Good evening!
Back again after a short break. I’ve been sooooo busy, but with fun stuff so it’s fine. Managed to read a bit also so this newsletter has life in it yet.
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What I’ve been reading this week and what I think about it
As discussed in my last post, I reread Penance (2023) ahead of mine and Eliza’s event at West Kirby bookshop on Tuesday. The book is out now and I urge you to buy it because it is so brilliant. I went over what I love about so I won’t repeat myself, but we had a great chat about it, her relationship with true crime, how it was a much different writing process to Boy Parts (2020), influences on the text and the novel’s setting.
I’ve almost finished with Elliot Page’s Pageboy, which has been very illuminating. I’m still not at the part that outlines Page’s transition so much of what I have read is based on his experience as a lesbian when he was presenting as a woman. Homophobia in Hollywood was rife, to the point where Page had to lie about most of his relationships,or had very strained ones because of the pressures from outside forces. It’s weird that we think we’re really progressive, but we’re actually not at all. There seemed to be a lot of concern about Page’s ‘brand’ and how being gay could impact that negatively, even though he played a lot of off-beat, unsexy roles during the early part of his career. It’s just weird to think that everyone is marketed in that way, whether we think about it or not -- that desirability is always considered when a lot of people are thinking about how another person presents themself. Very odd.
There is a lot in there about his relationship with his parents, especially his dad and his step-mother. I think he does a really good job of presenting how hurtful it can be for you to be constantly teased by someone, and how that can amount to abuse when it is coming from a parental figure. His relationship with his mother is more positive, and you can tell he gets a lot of joy from it. She was initially very resistant to his status as a gay woman because she was, quite simply, homophobic, but Page is clearly in a place now where they have mutual respect for one another, and she has accepted that she has a transgender son. Things like that feel very hopeful.
I will say that I’m not a huge fan of the way it is written; there are a lot of run-on sentences and weird things going on with punctuation, but I understand that this is very personal and so there may have been some natural resistance to a lot of editing. Still, I do find that I have to read a sentence a couple of times for the meaning to fully sink in -- and I would say with some confidence that I’m a strong reader (lol).
Yesterday I had a spare hour so I sat and read the first part of Jade Song’s Chlorine, which was gifted to me by Footnote, and was published yesterday. Now this is an intriguing little book, about a girl called Ren who swims competitively as a teenager and begins the novel by telling the reader very earnestly that she has turned into a mermaid. So far it is very tense, even though now I’ve written the premise down it does sound a bit silly. At first, I wasn’t a huge fan of the narrative voice but I’ve gotten more used to it now -- I’ll write about it properly next week when I’ve got a better handle on the text. I think I’ll like it, though -- it reminds me of Curtis Harrington’s film Night Tide (1961), which is also a light horror that focuses on mermaids being in places they shouldn’t be. The tone is very similar -- the blurb outlines Broder’s The Pisces (2018) as a similar novel but I don’t really see it, aside from it having a fantastical sea creature in it. It did make me read it though.
I watched Wes Anderson’s latest film Asteroid City this week, and have been struggling to find good writing on it. The closest I’ve gotten to it is this piece in The National, which focuses on his mode of storytelling -- using acts, or chapters, or just clear markers in the narrative. This is something I thought worked really well in this one (but didn’t so much in The French Dispatch) and was happy to find this article, but I do think it is more descriptive than analytical. I’ve been annoyed at the reception to this film, honestly. I loved it precisely because it is one of his stranger ones, but the reaction seems to largely come from a place of asking why certain parts of it are ‘under-explained.’ I don’t understand that, because I don’t think texts need to be completely ‘justified’ or explained away for them to be good, or even to make sense. Much of life is not explained! Anyway, I particularly liked the framing of this one (the staging of a television play, so that most people in it play two roles -- an actor and the character that actor is playing), and how it touched on lockdown during the pandemic without explicitly mentioning it. Also I thought Steve Carell was a real highlight -- he wasn’t originally cast in his role, Bill Murray was, but he got Covid so Carell stepped in.
(This is what I mean when I say, it is about the pandemic).
I absolutely loved this piece by Zadie Smith on Charles Dickens and the role he played in her latest novel. I related to a lot of it -- how he’s always there when you do any measure of research on the nineteenth century, and how you can try and be resistant towards him, but he always ends up pulling you back in. Her exasperation at how present he is was tangible, but she very perfectly summed up the love you can have for him too. This part near the ending made me a bit emotional - ‘He’s there in the air and the comedy and the tragedy and the politics and the literature. He’s there where he had no business being (for example, in debates about the future of Jamaica). He’s there as a sometimes oppressive, sometimes irresistible, sometimes delightful, sometimes overcontrolling influence, just as he was in life. Just as he has always been in my life.’
Books on my radar
In a fun little place where I’m not actually ‘in the mood’ for anything, which can be quite freeing. When I’m finished with Pageboy and Chlorine, I don’t know what I’ll read next, and that’s quite exciting. (That’s also why I’m reading two things at the same time, something I don’t often do).
Love
Your read on Asteroid City has helped me grasp it better--thank you. (Though I loved The French Dispatch and agree he’s doing similar things in these films--need to rewatch both!)