Good evening!
If you thought my writing on Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead in this newsletter a couple of weeks ago was a bit vague, then you would be correct. I was writing about it part of a longread on the meaning of ‘Dickensian’ for the Faber Journal, and didn’t want to repeat myself. You can read it here!
If you’d like to buy me a coffee, on Ko-Fi, you can do here 🙂
What I’ve been reading this week and what I think about it
I finished West of Eden by Jean Stein (2016) and felt genuinely sad to not be reading it anymore. It’s equally fun and illuminating, shining a light on how strange Hollywood is from the people who are in it. I loved how it covered such a wide breadth, from the very very early days to the late twentieth century. It felt like a book that someone like Stein could only get away with. She has lived in Hollywood all her life (her father is Jules Stein, the founder of Music Corporation of America), and she’s friends with a lot of the people she interviewed for the book. However, she can see that it is a deeply strange place and is equally as interested in showing that to the reader as she is in showing its humanity.
One of my favourite moments in the book is when she recalls how her father was desperately trying to keep her away from left wing politics, and so she was invited to a court hearing for someone accused of being a communist during McCarthyism. She ended up siding with the person accused and became interested in communism as a result, the exact opposite of what her father wanted. As I started on the last section I was a bit unsure why Stein was including her own family in the case studies that the book is made up of, but I can see that it justifies her as the person who needed to write it, as well as being, I imagine, quite therapeutic to her. That the book ends with the final word of a security man who is not from Hollywood is fitting -- she lets us see that Hollywood is not the entire world, that it is very insular and not real life.
That being said, it is also a very fun book. Joan Didion has a blurb on the back calling it ‘gossipy’, and that’s exactly it. Stein clearly knew that if she were to ask leading questions to people involved in a very vain, self-absorbed part of the world then she would get interesting enough answers, and she did. These people are vicious about each other.
I’ve nearly finished Dorothy Tse’s Owlish, translated by Natascha Bruce (2023). Forgive me for promoting myself again, but I’ll be in conversation with Tse at Manchester Blackwell’s later in the month -- tickets here.
Owlish is wonderful; it’s set in a reimagined Hong Kong and is a parable about colonialism, migration and fetishised bodies. Its protagonist is Professor Q, a man who lives on the small island of Nevers with his wife Maria. He teaches at the University, which is hit by the industrial strike action that is sweeping over the island. He feels very stuck in his life, and his only escape is his secret collection of dolls, which reaches new heights when he acquires a life-size ballerina doll called Aliss.
I’m not quite finished so I haven’t got any definite conclusions, but it is a book that I have loved going along with, for the ride. I’ve mentioned before how much I appreciate good writing at a sentence level (and for anyone new here, yes I know that sounds like a basic need from reading, but you’d be surprised how rare that can be). Owlish is full of great sentences -- as an example:
Professor Q mouthed the address Owlish gave him, feeling as though it was in a foreign language, the words just meaningless sounds. He pulled a pen without a cap from his pen pot and jotted the sounds on a home improvement magazine, in the corner of an advertisement for watches. After ending the call, he realised the dried-up ballpoint had failed to leave any ink on the paper, although the grooves of his handwriting were there, passing right through the glossy page and appearing as raised outlines on the other side. Running his callused fingers over the surface felt intensely erotic.
The imagery here is quite something isn’t it? It’s a familiar situation -- being frantic when someone is telling us something on the phone, trying to get it down with a pen that doesn’t work, so you end up carving the writing into the paper. Tse’s writing (and Bruce’s translation) evokes it so keenly. You can basically smell the magazine and can see the type of advertisement Q was trying to write on. This is right at the beginning also, so when I read it I knew I was in for a great read.
Books on my radar
During a recent trip to a bookshop, I picked up a book of dark manga. I don’t know what it was exactly, but I know that I really enjoyed it, so I had a look online at where to start. This was clear as mud because everyone and their dog has a different opinion on a good starter series, so I asked the resident nerd in my life, Eliza, and she gave me a few suggestions. I picked up Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Fire Punch (2016), which I’m really excited to get started on.
My friend lent me a copy of Caoilinn Hughes’ The Wild Laughter (2020), which looks really good, and also has a really striking cover.