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alittledizzy · 6 years ago

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If you’re not reading Play 1950 by @waveydnp right now then idk what’s wrong with you. She’s updating it with a new chapter every few days (though not on a schedule, so the new chapters are just like a pleasant splash of pining lesbian love into your life when you least expect it) and it’s building so beautifully. The premise is that they were best friends growing up - Fi is a lesbian and was out during university but isn’t out to Dee, and Dee is struggling her way through university in a constant state of depression and crisis and leaning on Fi. There’s so much about this story that these characters are going to have to unweave, so much about each other they’re going to figure out and you can just taste how close to the surface those revelations are but there’s no hurry to this fic, there’s just a strong sense of living each moment written in their footsteps and feeling what they feel, wanting more for them but knowing they have to get there in their own time.

It’s a story about two women in love, but they’re still recognizably Dan and Phil, and if you can read Dan and Phil aus where they’re American teenagers, or where they’re space and plant boys, or where they both end up married to other people, or like whatever in the literally endless list of alternate universe possibilities exist - then a story where they’re both cis women shouldn’t throw you too much.

Also! It has Jimmy, as Fi’s roommate! And it’s absolutely stunning to me how this very much reads like Jimmy, and Fi very much reads like Phil, but Fi and Jimmy’s friendship/relationship couldn’t be more different than in amaaf - erasing the sexual tension that existed between Phil and Jimmy shifted things so much and it’s so subtle but I love it. (And when I say shifted I mean that with no sense of negativity, it’s just like - good writing. Really good writing to take a dynamic that could feel like a repeat of something - only by virtue of Jimmy not being widely used and so it being easier to typecast him in a certain role - and make it not at all similar.)

Let me also add that if you’re not reading it because you don’t read au, or you don’t read gender-swapped fics, or you don’t like lesbian stories, etc etc - that’s fine and I don’t need to know about it. No one reading this needs to feel compelled to tell me why they for a fact know they aren’t going to read this story. And you sure as fuck don’t need to tell Sarah. Just, general rule: you never, ever need to tell an author why you aren’t reading their fic. You might feel defensive and like you want to make sure that the author knows you have a Reason, but they really don’t need to know why. It serves no purpose besides making an author feel vaguely bad about something they can’t control - your personal preferences.

So tl;dr: this post is not geared towards people who have already made up their mind, it’s geared towards people who might have seen the story, their finger might have hesitated over it, and they kept on scrolling but aren’t sure why. Or the people who have just been busy and haven’t seen it, since Sarah is primarily posting this direct to ao3 and not making formal posts for the chapters anymore.

And I will also add that if you already knew about it and you’re waiting for it to be done, I respect that since normally that’s me with WIP - this isn’t meant to be a guilt trip for anyone who has their reasons, I just feel like this one is slipping under the radar for a lot of people and it’s a fucking shame because this fic is a masterpiece.

Anyway, read Play 1950 by @waveydnp.

#fic rec #phan

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actingdeep · 4 years ago

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Jean & Cat

Give me your hand. Only give 'yes' or 'no' answers for now. We will go back later at the end. Close your eyes. I'm going to start by saying the Lord's Prayer. "Okay." That was all Lorraine could say these days. She would eat oatmeal when we set a bowl for her and she would smile. We put a red cigarette in her fingers and told her to inhale. She would cough twice in an elderly way, with sunken eyes staring straight forward, and she would smile. We shifted our intimate yet quaint and twisted car songs and dialogues to the back porch around 6 a.m., after tiptoeing past conked couple Jean and Ryan crashing on their living room floorbed, making coffee, using the restroom and watering the silly-looking dog. There is a very alien type of relaxation that comes with being the last ones alive from a late night civil war on your own good health, with everyone else defenseless and asleep like regrettable casualties. The horizon stretched and yawned. Past our feet, in the dew-covered grass, layed the sheepdoglike Lily, with her green bone flinging around her teeth. Cat had abilities within her revealing dormant truths and hidden pasts in others. I had amphetamines within me releasing all boring skepticism and reason. By the end of the night, she had given me a personal palm reading. The accuracy was daunting at first (and still is). It was a superstitious and almost laughable act, yes; but it was pinnacle altruism--and at that moment, after all these years, it was finally clear to me that she was my friend. I was feeling a little effete as a hidden star burnished the scale of an overripe and infirm world. Cat and I had inadvertently stayed up all night. We were either still drunk, or low-key tweaking, or probably both. Our eager spirits were about to be given another boost out of their usual pockets of time and space. We lounged with sleepless energy in squat gray outdoor chairs on the small back porch, with blowing trees and birds singing in the early summer morning. Jean had already long fallen asleep on her living room floorbed, and now that I finally had Cat out of the car, I could let my blood cool between easy nature and cheap science. The dome of the pipe we were smoking Annie from caught some outside debris from the wind that was blowing and made a slight brownish blemish on the inside, which made the taste of the rolling smoke a little less clean than the previous hits. Many a time when Jean and I were gulping down cherry-flavored vodka around this time six or seven years ago, in the bedroom right behind Cat's, when they still had their old house, I had never fathomed a table could turn so drastically: the table being my relationship with these two women--mother and daughter--over time frames scattered and separated by intermittent spaces of buildup and decay. The days when talking to Cat filled me with dread seemed like false memories when I looked at her now. I almost liked her more than Jean these days--a funny thought, indeed. "Are you still hungry?" "Okay." At 4 a.m. we were back from the bar, and pulled in the driveway of Jean's grandparent's house. She struggled to shut her car door and sauntered inside. I followed, but before I made it in the house, I heard my name called back from behind me from the driveway. I turned to see Cat gesturing for me under the dim car light. She was looking around in the car for something I don't remember what. I got back in to help her search for something likely of the highest unimportance. As we began to talk more, we ended up being in the car for at least an hour. When Cat begins to chatter with you, an angel should come down from Headache Heaven to give you a Valium and a bucket of popcorn. We hadn't talked very much all night, only because once she dropped off Jean and I at the bar, she didn't come in to join us finally until around the last half hour we were there, where I would eventually start a scene that would close the entire bar for the night. We laughed about that, and caught up with one another in general about the changes and differences in our respective current lives. Her overall pleasantness caught me off-guard, somewhat. As conversations in parked vehicles usually go, especially with our current bodily chemical states, we eventually graduated from serious discussion, to banter, to no words--just full duet performances to bands like The Violent Femmes and Fleetwood Mac, stridulate and true. This is nothing like using Tarot cards. Those things are complete bull shit. I am going to try to knock something loose here. They're screaming again: this time, passively-aggressively around the edges of the room, little hash symbols and asterisks and ampersands tunneling in the air and in and out of Lorraine's smiling ears. At first, the day was calm: quiet snores, with the T.V. playing The Price is Right, as some were still laid out on the floor asleep, some in chairs with coffee and paper, awake. The small house seemed much more open than it should have been. I watched the game show and sat on the couch next to Brenda, Cat's girlfriend, as she was scrolling her finger on a phone screen and grimacing a little. Jean's disheveled head was zzzing right next to my left foot. I put back large gulps of the coffee Brenda made me to put off my ineludible crash, and had cigarettes on the bright, thin clean carpet. Brenda started it; it was around 11:30 a.m. Grunting, she staggered over to Cat's floorbed to lean down, and WHUP!, smack her on her overturned body, making her yelp in a terrible way, like a little, running dog that pivoted wrong and twisted it's paw. Some moments you don't want to ever remember--that is--until you really can't. She had only been asleep for about twenty minutes, and immediately: "Fuck! What is...what is wrong with you?" cried Cat, still stridulate. "Who's all these motherfuckers in yer phone messagin' ya? Always fuckin' around on me, ain't ya? Don't give a rat's ass about me." "I don't talk to anyone, Brenda. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about!" "Ah, bull shit," waved Brenda, turning away like a troll. "Fuck you!" "Fuck you right back, bitch." "I haven't gotten any sleep all night, Brenda. I was up talking to Derek all night, and I just fucking fell asleep." "Well, good morning bitch!" And so on. This match lasted hours; piercing echoes branching off into littler sub-arguments (but just as loud) over other things they thought would be good also brought up, neither showing mercy, except to make a jeer and cackle at the other's expense. Dan had already taken Ryan to his morning college class and hadn't gotten back yet, so between sleeping Jean, contented Lorraine, and highly tired I, no one was attempting to dampen the vicious quarrel in any way. I was sitting quietly, looking down at my feet and Jean's stirring hair ball, not from lack of sleep, but from the plain child greenness of these two women. I knew Cat as a married woman to a husband, once. But no surprise came to me when I met her current girlfriend (womanfriend). I knew this was more of an emotionally-hinged relationship and sexually less so; only the emotions in use were nothing but petulant combativeness, desperation, and cold resentment; they were fools together. After a while, crash impending, I would simply walk outside, away from it all, until the screams muffled themselves in the distance. "Okay." Dan was the man of the house, and also Cat's dad. He was a few years shy of sixty years. Although I had never met him before, having stayed the night at his house, he was quite jolly and approachable. He smoked cigarettes with the front door open. His wife Lorraine sat by him in a low-back rocking chair, onlooking. The rooms of the house were typical in the grandparently sense: white-gold ceiling fan, porcelain figurines behind glass cases, mini fish tank, placemats on multiple kitchen tables, a smiling woman sitting in a smiling rocking chair, big television. The only thing out of place was the smoking; it was a subtle invasion of a seemingly innocent atmosphere, akin to squeezing your girlfriend's ass at church service. I couldn't believe I was smoking a square on a davenport. Did you know the dead see the future? Back in school, when Jean and I dated as teenagers, her mother Cat was in a seriously disobliging state--dependent on drugs like Xanax and methadone. She would stay in her room twenty-four seven and roar at us to turn the music down. She only left the house when absolutely necessary, and had a round, evil scorn forever in her floating eyes. She was ponderous, choleric and painstakingly contrary, instigating daily screaming matches with her husband, or daughter, or both. She was always in carping pain, and loved to spite her old pasts to herself in drugged, futile insanity. When she would bring her mom her dinner trays, Jean usually took accusation and insult as gratuity. On the occasions she was in good spirits (which usually implied she was unusually zapped), she would talk to you for what seemed like long hours about things like ghosts or glory days if you weren't careful to sneak past her bedroom door, which was permanently ajar, with a low, rambling sound leaking out of it always. I loved being in Jean's room more than anywhere in those days. I remember a pink sheet covering an overhead window making every movement and shadow a cotton candy daydream, sitting on a stack of two single mattresses, with us both leaning against a wall with blanketed legs and her kitten, soft and white between us, with secret, window eyes. And there would be Jean: beautiful and youthful in blonde and black and pink and brown eyes. She was in the school's color guard and I would watch her practice double and triple rifle spins in her backyard for hours, smoking dirt weed to her music playlists. We were underage drinkers; but she always had a guy to buy alcohol for us (to them, just her), and once he would drop it off, she would cutely thank him and send him away, bringing it into her room where I waited, and we would drink from the bottle, giggling; or, we would just stay in her room for hours to avoid Cat by playing music, taking pictures, or just making each other laugh hysterically in various ways. I hope I never forget that laugh. "Okay, honey." We carried our drinks over to a rounded booth in the corner and talked for a while, saying hello to the barkeep Stephen as we walked in, and to all the other puffy, smiling faces we recognized, but didn't know. It was just Jean and I right now, talking like we always could, no matter where or when we ever were. Apparently, Cat was sticking around the parking lot for a while to connect to the internet on her phone for something rather (or was she?), and selling soupcons of various pills here and there to her bar regular buddies, amiably, with wrinkled eye corners. Something is coming through. A man with a flattop military haircut. I also see an older man sitting in an easy chair. How well do you remember your childhood? Does the name Tom mean anything to you? Jean and I sat near the DJ booth, which wasn't really a booth inasmuch as it was a large man sitting in a folding chair with a laptop. We laughed, but were loving what he was playing. Her and I have always been able to listen to music together comfortably for long periods of time, often with naps and cool silences. In the moment, I felt that we were actually a good couple when we were seventeen, even though it only lasted a couple weeks, tops; but being friends was barely different, and easy to do. She had many boyfriends, one at a time, in constant replicating sequences--one, and another, and another. I never minded that--it is a task for most people to be alone. Ryan was her current boyfriend, but she didn't bring him to the bar--and not just because he was underage. She used men like a body pillow or an aspirin; leave them at the house and use them for comfort as needed (and they were always young). She was dull now. I had to entertain her because she was dull, and I loved her; but of course, in loving her, I was dull, also. After some rounds, we would smile more easily. I asked when her mom was going to join us, because, to this point, I really had no clue as to what Cat was even doing, us having sat there drinking, unjoined for an hour or two now. "She's in the car, smoking speed. That's her drug of choice now." After I gave off a questioning look, she continued: "I really don't mind it. I mean, at least she can function." Hmmm. I rounded my eyes, and curled my wet lips. I excused myself, and bolted outside towards the car. I knew Cat would share; greed a moral hit-man. The dim car light was on across the street. After twenty minutes or so, I sat back down in the booth and readjusted my eyes, feeling fresh. Jean was standing by the DJ booth. "Do you take requests?" "I take donations." An older woman with a strained gait and a proud, pauper air waddled up to our booth and gave a friendly hello-how-are-you to Jean, but not to me. Jean had a subtle knack for being pleasurable and forebearing to humdrum dishwater persons, the subjective soul inside me under a spell of well whiskey, and also Cat's treat, slowly making my thoughts increasingly insubordinate here. "Aye! A Jeanie in a bottle!" "Hi, it's good to see you." (No it isn't. She's foul!) "Been missin' ya round this place. Where ya been, girly?" "Just working, and taking care of grandma." "Oh, bless your heart! How is she? (She's okay.) "Y'know--good days and bad days." (Too bad this Jeanie can't grant wishes; she'd make it no days.) At one point, I reached over and took a sip out of Jean's beer bottle. The woman slowly straightened her mouth and furrowed her brow, glaring at me. "You're disrespectful." "I bought this. I've bought all her drinks." A cheap maneuver. She turned to Jean: "You should find better friends." I saw Jean's mouth twitch a little, then turn up again. "This is my oldest friend," she defended me cooly, with an undertone of hate only I could detect. I smiled at the woman as if to say, "How about that?" She had a countenance that was one part protectiveness for Jean, another part antipathy for me, and a third part, something I couldn't place, but that was definitely for herself. "It's okay, honey, he's really okay," said Jean sedatively. Jean looked more allayed than I was once the woman had eventually returned to her table. The front door was slowly staving off tottering bodies as the night bloomed into day. As she passed by them, coming back in from a cigarette, Jean looked up and noticed an old school friend of hers, who was talking to a man that happened to be sitting right next to me, at the far end of the bar. This made her face light right up, I noticed, which contented me quite well, as Jean in general wasn't particularly boisterous. She skipped up to the old friend and gave a kind and delighted hello. But this girl was obviously completely disinterested in her, and gave her a lowbred, patronizing sneer. "Okay." Freshly cold-shouldered, Jean rubbed her arms, and became specially downcast, then: this was not okay. Seeing her so depreciated so abruptly sparked a most tender agony within me that would prod my heart, even under the many obtunding whiskeys I had imbibed over the night. I called the insipid girl's attention, and seconds later, she looked up at me, and when she looked up at me, I vengefully, and without restriction, said: "What kind of rude, phony, fucking bitch are you?" Her body didn't move, but her fingers and face started to contort as she glared at me. She dropped her jaw a little, and then clenched it, and widened her thick, black eyes as a fire rose in them. Jean stood back a little, and the girl began to defend herself in belligerent fury, while I held my own ground in the meantime. Every sentence she spoke bumbled over the next; she was clearly plastered, and in rage. I continued to fuel that rage as I rebounded spurring insults like "Fuck you!" and "What do you know?" with gibes like "I can't! I'm outta cash!" and "Fish swim, birds fly, and you're a cunt!" This soon started a mini-uproar on that end of the bar, and very quickly had all the remaining bar-goers perking up from their glasses. Some people began to hover nearby us gingerly, in case of the possibility that things could get physical, as her and I continued to altercate, teams now forming behind us. After about three more minutes of her drunkenly calling me names and I relentlessly making fun of her for being fake and angry, the bartender Stephen kicked her out. He was good friends with Jean (a regular there), and had saw us together all night, and must have been partial. He told the friends of the girl I accosted, now a tornado of nails and hair and fury, body still unmoved, to take her outside, and so they did. He locked the doors, then turned to give me a face of exhausted vitriol. I still sat there at the long bar next to my friend Cat, the medium, and her deservedly defended daughter, one of my most nascent and esteemed loves from years and years ago. Because of our mutual friend Jean, he would only give me a little hell for causing such a row, and I gave him a most disingenuous apology. We reset and regrouped, and were soon out the door. What a perfect pleasure it is to mislay all complacency and trepidation, and to actuate defiance in the face of all of our false, permeable cordialities, and to see just how easily it can all fall away. To feel what I did to be an imperative as to glorify a strayed memory of a forgotten devotion only moreover authenticates my conviction that the ways we go, and the happenings in our lives, occur for no reason at all but for our own attempts at nullifying an unavoidable and steadfast state of lifelong suffering. Jean thanked me for standing up for her, and gifted me an old look and smile that, so many years ago, I would have never believed I had forgotten. "Okay."

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nclkafilms · 7 years ago

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A Resounding Work of Cinematic Magic

(Review of ‘The Shape of Water’, seen in Nordisk Film Biografer Kennedy in Aalborg on the 22nd of February 2018)

It’s a heartfelt romance, an homage to classic monster films and a gritty cold war thriller. But above all, Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water is a fairytale of the most magical kind. Del Toro who has struggled to gain appreciation for his work after fascinating us all with the stunning El Labyrinto del Fauno (2006), here returns to his winning formula from said film: a magical, escapist fairytale set against the backdrop of brutal, real world events. The Spanish civil war has been changed to the cold war and the space race between the US and the Soviets and in stead of the young Ophelia we follow middle-aged Elisa; a cleaning lady at a top secret US science facility. Apart from this, The Shape of Water is bursts with the same creative grandeur, fable-like imagination and heartfelt emotions that made El Labyrinto del Fauno such a hit. And yet, they are completely different films.

As already said, The Shape of Water, follows Elisa Esposito; a mute, whose shy and somewhat introvert personality suits her job as the cleaning lady, who has to simply just blend in and clean without observing or engaging with anything in the science facility she works in together with regular colleague Zelda. At home she spends her days with the same routines and usually together with her equally secluded neighbour, Giles, who is a now downcast artist living alone with his cats. One day, however, the regular routines and repetitive everyday life of Elisa is turned upside down as a new “asset” is brought into the facility; a strange man-like fishy creature with whom Elisa quickly forms a special bond centred around their common lack of speaking abilities. The asset, however, is shrouded in mystery as it is heavily guarded and tortured by new head of security, Richard Strickland, who is attached to find out what secrets the creature holds and how it can help the Americans win the space race with the Russians. As things escalate, all characters are forced to take a stand and decide which side they are on with the risk of grave, personal consequences.

As the main character, Elisa, Sally Hawkins delivers one of the most profound and stunning performances of recent years. To do so without uttering a single word throughout the film is a proof of just how good an actress she is. She perfectly captures the shy yet confident nature of the introvert Elisa as she suddenly finds a true confidant in the amphibian man who - with her own words - sees her for who she is and not what she lacks. Her performance is as powerful as it is heart-wrenchingly fragile. I, for one, completely believed in the character and her growing relationship to the odd creature; Hawkins’ mannerisms and use of body language was deeply fascinating and complex. A necessary level of performance for the film and story to work; casting when it is done to perfection!

Opposite her is the “two men in her life” (which is beautifully shown in a panning shot from outside their neighbouring apartments in the second half of the film) is veteran Richard Jenkins as Elisa’s neighbour Giles and Del Toro’s recurring “creature man” Doug Jones as the amphibian man. Jenkins turns in a scene stealing performance as the odd, suppressed gay friend who struggles to realise the exact nature of any of his interhuman relationships. He is also the comic relief in a quite a few instances and his chemistry with Hawkins is simply heartwarming. Jones, whose job is obviously somewhat hidden by the mix of prosthetics and CGI, manages to pour a lot of humanity into the scales of the water creature. His body language shifts fiercely from delicate curiosity towards Elisa to frighteningly brutality when threatened. Make no mistake; this is the work of Jones and a testament to abilities as an actor. He strikes a magical chemistry with Hawkins.

The remaining, stellar cast is made up of Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon and Michael Stuhlbarg. Spencer, although slightly typecast, delivers her best performance since The Help as the constantly talking and loyal friend to Elisa, Zelda, who is often given the job of putting words to Elisa’s gestures. Shannon, however, is a manic powerhouse constantly balancing on the edge of blatant over-acting as the embodiment of the cynical America; demeaning towards each and every other character and brutally violent, he acts with such a nerve that he carries the cold war thriller aspect of the film on his perfectly capable shoulders. Opposite him in this part of the story, is Michael Stuhlbarg’s dubious doctor who faces the ethical dilemma of choosing between his chosen way in life or that of the mysterious, fascinating and beautiful creature that speaks to his scientific heart.

All in all, this is cast that strikes a near perfect chemistry between all the central characters making their omission from the SAG ensemble award (they weren’t even nominated) nothing but baffling!

They are, of course, all controlled by a firm, confident and most importantly loving hand from director and writer Guillermo del Toro. In his recent BAFTA acceptance speech he spoke about how monsters had saved him on several occasions and how, in many ways, there were his best friends. This love for and understanding of monsters, the obscure, runs through every vain of this film. It is a work of love and imagination with a level of sincerity towards its subject matter that is extremely refreshing in 2018 Hollywood due to the increasing rarity of exactly this. He is perhaps the best modern storyteller of fairytales and despite some issues here and there in the story (e.g. a slightly rushed initial romance and some lose elements) the overall magic of the film quickly made me forget about this. Fairytales has never been about waterproof storylines that has to be 100% believable; quite the contrary. The essence of a fairytale is the magic and the way it mirrors the real world and here, The Shape of Water, serves as no less than an exquisite example.

Be aware, though, that this is very much an adult fairytale. Where El Labyrinto del Fauno was seen from the perspective of a child, this is an adult film from start to beginning. Sexual tension and desire is recurring topic whether it is in Elisa’s daily bath routines, Giles’ misunderstood relation with the local café’s servant or Strickland’s need to control women. The sexuality of the story comes to a beautiful conclusion ultimately captured in a single shot of a bus window. The film also takes on many relevant political issues with suppressed individuality perhaps the biggest of them all: Elisa being an outsider due to her disability, Zelda experiencing racial discrimination, and Giles struggling to find acceptance for his sexuality. As highlighted by Octavia Spencer it is actually quite beautiful to see how the african-american woman and suppressed homosexual man becomes the voices of wisdom for the lonely Elisa as they take on the cynicism of the militarised world they live in.

Visually each and every frame of this film is pure eye candy thanks to the masterful cinematography by Danish Dan Laustsen (actually from my home town) and the imaginative, creative and beautiful production design by Paul D. Austerberry. The film has an estimated budget of just below $20,000,000, but the (mostly) physical sets looks like it was much more expensive than this, which is simply awe-inspiring in a time where CGI seems to be the main solution with budgets continuing to blow through the roof. The Shape of Water, is also a feast for the ears thanks to a whimsical, subtle and moving score by Alexandre Desplat, who once again shows why he is one of the absolute best in his field right now.

The film received no less than 13 Oscar nominations and is sure to go home with some of these. Whether it will win Best Picture or not is a big question (del Toro seems quite certain for Director), but no matter what del Toro has certainly found the appreciation he has longed for from Hollywood and it is a remarkable feat that this was done without the film feeling like anything but a del Toro film through and through. It’s a work of love and a celebration of the human nature. How should we deal with the darkness of the real world monstrosities? Del Toro’s answer always seems to be through the beauty and love of imagination. Thanks to this, he has created the perfect escape that simply HAS to be seen in the darkness of the cinema that hasn’t seen magic like this for years.

5/5

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litbits · 8 years ago

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2016 Books, Part 1

I read the fewest number of books this year since I began recording my reading in 2011, another thing to blame on The Election. I consumed massive quantities of news articles, think pieces, petitions, and rants. I also subscribed to the New Yorker again, an unexpected reaction to living abroad (it’s more charming when you don’t live in New York).

Anyhow, this is the bottom of the list of my year in reading. Ranked in terms of how they affected me - images left, insights sparked, language bedazzlement renewed...

13. The Underground Railroad (2016) - Colson Whitehead

Unpopular opinion ahead, as this was one of the most celebrated novels of the year: I would have preferred to read about this subject of the novel in non-fiction form. Whitehead is passionate and eloquent on his theme, which is so explicitly slavery in a historical context, rather than the fictional characters he creates. His interest is in the way attitudes towards slavery and treatment of African Americans shifted by state, based on the laws, economy and historic moment. The main character has a too-contemporary attitude and ability to synthesize that feels beyond her moment in time. Uneducated and illiterate (until she teaches herself to read), she’s relentlessly atheist, and is able to extrapolate views on complex issues like the need for solidarity with native peoples, the reproductive rights of mentally ill slaves, and the horrors of the middle passage. While I took in the points, I wasn’t convinced it was the character who thought them. Similarly, manifesting the underground railroad as a physical rather than the real metaphor it was in history casts doubt on any real details he includes. (A novel like Beloved, on the other hand, is character-based, delving into the psychology of having a child while enslaved, and is effective in that sense. The clearly fictional aspects, like the magical realist touches (ghost baby), enhance the understanding of the people that Morrison creates, rather than casting doubt on the historical reality of slavery.)

Origin: Purchased new at Utrecht bookstore after unanimous Toastie book club vote.

14. The Circle (2014) - Dave Eggers

It captures the relentless cheeriness and blind optimism of the tech industry, blithely ignoring the sinister implications of inventions like tiny cameras, constant connectivity, and the destruction of privacy. I liked best the inclusion of the main character’s private moments kayaking alone, a more subtle nod to the way such moments are becoming more and more scarce. Also the descriptions of online activity - the constant need to react to the primitive emotional needs of a virtual audience. As a piece of fiction, it lost me in the last third, with heavy-handed metaphors (the Mariana Trench animals), the sudden escalation of the plot (Annie character), and the obliviousness of the protagonist (part of the point, but her stupidity was frustrating).

Origin: Gift from bookworm friend Shannon.

15. Unsuitable for Ladies: An Anthology of Women Travellers – Selected by Jane Robinson (1994)

An anthology of travel accounts by women, across centuries and countries. The excerpts include accounts from a Mormon missionary in Switzerland, an ambassador’s wife in Turkey, pilgrimages to the Holy Land, rich ladies on the Grand Tour (in Italy). It’s organized by continent, very fat, and the excerpts usually quite short, so it’s only a taste of each writer. In a search for comprehensiveness, the distinctive voices are lost. Though there are some fascinating journeys, you leave them too soon and you’re not tempted to read the whole book (I didn’t).

Origin: Random purchase at a used bookstore in Gent.

16. The Talented Mr Ripley (1955) - Patricia Highsmith

I saw the film first and it rather tainted my reading of this book. The characters and their relationships were more fully developed in the film; the sexual tension between the two men runs higher and the girlfriend (played by Gwyneth) smarter and more volatile. The film is also so scenic and lush, a European fantasy, while the book is more internal, a tour inside the mind of a cold-blooded murderer, in a thriller sort of way. I wasn’t particularly inspired to read the rest of the series.

Origin: Boekenzolder, the free book warehouse in Leiden, picked up by Dan as we as we had just watched the film.

17. PornoBurka (2013) (en español) - Brigitte Vasallo

Read as part of my search for a novel I won’t be able to resist translating into English. It looked promising as it takes on very-now issues like the gentrification of cities (in this case in Barcelona), and their citizens reckoning with a new age of multiculturalism and clash of cultures. But in this novel, the parody goes so far that it’s not sure what it’s parodying anymore, or maybe what the point of the parody is. Every group and character becomes a target, to the point of being offensive (feminists, gay men, etc.), though I think the intention is the opposite. The absurdity is stretched so far it doesn’t hold together at the end.

Origin: Fantastic big bookstore in Barcelona

18. Fates and Furies (2015) - Lauren Groff

This was listed as Obama’s favorite book of 2015, possible proof the government lies. Otherwise I would say I don’t trust Obama’s taste in fiction. Although a lot of people liked this book. I did not. The protagonists are rich and beautiful and irresistible to all mortals. It features not one but two private detectives, a stolen painting, a secret abortion AND a secret baby, etc. while purporting to offer insights about marriage amid references to Greek tragedy. Writing that consciously tries to be interesting via curious metaphors (e.g. her armpit hair was like a baby bird’s nest), amid what is ultimately a schlocky plot.

Origin: Toastie book club selection, purchased at ABC Books in The Hague.

Books in Progress

Not abandoned! In progress!

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome - Mary Beard

230 out of 536 pages. I shouldn’t have put this down, should have kept plowing through while I had momentum. A nice balance between scholarly and secular. I was enjoying it for the way it raised questions about Ancient Rome rather than providing pat answers. I will finish it!

Origin: Impulse buy at Heathrow airport bookstore following a flight delay. Had been eyeing it for some time at various bookstores.

A History of the Lowlands

Another history book. But this one soooo dry. But with good tidbits if you’re paying attention. Therefore: not abandoned yet.

Clases de Literatura - Julio Cortázar

Again, I was enjoying it but put it down and became distracted with something else. A transcript of a lecture series Cortázar gave at Berkeley, with insights into his stories, development as a writer, influences, etc.

Books Abandoned

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely - Claudia Rankine

I love Rankine’s genre defiance, her use of images, her rawness. However, this was the second time I abandoned this book out of a fear of being launched into a depression.

#books #book lists #colson whitehead #lauren groff #dave eggers #patricia highsmith #brigitte vasallo

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caveartfair · 7 years ago

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Elizabeth Murray’s Rule-Breaking Paintings Continue to Inspire Younger Artists

Photo by Barry Kornbluh, December 1987 / Estate of Elizabeth Murray. Courtesy of Pace Gallery.

An enlarged, black-and-white photograph of painter Elizabeth Murray’s hand ends Pace Gallery’s current exhibition—closing January 13th—which focuses on the late artist’s work from the 1980s. Murray’s dirty, bandaged fingers (thumb hidden, pointer bent) lightly brush a marked canvas. The picture functions as a final reminder of her distinct touch. Often extending to around 10 by 10 feet, her large-scale canvases bulge and ripple from the walls, fold over themselves at the corners, or comprise fractured and imperfectly interlocking shapes. The rough, layered surfaces and messy edges suggest an artist in thrall of paint, linen, and stretchers, and their myriad possibilities under her own hand.

In 2005, the Museum of Modern Art mounted a retrospective of Murray’s work, making her the fourth woman—after Louise Bourgeois, Lee Krasner, and Helen Frankenthaler—to ever receive the honor from the Department of Painting and Sculpture. She was battling lung cancer at the time and passed away in 2007, shortly after seeing her work showcased in that year’s Venice Biennale. From MOCA Los Angeles to the Walker Art Center, institutions nationwide (plus a couple beyond the U.S.) have bought her work, though its scale can be prohibitive to individual collectors. Nevertheless, Murray’s legacy remains more slippery than many of her contemporaries’; it’s difficult to slot her singular, exuberant, and ever-evolving practice into art history.

Additionally, says Pace Director Douglas Baxter, Murray’s market became more difficult after the MoMA show. The generation that had collected the artist was dying off. Her contemporaries, such as Susan Rothenberg and Joel Shapiro, are continuing to make work, while Murray’s premature death prevented her own career-capping late phase. Dan Nadel, who along with Carroll Dunham co-curated a 2016 exhibition of her drawings at Lower East Side gallery Canada, echoes the sentiment. The retrospective did not spur the additional scholarship Murray deserved, he says, and “she did not become a kind of lodestar, as she should have.” The Pace show, and its accompanying catalogue, aim to reaffirm her position as a crucial character in the development of painting.

That volume includes a chronology charting Murray’s art alongside major historical events, beginning in 1977, the year Murray moved to White Street in Lower Manhattan. By this time, she was an established artist working as a lecturer at Princeton and an instructor at Yale and the School of Visual Arts. In the ’70s, Murray was transitioning away from rectangular canvases and minimal explorations of line, opting instead for shaped canvases depicting more cartoonish figures. Their bright hues, dreamlike quality, and merging of high and low culture became her hallmarks.

The chronology omits Murray’s earlier, more difficult years. Raised in Chicago and Bloomington, Illinois, the artist grew up impoverished and, at times, homeless. With financial support from a high school art teacher, she attended the Art Institute of Chicago and committed to life as a painter. After receiving her MFA at Mills College in Oakland, she moved across the country to New York in 1967, sensing the city’s unique opportunities. Murray quickly settled into her new artistic milieu.

In the recent documentary, Everybody Knows... Elizabeth Murray (narrated by Meryl Streep), artist Chuck Close remembers the earlier work from the 1970s: “even though there was very little going on, they were very reductive, there still was a physicality to the piece that was lovingly made.” Artist Deborah Kass similarly stresses that unlike other artists of her time, Murray “was making abstraction personal.” Throughout her significant shifts in form, these characteristics remained constant.

The Whitney Museum exhibited her work in 1972 and 1973 group shows. A friend, painter Jennifer Bartlett, introduced her to Paula Cooper that year. Murray began showing at the gallery shortly after, and her reputation grew. The gallerist and artist maintained a close relationship until Murray left the gallery in 1996 for the larger resources and opportunities at PaceWildenstein (now Pace).

The Pace exhibition traces the artist’s evolving tendency, throughout the 1980s, of creating canvases that came off the wall toward the viewer. ��She was taking the idea of what a rectangular, traditional stretcher bar was, and she was folding it and twisting it,” explains Jason Andrew, who manages Murray’s estate. Consider Stay Awake (1989) a canvas that wraps around a stretcher manipulated into a large, cup-like form. Viewers can peer into the top and two other cylindrical openings, offering an experience akin to assessing a sculpture. Dis Pair (1989–90, on loan from MoMA), resembles a comically gargantuan pair of shoes; the viewer can peek into the soles. “She liked the physicality of it,” says Baxter. “It’s a way of interacting with the viewer, engaging the viewer more actively.” In the catalogue for her MoMA retrospective, scholar (and major Murray champion) Robert Storr claims that the artist’s work in the 1980s was nothing short of revolutionary. “Murray became the first painter to fully commit herself to devising surfaces on which to paint that behaved according to the same biomorphic principles as the images themselves,” he writes. During her final decade, Murray’s paintings morphed into complex, puzzle-like assemblages of interlocking canvases that resembled comic strip elements.

Murray’s life reflected this desire to connect with those around her. She frequently and vocally advocated for her female peers. She protested with WAC (Women's Action Coalition) and in 1995 curated an all-women exhibition at MoMA as part of the museum’s Artist’s Choice series. The show spanned 1914 to 1973, with drawings, paintings, prints, and sculptures by about 70 artists. Murray focused especially on the 1950s and ’60s, when artists such as Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, and Lee Bontecou (whose own works powerfully protrude from gallery walls) were making their reputations. Her move to PaceWildenstein, says her daughter Daisy Murray Holman, was about “breaking into the boy’s club, creating a pathway for more women to be there.”

Feminism runs through Murray’s work, too. Her Story (1984) comprises three overlapping canvases, shaped like two As and an E, that suggest a woman sitting in a chair. A pink book in her lap doubles as genitalia. The complex, fragmented depiction of femininity makes gaps and absences (created by the holes in the As and the distance between the letters) into crucial parts of the picture.

The domestic sphere and its fractures become dramatic and weighted in massive canvases that abstract cups, tables, and other household forms. As scholar Kellie Jones reminds viewers in her catalogue essay for the Pace show, however, Murray’s works are about far more than mundane objects: They’re engagements with the entire history of Western still-life painting.

If Murray’s passionate politics entered her work in a dreamy, subtle manner (she was also an extensive dream journaler), she was very vocal at home. “At the dinner table, recalls her older daughter Sophie Ellsberg, “we definitely talked about politics. We didn’t really talk about her art.” She remembers her parents bringing her along to WAC protests, the women wearing pink slips to protest the GOP. Murray worked in her home studio on a strict schedule, and she sometimes let Ellsberg and her sister help her spray paint her work; motherhood informed, not inhibited, her paintings.

Jones connects the paintings’ sensuality and Murray’s role as a mother. Just In Time (1981), celebrates the summer she fell in love with her second husband, poet Bob Holman. “The sexual nature of the painted images then is also invested in their imagined fecundity,” Jones notes. While there’s plenty of conflict in the subsequent works (fissures, spills, messiness), there’s also a celebration—particularly in Murray’s repeated, embryonic bean forms—of life begetting life.

Through researching and cataloguing Murray’s work, Andrew hopes to build momentum and a new context for the artist—and he wants to offer younger artists visceral experiences with the colossal, highly textured works. The Canada show similarly appealed to younger artists. Andrew mentions painters Justine Hill and Yevgeniya Baras as part of a new generation who clearly look to Murray for inspiration. I asked Andrew why he thought the list of acolytes skewed female. “I feel like women artists are more free about being able to speak about who they’re inspired by,” he says. “Their male counterpoints still seem to want to claim ingenuity or originality.”

Murray’s legacy, too, is at the mercy of American cultural values. In the 1980s, Jean-Michel Basquiat was dating Madonna, partying with Andy Warhol’s glamorous coterie, and indulging in the drug habit that would lead to his untimely death. Julian Schnabel was breaking plates and living large. Violence and masculinity were often central to the celebrated Neo-Expressionist paintings of the day; Murray’s life and work stood in contrast to this sensationalism. “I think in a way she was expressing her femininity,” says Andrew about the artist’s work in the ’80s. “Murray was giving birth, she was having a family—and she was painting.”

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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