Category: Uncategorized

Books: The Lying Life of Adults. A Novel by Elena Ferrante, 2019

I have previously had mixed feelings about the writings of Elena Ferrante. My esteem of her rose after the film adaptation of “The Lost Daughter” by Maggie Gylenhaal, a truly original and thought-provoking film. My initial complaints about her fiction were related to the first part of the Neapolitan quartet – “My Brilliant Friend” which I found cliched and uninspiring, especially her very traditional class-struggles approach. In contrast – I was impressed by “Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay” which is an example of an in-depth look into the motherhood and womanhood themes of her previous books and a sort of more incisive continuation of “The Lost Daughter.” In the former, I enjoyed the string of character studies – contradictory and complex, the prose – dense and subtle, the non-judgemental representation of opposing kinds of “femininity,” the ambiguity of female strife for independence as a mix of libration and egotism. “We all narrate our lives as it suits us.” writes Ferrante. This is the powerful message of “Those Who Stay and Those Who Leave” – and it is the meta-revelation of the first-person narrative in that novel.

In “The Lying Life of Adults,” this principle is taken to a level of arbitrariness. An exceptionally smart girl, the author wants us to believe, is debunking the “narrative” of the adults that surround her as lies. Doing that she builds her own, supposedly innocent and honest, narrative. Not a new thing, by the way (i.e. What Maisie Knew) . The problem with the narrative of the coming-of-age girl, is that at some point the “disbelief” cannot be suspended. It becomes impossible to give credit to her unusual for her age intelligence, her interest in higher matters of politics and philosophy, the impression she creates for adults and peers, and her supposedly penetrating representations of the adults in her life. This time, Ferrante is invested too much in binary oppositions: ugly-beautiful, dreamy-cynical, rich-poor, entitled-self-made, so that instead of transforming into psychological “depth” the oppositions come across as confusing and arbitrary. In the main character’s narrative everything becomes possible and hence — not engaging.

Books: The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto, 2015

Have not had much luck with American novels recently so I decided to switch to Japanese literature…Really, everything that I started reading from Bestseller lists or Book Club lists was unimpressive as literature, “literal” or lacking in style (e.g. The Lions of Fifth Avenue”) or “checking boxes” propaganda type (e.g. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride.) American fiction is becoming more of a “socialist realism” type of fiction, propaganda over belle lettres, politics over art….

So, here it goes – a Japanese novel. It was a strange experience. It is short, compared to American novels, obviously, Japanese publishers don’t have a recommended word count for a novel…It is definitely engaging – the existence of a secret is planted at the beginning of the novel and its disclosure represents its very end. It describes the relationship of two very fragile, very strange characters with a combination of naivete and depth that strikes me as a feature of modern Japanese literature. Here, for example, is a line, that I remembered: “You never know you are happy until later”…Simplicity and depth at the same time is very appealing. At times, the simplicity starts to dominate the narrative, unfortunately, and you are left with some very banal observations. On the other hand, Yoshimoto can definitely create haunting scenes – reminiscent of Gothic literature.

TV: Ripley, 2024, Dir. Steven Zaillian

Hands down – the best thing about the new version of “Ripley” is its black-and-white cinematography – kudos to Robert Eslwit!

Otherwise – it seems that the driving force behind the making of a new film version of Patricia Highsmith’s novel was Andrew Scott who so badly wanted to play Ripley! And there is the rub…because he is not for that role, he lacks the “charmer” aspect (even though we found him very charming in Fleabag.) And you wonder what draws these people to him?! Why would Greenleaf senior ask this particular man to persuade his son to come back from Italy? Scott (and the director) obviously emphasize the class aspect of the character – a person from the lowest strata of society, who wants to become one of the high society, who mimics their tastes, aspires to appreciate art and enjoys being surrounded by beautiful objects but at the same time has the audacity to criticize his wealthy companions for being too bourgeois (the whole line with the ice-box). So, Ripley’s is a story of hatred for the upper classes but also a deep desire to join their ranks. Scott also focuses on the sinister aspect of the hero. He is sinister even when he plays nice, of he just can’t do the latter…

Comparisons with Matt Damon and Alain Delon are inevitable and don’t go in favor of Andrew Scott.

The series becomes tedious at some point because of the lot of “fluff” in the footage just meant to turn this into a series (with a second season probably coming up, on top of that…) There are some ridiculous parts in the film – one that stands out is the “analogy” with the criminal Caravaggio! An episode that was original and striking, mostly because of the cinematographer, was the one about Dicky’s murder, an elaborate and haunting nail-biter…

TV: Feud: Capote Vs The Swans, 2023, Creator Ryan Murphy, Dir. Gus Van Sant, Max Winkler, Jennifer Lynch

Unfortunately, the second installment of Ryan Murphy’s “Feud” is not as good as the first one. The dramatization of Betty Davis’ and Joan Crawford’s conflict was really great! It involved the manipulated context of this feud, the role of the media and the industry, and two great characters – it was a really demo of dramatic writing and a great pleasure to watch with the excellent performers!

“Capote Vs The Swans” lacked the dramatic energy that draws you in, the “feud” was illustrated, not acted out. The focus was on Capote’s idiosyncrasies, his loneliness, self-destructive behavior, narcissism, relationship with his mother, etc. (Tom Hollander was great playing Capote.) But the characters on the other side were underdeveloped, they were an illustration of an age long gone now, they were the “swan song” for the socialites of 1950s New York. The series strong point was the nostalgic feeling it induced despite the intended “criticism” of the New York high society from that time. An elegy for the women who were buying their “gardening hats” at a particular time of the year or who were fussing about the perfection of the edges of the invitation cards …was that ironic or sad or glamorous! It seems – the latter…And you could sense it in the way the “swan” performers enjoyed playing their roles – Naomi Watts, Diane Lane, Calista Flockhart, Chloë Sevigny….

Books: First Lie Wins. A Novel by Ashley Elton. 2023

It is a book about a female con artist who is controlled by a mysterious Mr. Smith who instructs her to do various jobs and defines her marks. The protagonist does not know who is her Master. The plot follows her relationships with her most current mark, Mr. Smith and some “helpers” and antagonists. OK, so far so good. BUT – the plot is so arbitrary and incredible that a self-respecting reader would get very annoyed and offended by the stupidity of the whole thing.

Here is the heroine talking: “I shove a few fries in my mouth while I consider my next move.” This is exactly what the author was doing while writing this novel…The protagonist has about ten other aliases for her previous “jobs” and they are all called upon when something in this outrageous plot has to be motivated.

I found this title on the best-seller list and it was an editor’s pick on Amazon, and a book-club selection! It is either a symptom of the enormous power of advertising or the stupidity of the (mostly) female reader or both. Scary!

Film: “The Triangle of Sadness” 2022, Directed by Ruben Östlund

The winner of the Best Film Award of 2022 of the European Film Academy is quite disappointing.

Its best part is the starting scene where we see an audition of male fashion models and the instructions they are being given on how to relax the “triangle of sadness” on their faces or slightly open their mouths in order to “look more available” or how to train the “Balenciaga look” vs the “H&M look.” And the viewer is misled to believe that this will be a scathing and fresh satire of the fashion industry. Instead, the film goes on to become an annoyingly predictable and transparent parable of class conflict, the class of the super-rich or consumerist society. There are some good previous examples in European cinema that did this quite successfully – La Grande Bouffe and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, for example. Ostlund’s creation is a tired imitation of these as well as Bong Joon Ho’s recent film Parasite. The core part of the film is set on a luxury cruise yacht with some of the cliche characters being a Russian oligarch, a weapon manufacturer, a fashion model turned influencer and an IT start-up owner. These representatives of the class of the rich are of course quite obnoxious and we see them eating and drinking and then, you guessed it, throwing up, etc. The poor, again in a quite cliched manner, are represented by the service and crew of the yacht, the “lower deck”, who are servile to the extreme and motivated by money in their submissiveness, while the captain is a drunk and a Marxist. I would rather put the latter in quotation marks because his “Marxism” is “for dummies.” In the third part of the film, after the ship wrecks and all find themselves on an island, the poor take over as they have access to the food supply, and turn out to be quite disgusting as well. The overarching “idea” of the film seems to be that the rich are very very bad and the poor are justified to be bad. And this “idea” is shoved at the audience in a boring and very simplistic manner over the course of two very long hours.

It is quite a pity that this talented director who grabbed the critics’ attention with an original and fresh film like Force Majeure winds up with a stale didactic bore that unfortunately appeals to film juries as it “checks all the boxes.”

I am back…

Several years and some hundred books later…I am restarting my Reader’s Diary.

I was surprised to find out that some of the posts had actually generated some comments. Very grateful for that…

I have decided to write not just about books but also film. We’ll see how it goes.

Wishing you a Happy New 2014!

Brooklyn Follies. Paul Auster. 2006

Remember the story from Paul Auster’s film “Smoke” told by Harvey Caitel’s character towards the end of the film? It was a Christmas story about a man visiting a blind woman in the “Projects” and pretending to be her nephew…The new novel of Auster feels like it is being told by the same character — there is similarity in the narrative’s pace and style. The language is the everyday life conversational language of Brooklynites but Auster endows it with depth and beauty, which transcends the pettiness of the mundane. The narrator, Nathan Glass, is an insurance agent who goes back to his birthplace – Brooklyn, to spend the final stage of his life after cancer treatment. But the book is not dark — Nathan’s stories sound optimistic – sad but glorifying the beauty of life despite its tribulations.

The novel ends on a nostalgic note – a longing for a pre 9/11 innocence.

The plot is a “snowball” plot, which gradually involves more and more characters whose lives become entangled with Nathan’s. In addition to dramatically exploited relationships of lovers, spouses and parents-children, Auster pursues some unusually prosaic blood relations — uncle-nephew and uncle-niece. (I can’t recall of another recent novel that explores such relationships unless I go back to Dickens). In general, the narrative style itself reminds of nineteenth century techniques – for example, the device where the narrator injects suspense in the story with sentences like : “Had I known what would happen after that, I wouldn’t….” or “what happened next was very unusual and etc.” or “if I hadn’t made the decision to …, most of the events of this novel would have never taken place…” I am glad Auster returns to classic narrative techniques even though he has not entirely abandoned “post-modern” devices like self-references and hidden-quotations. And if the Kafka story worked beautifully, the “Book of follies” penned by Nathan seems unnecessary and does not contribute in a meaningfully way to the book. The mini-plots utilized by Auster involve scams — one that reminds of “Ripley Underground” (Patricia Highsmith), another (Hawthorne-related) – told with great enthusiasm for the Rascal and his/her life-loving energy. The book is definitely addressing a “reading” reader, who would probably derive the most of it, but its beauty lies beyond the literary references – it is in the intertwining small bitter-sweet events of life, the yarn of living and storytelling delivered with seriousness and an almost revelatory tone, which seemingly does not correspond to the pettiness of the subject matter – a waitress with a jealous husband, a perfect mother sending her kids on the school bus, a guy mowing his lawn…

All these miniatures perfectly tie together with Nathan’s idea at the end of the novel to start a publishing enterprise dedicated to recording the biographies of the forgettable — the ordinary people.

Quote:

“I want to talk about happiness and well-being, about those rare, unexpected moments when the voice in your head goes silent and you feel one with the world. I want to talk about the early June weather, about harmony and repose, about robins and yellow finches and blue-birds darting past the green leaves of trees. I want to talk about the benefits of sleep, about the pleasures of food and alcohol, about what happens to your mind when you step into the light of the two o’clock sun and feel the warm embrace of air around your body.”