#Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews

[infiniterichesinalittleroom]

The most desirable state. In one sense a special use of words and pictures can conduce silence. The scrapbooks and time travel are exercises to expand consciousness, to teach me to think in association blocks rather than words. I've recently spent a little time studying hieroglyph systems, both the Egyptian and the Mayan. A whole block of associations—boonf!—like that! Words—at least the way we use them—can stand in the way of what I call nonbody experience. It's time we thought about leaving the body behind.

William S. Burroughs • Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Third Series

[heavenlyyshecomes]

INTERVIEWER

That seems similar to the idea that the way that one language expresses an idea might never fully translate to another. What happens in that space you inhabit as a translator, between the original work and the translation?

CARSON

I think of it as a ditch, a ditch between two roads or countries. It’s always been interesting for me, the state of mind that the translator arrives at, where they have two languages simultaneously on their brain-screen. And they’re saying something not quite equivalent and they both keep on floating there. Some writers—Emily Dickinson would be the outstanding example—make use of that ditch within their own language. So she’s not translating from another language. She’s translating herself. She writes certain lines and words and then crosses them out and puts another word in, or writes the third word on the side, or turns the paper over and makes another version of the whole thing. And it all exists together as the poem. It’s just a really weird state of mind, to have all that floating, and have it be, have it constitute the poem in its entirety—in its untidy, unresolved entirety.

In translation, this arises in a different way, because you have a text, and it has perhaps certain obvious errors in it. And then you have variant readings at the bottom of the page, which are ideas that different scholars have had over the years to make a better reading where it seems wrong. So you get, again, these possibilities floating in your mind, for the same thing, but different. And they’re all kind of there together constituting the poem. I’ve never known what to do with that. It’s a beautiful event to have the poem in Greek with various readings in English underneath it, and to have all that floating as possibilities for what the guy really said.

I can’t communicate the beauty of that most of the time on a page in a book, or in something called “a translation of x.” There’s no format for that. You can do it sort of on a computer with links and whatnot, side text. But basically nobody wants to be bothered with reading all those links, and it doesn’t feel the same. As a scholar, when you’re looking at the page itself with the language and the variants, and it all floats in your mind, it’s just an extraordinary experience. Incommunicable, I think, in its finer aspects.

—“Throwing Yourself Into the Dark”: A Conversation with Anne Carson, in The Paris Review

[centrally-unplanned]

Oh I had a book review that I never did - Apostles of Mercy. Third in a series that I like, but while still "good" its the worst one so far! The Noumena series is a First Contact story set in Bush-era USA, telling the tale of Cora, a down-on-her-luck "everygirl" who gets dragged into being an interpreter/uncomfortably-intimate pairbond for an alien refugee named Ampersand whose home species is probably gonna wipe out humanity as a threat prevention/"why not" measure. Lets complain about things on the complaining-blog:

(The cover art continues to slap, no downgrade there)

Book 1 of the Noumena series is, fundamentally, the story of Cora and Ampersand, and how they connect. It is done really well, their differences stack on their shared contexts and a bit of alien magic to make it really believable that they become a found family unit. So in book 2... Ampersand kind of PTSD's into becoming a reclusive asshole, and Core spends most of the book away from him connecting with other people? It is an odd choice but, you know, this can work. You create space in a relationship, they grow and change from the space, then reunite and that distance in fact builds the foundation for new stuff. Its bold for book 2 but fair enough. But then she does it again in Book 3!! Cora goes off to deal with other issues and hang out with someone else, and is primarily annoyed by or made deeply uncomfortable by Ampersand's presence and decision-making for most the book. Its not as severe this time, but still; you can't play that card again, like come on! Are you telling your Transformers meets Beauty & the Beast fanfic or aren't you? Make up your mind! It comes off as too-clever-by-half, someone uncomfortable with doing the "typical" and having to constantly ~subvert, to ill effect.

Speaking of, the distraction du jour for Book 3 is Paris, Cora's new girlfriend. And she is very, very boring. She is just A Person, spends most of the book a prisoner trying to survive alien captors who don't understand her, and pretty much just has to be rescued at the end. There is no connective tissue - skills that she has that are crucial, themes she is the lodestone for, etc. In Book 2 Cora's partner Kaveh was far, far more interesting - he pushed the narrative forward, he was audacious and witty, and he had a deep internal narrative as to his motivations and goals. Paris seems like a checkbox in comparison. And I think there is something to that - in an interview Ellis remarked that she has gotten far less "critique" on her male characters than her female characters from the lens of making them interesting to read. She implies a degree of audience sexism there, but I think its probably the reverse - besides Cora (who is great) her male characters are just way more fun because, surprise surprise, they are allowed to be assholes sometimes in ways that make them complex and interesting. Even Kaveh, who is a very positively coded character, is a thirty-something rich guy sleeping with a college-aged broke trauma ball and is shamefully kind of loving being the fixer to her broken bird. That is good shit to read about - Paris could never because she is simply A Good Person. Because of Woke.

And speaking of politics! So this part of the series was always a little cringe - Ellis as a writer wears her politics on her sleeve and they are definitely a form of unsophisticated leftism with some really heavy-handed moments. But I don't mind reading the works of people I disagree with, I quite love it in fact; in the first book it is generally fine, because she sets up competent and realistic opponents. In Book 1 its the CIA embodied in Sol Kaplan, who believes in the War on Terror and all that jazz and is one of the best side characters, and Cora has to face brutal consequences for her own ideals. In Book 2 the cringe ratchets up a bit but still, here the debate is over civil rights & strategic approaches to the now-public alien refugees, and the "right-wing" factions are portrayed with intelligent arguments around security & deterrence, and also score their own wins. In Book 3, the main plot revolves around a sister alien faction's camp who specialize in biotech. And they have this whole thing where they move from place to place for secrecy, and to be away from people they find themselves in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, and then an uncleansed mine field in Cambodia. At which point they start saying things like "we should eliminate the humans, we would steward the earth better" and you in the audience are totally supposed to be sympathetic to that. Its incredibly eyeroll, the large majority of the planet is rural countryside they could escape to with nothing close to that scale of damage, they literally chose the worst possible locations on two coin flips in a row. How are they not in Montana. Or Siberia. Its cringe, guys. She does the same thing with the CIA in this book, who eventually get commandeered by a US general who literally thinks of ethnic minorities as subhuman and says so explicitly. Incredible cringe.

Finally, Mary Sue problems. Cora interacts extensively with three humans in this book, and two of them want to fuck her and the third is her evil dad. Said dad spent the first two books being a distant figure pulling off big moves; in this book he literally does nothing but putz around, with no clear agenda but "butter up Cora", who sees through it immediately and fucks him over at the end. Like you spent two books setting this guy up? That is it? So Cora can look smart? We already knew she was smart. Someone says he loves her an "angelic" platonic way. Its not a good look and tbh a little baffling coming from Ellis, who is not at all someone who typically does that kind of stuff. I have to chalk that up to "ah fuck how do I wrap this arc up" syndrome.

Okay, done! Tbc the core of the book was still solid plotting and there was progress on interesting fronts. Its just sad to read Book 3 in a series where it commits mistakes the first two books explicitly avoided, like she ran out of endurance. Hopefully this is a book where she just got it out of her system.

[justforbooks]

Elias Khoury

Lebanese novelist best known for his 1998 book Gate of the Sun, which he said was an act of love for the Palestinian people

Throughout his life and in his 14 novels, the Lebanese writer Elias Khoury, who has died aged 76 after a long illness, explored his region’s contemporary history, whether it was identity politics, social inequality and injustice, or the expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians that he witnessed first-hand.

His best-known work, Gate of the Sun (1998), translated into English by Humphrey Davies, is both an epic love story between a husband and wife, and one of the first novels to describe the 1948 Palestinian Nakba, giving faces, names and histories to the voiceless.

Khoury used stories that he had collected over seven years from Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and testimonials from Palestinians who remained in the Galilee region, today part of Israel. Gate of the Sun was an act of love for the Palestinian people, Khoury said, and in it he wove those stories together to give the full sweep of Palestinian history. The novel has been translated into 14 languages and in 2004 was made into a film by the Egyptian director Yousry Nasrallah.

Khoury was part of what is known as the civil war generation of Lebanon (1975-90), which includes writers such as Hanan al-Shaykh, Hoda Barakat, and Jabbour Douaihy, all of whose works were a significant departure from earlier Lebanese authors through their modern style and content. Khoury experimented with narration and form, as well as the way he wrote in fus’ha, or classical Arabic, bringing the language as close as possible to the spoken word, increasing its fluidity.

His first novel, On the Relations of the Circle (1975), was published the year the civil war began. He participated in the war with a leftist alliance, and was injured, losing his sight temporarily. In between fighting he wrote his second book, Little Mountain (1977), which describes the early years of the war through the eyes of three characters. In White Masks (1981), Khoury wrote about the social fragmentation and disintegration of Lebanese society undergoing the complexities of a civil war.

Born in Beirut, into a Christian middle-class family, he was the son of Adèle Abdelnour and Iskandar Khoury, who worked for Mobil Oil. He came of age in the 1960s and early 70s, when the city had become a flourishing intellectual and artistic regional capital. However, this was against a backdrop of sectarianism and profound economic inequality, deeply influenced by regional tensions.

While studying history at the Lebanese University in Beirut, in 1967 Khoury travelled to Jordan to work in a Palestinian refugee camp, then joined the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. In an interview with the Paris Review in 2017, Khoury said: “We trained in Syria, in the camps at Hama and Maysaloun, just off the Beirut- Damascus highway … Later on, we worked in the south of Lebanon as well as around Beirut.”

However, Khoury decided he wanted to become an “intellectual”, leaving for Paris in 1970 to study social history at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. There, he worked on a thesis about the 1840-60 Mount Lebanon war between the Druze and Maronite communities that provided a base for his subsequent writings on the civil war.

Two years later he returned to Lebanon where he worked at the Palestine Research Center and for its journal, Palestinian Affairs, where he became editor-in-chief in 1975. He was culture editor of the Lebanese daily As-Safir from 1983 to 1990 then, once the civil war ended, he ran the cultural supplement of the An-Nahar newspaper.

Khoury was actively involved in the region’s secular, leftwing intellectual scene, working with the poets Mahmoud Darwish and Adonis, and the writer and critic Edward Said in New York, where Khoury taught Arabic literature at Columbia University (1980-81), then held the title of global distinguished professor at New York University (2000-14). He also taught at the University of London, and universities in Switzerland and Lebanon.

According to his French-language translator, Rania Samara, who worked with him for 25 years, Khoury was “someone who lived his Arab society to the fullest with his political positions and commitments. He was courageous and frank about everything he thought, and all this was reflected in his work. There was no dissociation between life and the man.”

Although he always supported the Palestinian people, Khoury never hesitated to criticise Arab leaders, including the PLO, and he sought to understand Israel, teaching himself Hebrew and reading Israeli novelists. Indeed, his Children of the Ghetto trilogy (2016-23) is set in Lydda, Palestine, which becomes Lod, Israel, where his Palestinian characters speak Hebrew, but also in New York and Warsaw, where Jewish and Israeli histories are explored.

The trilogy characteristically follows a form of circuitous storytelling – Khoury spoke of his love for the One Thousand and One Nights, and the infinity and continuity of Scheherazade’s stories. His own stories often feel as if each narrator is passing a baton to the next. The protagonist of the three books in the trilogy, My Name Is Adam (2016), Star of the Sea (2019) and A Man Like Me (2023), Adam Dannoun, is a complex character whom Samara thought that Khoury most resembled, saying: “He didn’t know if the character resembled him or if he was the character. We no longer know who the author is and who the reader is. The reader is the author’s mirror. He loved this dizzying kind of game.”

In A Man Like Me, the character of Khalil, who originally appeared in Gate of the Sun attempting to revive a comatose leader of the Palestinian resistance by telling him stories, resurfaces, circling back to Khoury’s previous work.

As well as his novels and articles, Khoury wrote a collection of short stories, three plays and a number of literary studies.

Throughout his recent illness and nearly year-long hospitalisation suffering from ischaemia, Khoury wrote articles for the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper. He was also the editor of the Arabic Journal of Palestine Studies and was working on a novel set in contemporary Beirut.

Two months before his death, Khoury wrote in Al-Quds al-Arabi: “Can he whose ordeal has been rooted in the land since the beginning of the Palestinian resistance lose heart? Gaza and Palestine have been savagely attacked for nearly a year, yet they continue to resist, unwavering. A model from which I have learned to love life every day.”

He is survived by his wife, Najla Jraissati Khoury, a writer and researcher whom he married in 1971, his daughter, Abla, his son, Talal, a grandson, Yamen, and three siblings, Samira, Souad and Michel.

🔔 Elias Khoury, author, editor and journalist, born 12 July 1948; died 15 September 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[saintescuderia]

How To Become A Writer?

Responses will vary. They all won’t answer you.

It happened when I started working full-time.

It’s interesting that — as soon as Teams calls and spreadsheets became a reality, the adjoining tabs open would have Google searches on how to become a writer. 

The very question: how to become a writer? It’s funny to think that Google could’ve provided an answer to something writers themselves has been struggling to answer for the longest time. Every single Paris Review Interview provides a different response — albeit they all share the same trait of being philosophical, artistic and not at all straightforward. 

The only straightforward thing I could find on how to become a writer was the Google-sponsored website of Medium. It seemed like this was the updated version of early 2000s blogging and Wordpress. 

I had tried Wordpress. I had also given up on Wordpress. 

And so I tried Medium. I shortly gave up on Medium. 

It wasn’t due to the same reasons, though. Wordpress was confusing and isolating. Medium was easier and you already had articles to read before you noticed the little button to write your own. However, therein lay the problem: Medium gave me nowhere to hide. Was I fully ready to embrace it? Was I ready for my life to change? Eevery word I put out there has to be perfectly selected and crafted in my own original way that I am changing lives with each paragraph. No matter the fact that I don’t even know what I’m doing or why I’m doing it. I just know that I need to do it. 

The imposter syndrome got to me. No matter the inherent desire to do this — something existing since the days of waking up 5am before school to write fanfiction — I just couldn’t stay consistent. 

During my brief Medium interlude last time, I did see a trend. People would try to build their following through writing consistently for 30 days. 90 days. It didn’t really matter. They ahd set a goal and wrote — and posted — consistently for that alloted amount of days. 

I read some of those posts. They weren’t all life-changing. They weren’t philosophical or even artistic. But they were straightforward. They were here, I did it. It’s not great, but I showed up and did it anyway. If I think about what is missing from this, it’s that very thing. To get just get over myself and write badly because bad writing is inevitable. 

So, here is my own 30 day challenge. I'm documenting this not just on Medium but also on the website that has had my back since the inception of my personality as a whole. Tumblr.

It may be odd to think that I am using Tumblr as a means to post my work and start to build up a portfolio, if you will. Tumblr's day has passed and it gave the likes of Rupi Kaur her platform back in 2010s - we've moved past that!

Sure. Neil Gaiman is still on here.

Also, unlike Wordpress or Wix or any of those other sites, the 10+ years I've spent on this forbidden 'hell-site' means I actually know how to use the damn thing. If we're going to embark on the journey of writing everyday, at least give me the past of least resistance. I know Tumblr.

Because, really, this is all so I can get out of the ivory tower that is every writer’s self-doubts and insecurities. Who knows, maybe I’ll start to figure out just what it is to be a writer. 

(It also helps that F1 is back. That may or may not be a coincidence.)

[synthetic-ultramarine]

Ten Book Reviews

To celebrate the new year I thought I'd do some short book reviews! This is by no means a comprehensive list of everything I read in 2023; I decided to focus on fiction rather than non-fiction for this post, and I slowly trimmed down my list of books to focus on the ones that gave me the most to talk about.

Books I Liked:

Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer There's so much to be said about these books, they really deserve their own post. This series is so characterful, so atmospheric, and so masterful in its use of suspense, dread, and tragedy. Lives up to the hype 100%.

Devil House by John Darnielle John Darnielle reads his own audiobooks, and he's good at it. This book follows a true crime writer as he confronts the consequences of framing people's lives as narratives. It's about haunted places. It's about the often-forgotten potential for cruelty in the storytelling impulse. But most of all it's about the thesis that it's self-defense for a squatter to kill a landlord with a sword. If you like this, Universal Harvester is also good.

The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton I think someone should do an adaptation of this that takes place on tumblr.

Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis In this book, C. S. Lewis writes about a woman's struggle against god- no, wait, where are you going, come back! It's a take on the Cupid and Psyche myth from the perspective of the jealous sister, here reimagined as a genuinely concerned sister. Vivid imagery, beautiful prose, and a meditation on the relationship between the human and the divine that I still found interesting as a homosexual apostate. There's some fascinating stuff about the androgyny of God in here. Yes, for real. From Clive Staples Lewis.

Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente This book is overstuffed with concept. It's set in an alternate 20th century where the empires of earth have settled the nine planets, and it's about the film industry, which is based on the moon because the united states never colonized california. The story is a collection of ephemera - interviews, ship manifests, tabloid columns, clips of damaged film - relating to the disappearance of a renowned filmmaker who vanished while working on an infamous lost documentary. Also, space whaling. It's about that as well. Every time I try to describe how I feel about Valente's writing style it comes out sounding like one of those weird perfume reviews. I'll just say I found the prose overwrought at times, but ultimately I'm glad kept reading. The book is packed with mythological references, and while some are quite effective, there are also some that don't really do anything. There's a lot of genre-hopping; the noir sequences chafe against the style of the prose a bit, but the cosmic horror scenes are chilling. What is really good about this book is how thoroughly everything in the alternate-history setting is thought through. It talks about how the long day-night cycle of Venus affects the work of a film lighting technician. It talks about French colonies on Neptune losing radio contact with Paris as the earth passes behind the sun. It confronts the idea of Venus and Mars and Pluto as terra nullius, even though that's a concept some people seem to prefer not to critique. I'm going to be thinking about this book for a long time. If you like Nope, Dark City, or Mystery Flesh Pit National Park, you should read this.

Finna by Nino Cipri Weird, fun novella about two exes who still love each other, wandering through a maze of alternate universes for minimum wage. Portal-esque corporate satire, snappy pacing, and a compelling central relationship. So good.

The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon A beautifully written story about body horror, giant robots, gay sex, religion, mortality, and tenderness. The worldbuilding is intricate, sprawling, and sometimes ambiguous. The relationship between the main character and the love interest is far from the Standard Romance Subplot Structure, it's fresh and very compelling. The in-universe sacred poetry that shows up throughout the book is also very good. I have it on hold at the library for a reread. This book is tragically underrated because they're marketing it to the wrong audience. It's more cronenberg than canva cover. Tor should be selling this to the Annihilation weirdos, not the Red White & Royal Blue crowd. People go into it with the wrong set of genre expectations and then don't know how to react. I'm here to set the record straight: The Archive Undying rules and you should read it. I especially recommend this book to Friends at the Table listeners, since the author is One Of Us and the show is a notable influence.

Books I Didn't Like:

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty The setup to this book is very compelling: 6 people lived a happy life together, isolated on a spacecraft for decades, until they were all violently killed. New copies of their younger selves wake up in the ship's cloning facility with no memory of last 60 years. One of their future-past selves was a murderer, and the killer's clone inherits their legal culpability. While the high-concept murder mystery is a great idea, the future politics are profoundly unimpressive, and sadly by the end of the book the latter has entirely subsumed the former. There keep being these flashback scenes about cloning politics back on earth - not only are these very politically shallow, they also kill the claustrophobic ship-in-a-bottle atmosphere of a good fucked up space scenario. As an example of the shallow politics: "all major religions" are stated to be intolerant towards clones. Apparently all the sects and denominations of All The Religions are just doing the same thing, as if they are interchangeable with each other. And then there are The Riots, which are portrayed as a political misstep, too disruptive, too loud. And then of course we have the NYC real estate billionaire villain. Florals? For spring? It's beyond me why a locked-room murder mystery would even need a villain who wasn't in the room. There's also a hacking scene I found so absurd that it nearly made me return the book unfinished. Disappointing.

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman Yeah, that's right, I'm gonna talk shit about Neil Gaiman on tumblr. You think you can scare me. old man?! I can't be silenced! Anyway, remember the Sexy Lamp Test? This is the worst failure of the Sexy Lamp Test I've ever seen. The girlfriend that the guy in this book is fighting with his brother over could be replaced by a nice car the brother took for a joyride, and the plot wouldn't change. At least with a car there wouldn't be consent issues.

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey In the real-life 20th century, there was a proposal by the U.S. government to introduce the hippopotamus to North America as a meat animal. Thankfully, it was scrapped. This alt-history western asks: what would the world look like if they went through with it? It's an intriguingly bizarre premise. Unfortunately, when I made that "your story should have scenes that aren't bioware cutscenes or tvtropes pages" post, this book was one of the reasons why. The dialogue and characters are nothing to write home about, and the plot is just rote. Here we are in a bar fight. Now we are planning the heist. Now we are remembering the tragic backstory. Now the antagonist has double crossed us. The hippos are involved in the plot, but they don't drive the plot in any way that depends on their being hippos. They only really differ from horses aesthetically. The thing that really bothers me about this book, though, is that this story clearly wants to be a modern, progressive take on the western genre, with a queer cast and all, but it doesn't give a single thought to the existence of native americans. There are no native main characters or side characters. Despite being a story about the radically destructive transformation of the north american ecosystem by the settler state, there is not even a single throwaway "the Choctaw are not pleased with the feral hippopotamus situation" line. Radiance gives more thought to the status of native american society in its alternate history than River of Teeth, and Radiance takes place entirely in outer space. Come on now.

[asfearlessasamango]

mario vargas llosa in "writers at work: the paris review interview series (ninth edition)"

[lowcountry-gothic]

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E.L. Doctorow, Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews, 2nd Series

[dzgrizzle]

Two new books I got on Saturday at Atlanta Vintage Books, both related to the Bloomsbury Group of writers and artists:

(1) A 1947 first edition of Devil at Westease, the only murder mystery written by Vita Sackville-West, and perhaps her rarest book to find. A New York Times review on May 11, 1947, said: “This new book by V. Sackville-West, poet, novelist, biographer, writer on travel and sundry other subjects, is a whodunit, complete with murder, police, unofficial detective and a romance. It is, as might be expected, very well-bred, with sustained suspense, a subtle and original turn of plot, and a fine literary flavor, qualities with which mysteries are not too often blessed.” The copy I got is hardcover with no dust jacket, but it's in extremely good condition for a book that is 77 years old.

(2) A 1971 paperback printing of Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews (1958), with interviews by several major authors of the 1950's, including E.M. Forster. I found this typewritten note inside the book (see the third pic) from a lover of Beat literature who apparently stole the book away from Jim and did not know that William S. Burroughs was “heavy into drugs.”

I’m extremely happy with both purchases!

[k7l4d4]

K Reviews and Rants: Miraculous Ladybug Season 5! Episode 5

Hello all, I'm back again with another review! Was honestly unsure if I would get this one posted, given I had a rather long run today in regards to work.

This episode... frustrated me. It essentially serves as a roadmap of the writer's intention to isolate Adrien. In how it presented Adrien as being gaslit by Gabe into thinking his dad FINALLY gives a genuine shit about him and pushing him into a yes/no situation where he's forced to pick between staying a Model or letting Gabe use his image for the Alliance Rings, as well as how it just had Nino act like an utter idiot, running his mouth, putting on a very dumb plan to try and spy on Monarch's actions... the setup feels designed to leave Adrien with no one he can trust with his true feelings and concerns but Marinette/Ladybug, and given how tightlipped she is about herself, that's a recipe for disaster in terms of unbalanced relationships.

Anyway, on to the review! As always, warnings for profanity.

Episode 5: Illusion 

Okay, we get some news interviews... and the thing that's standing out the most to me is XY being a completely ditzy moron, which makes the idea that he ever could've been able to set up holograms to do performances in his place during Season 1... SUSPECT, to put it lightly. Really Astruc, if you can't even do something like THAT consistent, you aren't gonna be able to hold together a message about "wealthy elites" or whatever nonsense is running through your head. 

And oh boy, having Chloe be the local Strawman again, what a surprise. Like... Dude, Tommy, turning someone you are engineering to be hated by the audience into acting as the mouthpiece for every criticism of the show and characters you dislike, and in the most stupidly reductive takes ON those criticisms around makes you look like a petty jackass! 

Okay, why the hell are the show host dude, Bob Roth, and the fucking BANANA presented as a panel of experts... I just do not have anything to say about that beyond "what the fuck?" Why are they using three randos as "experts" about the threat presented by a psychotic terrorist, and how to stop said terrorist, with one of said "experts" being a known corrupt executive!? 

Honestly, what makes this stupid scene even worse is that literally NOTHING of substance is actually discussed, despite apparently being an important talk show segment about the safety of Paris. It trivializes the overall plot of the season, and the series as a whole by giving the implication that people are so unconcerned about it that a goofy spoof segment featuring a wacky tv host, a sleazy music producer, and a guy in a banana suit about how "serious" it is makes for prime entertainment. 

And honestly? They could've made that set-up WORK by having Gabriel SEE the show and become furious that people aren't taking him seriously, and then plans out something audacious. But THAT would require Thomas to be willing to acknowledge that this scene just makes his "sympathetic villain" look like a complete joke. 

Okay, we get a moment of Adrien being completely pissed off over the Alliance Rings and how they involve his father objectifying his image and voice even WORSE Than before... and decides to use his newly gained confidence to confront him over it. Good for him! Now how does this get ruined? 

And there it is. "Call me dad." ...Thomas, if you were trying to portray Gabriel as sincerely trying to be a better father to Adrien... I honestly think this was the stupidest way you could've done it. Oh, he's only JUST NOW deciding to give a shit about his kid!? SERIOUSLY!? Right after setting things up so that he profits off of his son's image and voice. Combined between just how jarring it is that Gabriel is acting like this, as well as him claiming to take Adrien to school himself... I'm sorry, but this feels like he's gaslighting Adrien to me. 

Oh yes, "disappeared." Not DEAD. Because oh no, we can't ever mention DEATH on a kid's show, no no no, we have to wiggle around the topic, no matter how blatantly we otherwise telegraph it. Better to imply that at best Emilie became a deadbeat parent and ran off, or worse that she got kidnapped or something, because CLEARLY THAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT WAY TO FRAME THIS SITUATION!!! Oh, and Gabriel's happy go-lucky "family man" mask immediately starts slipping with him nearly chucking the frying pan he's cooking in across the room. Wow, what a great dad, CLEARLY this is a man without anger and control issues! 

And also, when and how have Adrien and his dad EVER been closer?? Like, apparently Adrien's mom has only "disappeared" since LAST YEAR, yet Adrien is completely weirded out by the idea of Gabriel being a "dad" instead of the cold, demanding father who micromanages his life. Again, THIS LOOKS LIKE HE IS GASLIGHTING HIS SON THOMAS!!! 

And now we get to the crux of the matter... exploitation. Thomas, Gabriel basically profiteering off of his son's image (which could be used against him in some VERY creepy ways, I might add!!), whether it be through having him do photo shoots and model clothing/jewelry, or by having him be the controllable face of the AI rings scattered across the city, IS EXPLOITATION. Him having "more time to spend with his son" DOES NOT MAKE IT BETTER since he seems damn convinced to take advantage of his son and ignore his actual wants and feelings. Heck, again, him justifying the Alliance Rings using his son's image and voice on the basis of "spending more time together" just comes off as either emotional manipulation or gaslighting, since he's pushing Adrien into the framework of accepting one uncomfortable and exploitative situation or the other, while denying him the right to not be involved in EITHER ONE. Him trying to put on the "happy family man" role does not work, he just feels like a creep about it, and the fact that he's making Adrien doubt standing up to him because he's acting "nicer" gives the implication that he's only doing this so he can better manipulate Adrien into doing what HE wants Adrien to do, not what Adrien actually cares about. GAAAAHHHH!!!! 

Okay, we get a scene of Alya and Marinette theorizing about how Hawkmoth is empowering his Akumas with Miraculous powers... and yeah, I can see where their theories are coming from, given their lack of information. Oh hey, Nino showed up! ...This is gonna be the start of the trainwreck, isn't it? 

Alright, so Nino basically blows off his future to be, as he puts it, a "superhero," and seems to meaningfully think he'll be able to help against Monarch. Like... I don't MIND the passion and idealism behind this, but I have the sinking feeling this is gonna go to shit really fast. Okay, just got started up again... and seriously Nino, "Comrade Mayo, Comrade Ketchup?" Thomas, are you even TRYING to make Nino serious!? This... this is little kid shit!! And I don't mean the viewers, I mean this is demeaning!! It's just like that stupid meeting before, it's talking down to the audience by assuming they "won't get it" and using the most childish interpretation of what SHOULD BE a serious talking point for the series!! 

I LITERALLY JUST STARTED THIS BACK UP, HOW DO YOU FUCK UP THAT MUCH IN JUST HALF A MINUTE!? 

Yeah, yeah, Marinette should absolutely be the one to question Adrien about the Alliance Rings, not Nino or anyone else who knows him. Oh, and of COURSE they fucking dismiss the fact that Marinette is FINALLY ACKNOWLEDGING THE FACT THAT SHE HAS NO SELF CONTROL AROUND ADRIEN AS A BAD THING BECAUSE IT GETS IN THE WAY OF "TRUE LOVE" BECAUSE WHY THE HELL NOT!? Ughh... this is getting "better and better." 

Nino, dude, using secret "codenames" in a public setting, particularly dumb ones named after condiments, makes you look like a fucking moron. Does- Does Thomas genuinely believe that this makes Nino look clever or something...? 

Did. Did that literally JUST happen. Did Nino. SERIOUSLY ADMIT. To being a Superhero and then UNMASK HIS GIRLFRIEND in front of two people who he has no evidence have ever had anything to DO with the Miraculouses!? WHAT THE RAGING FUCKWAFFLE ASTRUC!? No. NO ON EVERY LEVEL!! This is the kind of nonsense that makes it very FUCKING OBVIOUS THAT YOU ARE A HACK!!! No, I DO NOT GIVE A SHIT IF THE SHOW IS FRAMING HIS EXPOSING THIS IS A BAD THING, IT IS STILL FUCKING STUPID BECAUSE I DUNNO, WHAT IF LADYBUG GETS THE MIRACULOUSES BACK AND YOU JUST PROVED YOU CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO KEEP YOUR IDENTITY SECRET ANYMORE GENIUS!? Astruc, YOU ARE NOT CLEVER!!! THIS IS THE MOST BONEHEADED BIT OF NONSENSE YOU COULD HAVE POSSIBLE HAVE NINO DONE AND MAKES HIM LOOK LIKE THE LAST PERSON WHO SHOULD BE RUNNING A RESISTANCE MOVEMENT!! 

But then again, given you are repeatedly portraying him as an incompetent and goofy idiot who is taking things too seriously in the worst possible way, I am wondering if this might be FUCKING DELIBERATE!!! I cannot even BEGIN to fathom why you think making Nino the local DITZ is important, and I don't care to, because this is fucking GARBAGE!!! 

FUCK THIS EPISODE WITH A RUSTY SPOON, for it has tarnished the very IDEA of this episode being able to pull off dramatic and serious storylines with this one episode alone. It's one thing to portray a dramatic or serious storyline and bungle it by making it push too far or with improper set-up, but this? This episode so far has TRIVIALIZED the entire series in the worst way imaginable. It's not the worst episode in terms of writing, but the anger I'm feeling puts it pretty high up there. 

"The only ones who need to keep their secret identities are Ladybug and Chat Noir, not us!" Nino... (Breathes deep) BOY!! Wow, it sure is great that there ISN'T a magical terrorist going around, actively looking for anyone and everyone he can use as leverage to fulfill his personal ambitions and who HAS made it a point of targeting civilians he so much as SUSPECTS of being connected to the Superheroes opposing him, even if it's just to use as FUCKING BAIT!! Because that would make this blase attitude and dismissal of personal safety and secrets that aren't his to share UTTERLY FUCKING MORONIC!!! Astruc... get fucked with a rusty spoon. You have shamed the concept of Superheroes. I am very neutral on Nino, and even I CAN FUCKING TELL THIS IS OUT OF CHARACTER FOR HIM ON EVERY FUCKING LEVEL!!! 

You know, something just occurred to me... Chloe had Adrien's Gabriel-decided diet delivered all the way to the Cafeteria and hand-delivered it to him. Granted, it wasn't her hands but still, that is a LOT of effort to go for... well, ANYONE. While the intended takeaway by Astruc is that she "doesn't GET Adrien and is forcing him to be someone he's not!!" she's really not forcing him at all, even when she obviously disapproves, and would've had fuck all ways of knowing that Adrien was unhappy with how deeply Gabriel dictated his life. To her, this was an act of kindness on a whim for her only friend besides Sabrina. Oh, and OF FUCKING COURSE THEY IGNORE THAT CHLOE CUT ADRIEN OUT OF HER LIFE BACK IN SEASON FOUR BECAUSE WHY THE FUCK NOT!? 

Okay, back on, and we get a moronic scene of Nino justifying CONTINUING to talk about his secret that isn't technically his right to share with Adrien... but it also highlights the MANY blatant double-standards going on in this fucking fiasco of a series!! For god-fucking SAKES, what honestly makes this all stupider is that Nino is blabbing about telling a secret that he blabbed to Adrien on the basis of them being "best friends," while Adrien hasn't shared that he is Chat Noir, yet Marinette told Alya HER secret, and both say that she hasn't shared secrets between them... WHERE DO I EVEN FUCKING BEGIN WITH THIS CLUSTERFUCK OF A FIASCO!? 

For starters, not only is this is a massively hypocritical double-standard presented in showing that it's okay for Marinette to share HER secret identity with Alya, while punishing Nino for having told Adrien HIS secret identity, it also makes Marinette look WORSE by showing that, for all his numerous faults and inconsistencies as a hero, Adrien has at least fucking held to THAT RULE TO AN IRONCLAD DEGREE!! Oh no, let's not get into the potential implications of what this would mean for his friendship with Nino if he ever found out later, oh no, let's move on and NOT focus on that, please and fucking thank you!! 

The second aspect to this nonsense is how Nino STILL DOES NOT FUCKING SEE THE PROBLEM WITH BLABBING A DANGEROUS SECRET IN A PUBLIC CAFETERIA!! Even IGNORING this monumentally stupid double-standard (I GET why Marinette told Alya, but it's still a humongous double-standard in that, despite having confided in a trusted confidant herself, Marinette never gave the fucking okay to Chat Noir, since HE DESERVES TO HAVE A CONFIDANT AS WELL!!), it feels like this stupid scene is trying to JUSTIFY this double-standard by making Nino an incompetent idiot who cannot for the life of him keep a fucking secret!! 

And now Lila is showing up, how will this ruin things further...? 

And Marinette is immediately on the offensive. As much as people still falling for Lila's lies is obnoxiously stupid, moments like THIS CRAP make it pretty damn easy to see where the "jealousy" claims come from. It is STILL STUPID, but when you have her go and say "all the seats are taken!!" particularly when the boy everyone claims you are jealous over is there, IT MAKES HER LOOK SUPER JEALOUS!!! Gggaaahhh... Astruc, why are you such a fucking idiot... 

And we get Nino trying to claim that they are in a secret meeting. In the middle of the lunchroom. Where ANYONE CAN OVERHEAR HIM SINCE HE WASN'T BOTHERING TO KEEP HIS VOICE DOWN BEFORE HAND. Yeah, this is bullshit SQUARED. 

Okay just... just... the metaphor just BARELY works, but it really kills the tension. Adding dramatic music does not make a metaphor about adding and removing honey from yogurt NOT sound goofy and stupid. And when I say "barely," I mean "not at all" because honey would be incorporated into yogurt, meaning you can't remove it, so the simile/metaphor falls apart right away. And then... we get Nino's "plan." I feel that I will be pissed off from this! Oh, and Lila apparently took a photo and posted it on all of her social media accounts, THAT will be fun! 

Nino claims to make an Akumatization happen... and record it... dude. ALL THE FUCK NO!!! If the point of this nonsense is to make Nino look stupid and untrustworthy, YOU HAVE FUCKING SUCCEEDED ASTRUC!! The "magic ladybugs fix things anyway, so no consequences matter" is the logic that is literally used by Scarlet Lady, one of the nastiest Salt-fic takes on Chloe around!! You are actively making Nino use the logic of a sociopath, especially since Nino seemingly isn't taking into account the possibility of "WHAT IF LADYBUG AND CHAT NOIR LOSE!?" There is faith, and then there is blockheaded NONSENSE!! 

Oh, and NO, the Akumatized victims remember FULL AND WELL what caused them to get Akumatized, it's what they were DOING while Akumatized that they don't remember, dumbass. Astruc, how the FUCK did you think this nonsense was a good idea!? 

And then we get Nino dismissing all the criticism on the basis of "eh, I've got you guys, it'll be fine!!" Like... again, this is the difference between having faith in someone and being SUICIDALLY OVERCONFIDENT!! And now a hoard of Adrien fans are storming the place because of Lila's posted photo, of course. Also, it looks like they put in Wayhem but with recolored hair in the front of the crowd. For a guy who is meant to be a fan of Adrien's, he's not so good at respecting Adrien's desire for privacy and space. 

And apparently Nino's reasoning for targeting a parent for tormenting is on the basis of "almost all of them have been Akumatized at some point" while ignoring WHAT IT WAS THAT CAUSED THEM TO BE AKUMATIZED!! Oh, and don't get me started on him glossing over how that label ALSO APPLIES TO ALL OF HIS TEACHERS!! Just... fucking FUCK this shithole of an episode!! 

Oh, started back up again. Nino actually makes a good point about whether or not Gabriel has really changed and if this is just a publicity stunt for the Alliance Ring... but the fact that he is saying this TO GABRIEL'S EMOTIONALLY ABUSED SON makes him look like a fucking idiot and utterly insensitive. And while it's not a publicity stunt, I'd say he's right that Gabriel hasn't changed and this is just performative on Gabriel's part to make himself feel better about being a supervillain. 

Okay, it looks like Nino is apparently acknowledging that he went too far and shouldn't have said something like that to Adrien. But considering how stupid the rest of this episode has made him, it's barely anything. 

Marinette... No. NO!! You should damn well fucking KNOW that trying to deliberately CAUSE an Akumatization is a fucking disaster waiting to happen!! There is no ethically rationalizing this choice, and what is the fucking point of having revealed your secret to Alya if you aren't going to back her up when she's speaking in your alter ego's name on something you SHOULD KNOW IS NOT A GOOD IDEA!? 

Alya, you are right on the money, WHY IN THE WORLD ARE THEY FUCKING GOING ALONG WITH THIS!? Even if it's GABRIEL, you are all literally talking about torturing another human being "for the greater good." Do you have ANY CLUE what kind of BS that is!? There, there is no way to condone this level of insanity!! You cannot make someone look sympathetic when they do shit like this!! 

Oh, and Lila apparently overheard everything and is gonna go rat them out to Gabriel, HOW THE HELL DID THEY NOT HEAR HER FOOTSTEPS!? Them missing her in the chaos of sneaking out of the mob SHE CAUSED I can get, but this!? Nope, not at all, particularly when the only effort she's putting into hiding is standing off to the distance. 

Okay, we get a scene of the Parent-Teacher Conferences and WOW, they did not even TRY to fill the seats in the slightest. Oh, we get Max's mom, Sabine, Anarka, Mrs. Rossi, Roger, Otis, Andre, Mylene's Dad, and Gabriel... but I notice a distinct lack of representation for Ivan, Nathaniel, Kim, Rose, or Nino. Heck, even if they were just nameless background characters, they could've given us SOMETHING TO GO OFF OF!! 

Moving on... 

Okay, they are talking about a file regarding helping the kids figure out what they would like their futures to be, and apparently the school already has them... so what the fuck is with a certain future plot point regarding THIS EXACT SITUATION!? 

...Wow. They are seriously not even TRYING to make it look like they aren't deliberately trying to get Gabriel dirty. Seriously, at least with Marinette, you at least have something resembling an EXCUSE for this garbage, since she has a reputation for being a klutz and forgetting things (both in terms of leaving them behind and having them with her) so her bringing along food from the cafeteria and then getting it all over someone due to being clumsy, at least THAT MAKES SOMETHING RESEMBLING SENSE!! But Adrien literally just turned to his dad, holding a plate of food, and the deliberately PITCHED HIMSELF FORWARD!!! For the love of SHIT, after putting us through this nonsensical hodgepodge of a "plot," THIS IS THE BEST THING YOU COULD COME UP WITH TO EXPLAIN HOW THEY GET GABRIEL AKUMATIZED!? THIS!?!? FUCK THIS NOISE WITH A RUSTY SPOON!!! 

And Alya isn't even PRETENDING to have an excuse or reason for this. Not even leaving something behind. She's also not playing along.... BUT SHE IS STILL GOING ALONG WITH THIS!? And Nino, there's such a thing as "cutting your losses and picking someone else." Insistently attempting to get the result you want on a specific target is a losing battle, and makes you look LIKE A FUCKING MORON!! 

And that was a waste of a perfectly good chocolate cake too! 

Who saw "Adrien gets pulled out of school due to making Gabriel mad" coming? Honestly? ME!! AS SHOULD ANYONE WITH A BRAIN BECAUSE NEWS FLASH NINO, PEOPLE GET MAD OVER THINGS EVERY SINGLE DAY!! JUST TRYING TO FORCE SOMEONE YOU KNOW AND DISLIKE TO GET UPSET TO BE AKUMATIZED IS NOT GOING TO WORK, AND GOING OUT OF YOUR WAY TO UPSET SOMEONE WITH POWER AND AUTHORITY HAS FUCKING CONSEQUENCES FOR DOING SO!!! Dear GOD, if this isn't a plot by Thomas to make Nino look like an idiot, a bad friend, and someone Adrien cannot trust with his secret, then he is an even BIGGER FUCKING HACK THAN I ALREADY THOUGHT!!! 

Marinette, for once, SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT ADRIEN!! You literally have NOTHING TO DO WITH GABRIEL TAKING HIM OUT OF SCHOOL BESIDES YOUR WILLINGNESS TO GO ALONG WITH THIS NONSENSICAL PLAN!!! I have never in my life scene a writer turn their own main character INTO A FUCKING STRAWMAN!!! Because honestly? When it comes to the Love Square at this stage, THAT IS WHAT SHE IS!! She offers up hollow arguments as to why she "can't" be with Adrien that she doesn't actually follow up on, and it honestly just comes off as her whining about how unfair her life is rather than just, I don't know, GET THERAPY!? Because that's what she needs, a therapist who can get it through her skull that the problem isn't that she's "a curse," or "needs to stop loving him," she needs to learn how to ACT LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING AROUND HIM , but because she never puts up a real argument as to why her crush is a bad thing, she just keeps getting pushed back in his direction by Alya with NONE of her actual underlying problems being addressed!!! 

Yup. Gabe is pissed off. He couldn't make it a single fucking day with keeping up the "happy dad mask" and it is as obnoxious as possible. 

And WOW, the "Illusion Gabriel" is honestly pretty fucking stupid, honestly. Like, the dude is supposed to be pissed off at having had a bad day where his efforts to try and bond with his son were squandered, but he has the illusion version... moping about how nobody is accepting his efforts to change!? Astruc, is this meant to be a snide reference to people who expected Chloe to change, or do you HONESTLY think anyone views the situation like this!? Like, if it were just Gabriel's own delusions of being a moral person, that would be one thing, but people are apparently buying it, and it is STUPID. 

"Don't worry, we got the video!" A video that shows literally nothing and "coincidentally" glitched out the exact moment he "got the Miraculous power." Ugh... What's really stupid is that the Illusion Collector is AN ILLUSION, so... like, how did he even FIND Marinette and the others so quickly? He should have no clue they are even THERE yet!! And I just KNOW this is gonna get worse... 

And Nino just blurted out his "secret codename" for the world to hear, AGAIN, this time in front of what he thinks is an Akuma... does he SERIOUSLY THINK that this wouldn't tip Monarch off to the fact that ordinary citizens are plotting against him, and take steps to counter it!? 

And now Monarch gives himself a bunch of powers directly to ambush the heroes while they are distracted by the illusion. To be honest? It's a good plan. Even if it blows open the fact that they are fighting an illusion (which is doubtful, unless he specifically uses Voyage in front of them AS Monarch), it's at least a decently executed strategy to maximize his odds of snagging their Miraculouses. 

Okay, so Chat got Venomed... Marinette, you KNOW WHAT BEING HIT BY VENOM LOOKS LIKE, HOW ARE YOU NOT IMMEDIATELY ON GUARD!? And asking him what he's "afraid of," Marinette, people DO NOT FREEZE IN PLACE HOLDING A POSE WHEN THEY ARE SCARED, RIGHT DOWN TO THE FACIAL EXPRESSIONS!!! GAAAHHHH!!! 

If there is ANYTHING that fucking infuriates me more than inconsistent storytelling, it's STUPIDITY driving the storytelling. Seriously, one MASSIVE recurring point with the Akumas is that they aren't aware of their actions or fully in control of themselves, so Gabe making his Illusion-clone say "it's too late to save me! I've tried to change-" and that's as far as I got before pausing it to calm down MY SHEER RAGE at this nonsense... yeah, no. If anything, THIS MAKES GABE LOOK LESS SYMPATHETIC YOU FUCKING HACKS!!! Because so far, the ONLY Akumas that have been shown to be genuinely in control of their actions are those who were Akumatized WILLINGLY!! You cannot come back from that!! Whatever shit happened in his normal life DOES NOT JUSTIFY TEAMING UP WITH A LITERAL FUCKING TERRORIST!!! 

Seriously, this is FUCKING STUPID!! Trying to make Gabriel look sympathetic NOW, right when he is "mid-Akumatization," even if we DIDN'T know that it was all bullshit... I'm honestly baffled how Ladybug didn't pick up that something was wrong, since the ONLY Akuma that has ever expressed any ability to deviate from their Akuma-derived obsession was Evillustrator... and that was only TEMPORARY before it came back worse then before. Like, does Thomas REALLY think that making it that Akumas are always aware of what they are doing and do it knowingly makes for GOOD FUCKING WRITING!? 

HOW THE FUCK DID MARINETTE NOT NOTICE THAT GABRIEL WASN'T SOAKING WET DESPITE HAVING FALLEN INTO THE WATERS OF THE SEWER!? And it was AFTER he had "rejected the Akuma," so if the authors try and spin some BS I am going to call them out on it!! 

One more one last thing. Apparently Nino and Alya think that a glitch in the video is a "magic lightning bolt" that sends and retrieves the Miraculous... and it ends with ALYA apologizing and going along with Nino's nonsense. No having Nino learn a lesson about being going too far even for a good cause (which would at least have been SOMETHING to make this less cringe-inducing), oh no, we have it that ALYA, the only one in this "Resistance" who has been talking sense this episode, realize that "Nino was right all along!" Because CLEARLY getting a crappy video was more important than having potentially traumatized someone!! NOW I'm moving on. 

Not gonna mention this latest bit of stupidity coming forward involving Nino basically admit to this nonsense... nope, not gonna do it. Not gonna give into the anger.

[abwwia]

Olga Tokarczuk a Nobel Prize winner.

Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk ([tɔˈkart͡ʂuk]; born 29 January 1962) is a Polish writer, activist, and public intellectual. She is one of the most critically acclaimed and successful authors of her generation in Poland. In 2019, she was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Polish female prose writer for "a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life". For her novel Flights, Tokarczuk was awarded the 2018 Man Booker International Prize. Her works include Primeval and Other Times, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, and The Books of Jacob. Via Wikipedia

(3) IN HER BOOKSTORE IN WAŁBRZYCH IN THE LATE EIGHTIES. COURTESY OF OLGA TOKARCZUK. pic 2&3 source: The Paris Review

Olga Tokarczuk, The Art of Fiction No. 258

Interviewed by Marta Figlerowicz

“I’m an Aquarius—that’s where the pro-social, curious part of my personality comes from—but Neptune is in Scorpio in my birth chart, in opposition to all that.”

🇵🇱 Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk (ur. 29 stycznia 1962 w Sulechowie) – polska pisarka, eseistka, poetka i autorka scenariuszy, psycholożka, laureatka Nagrody Nobla w dziedzinie literatury za rok 2018, laureatka The Man Booker International Prize 2018 za powieść Bieguni oraz dwukrotna laureatka Nagrody Literackiej „Nike” za powieści: Bieguni (2008) i Księgi Jakubowe (2015) via Wikipedia PL

[infiniterichesinalittleroom]

I don't write any more poems. I make poems that I recite to myself, which I taste, which I play with. I feel no need to communicate them to anyone, even to people I like a lot. I don't write them down. It's so good to daydream, to stammer around something which remains a secret for oneself. It's a sin of gluttony.

Blaise Cendrars • Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Third Series

[gravalicious]

I guarantee you that no modern story scheme, even plotlessness, will give a reader genuine satisfaction, unless one of those old-fashioned plots is smuggled in somewhere. I don’t praise plots as accurate representations of life, but as ways to keep readers reading. When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time. One of my students wrote a story about a nun who got a piece of dental floss stuck between her lower left molars, and who couldn’t get it out all day long. I thought that was wonderful. The story dealt with issues a lot more important than dental floss, but what kept readers going was anxiety about when the dental floss would finally be removed. Nobody could read that story without fishing around in his mouth with a finger. Now,there’s an admirable practical joke for you. When you exclude plot, when you exclude anyone’s wanting anything, you exclude the reader, which is a mean-spirited thing to do. You can also exclude the reader by not telling him immediately where the story is taking place, and who the people are—

Kurt Vonnegut

George Plimpton (ed.) - Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Sixth Series (1984)

[grandhotelabyss]

The only "mythos" at work here is the 20th-century cult of the editor, the editor as effective co-author of the text and spiritual mentor (not to mention quasi-AA-sponsor) to the author. I take it this evolved from the unofficial cases—Stein in relation to Hemingway, Pound in relation to Eliot—to the professionalized version that was obsolesced by the 1980s and of which Gottlieb was the last living representative. Ironically, I discuss this model, very much including its virtues, in the essay on The Orchard Keeper I posted in remembrance of McCarthy.

I certainly don't say this model can't have its good effects: Pound improved The Waste Land; even Lish, though what he did was ethically dubious, improved Carver; and if writers as great as Morrison and Ozick say Gottlieb helped them (though even they refer more to emotional or spiritual support than anything else) then I believe them. But I suspect the cult of the editor also enabled a certain irresponsibility or infantilization in authors that softened them up for the corporatism that was about to overtake the cult of the editor itself; I personally wouldn't make major changes to a project—one anecdote has Gottlieb telling Chaim Potok to cut 300 pages—to satisfy a profit-seeking entity's installed proxy for readerly impatience, no matter how brilliant—and Gottlieb was brilliant.

"The author as genius" is, as they say "deep Lindy," while the editor as the author's equal is a highly contingent 20th-century economic phenomenon that passes with Gottlieb himself.

By none of the above do I mean to deride Gottlieb. The Art of Editing Paris Review interview with both the man and his writers is well worth reading. I love this part of it from Morrison:

Bob and I used to joke about our egos being so huge that they didn’t exist—which is a way of saying that neither he nor I felt we were in competition with anybody. That’s not a very nice thing to say about myself or him; but at the same time, it’s important to remember that a large ego can be generous and enabling, because of its lack of envy. There was a way in which our confidence was wide-spirited.

It's as if giants once walked the earth! Now we have, well, this kind of thing—just endless, endless whining.

Also I place here a late piece of Gottlieb's own, a generously negative New York Times review of one of the posthumous Harold Bloom volumes that shows how passionately and deeply read he was.

Equally maddening is Bloom’s ardent championship of the Pevear / Volokhonsky translations that are, to my mind, destroying our reading of Russian literature. Some time ago, I was trying to read their version of a collection of Chekhov’s short novels and was so irritated by the flat, lifeless dialogue that I found myself flinging the book across the room — I, who can hardly bear to deface a book by making a note in a margin! But to do this to Chekhov! I know God will forgive me.

[otherpplnation]

938. Kerry Howley

Kerry Howley is the author of Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs, now available in trade paperback from Vintage.

Howley is a feature writer at New York magazine and the author of Thrown, a New York Times Editors' Choice and pick for best-of-the-year lists in Time, Salon, Slate, and many other venues. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Best American Sportswriting, The New York Times Magazine, and Harper's. A Lannan Foundation Fellow, she holds an MFA from the University of Iowa, where she was a professor at the celebrated Nonfiction Writing Program until joining New York. She lives in Los Angeles.

***

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[dankusner]

Woody Allen Reëmerges with a Movie About Getting Away with Murder

Actors Valérie Lemercier and Melvil Poupaud in “Coup de Chance.”

The director’s films have often specialized in denunciation and retribution, and the comedic thriller “Coup de Chance,” set in Paris, fits this pattern all too plainly.

Woody Allen’s French-Language Thriller ‘Coup de Chance’ Gets U.S. Release From MPI

Controversial director Woody Allen’s 50th film “Coup de Chance” is coming to U.S. theaters. MPI Media Group will release the movie on April 5 for North American markets, with a digital/VOD release on April 12.

The film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, drew both protests and an enthusiastic two-and-a-half minute standing ovation.

U.S. theatrical distributors have generally avoided Allen since the #MeToo movement resurfaced Dylan Farrow’s allegations of child molestation against him, and actors like Rebecca Hall, Timoth��e Chalamet and Greta Gerwig have expressed regret over working with him.

“Coup de Chance,” which translates to “stroke of luck,” stars Valerie Lemercier, Niels Schneider, Lou de Laage, Elsa Zylberstein and Melvil Poupaud in a tale of murder and intrigue that follows a beautiful couple living in Paris whose lives change when a former flame re-enters their orbit.

Variety’s chief film critic Owen Gleiberman hailed the film as Allen’s best since 2013’s “Blue Jasmine,” writing in his review, “If you’re looking for an inviolable law of cinema, one that you can more or less can take to the bank, the Venice Film Festival just confirmed an ironically delightful one. It is this: Murder agrees with Woody Allen.”

In an exclusive interview with Variety ahead of the film’s premiere, Allen revealed that “Coup de Chance” may be his last feature.

“I have so many ideas for films that I would be tempted to do it, if it was easy to finance,” he said. “But beyond that, I don’t know if I have the same verve to go out and spend a lot of time raising money.”

To a point, infidelity is the only “crime” committed in Coup de Chance, which may be opening locally this Fri/5 (Bay Area venues were unconfirmed as of this writing), and will be released to VOD/Digital platforms a week later.

This is reportedly Woody Allen’s 50th directorial effort, and his first in French—not just set in France (like Midnight in Paris), but with exclusively French characters and dialogue.

However you feel about him in the wake of various scandals, rumors, and accusations from 30-odd years ago, this latest is easily his best in a decade or more.

It would be a good one to go out on—after all, he’s 88, and most of his recent work has been, well, tired.

Not that the new film (whose title translates as Stroke of Luck) is any masterpiece.

Coming from another talent, it would seem solid enough if unremarkable.

For Allen, though, it’s a near-peak in the realm of relatively serious melodramatic intrigue that he’s already approached several times, sometimes well (Crimes and Misdemeanors, Match Point), sometimes badly (Cassandra’s Dream, Wonder Wheel).

It shares with the latter misfires some stilted dialogue that might’ve come out of a 1930s stage play—but even that stuff sounds better spoken in French with English subtitles, by actors very good at striking a naturalistic tone.

Fanny (Lou de Laage) has rebounded from a disastrous first marriage to a very secure, comfortable second one with wealthy financier Jean (Melvil Poupaud).

She’s quite aware of being viewed as a pretty younger “trophy wife,” though there is no doubt he truly loves her.

Yet some gap in Fanny’s life begins to ache when, walking to her job at a Parisian auction house one day, she’s accosted by Alain (Niels Schneider)—an old schoolmate who was too shy to admit his crush on her then, but as a successful writer has few such qualms now.

As they begin meeting regularly for lunch, she finds him attractive, charming, fun, persuasive, and sincere.

Fanny resists temptation… until she doesn’t.

But her guilty secret does not escape the awareness of possessive Jean, who’s hyper-sensitive to his adored wife’s moods.

And Jean is not a man who can take such things lightly.

More, he is—like Jay Gatsby, name-checked in the script—a man whose fortune is reputed to have roots in underworld connections, with one business partner having died an all-too-convenient “mysterious death.”

He does, in fact, “know people”—the kinds of people you would not want on your tail.

As before, Allen evinces no real instinct for suspense, or ingenious plot twists; it’s a measure of Coup’s overall strength that one particularly improbable turn at the end doesn’t sink it.

But his primary emphasis is psychological, on the workings of desire and guilt, morality and amorality among figures both bound to and conflicted with one another. (Eventually they include Valerie Lemercier as Fanny’s mother, who assumes an amateur detective role in the later going.)

While this isn’t a particularly profound film, it has an engrossing surety of plot and pacing this writer-director hasn’t managed for a while.

Though there are no bravura performances as in some Allen joints, the Gallic cast is expert, their breeziness downplaying occasional elements of creaky contrivance.

Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography is luminous as ever, albeit not so picture-postcard as to detract from what’s at heart a deadly noir potboiler.

And the soundtrack is happily full of vintage jazz tracks from Nat Adderley, Modern Jazz Quartet, and others.

“Coup de Chance,”

Reviewed:

Woody Allen Reëmerges with a Movie About Getting Away with Murder

The most recent movie directed by Woody Allen, “Coup de Chance,” which opens in theatres this Friday, April 5th, is the most prominent theatrical release that any of Allen’s films have had since “Wonder Wheel,” six and a half years ago.

But it’s not for lack of trying.

In the meantime, Allen has been busy.

In August, 2017, he signed a four-picture deal with Amazon.

He started shooting “A Rainy Day in New York” a month later, with a cast that included such prominent actors as Timothée Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Selena Gomez, Rebecca Hall, and Liev Schreiber.

But, that October, allegations of sexual abuse and harassment emerged against Harvey Weinstein—many of which were reported by Allen’s son Ronan Farrow, in The New Yorker—and against other powerful Hollywood men, energizing the #MeToo movement.

That December, days after the release of “Wonder Wheel,” Allen’s daughter Dylan Farrow, who had accused Allen of molesting her when she was a child, published a piece in the Los Angeles Times in which she went into detail regarding those accusations and asked why, at a time when other movie men accused of sexual misdeeds were being removed from positions of power, Allen appeared to continue his career with impunity.

(Allen has always denied the allegations.)

After Dylan’s L.A. Times piece appeared, Amazon sought to terminate its deal with Allen.

A small distributor, MPI Media Group, which specializes in horror films and stock footage and hadn’t had a significant theatrical release in more than a decade, acquired “A Rainy Day in New York” and released it in just a handful of theaters in the U.S. before bringing it to streaming services (including Amazon).

Several of the film’s actors, notably Chalamet, Gomez, and Hall, expressed regret for having worked with Allen (as did others, including Greta Gerwig, Elliot Page, and Colin Firth).

Allen’s next movie, “Rifkin’s Festival,” starring Wallace Shawn, was filmed in Spain, in 2019 and was again released by MPI, mainly via streaming.

That company is also distributing “Coup de Chance”—its title means “stroke of luck”—but, this time around, it’s arranging a more vigorous theatrical release.

Made in France with well-known French actors, “Coup de Chance” is a comedic thriller on a prominent theme throughout Allen’s œuvre: getting away with murder.

On a Paris street, a young French woman named Fanny (Lou de Laâge) bumps into Alain (Niels Schneider), a friend from high school.

They rekindle their friendship and then start an affair; Fanny’s husband, Jean (Melvil Poupaud), suspects her of infidelity, hires a private eye, learns the details, and hires hit men to get rid of Alain in such a way that his body is never found.

Fanny, heartbroken, thinks that her lover has simply abandoned her without warning, but her mother, Camille (Valérie Lemercier), suspecting foul play, conducts her own investigation, and plans to inform the police.

When Jean gets wind of his mother-in-law’s intentions, he arranges to have her killed, too.

Allen’s movies have often displayed an obsession with the nature of evil, a fascination with those who are able to do evil and go on living normally—whose powers of compartmentalization, rationalization, or simple self-righteousness are stronger than their scruples. “Coup de Chance” is only one of the more brazen films in this vein.

In “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” from 1989, a philandering husband conspires in the murder of his mistress; that he gets off scot-free is cited (by a character played by Allen) as evidence of the injustice and unfairness of the universe.

Allen addressed the theme again in “Match Point,” from 2005, a movie in which he doesn’t appear, and this time—from the other side of the divide in his life, post-accusations—he approaches the subject with a triumphalist sense of grace.

It’s the story of a down-and-out antihero who gets away with murder and thereby ends up a rich and successful socialite—a man on the make, eluding his fate by way of a concatenation of accidents that line up like a perverse theodicy.

In that film, Allen no longer frets about the dark injustice of the world; he sees it as, in effect, God’s will to enable a man with big dreams and desires to realize them unimpeded by the petty mechanisms of human justice.

The quandary that Allen’s own troubled situation poses for his work—for his moralistic art—is dramatized in the 2002 comedy “Hollywood Ending,” in which Allen plays a director whose career is threatened when, the night before shooting a film that’s supposed to be his much-needed comeback, he’s suddenly struck blind (psychosomatically, as it turns out).

What he does is pretend to direct while blind—an impairment that’s both the spark for some of Allen’s greatest physical comedy and a keen tragicomic metaphor for the desire not to see, not to bear witness, and for the artistic pretense that results.

That febrile, antic movie mines another of Allen’s longtime motifs: the plot point of hiding evidence.

In “Scoop,” from 2006, one of his liveliest latter-day comedies, only the supernatural intervention of a dead investigative journalist brings crucial evidence to light.

There, a man has murdered a woman who, he says, was blackmailing him; when Allen’s character, a magician, joins the investigation, he, too, gets killed.

In short, the movie’s subject is the danger of opening one’s mouth and not keeping omertà.

The big reveal of “Blue Jasmine,” from 2013, is that a middle-aged woman—whose husband was about to leave her for a nineteen-year-old—denounced him to the F.B.I. for financial chicanery.

In “Irrational Man,” from 2015, the protagonist murders a judge who ruled, he thinks, unjustly in a family-court case, and nearly gets away with it—not hesitating to bump off someone he suspects of planning to turn him in.

One of Allen’s strongest films, the ink-black tragedy “Cassandra’s Dream,” from 2008, centers on a rich businessman’s attempt to kill a business partner who is preparing to testify against him.

In “Wonder Wheel,” from 2017, a woman who informs against her mobster husband spends the rest of her life in fear and on the run.

The crux of “Coup de Chance” is what Camille plans to do with the information that she gleans.

But what tips her off in the first place to the possibility of Jean’s foul play isn’t physical evidence but a bit of gossip.

Jean, a decade or two older than Fanny, is rich, powerful, and well connected—he’s a financier of a murky sort who tells Fanny only, “I help the rich get richer.”

But his mysteries go deeper.

Years ago, Jean’s business partner vanished without a trace; Jean profited greatly as a result.

At the time, Jean came under suspicion but he was never officially implicated; now he dismisses those accusations as “a few weeks of gossip,” and calls his accusers “paranoid.”

Yet in his social circles there are whispers that Jean indeed had a hand in the disappearance.

One woman says, “Thank God for gossip. Without it we’d be stuck with real facts.”

But, belatedly getting wind of the rumors, Camille notes their foreshadowing of Alain’s disappearance, and her D.I.Y. snooping generates both suspense and comedy.

The film’s skitlike-ness is emphasized in its form, with its many single-take scenes and long takes, which in effect treat the settings like stages and the actors like theatre actors.

Allen clearly loves Paris—at least the cosseted parts, and he seems unable to see any other kind.

Even Alain’s relative bohemia of a furnished sublet is absurdly comfortable; if Jean’s circle of bankers and politicians reeks of money, Alain’s artistic one is perfumed by it.

The characters are stereotypes living their lives stereotypically; there’s no verve to the filmmaking.

Moreover, Allen doesn’t speak French, and it shows in the actors’ performances, which, for the most part, come off as undirected—skilled, of course, but flailing in a void.

Yet the movie, aesthetically as lumpy as a latke, nonetheless has a weird and lurid vigor that comes from an altogether different source: Allen’s pleasure in his own imagination—his delight in inventing the plot.

Though the movie’s actual protagonist is Fanny, it’s Jean who gets the bulk of Allen’s attention—and Camille who gets its finest role.

To put perhaps too fine a point on it, the mother-in-law in “Coup de Chance” is a stand-in for Mia Farrow, Allen’s current mother-in-law and his former partner, whose accusations, more than thirty years ago, had led to investigations of Allen.

Yet, as indicated in the title of the revelatory four-part documentary “Allen v. Farrow,” from 2021—which refers to the custody suit that Allen brought against Mia Farrow after Dylan’s accusations were disclosed—the focal point of Allen’s defense, and of his public hostility, has always been his ex-partner.

The vigor of Allen’s characterization of Camille, and of Lemercier’s performance, comes from the fact that “Coup de Chance” is essentially another of Allen’s Mia Farrow movies.

The character has the impulsive energy displayed by Farrow in “Broadway Danny Rose,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” and the erstwhile couple’s other films together.

Allen’s films have always been sketchlike, but when he was younger they nonetheless seemed ampler.

They were filled with first-person and nearly present-tense experience and a nuanced view of his own milieu, which was both at the center of the New York cultural-social set and a myth being made in real time.

He was the nebbish hero, a man about town who floated above it, in tune with his carefully curated setting, and yet, with his noli-me-tangere chill, he also seemed somehow unreal.

Much of the tension in his better films comes from a certain air of theatricality; it’s also why his more sombre-toned movies were rarely satisfying—he couldn’t keep his face quite straight enough.

But his films’ sketchlike quality allows his voice to come through, directly, on the soundtrack, in action, even in direct address to the camera.

The fiction was a flimsy dramatic framework for his voice, which, in his recent movies, has become strained, vain, confined as if to an official self-promotional, self-justifying role.

“A Rainy Day in New York” is Allen at his most perfunctory—yet also at his most enraged.

Chalamet plays a trust-fund Bartleby, a chirpily discontented college student with the unlikely name of Gatsby Welles, whose girlfriend (Fanning) is sent by the school paper to interview a big-time middle-aged director (Schreiber).

In short order, the director hits on her, a screenwriter (Jude Law) hits on her, and a heartthrob star (Diego Luna) hits on her.

Allen’s dramatic assertions about the lusts of movie men for a nubile young woman are matched by his contemptuous depiction of her as a ditz out of her depth, especially as compared to the soulful rebel Gatsby, who throws her over for a younger girl (Gomez).

(Along the way, Allen also jabs at journalists as unprincipled gossipmongers.)

Above all, “A Rainy Day in New York” is a story about every middle-aged Hollywood man who pursues a twenty-one-year-old woman, which is to say, it’s Allen’s own version, or inversion, or perversion, of the phrase “me too” as a form of whataboutism: yes, he has had relationships with much younger women (including Soon-Yi Previn, whom he married), and, yes, his films are rife with May-December relationships, as in “Manhattan” and “Husbands and Wives,” but whoever would criticize him should also cast stones at the whole movie business.

And the world did, in effect, with the #MeToo movement.

“Rifkin’s Festival,” shot in 2019, is the story of an old man—a former film professor, played by Wallace Shawn, who sought the will-o’-the-wisp of art and culture and ended up a dried-out and lonely husk.

The drama is sodden and mechanical, but what gives the movie a glimmer of life is Rifkin’s fantasy world: he imagines himself into comical parodies of scenes from classic movies that he loves, including “Jules and Jim,” “Breathless,” “Persona,” “The Exterminating Angel,” and “Citizen Kane.”

In the light of Rifkin’s diffident anguish, the heartfelt whimsy of these scenes plays like Allen’s own nostalgic reminiscence of his early, funny stuff—and of the way that his life used to be.

In “Coup de Chance,” Allen borrows from another classic, John Ford’s Western “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” the story of a miscreant who has long evaded the law but eventually gets his extrajudicial, extramoral comeuppance.

The ending of “Coup de Chance” offers a tragicomic surprise that echoes the key plot point—the shootout—of Ford’s film.

Allen has suggested that “Coup de Chance,” his fiftieth feature, may be his last; if so, he goes out with a self-excoriating bang.