Good evening!
Hope everyone is well and having an okay January, despite it… being January, and multiple catastrophic events happening globally. If you’re feeling a bit useless but want to help:
Here is a fundraiser organised by a friend of a friend that will go directly to a Palestinian family who have recently been displaced from Jenin.
If you are an academic, you can sign up to this UK-Palestine mentorship programme, organised by the Muslim Researchers Network.
Donate to the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians here.
If you’d like to buy me a coffee, on Ko-Fi, you can do here 🙂
My twitter/X is @jessf_white and my Instagram is @lunchpoems.
What I’ve been reading this week and what I think about it
This week I read Paula Byrne’s Blonde Venus (2020), which was previously published as Mirror, Mirror. It is a novelisation of Marlene Dietrich’s life, from her early days in Hollywood after being discovered in Berlin, up until her death. Dietrich’s name has been altered to Joan Madou, with some characters keeping their actual names (Billy Wilder, Ernest Hemingway, John F. Kennedy, as examples), and others slightly altered, as in Josef von Sterberg becoming Mo Goldberg and Brian Aherne becoming ‘Lacy’. I’m not entirely sure why there are any name changes at all (unless it was to have more room for artistic expression) because it wears the fact of it being a ‘novelisation of Marlene Dietrich’s life’ very much on its sleeve. The blurb doesn’t actually mention that the central character’s name has been altered to Joan, it just calls it a…novelisation of Marlene Dietrich’s life.
Did I enjoy reading this book? Yes. Did I think this book was good? No I did not. Interestingly, I think this is where many people who are vocal online about their reading trip up in their defence about reading shite. There is a distinction to be made between finding a book entertaining, and it actually being a well-constructed and well-written text. I absolutely raced through Blonde Venus because I was so entertained by it and found it very absorbing. In that way I valued it as a reading experience, but the experience of reading something doesn’t account for it actually being any good.
This wasn’t an entirely wasted experience whatsoever -- some things are done well, and I was given the opportunity to think about approaches to writing about Hollywood, which will inevitably assist my own writing on it. What I thought worked were the sections written from the point of view of Dietrich’s daughter Maria, which were based on Maria’s writing and discussions about her life in Hollywood. I think what was captured well was the ostracisation of those who didn’t aesthetically fit in, and the isolation a child can feel in the shadow of their very famous parent. There was a real emphasis on Maria’s weight, which I think was pushed a little bit too much but did drive home the attitudes towards eating and dieting in that culture.
My two main issues with this text were some of the wording and storytelling choices, and the presentation of Dietrich herself. I felt that, sometimes, Byrne fell back on very, very stereotypical melodramatic phrasings to create her image of early Hollywood, which I felt undermined it as a project somewhat. It’s a shame because there were also some moments of really lovely prose, which I wish had been eked out a bit more.
As for the presentation of Dietrich herself -- that’s a tricky one. I have a tertiary knowledge of her life, and so I wasn’t bothered by the tiny details being wrong or dramatised a bit too much, although I’m sure there are things that have been altered considering her name doesn’t appear in the narrative. What I was bothered by was how the presentation of her became almost a caricature of a woman in Hollywood, and of a German-American during WWII. I don’t know what Byrne’s intentions were in writing Blonde Venus, but my impression (and there is an important distinction between intention and audience impression, I’m aware of that), was that she bore very little love towards the actress, especially towards the end of the novel. I have no doubt that she had a fascination with Dietrich, but fascination does not equal love or respect. The actress is almost cartoonishly evil and over-the-top, negligent towards her daughter while also smothering her, and, to put it one way, a big big whore. I don’t actually think that anyone is as self-centred and strange as she is presented here while also being a functioning person. There is an argument that she is largely presented from her daughter’s perspective, who has a right to take issue with how she was raised, but every other chapter is also told from the perspective of Dietrich’s mirror (?), which is meant to be a truthful image of her. I don’t think that as a storytelling device (the talking mirror) (?) really worked because it becomes a bit gimmicky after one or two chapters, nevermind having half of the novel written that way. There could have been a good placing of the mirror theme (especially when key historical moments happened, like kristallnacht), but this only would have worked if it was done more subtly. Which it was not because, and I can’t stress this enough, there was a talking mirror. (?)
A book that I’m glad I read because I got a lot out of it, and was entertained by it, but one I am not going to try and emulate, I’m afraid.
Today I started reading Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette (2020). I’m only a few pages in but it’s already packing quite a punch.
More next week!
Books on my radar
I think I’m going to try and alternate my reading between non-Hollywood based and Hollywood-based, so after Minor Detail I will probably pick something up by my beloved Gavin Lambert. But we’ll see…you know how I am.