her driving lessons, dabbles in flamenco dancing, worries about an abused student, and begins dating the dorky but sweet social worker she calls in to deal with same. While Poppy’s forced cheerfulness initially seems a self-involved way of needling others into paying attention to her, it turns out to be a resilient way of dealing with difficult or worrisome people – she is able to work closely with people most of us would avoid, and can approach them without fear, because her irrepressible spirit enables her to maintain her equilibrium in the face of verbal abuse. Even Poppy has her limits, however, and eventually we see where they are.
Positivity has taken a beating recently – there was Eric Wilson’s Against Happiness, which I didn’t think much of, and now Barbara Ehrenreich has a new book out, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, which is probably pretty good. And while I agree that many times, urging a good attitude toward a shit situation is a way of manipulating people who might otherwise cause some trouble into tapdancing in their fetters, on the other hand, irrepressible cheeriness can be a source of great personal power. People with Poppy’s personality make good teachers, social workers, rehabilitation workers, counselors and mothers, and the ability to withstand a constant barrage of at best depressing and at worst heartbreaking people and behaviors is an essential skill for those who perform such important social functions. Undoubtedly, however, every last one of these people eventually must define their own line of just how much of someone’s shit they can be expected to take before giving up on them.
I’ve Been Watching: Two Lovers
This is the movie Joaquin Phoenix finished up directly preceding his crack-up and/or performance art stunt that had everyone so deeply worried. Personally, I was leaning towards stunt, but now I feel like we haven’t heard anything from Joaquin in awhile, which makes me think he might have had to go away for a bit, which points toward crack-up. I don’t know, though; I still think he was trying to keep a straight face on Letterman.
Anywho, Two Lovers concerns Leonard, a suicidal, mopey loser who lives with his parents in Brighton Beach and who inexplicably draws the attentions of attractive and employed Sandra (Vinessa Shaw). This situation is complicated, however, by Leonard’s involvement with his stunning, pathetic, drama queen of a neighbor, Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), who initially seems mysterious, but who turns out to be involved in an entirely banal affair with her married boss. Does Leonard have a chance with blond, zany Michelle, or will he have to settle for the stable and available brunette, Sandra (who will undoubtedly realize after she’s had two kids with him that he’s a total loser, and an energy drain, and if she’d only hung in for another year, she surely could have met someone better)?
Who the hell cares? I hate this kind of shit. Did reviewers see the same movie I saw, or does James Gray hold the sort of social capital that can’t be crossed? Because seriously, this movie was made a thousand times already, and the woodcut wasn’t worth the prints.
I’ve Been Watching: Up the Yangtze
In 1993, the Chinese government began construction on the world’s largest hydroelectric dam, the Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze river. The dam would provide badly needed hydroelectric power, but it pretty much sucked for the two million people living and working along the river banks, who would need to find new sources of livelihood, and to be relocated by the Chinese government (which, you know, good luck). The decision was also unpopular for aesthetic reasons – the Three Gorges river is one of China’s big tourist draws, and riverboat cruises to take in the dramatic scenery have long been in demand.
Up the Yangtze is a documentary that primarily focuses on the eldest daughter, Yu Shui, of one family currently subsistence farming in soon-to-be-flooded land. The riverboat industry is doing a brisk trade in farewell tours of the Three Gorges, and the Yus instruct their teenage daughter (who would prefer to go on to high school) to get a job on one of the boats. “Cindy” works her way up through the rankings of the riverboat staff, progressing from dishwasher to dining cabin server, while her parents and little sister literally haul their few belongings up the banks of the rising river on their backs.
By focusing on the specific instance of the dam project and riverboat cruises, the documentary manages to illuminate a more sweeping picture of China today, without much editorializing. The scenery is beautiful, and the camera work conveys a sense of ominous, rising threat in the seemingly benign sweeping shots of the Yangtze: the film opens and closes with low shots in the high, prison-like locks of Three Gorges Dam; the abandoned ghost towns on the riverbanks loom through the mist; and there is a lovely time-lapse sequence showing the Yus ‘ home being gradually reclaimed by the rising river. Inside the riverboat, the interactions between the young Chinese staff, the older Chinese management, and the American and European tourists are hilarious and telling. In my favorite scene, a manager instructed a dining room full of new employees in the finer points of speaking tactfully to tourists. He tells them not to be overly humble when speaking to Americans, not to compare Canada to America, and never to bring up divisive political issues like the troubles in Northern Ireland or the Quebec separatist movement. He also tells them never to call anyone fat or old: “you should say ‘plump.’”
The subjects of the documentary are extremely aware of the camera, which is intermittently charming and distracting. Some random townsfolk interviewed by the crew clearly ham up the high drama – their complaints are legitimate, but I think their hysterics are overwrought. The tourists (mostly senior citizens) are framed to look foolish and self-involved, as they attempt to be tactful, cooperative and non-committal for the camera – wearing silly hats like good sports, and carefully saying that China is “so interesting.” And Cindy, as an already always embarrassed adolescent, is so horrified to be on camera (particularly while doing menial kitchen labor, or being visited by her hick parents) that she frequently actually weeps from self-consciousness.
For the most part, however, the film is an interesting and informative look at a large-scale project in rural China and the unfortunate individuals displaced by sweeping change, as well as an insightful picture of the shifting social classes and growing economic ambition in contemporary China. The dam is scheduled to be completed in 2011.
I’ve Been Watching: The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford
Ok, I just can’t stand Casey Affleck. I don’t like the way he looks, I don’t like the way he talks, he just bugs me. I never much liked his older brother, either. So, you know, take that prejudice into account. And I will give him this: he seems to know he’s unlikeable, as he nearly always plays unlikeable characters, so at least he’s self-aware. The polar opposite of Casey Affleck is Brad Pitt; while it’s completely unnecessary to enthuse about his obvious attractiveness, it’s continually shocking to me. I mean, he’s just freakishly attractive, isn’t he? And seems to get more so every year he ages. It’s bizarre.*
So, given their respective consistencies, these two were very well cast. Brad Pitt is Jesse James, famous outlaw, charismatic and capable. Casey Affleck is Robert Ford, stubby and unimpressive, personally ambitious, socially retarded. You can see where this is going: it’s right there in the title. The movie is fine: it’s entertaining, but not amazing in any way. It could have ended about thirty minutes sooner than it did, but what movie couldn’t? The movie may have been trying to say something about infamy, or perhaps the interesting thing is that the villain is the man who killed the outlaw, rather than the criminal himself. Or whatever. The members of the James gang are every one far more interesting than either James or Ford. There’s lots of intrigue, and everyone’s wary and suspicious of each other, and above all of James, who’s ding-dong out of his mind.
It is chilling to watch a group of people who are ostensibly “friends,” but who are all terrified of each other, and particularly of their unpredictable and all-powerful leader. I wondered to myself, as I watched this movie, why anyone would put themselves in such a precarious social situation, and then I remembered seventh grade. At least James’s gang were in it for the money.
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*Incidentally, speaking of casting, I think it’s an absolute insult to cast an actor of Mary-Louise Parker’s stature in a near-silent bit part. Perhaps she really wanted to be involved with the project for some reason, but I felt offended on her behalf. Use an unknown for that shit, bitches.
