Hello! I am currently home alone, and I am struggling to remember the last time this would have happened to me. I am enjoying feeling like the king of the castle!
I just finished reading Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh, which means that until her new novel Lapvona is out in June, I can officially say I’ve read everything by her and here is my new and very (un)official ranking:
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Homesick for Another World
Eileen
Death in Her Hands
McGlue
I read the first half of Death in Her Hands yesterday, and the second half today, which split up pretty nicely to be set-up and then action (notice how it’s not resolution though). The novel is framed as a murder mystery of sorts, and though you are fully aware the entire time of how explicitly this story is just about a very lonely old woman starting to confront anger she’s hidden her entire life and projecting all kinds of wild fantasies in her head, I was still very disappointed by the lack of payoff, sorry Ms. Moshfegh. Love her, and will continue reading anything she puts out, because her writing is fascinating, and lends a sort of ease to my brain even though she’s usually delving deep into the off-kilter and generally unpleasant psyche of her broken protagonists, I find it comforting, soothing even. I’ve toyed with the idea of Ottessa Bingo, maybe I’ll officially draw up a board for the next one, but I think some of the squares off the top of my head would be:
Protagonist has an dysfunctional/utilitarian/uninterested attitude/relationship with food
Protagonist has a tedious and repetitive daily routine that they rely on
Protagonist has very little understanding of what to do with technology
Protagonist scoffs at and/or is disgusted by sex, or at least the sex they’ve had/are having
Protagonist has long-winded internal monologues about how disgusting people are
Protagonist occupies an incredibly vague/unspecified landscape that lends a sense of unreality and blurring of edges to the narrative and narrator
Protagonist never spends any money, has no relationship to buying things (again utility above sensation)
Honestly, these all add up to a good time for me, even if they show up pretty often in her narratives, I find the characters that she crafts around these posts to all be fun escapes into the mind of someone just a little more fucked up than me :—) ty girlie. But yeah, Death had so many enticing little morsels, but I was really looking for some of the pieces to connect, and when I realized there were only 10 pages left I was frustrated coming to terms with the fact that none of my questions would be answered. That is life though, so can’t be too mad at her. Overall I always enjoy reading her writing and living with her characters, though I do always read her novels very quickly, because I don’t think it’s healthy to let my extremely porous and sponge-like brain live in that mentality for too long, lest I start living into it. As someone who was walking around my house last weekend telling each of my roommates one by one that I was going to “Gone Girl” myself, I honestly believe I shouldn’t be trusted with female anti-heroes unsupervised.
What else did I read this week? Since it’s been snowing and that’s about all I’ve been doing…. I read Play It As It Lays, which I did refer to as the OG My Year of Rest and Relaxation, so there you go. I love Didion, and again, I had to read this one in two sittings over two days, because if I lived in that narrator’s head much longer it would have been bad for me. I did leave a goodreads review about this one, so apologies if this is repetitive for you, but thanks for engaging with my Content™: When Zadie Smith recently eulogized Joan Didion she lead with, “You didn’t have to agree with her, but you had to submit to her sentences.” And I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Play It As It Lays is the gold standard, and probably the mold, for this genre of fiction that has become increasingly popular in the last ten years: stories of dysfunctional, mentally-ill, unlikable, unlively women who are just kind of ghosting through life. I’m not saying that Maria (Muh-rye-uh), our protagonist, is just vaguely unlikeable okay? She’s incredibly depressed, and we get some hints as to why, but mostly the answer is “everything” and also “nothing”.
Referencing back to the “Against the Trauma Plot” essay I linked to last time we were all gathered here: I will say that Didion’s restraint, not only in her incredibly effective (but not incredibly affective) sentences, but also in the morsels of Maria’s past that she doles out to us, that restraint is what shines. There is no “a-ha this is why she’s so fucked up” moment, and I really appreciated that. I can’t really describe this novel as anything but brutal. It’s brutally concise, it’s dedicated to Didion’s husband (damn), and there is no traditional “resolution”, (but this is done in a far more satisfying and thoughtful way than the non-resolution of Death in Her Hands in my very own humble opinion, which is what you come looking for here in my very own humble newsletter, correct?) You should read Play It As It Lays, but go into it braced for the kind of devastation you experience when you have a quiet moment and perhaps accidentally allow the absolute, ultimate meaninglessness of life to settle in :—)
The final book I want to throw in here is We Do What We Do In The Dark — this book is out in May, and an advanced copy of it showed up for my roommate while she wasn’t around so I stole it and read the first 37 pages and swiftly gave up and put it back where I found it.
Here’s the thing: I’m so glad that there’s an excess of quality queer content nowadays, and that I no longer have to trudge through something I think is truly Bad just to get the satisfaction of some girl on girl románce. My inside scoop months ahead of this book coming out is: meh. Obviously I didn’t finish it, and I rarely feel equipped to even begin forming an opinion about a novel until at least 100 pages in, but this gets a special mention because it was so especially unfortunate to me. There’s absolutely no pacing, the dialogue is so cringey, and something that makes me more uncomfortable than anything in a novel is when the author wants to be cheeky and thinks they’re being clever throwing in parallels and references and stuff that are supposed to make the reader go oooh, but in this case only provoked an eyeroll or a “really?” from me. My verdict is just skip it, I’ll give you plenty of good gay book recommendations, and so will any bookseller at your local indie shop. Sorry to this author!!!
Okay congratulations to anyone who reads this solely for movie content, because here we go! I still haven’t really been watching movies this month, except the 2001 Tomb Raider movie the other night, which by the way the literal Illuminati are the antagonists of that film, which is hilarious. Last night I got way way too stoned and tried watching The Lodge (scary) with my roommates and the veil between fiction and reality blurred so much for me as I was sinking into the couch that I had to just stand up 15 minutes in and walk out of the room without saying anything, I then proceeded to sit in my bed and watch 4 hours of Drag Race content on youtube just to get myself back to a fun, cozy place.
I just had a bunch of risotto and white wine, and now I’m finishing this newsletter up with Speed (Dennis Hopper vs. Keanu Reeves vibes) playing in the background. That catches up you on my recent exploits, let’s go back into 2021 faves:
What Do We See When We Look At The Sky? (2021, Georgia, dir. Alexandre Koberidze) — A friend of mine recently watched this and texted me something along the lines of “this movie is so you”, and to lean in for a moment, I’ll say I felt “seen”. This is definitely one of my f a v o r i t e films of 2021, and what a DELIGHT to watch. It’s streaming on mubi right now and you should watch it if you want to just look at something nice and feel nice for 3 hours. Gorgeous cinematography (check), heartwarming story (check), absolutely perfect pacing (check), I wish more movies felt the way this feels, but maybe if they did this wouldn’t be quite as special. Do you ever cry because something is so beautiful? I do! and I did, watching this. Also I got to see it at the Metrograph (my fave), and I got to see it for FREE with Mubi Go (bonus points). If you’re in New York and you don’t already have a Mubi account or you do but you aren’t using Mubi Go, you need to get on this.
Titane (2021, France, dir. Julia Ducournau) — Ti-motherfucking-tane baby. This is body horror extraordinaire, but what you don’t expect going in is how simultaneously unsettling and touching the larger story of family and belonging is. There are some simply unforgettable moments, and overall it is So Wonderfully Queer it’s mind-boggling. Not flawless, but it did spark some very interesting conversations about the director’s intent with certain scenes as far as the politics of representation and desire and responsibility on and off camera go. Stimulating and provocative and fresh! You will be screaming “show me the car baby!” for weeks, and that’s a promise.
Drive My Car (2021, Japan, dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi) — This is up there in my top 5 of 2021 for certain. Another perfectly paced 3 hour film that I could have sat watching unfold all day. I think that what I loved most about this film was how the story so easily could have slipped into cliché and at every turn chose nuance and humanity and tenderness and honesty. I’m gonna scream thinking about how good this movie is. There is one image that I have saved to my desktop that I open from time to time and well up each time I see it. I will include it here for those who have and have not yet watched.
Benedetta (2021, France, dir. Paul Verhoeven) — Fun fact: Paul Verhoeven and I have the same sun (cancer), moon (aries), and rising (aquarius) signs, so basically we’re soulmates. I love this fucking freak of a man and of a film. If you read the incredible Lauren Groff novel Matrix that also came out in 2021, you got a very measured and tender alternate universe version of this gay nun story (recommend by the way). Benedetta is a Wild Ride so strap in babes: when I say Virgin Mary you say Dildo, when I say Bubonic Plague you say Blasphemy. If you read the first part in this roundup series, which I sent all the way back in mid-November, you read about Sibyl, lucky for all of us the lead actress (our girlie Virginie Efira) plays Benedetta and she does it so well. Erotic thriller the house down… boots.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021, Romania, dir. Radu Jude) — As far as films I saw in 2021 that break the mold and re-define what filmmaking can be, this is the one, hands down. A brutal indictment of capitalism, a genre-defying (genre-creating?) experiment, and an over the top laugh out loud comedy alllllll at the same time. I did not know (but apparently everyone but me knew) that this film opens on an amateur sex tape, and I was of course sitting in a theater at like 3pm with a few old people clutching my pearls. As both a lover of film and someone particularly interested in the post-USSR history of Romania I found this one thrilling and I think you will too. Also, I got an absolutely delicious slice of carrot cake from the Film Forum snack bar afterwards and walked around feeling like a million bucks, that’s that primo post-good-movie feeling.
The Inheritance (2020, US, dir. Ephraim Asili) — Set in West Philadelphia baby!!!!!! Do you like La Chinoise?? Yeah you do, now go watch The Inheritance streaming on Criterion. First of all: Sonia Sanchez is in this movie. Everything else: what a funny and clever portrait of modern activist spaces, and all the less glamorous, domestic aspects of building community, setting intentions, and creating relationships with the people you’re organizing with. It’s also such a delight to look at, so many bright fun warm colors! It also also includes an incredibly enlightening history of the MOVE organization, and I’m gonna go ahead and say that everyone in Philly should watch this please and thank you :)
Okay that’s the end of this list, there will be One! More! Installation! with the final films of 2021 so stay tuned <3 <3 <3