#god i don’t think i have immerse myself into a fictional world so deeply before

[toffeelemon]

I don’t feel like our love is brand new. There must have been lovers, soulmates, before us, experiencing what we get to have. And it’s giving me comfort to imagine there will be many more like us to come. Our kind of love is the kind of love that makes this rotten world worth living in.

prince simon in madrid

a pilgrimage along the world that @prince-simon created 🥹

Simon’s neighbourhood, Chueca

“It’s actually the Queer Neighbourhood of Madrid, and coincidentally also where I live.” He lowered his voice as if to tell a secret, “It’s actually not a coincidence at all.” (chapter 2)

Casa de Campo (view from the Royal Palace lol oop)

Wilhelm didn’t even recognise himself. He didn’t think he’d ever looked that happy. And Simon… his eyes were closed and his curls were a mess and Wilhelm had never seen anyone more beautiful. (chapter 3)

El Retiro

Simon looked at Wilhelm much too adoringly for a statement this goofy. “The ducks are gay!” He yelled at Santiago and Paula, “Just so you know!” (chapter 9)

Palacio de Cristal

“Here’s a funny thought - bear with me, okay? But just imagine. Flowers. Everywhere, like on the ceiling, up the walls. Fairy lights scattered all through it. It would be so gorgeous as a- uh, like. For a wedding…” Realising where his train of thought had gotten him, Wilhelm fell quiet, looking at Simon with wide eyes. (chapter 9)

El Palacio Real de Madrid (more specifically the Throne Room lmfao)

Simon traced his fingers over the bruises on Wilhelm’s neck and in the opening of his dress shirt, humming contentedly. Wilhelm followed the movement in the mirror, and marvelled at how good they looked together, how well they fit together and how much Simon belonged right here – on the throne, with Wilhelm. He deserved the world and so much more. (chapter 12)

Museo Nacional del Prado

Around them, the other visitors kept moving, admiring the art on the walls, and for the moment Wilhelm felt infinite, imagining himself a painting, looked at and analysed hundreds of years from now. El Abrazo de los Príncipes.

Lo Spasimo, Raphael, 1515-1517

“Are we allowed to kiss in front of Jesus on his way to crucifixion or is that tasteless? Because I really want to kiss you right now, Simon.”

Las Meninas, Diego Velázquez, 1656

“He made me look at Velázquez in the painting and how he was looking back at the viewer, at me. I still remember the exact tone of his voice, how he was so certain when he told me that I had every right to be where I am. That I am the subject of this painting, the king being painted. All those tyrants, King Felipe and Emmanuel and all those that came in between, they are trapped in that mirror forever while I am here, alive, we’re here. Velázquez is looking at two queer princes, ready to paint us.” (chapter 13)

Casa Alberto

“So, tell me more about this special part of Madrileñan history.” He was slightly teasing but mostly actually curious. 

Simon seemed all too eager to answer that question, and it hit Wilhelm how genuine Simon’s care for his city — his country — and its people was. It made him a little sad to know that a lot of people didn’t get to see that because they only focused on Simon being too gay or too Latino, or even just too carefree and enjoying life because he was young, to be their future king.

bonus content:

Iglesia de San Antonio de los Alemanes (where Simon goes to church)

“I think I need to go somewhere.”

“Oh?” Wilhelm said softly, “Right now?”

Simon hesitated before he nodded. “I need to- get some clarity? Or - I hope that I’ll get it there?” He whispered, voice shaky.

“Do you want to tell me where you’re going?”

“To- uh, to pray? I mean- to church? I don’t know if I’ll pray…” Simon’s voice was shaky, uncertainty shining in his eyes when he dared to look up at Wilhelm. (chapter 11)

[catholicartistsnyc]

Meet Baltimore Featured Artist: Rebecca Mlinek

REBECCA MLINEK is a Baltimore-based screenwriter, poet, fiction and creative non-fiction (CNF) writer. 

Check out her work: (Upcoming Podcast | Facebook | Short Stories & CNF)

CATHOLIC ARTIST CONNECTION (CAC): Where are you from, and what brought you to Baltimore?

REBECCA MLINEK (RM): I'm from Pittsburgh, Pa. I got married right after college and my new husband's job brought us to Baltimore. That was 20 years ago! It took a while, but Baltimore now feels like home. 

CAC: How do understand your vocation as a Catholic artist? Do you call yourself a Catholic artist? 

RM: This is a tricky question. I don't think I can be anything other than a Catholic (insert noun here) if I take my faith seriously. But at the same time, I don't label myself a "Catholic writer" because Catholics aren't necessarily my audience. Most of my writing community, and most of my audience tend to be non-religious seekers of truth. Those are my people - I get them and I think they get what I do.

I see my mission as a writer as bringing some of the weird, complicated, messy way the world works into greater relief. I often find myself exploring ways in which hope can be found in the midst of pain. Both of these align with Catholic principles, but aren't strictly Catholic ideas. 

CAC: Where have you found support in the Church for your vocation as an artist?

RM: Does your newsletter count? (Editor’s note: It does.) I am lucky to belong to a parish (Mount Calvary in Baltimore) that attracts artists and musicians and scholars, and interacting with my fellow parishioners is always inspiring. But otherwise - I often don't even look to the Church for support in my writing. I, maybe wrongly, assume that the powers-that-be are looking more for propaganda than the challenge of art, and I'm not interested in that kind of writing. 

CAC: Where have you found support among your fellow artists for your Catholic faith?

RM: I've found my fellow artists and writers to be incredibly supportive! Which goes against the popular assumption that "Hollywood" is a bunch of godless monsters. Most of the people I interact with are lovely, caring, and deeply respectful of my religious beliefs, even when they don't understand them. They are, frankly, often more conscientious and respectful than fellow Christians. 

CAC: How can the Church be more welcoming to artists?

RM: Paying us? Ha ha. Actually, I think the main thing the Church needs to do is to embrace being challenged. Loyalty to our faith is not the same thing as refusing to ever acknowledge problems. A spouse who refused to ever consider or face the beloved's faults would be neglecting his or her duty. I think artists are the Church's nagging spouse, and spending more time listening and less time in knee-jerk defensiveness could open up a whole world of beauty we've really almost closed ourselves off from. 

CAC: How can the artistic world be more welcoming to artists of faith?

RM: Honestly, in my experience the artistic world is very welcoming. Most artists understand devotion to an ideal - it's not that long of a jump between that and devotion to a Person. 

CAC: Where in Baltimore do you regularly find spiritual fulfillment? 

RM: Mount Calvary (part of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter). The liturgy is beautiful and reverent, the people are friendly and wonderfully weird, and the pastor is a truly devoted and hard-working priest. You can find the best book club (like, serious discussion about serious books) I've ever come across. You can find parishioners handing out breakfast sandwiches to the needy on Saturday mornings.  You can find pews crawling (literally) with children - a truly vibrant community. I can't recommend this parish highly enough!

CAC: Where in Baltimore do you regularly find artistic fulfillment?

RM: I sometimes make it to the Baltimore Women in Film Collective, though not enough to call myself part of the group. They are great collection of women, though, and I wish I could make meetings more! I love the Baltimore theater scene - I particularly love the Chesapeake Shakespeare Theater Company. I was gifted season tickets a few times, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Also, the BSO is a great asset to my city! We are always moved and inspired when we go to a concert. 

CAC: How have you found or built community as a Catholic artist in Baltimore?

RM: I teach writing for high school, which plugs me into the writing community in a very natural way. Writers come to the school to mentor the youth, and I get to connect with them! Also, my students grow up to be passionate and talented writers themselves, and I look forward to the day when most of my prestigious writing contacts are former students!

CAC: What is your daily spiritual practice?

RM: I never write anything (even this) without first saying a section of the Liturgy of the Hours. I'm freewheeling with the time, but I love repeating the psalms - I feel like I slowly absorb ideas that are too deep for me to get after just the first few hundred reads. 

CAC: What is your daily artistic practice? And what are your recommendations to other artists for practicing their craft daily?

RM: I work on my writing every day! But I don't beat myself up if it's working on wording for a website or a grant application rather than creative writing.

My biggest recommendation, actually, is as a mother. Give yourself permission to spend time on your passion! If keeping your counters pristine all day long gives you joy, great! But I promise you, nobody is going to remember how gritty your counter-tops were if you spend that time writing instead. (I know this because my counter-tops are, in fact, truly appalling.) 

CAC: Describe a recent day in which you were most completely living out your vocation as an artist. What happened, and what brought you the most joy?

RM: I recently wrapped recording on a fiction podcast I wrote and directed. It was amazing to me how much energy it gave me! I came home from a long day with no food, having slept very little, but with more energy to hang out with my kids and husband than ever. Seeing my words brought to life was a joy unlike almost anything else. 

CAC: How do you afford housing as an artist?

RM: Both my husband and I work full time - housing in Baltimore isn't horrible (though it's not great), but putting our six daughters through college is a constant financial stress. 

CAC: How do you financially support yourself as an artist?

RM: I teach writing full time for a public magnet high school, which is a nice way to make money as a writer, since I'm immersed in the craft of it constantly. The Stowe Story Lab is a wonderful community of writers, and one I'm very proud and grateful to be a part of. Rocaberti Writers is another group (through their writing retreats in Spain and France) I've been fortunate to join. Online, I've found a lot of support through the Roadmap Writers programs. They really trained me how to pitch myself and my stories, and have connected me to some wonderful and supportive mentors. 

CAC: What other practical resources would you recommend to a Catholic artist living in Baltimore?

RM: Lots of coffee. If you're in Baltimore, I don't know why you'd drink anything other than Zeke's. I also have to mention one of my favorite bars, since I recently published a poem dedicated to it: Max's Taphouse in Fells Point. It's a serious beer bar, old as dirt, and a great place to spend a few hours with friends.

Also - the library! Use your library! Not only are they great for books, they can help with so many things. For my podcast, I was able to rent out a room in the library for auditions, and then again for rehearsals, and it didn't cost me a billion dollars. I love the library! 

CAC: What advice do you have for Catholic artists post-graduation?

RM: Do your art, even if you feel stupid - you might feel like it's a waste of your time, but it isn't! Find people who get it and will support you. Pray - go to adoration, go to mass, pray in the car, pray before you write or paint or whatever it is you do. Let God be a part of your process. 

[andysnorwayaffairs]

Final Project

Pt 1; a perfect ending. feeling a rush of shared excitement - finally! just like me!

warmth, embraced, a queer kind of friendship. we sat in the grass and talked about how our lives were growing up, how our queerness was realized and how it affected the way we walk in the world. our stories are so similar yet so, so different. miles and miles of time away, you announce to your friends that you’re probably maybe gay. you start a spark in their minds, and soon after you’re deemed the trail blazer of coming out. you are brave, do you know it? you were the person who i wished for. so desperate for approval from others, and not meeting anyone like you, i took it upon myself to starve my queerness, the differentness, the part of me that i knew i could definitely be hated for. and i can’t stand the thought of being hated. and a part of me hated myself for who i was. i was taught that i couldn’t love like that, that it wasn’t *real*, that anything other than normal is impossible, wrong, destructive. so i listened, and i believed them. not completely, that is also true. that’s why i never stopped immersing myself in online queer culture, why i desperately searched for any sign of queerness in the online personas i followed and in the fiction that i read. we talked about this too, how we’d entrench ourselves in media and later realize that we were part of the group we were so obsessed with. finally... just like me

you opened your heart so quickly - your friends, they tell me that they’re so happy that you’ve met me. you open a window into your life and lend a hand to help me hop in. i see how you love others, and how they love you. we run through the lawn of a backyard riddled with ripe fruit and laugh like children at how sweet the juice is. we share a meal and spend hours talking about nothing and everything. i sometimes stop and listen to the chatter, and i feel complete warmth even when i cannot understand what is being said. we read the cards i brought and i learn how each of you sees love. i see the way you interact with your loved ones, the way you so deeply care to spend time with them. letting go, giggling in giddy joy, acting like absolute fools. finally, just like me

cried a farewell last night

thank you for offering me a bizarre, unfair amount of kindness

thank you for showing me a glimpse of your life, your entire world

thank you for extending a hand in friendship, in solidarity

thank you for being my friend

I feel like my time here, my glimpse into another person’s life, feels like a glimpse into an alternate timeline. A timeline in which I accepted myself from the beginning. A timeline in which I told a friend about my crush on Jen from Buzzfeed. A timeline when I refused to normalize myself, refused to uphold the boundaries that were unfairly placed on me. A timeline when I was brave. A timeline when I stopped being so damn scared. A timeline when I realized that my friends would still stay friends with me, and those who didn’t want to, I should let go of anyways. There will always be people who don’t match up with your values, your energies, your being. I won’t lie to myself and say that it wouldn’t hurt like a bitch, but it’s a hard fact of life that homophobes, transphobes, racists, xenophobes, ie bigots exist and there will be always be bullies and people who don’t care about you, who WANT to put you down, who want to hurt you. In a world of power, there will be those with some and those without. I was given a small window into my friend’s life and saw a life pathway built around friendships who learn and grow right alongside you. I’ve always thought about that – what if? What if I let go earlier? In my timeline, the forces around me were not as kind to me. I was told queerness was ugly, so utterly upside down. I didn’t have anyone to tell me otherwise. Perhaps if I had a positive role model to tell me that it WAS okay, that it was beautiful and wonderful. Perhaps if I had a friend like them in my life who was the first to come out and encouraged others by simply living their life the way THEY want to, perhaps I would have had the courage to do so earlier. I can’t change the past.

But I can think about how the events of my past shaped my present, and how my present shapes my future. Thank God - I DID let go! There’s no race to live your truth, but oh god it feels so good to do it NOW. I’m so thankful that I found the bravery these people I know now have embraced so many years ago. I feel like my own person, like an entire human soul. I don’t feel the need to please anyone. This queer experience, of finding yourself and maybe even fearing yourself, but, ultimately, coming to love yourself despite dominant society failing you, that is a queer experience. Regardless of any experience, something we all share is having to live in a world that ultimately does not accept us, does not want us.

An ode to knowing that although things are different here, and that there’s no possible way that I could have had a similar timeline just simply because of how different our spheres and worlds are... despite this, despite the fear and self hate and internal violence I was forced into because of the life I was born into, despite all of this, I was still able to find myself and love myself and find others who love me for my whole humanness.

There’s a lot of work to be done in the world, for our lives and our safety and our happiness. I think the friends I’ve met here are doing that work. Through their love for each other and thus their refusal to conform, to stay quiet, to accept the norms in place.

Meeting this special friend may have been completely chance, but I believe fate had a little bit to do with it too. To give me this window, to let me see what beauty it is to allow a person to be themselves. The sooner, the better.

____ DISCUSSION

Pt 3:

It’s funny to see how these ppl’s reflections of their lives fit in line with exactly what we discussed through our readings and class discussions. Norway may be progressive in law, but not necessarily in practice. Each of the queer people I asked this about, or asked them to speak about their queer experience, expressed frustration at there not being much of a strong queer community here, and how they still experienced everyday oppression (you may call these micro aggressions).

Nordic model of inclusion + welfare, making this a space where it is looked down upon to discriminate for someone’s sexuality

A different relationship to Christianity

In the U.S., I grew up in a heavily queerphobic, heavily strict and monitored environment where I was even monitoring myself, reprimanding myself for all of the gay content I was consuming but allowing myself to keep doing it because I was “outside” of the community and thus could not be associated with it or have to think of the consequences.

In middle school I was fully aware that I had strong crushes on gay female celebrities but was petrified of sharing that information with anyone.

I shut myself down immediately, but continued to consume gay, lgbt, and trans media for years and years after, allowing myself to do this because I could convince myself that I was just “a straight girl” who was a big fan of the community.

After coming to college and experiencing true freedom from the expectations and values placed on me, it took me less than three days to come to the realization that I was in fact, extremely not straight. It took me 6 more months to fully feel comfortable admitting to myself and claiming the label that I was gay. It took me another year to “come out” to all of my friends and folx I really cared about.

-talk about how this is a divide between my experience and the experiences of the friends I made here. L & their friends came out when they were extremely young, in middle school actually. Our timelines diverge here.

Only recently, I began to make friends on the shared experience of our queerness. Meeting my close friends now, sharing intimate + tender moments. Loving each other and supporting one another the way family might do. A queer kind of love shared in these emotional bonds. A kind of love I had not experienced before my full acceptance and life as a queer person. Tender, radical love.

Meeting L, sharing on our experience of being queer and trans. And not to say that their life in Norway is so much better. The Nordic model may allow for some general acceptance, but queerphobia still has its roots in other malicious ways. Many of L’s friends still don’t use their pronouns. A is called the slur version of the word lesbian, and she recognizes that being a lesbian is not favorable to society. She wants to be a prof of gender studies at her uni but told me that since there is already one queer person on staff, she’ll never be hired on.

M telling me about how even tho queer ppl are accepted on the outside, and in the law, in practice, not so much.

-A telling me that people hate lesbians

-in Norwegian, the word for lesbian is also really similar to the slur, “fucking lesbian”

CONNECTION TO THE FIRST ARTICLE WE READ

Norway’s state feminism and inclusion of queerness is heteronormative, only assimilating those that fit into the family, hetero model (thinking to naked sculpture park, extremely family oriented)

Same sex has to still be straight – family, private, culturally straight.

[cardhouseandthecage]

I actually am wondering about the Star recruitment process, Denizen-Star communication, and the interface between our reality and Faerie with regard to all this. Like if you or I was to get sucked into the Star process, what would it be like in terms of ordinary logistics? How would they first reach out to us? What if we tried something like getting other people involved who legit believed in all this but the Cardhouse really didn't want them involved? Apologies if this can't really be answered!

an EXCELLENT QUESTION, friend, and incidentally a subject of ongoing investigation on my part. THE subject of ongoing investigation. My whole life. Which is to say: I can’t give you a complete answer—I can’t even necessarily give you a correct answer—but you have absolutely come to the right place. You wont get any kind of answer anywhere else. Here’s what I’ve pieced together from my research, thus far:I. The first thing you need to know about Stars is that they don’t actually believe in fairies. Not Literally. Not necessarily. 

You are familiar, I assume, with the Moment of Magical Proof™? You’ll find it with most stories that begin in the mundane. Our protagonist might want to believe in magic, but they can’t—magic is fake and everyone knows it—so they’ll rationalize for as long as they can. Then something happens. Magic intrudes upon their lived experience in a way they can no longer deny. YER A WIZARD, HARRY. Magic is real, and will continue to be real for the duration of the narrative.

That moment never happens.

There is no first contact for a Star, no revelation, no paradigm shift: it’s only ever a slow fade. And that little voice of in the back of their heads, the one that knows none of this could ever be real? It never goes away. That’s important. It’s part of what splits them—and without a split there is no harvest.

The Cardmaster settled upon this business model for a reason. Certainly he could present the Cardhouse more literally, but he’d be working against dominant trends: most people don’t believe in fairies literally, and our beliefs govern the channels through which fairies can contact us. So if you don’t really believe that some fairy bitch could pup up in your window and approach you with the deal of a lifetime, they’re going to have a really difficult time making that happen.* It’s much more cost-effective to build on a pre-existing system of belief than to overturn it. 

II. But what’s all this nonsense about the power of belief, HQ? Are you really going to sit there behind your screen and tell me that you subscribe to Magical Thinking? Who exactly is funding this study???

AHAHAHAHAHA NO ONE, naturally, but also: no. No, of course not! I may not be funded but I take myself very seriously here: I’m not arguing that our beliefs can change reality directly. Antoine was absolutely right about the tree root: that’s a thing in the physical universe and it’s going to go on existing regardless of what we think about it—outside of what we think of it. Oxygen doesn’t care about my feelings! There’s a side of things won’t budge, no matter what I believe (I know this; I’ve tried). Even if I clapped my hands and dreamed with every fibre of my being, it wouldn’t wouldn’t make a fairy into something I could bring into a lab and prove.

But my belief would change something. It would change the Faerie-Reality interface. If I believed fairies were real, they’d be real to me. It would change how they exist in the extra-dimensional space in my head. And that space in my head—in all of our heads—that’s the dimension of things that connects up with Faerie. That’s what empties into Faerie, perpetually, without our volition or consent. I’m fooling myself if I think I’m in control of that space just because my thoughts effect it: I didn’t choose most of my beliefs any more than I chose my body. There’s a whole world of thought that I inherited, and correspondingly a whole landscape of Faerie that’s built up in connection to Reality over time. By this mechanism, then, our beliefs can alter reality: indirectly. Reality generates Faerie, but Faerie is incessantly fucking with us in return, and the ways in which it fucks with us influence the actions we take in Reality. III. Any agency behind such fuckery I term “a fairy.” 

Fairies “live” in the backworld (they’re made of the same stuff it is) and can manipulate the residue that accumulates there: they’re not real by any means, but they do exist. It is worth noting that fairies, by this definition, don’t give a damn whether we believe in them. This may first strike you as counter-intuitive: if they’re made of our thoughts, then surely our belief means a great deal to them? To which I answer: yes, it does. Absolutely. Just not in the way that you’d think. I’m guessing you’ve probably encountered some version theory of belief-dependancy and the Decline of the Mythical? It’s related to a lot of things (many of which are true, see: placebo effect), but generally it asserts that the vitality of imaginary beings has diminished in direct proportion to our diminishing “belief” in them, and consequently there has been a great falling off in the power of gods and fairies and the like as we have entered the modern era. My findings suggest the otherwise. I say we still believe in plenty of “unreal” things, and as strongly as ever we did. Even our science feeds into the Faerie: it’s made of our thought! We use science to describe reality, but it itself is not fully “real.” Besides which, it’s not as if fairies are limited to drawing upon our literal beliefs. We don’t generally think of fiction as real, and yet it shapes us. And a desire can be every bit as potent as a belief. Fairies don’t care whether we believe in them: all they require is that we want to. They’ll play our beliefs against our desires and catch us between them, bring us to our knees before the impossible; we’ll yield our sacrifice readily enough, god or no god.  All they require is that we dream. 

So no, I don’t think we’ve impoverished fairies at all by sorting fact from fiction as we have. I think we’ve blinded ourselves to their power, locked the door and thrown away the key only to have them catch it. I think we’ve given them everything. I think we’ve spoiled them.

IV. But I digress. You asked me about the logistics of Star recruitment and Denizen-Star communication. 

It starts, traditionally enough, with a fairy ring.

Not a literal ring, generally (that’s very retro), but the there are certain channels of interface—certain ‘meta-forums’—that the Cardhouse keeps open as traps for potential candidates. For a while now, the internet has been the best “place” to set up such a forum, so they frequently overlay or branch off from real online sites. But they could be anywhere. Any work of fiction can easily serve as a jumping off point (provided it’s fantastical enough), or else game of make-believe, or even a good old-fashioned glade or a shopping centre or an abandoned house. If you’re intrepid enough you might find your way to to one through pure whimsy: it’s only a matter of stumbling into the right headspace.

Unfortunately, there’s no clear indicator for when such a stumbling has transpired. The meta-forums interface so seamlessly with what we think of as plausible that we don’t recognise them when we see them and we can’t tell once we’re in.** You can’t necessarily tell when someone else is in one either. It just looks like preoccupation—an obliviousness to the “real world.” But it also looks perfectly realistic, especially from the standpoint of the Star. Because fiction exists, and games exist, and there are all kinds of things you can get obsessed with on the internet and none of them especially challenge the laws of physics. They way you engage with the meta-forum doesn’t look different from how you’d engage with any other imaginary thing. Generally, it starts out as a game or an RP or a kind of choose-your-own-adventure story through which you get to know the characters and the basic setup. That setup presents itself very differently depending on what you’re into, but you’re usually given to understand that the Cardhouse produces very special magical items, and that you can help the Cardmaster gather ingredients for these items by undertaking quests or solving puzzles or making certain offerings or blending the perfect tea or getting your two favourite denizens to make kiss or doing whatever it is you’re doing that is “playing the game”. One denizen in particular serves as your primary contact and guide. You might also be given to understand that Cardhouse products are all a part of the ongoing effort to Fight The Encroaching Darkness. It’s a very all-consuming obsession, and while you’re immersed in you often ‘forget’ it isn’t real, but never in a way that raises any suspicion. For the most part, you know it’s just a game. And for some people that’s all it ever is, and they move on.

If you are destined to become a Star, however, at some point the game will change. One day, your denizen approaches you in great distress: the threat of the Encroaching Darkness, they say, is much worse than they had previously let on. The game might end, as if it had never been! You may well never see us again, in which case… farewell in advance! It will be a very moving performance, and naturally you, the potential Star, will be deeply upset by this news. If you’re right for the job you will offer up your assistance on the spot, unprompted. You will say the magic words. Is there anything you can do to help?

…Funny You Should Ask.

And now the denizen will lay it out: there is, in fact, a way. You may not know this, but you happen to be a very special sort of person: a Star sleeps within you—a great power—but its light is not for the human world. If you were to promise to fight on our behalf, we could help you unlock that power on the other side. You would swear fealty to the Cardmaster, pledging your light to the cause and security of our House, and help us to beat back the darkness. But be warned! It is no task for the faint of heart. You would be asked to undertake missions in the depths of the Wild Lands, where evils reign free. You would be placed in grave danger. So yes, you really could save us, but we would never ask anyone to accept such a burden! If however you should choose to do so….well. You would be richly rewarded.

If it’s gotten to this point, the potential Star (feeling very heroic) almost always accepts.They are assigned to a team and presented with a “cage” to help concentrate their powers and serve as a holding space for any magical items they’re give in Faerie. The cage exists between realms and the Star can access it from either side. Generally, the more they use their powers as a Star, the more it fills up with light for them to draw upon. Doing certain things in the Mundane however can cause that light to diminish or spill out, so they learn to avoid doing those things. Yet insofar as they are human, the Star still regards this all as a kind of fantasy. Insofar as they’re a fairy, however, it is very real. How any given Star rationalizes the paradox will vary, but at no point does the human fully “believe” that what’s happening is real. So a fissure develops between the two selves, and the more and more the Star invests in their fae identity, the deeper it splits them.

And here is the difficult part—the part no one understands. People often ask me what a Star’s human self is doing when they are a fairy. Are they sleeping? Unconscious? Physically elsewhere? Mentally dead? Sitting behind a computer screen as in hypnosis? All of those, possibly. None of those, necessarily. The trouble is that there’s not a one-to-one correspondence between time spent in Faerie and time spent in Reality, so it never maps on perfectly. It’s very difficult to make it add up: I don’t have a working model for this part at all.

But I do know this. When a Star is harvested, they are harvested whole. No one notices them go, and there is no body to find. Everything that ought to have been real about them has been redirected to the other side. They make ghosts of themselves. They split off without a trace.

——

*Oh, you might say, well if it’s as easy as believing…—no. Believing is far from easy, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not convinced? Then try! As an experiment: just try to alter your basic beliefs in what’s possible and what’s not. Tell yourself you might wake up in a flower tomorrow morning. It’s possible! Tell yourself the earth of flat (come on, really in vogue). Or tell yourself I’m right! Tell yourself believing makes any difference. COME ON JUST BELIEVE IN YOURSELF,,,YOU CAN DO IT!! Ha. Of course you can’t. 

**This may appear to stand in contrast to more traditional fairy-lore, but I think it’s actually very much in line (and it’s one of the many reason I’ve chosen to call these creatures fairies). Sure, in those stories, the human usually knows that they’ve crossed into some kind of Other Realm and accepts the fairies as real, but none of that especially shocks them. They’re not experiencing any major paradigm shift: either they’re in an altered state or this encounter still falls well within their understanding of “plausible.” But their conceptions of plausibility will only stretch so far: they don’t understand that time is passing differently in the other realm, that a very alien set of “rules” governs the very fabric of it. The shock only comes when the person tries to leave Faerie as they would leave a party at someone’s house, and finds that they can’t. And it’s the same with Stars. Our notions of plausible versus implausible have shifted a little, so the trick happens at a different level, but it’s the same trick. The human has passed into foreign territory, but they’re still processing it in mundane terms, and consequently they won’t pick up on the most “unrealistic” aspects of the encounter (if ever) until it’s too late.

[aion-rsa]

I Think You Should Leave Season 2: Ranking Every Sketch

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How on Earth did we survive two years without new episodes of Netflix’s brilliant sketch comedy series I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson? The first batch of six episodes premiered on April 23 of 2019 and proved instantly iconic. 

Contained within the season’s roughly two-dozen sketches was absolutely hilarious and essential comedy that provided ample memetic kindling for the internet’s conversational fire. For the focused enough mind, it’s entirely possible to communicate with one’s friends exclusively in I Think You Should Leave memes. Lord knows, I’ve tried it.

Thankfully, ITYSL season 2 has finally arrived on Netflix after its COVID-19 delay. It features 28 sketches that range from “pretty funny” to “I can’t stop laughing. Oh God, I can’t stop laughing. It hurts, surely this is the end. Surely, I will die.”

Check out our rankings below and then begin yelling at our chances like Spectrum is dropping your network.

28. Credit Card Roulette

If nothing else, Tim Robinson and I Think You Should Leave co-creator Zach Kanin are incredible comedy scouts. Through two seasons, the show’s sketches have been a who’s who of up-and-coming comedic talent, like the wonderful John Early who is featured in this sketch. Unfortunately Early is not served well by the material here, which doesn’t rise to the same ludicrous heights as season 2’s other sketches. The best moment is Early’s immediate resolve that he’s not paying the bill, but the sketch doesn’t go too far after that. 

27. Dave’s Poop Double

The sketch that serves as the cold open of season 2’s final episode doesn’t get things off to the best start. The concept of Tim’s “Luka” hiring a guy who looks just like his coworker Dave to take monster shits every time he gets up is certainly fun but missing an important layer of added absurdity. Luka is probably the best name for any of Robinson’s random characters yet though.

26. Little Buff Boys Pt. 2

Season 2 features many more callbacks to previous sketches than the first season did. This followup to Little Buff Boys is the worst of the bunch but still quite funny. Perhaps the only thing more absurd than a Little Buff Boys competition is someone being proud of running “one of” the biggest LBB competitions in the Greater Cincinnati area. This sketch also passes up an easy Cincinnati Chili joke in favor of creating the truly vile “cherry chuck salad.”

25. Detective Crashmore Trailer

This trailer for action thriller Detective Crashmore is funny enough on its own but doesn’t reach another comedic level until the AOL Blast interview two sketches later. Still, I unironically want to see an action film with a lead character whose main quip is “Eat fucking bullets, you fuckers. You fucking suck. You fucking SUCK!”

24. I Should Have Got That

I Think You Should Leave deserves a big spread in AARP magazine. No other sketch show revels in the talents of older comedians quite like this one. After 81-year-old comedian Ruben Rabasa stole the show in season 1, season 2 ups the ante with many more sketches letting old folks shine. It’s Bob McDuff Wilson’s turn this time around and his child-like obsession with his student’s burger kills right up until the shockingly dark kicker.

23. Office Surfing

“I almost killed myself, Jullliieeeeee” is one of the best line-reads of the season. The sketch it’s built around isn’t too remarkable but man, does Robinson knock that one out of the park. 

22. “No, I Don’t Know How to Drive”

This is a quickie but a goodie. Robinson’s characters break down in tears quite often this season and this is one of the better occasions. How far have Tim’s characters come – from reveling in the existence of four-wheeled motorcycles to looking at the inside of a car and weeping “I don’t know what any of this shit is and I’m fucking scared.”

21. The Capital Room

Speaking of top tier comedic talent, thank God Patti Harrison stopped by another season of I Think You Should Leave. This time around, we get two heaping doses of Patti. This one, the first of the two, is the inferior but still quite great. In the span of roughly 30 seconds, Harrison unveils the saga of a woman who A. Got sewn into the pants of the Thanksgiving Day parade Charlie Brown float, B. Hates all bald boys, C. Sued the city and won a fortune, D. Is now helplessly addicted to wine, and E. Is tragically self-aware that her money will run out soon.

20. But It’s Lunch

Just like last year’s opening sketch, “But It’s Lunch” (this is probably a good time to mention, that I’m naming all of these things myself. You could very easily call this the Hotdog sketch but that would confuse it with last year’s hotdog sketch) sets the perfect opening mood. The sight gag of Robinson’s Pat trying to stealthily eat a hotdog is wonderful, and the fact that things so quickly escalate to hotdog surgery and puke is just sublime. 

19. Carber Hotdog Vacuum

The follow-up to “But It’s Lunch” occurs a full two episodes later and proves to be a hell of a pay-off. Robinson’s unnamed character (who is obviously Pat) very quickly reveals that there is one very specific reason he made this hotdog vacuum invention and you’ll never guess what it was. We all make mistakes. We shouldn’t be fired for them.

18. Insider Trading Trial (Stupid Hat)

This sketch somewhat mimics the experience of trying to explain what I Think You Should Leave is like to someone who has never seen it. “So, this guy took too small a slice of toilet paper…” or “…and then he has to have to have sex with his mother-in-law.” “Insider Trading” rotely describes the bizarre behaviors of one of Robinson’s deeply strange characters, Brian, as it’s being read into the court record. Brian and his stupid fedora with the safari flaps is in attendance to provide a visual aid. As are some hilarious flashbacks in which Brian attempts to roll the hat down his arm like Fred Astaire and instead encounters only wheelchair grease. 

17. The Ice Cream Store is Closed Today

Before he was a criminal lawyer, Bob Odenkirk was one of the most legendary sketch writers of all time. It’s only fitting that he stop by ITYSL season 2 to provide his comedic blessing. Odenkirk is great from the get-go but this one doesn’t really get rolling until the end when Robinson finds himself truly immersed in the fictional life of this sad old man. “His wife’s sick but she’s gonna get better” is a shockingly emotional moment amid pure farce.

16. Barbie and the Blues Brothers

This is the sketch that climbed the most in my rankings upon a second viewing. What first seemed to be a waste of Conner O’Malley’s manic comedic energy became a semi-classic once I submitted to its strange vibes. I don’t even know what to call this one but Robinson’s character refusing to stop dancing as Barbie the dog melts down is hilarious. O’Malley is better served by last season’s “honk if you’re horny” sketch, still he gets some bangers in this time around like “She thinks he’s a whole new guy because of the glasses and the hat” and “it’s her house, she’s doing what’s right!” Robinson once again closes this nonsense out with some well-earned tears. “It’s just me, Barbie. I’m not the Blues Brothers.”

15. Jaime Taco (I Love My Wife)

“Jamie Taco” is a prime example of just how rapidly (and how well) I Think You Should Leave is able to veer into pure nonsensical genius. At the top, this sketch comes perilously close to making an actual statement about how men are too quick to pretend like their wives are horrible nags. This sketch, however, has its sights set on something much dumber…and therefore better. Our hero (played hilariously by Richard Jewell’s Paul Walter Hauser) loves his wife because she helped him through his darkest moment, which just so happens to be when snotty young actor Jamie Taco refused to let him say his Henchman lines in a play.

14. Comos Restaurant 

All hail the return of the great Tim Heidecker! Heidecker, of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! fame, is one of the few comedians with a strange enough sensibility to be reasonably seen as an I Think You Should Leave forerunner. His season 1 turn as a walnut-obsessed jazz douche is a classic and this one reaches similar heights. This time, Heidecker’s character, Gary, and his lovely date, Janeane (Tracey Birdsall), have good reason to be annoyed by their date night at the sci-fi cosmos restaurant being interrupted by some hacky jokes. Of course, they use this opportunity to reveal that Jeannine’s mom used to drink puke for the Davy and Rascal radio show to pay for school supplies. It’s oddly refreshing to have a Heidecker character given a game partner and Gary and Janeane make one great team.

13. Detective Crashmore Interivew

While the Detective Crashmore trailer is the setup, this interview with AOL Blast is the punchline. Detective Crashmore is played by Santa Claus, because why not? Actor Biff Wiff’s gruff, nasally Midwestern timber is the perfect accent to accompany this lunacy. This is a Santa who in one breath demands to be taken seriously as an actor (Billy Bob Thornton-style) and in the next admits to seeing everyone in the world’s dick.

12. Sloppy Steaks (I Used to Be a Piece of Shit)

From here on out, it’s nothing but absolute homeruns. “Sloppy Steaks” could very well have been number one on this list and few would have batted an eye. The setup here is amazing as it gives Tim Robinson a reason to essentially have beef with a baby. The baby cries because he knows Robinson used to be a piece of shit. But don’t babies understand that people can change? That’s funny enough to begin with, but the real gut-busting moment here is the reveal of what “being a piece of shit” really means. In this case it means slicking one’s hair back and dousing the steaks at Truffoni’s with water to make sloppy steaks.

11. Johnny Carson Impersonator

Just a quick rundown for those who are confused…

Johnny Carson = Can Hit. George Kennedy = Can’t Hit. George Bush = Can’t Hit. 

10. Driving School (Her Job is Tables)

This is the rare I Think You Should Leave sketch that actually provides an answer to all the lunacy. As Robinson’s character’s Driver’s Ed class watches Patti Harrison’s actress in some dated videos, they can’t help but wonder what she does for a living. “Tables,” Robinson answers over and over again. This would be funny enough on its own but the reveal that Harrison provides tables to Monster Cons is a rare and valuable moment of “Ohhhhh that’s why” for this show. Equally as valuable is Harrison, who really sells that those tables are her lifeblood.

9. Claire’s Ear-Piercings

One has to wonder how much time goes into choosing the perfect “order” for the sketches in I Think You Should Leave. Two seasons in a row now, the show has selected pitch perfect opening and closing sketches. This closing number is oddly melancholic as the Claire’s orientation video for girls who want to get their ears pierced somehow gives way to one 58-year-old man named Ron Tussbler’s existential dread. If we really get to see the “highlights” after we die, forcibly fake laughing every ten minutes to make the voyeuristic experience all the richer sounds like a good strategy and not sad at all. Hang in there, Ron.

8. Little Buff Boys Competition

What. A. Crop. It was a virtual certainty that ITYSL season 2 would feature a spiritual successor to the classic “Baby of the Year” sketch in season 1. Thank God “Little Buff Boys” is up to the challenge of replicating that magic. This one has all the right elements to be another hit: Sam Richardson (in a wig this time, no less), a grand pageant hall, and some precocious youths. Troll Boy also joins the canon of young ITYSL characters who everybody instinctively hates alongside Bart Harley Jarvis.

7. Tammy Craps

There’s something weirdly nefarious about this commercial for a poisonous doll that doesn’t have farts in her head anymore. It’s a criticism of late stage capitalism crossed with the cursed nature of the Annabelle movies…while not being like either of those things at all. In reality, this is just another absurdist concept sprung from the terrifying inner depths of the writing staff’s mind. It also happens to be a particularly great one. The girl weighing her clothes down with rocks so she can hit the magical 60-pound threshold to safely play with Tammy Craps is one of the best gags of the season.

6. Karl Havoc

“Little Buff Boys Competition” and another upcoming sketch are likely to produce the lion’s share of memes and quotes from this season of ITYSL. But the one quote that’s stuck in my mind most aggressively comes from this hilarious episode 1 clip. The sight of Robinson’s Carmine Laguzio posing as the dead-faced freakshow Karl Havoc and muttering “I don’t want to be around anymore” is quite simply one of the funniest things I’ve ever witnessed. This is a marvelous, unnerving, utterly hilarious sketch. That there are somehow five better sketches speaks to how strong this season is. 

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5. Dan Flashes Pt. 1 (Office)

I Think You Should Leave is now two for two in introducing the most cutting edge items in men’s fashion. Season 1 featured the arrival of the highly practical TC Tugger shirt. Now season 2 ups the ante with the stylish Dan Flashes. This sketch succeeds because it takes a simple question “Why is Mike laying down during a business meeting?” and divines the most outlandish answer possible. Mike isn’t eating because he’s spending all his money on Dan Flashes shirts. 

4. Dan Flashes Pt. 2 (Hotel Menu)

It’s one thing to introduce a hilarious concept, it’s another thing entirely to put it into practice. This second entry into the Dan Flashes canon is amazing. Back in part 1, it seemed as though the intricate patterns on the Dan Flashes shirts have a hypnotic effect on men who look exactly like Tim Robinson. Seeing the reality of that – pasty men battling one another to get their credit cards to the cashier before the other – is truly hilarious stuff.

3. Coffin Flop

This is the second sketch of the entire season…the second! And holy shit, does it set a strong precedent for what’s to come. This impassioned message from the Corncob TV CEO for Spectrum to save his network and its precisely one television program is a masterclass in shock humor. Watching body after body busting out of shit wood somehow never loses its grim luster. Somehow, in a sketch that features dozens of naked corpses flopping to the ground unexpectedly, it’s Robinson’s monologue that hits the hardest. “This world is so fucked up. And people are mad at me because I showed a bunch of naked dead bodies with their spread blue butts flying out of boxes? Really?”

2. Calico Cut Pants

Every episode of I Think You Should Leave season 2 features five sketches save for episode 4 which has only three. And that’s because episode 4 is dominated by a near 10-minute epic called “Calico Cut Pants.” In many ways, Calico Cut Pants is the platonic ideal of an ITYSL sketch. It takes place in a nightmarish world where every bizarre action only leads to an even more bizarre reaction. Nothing ever cools down. There is always something stranger on the horizon.

In this instance, Mike O’Brien (longtime SNL writer and the creator of the terminally underrated comedy A.P. Bio) plays an office drone who enters into a living hell merely because his co-worker helps him out of a mildly annoying social jam. Robinson’s character introduces him to a website that advertises pants with piss stains on them. That’s all well and good but once you know about Calicocutpants.com you Always. Have. To. Give. It’s like PBS, but more demonic. This remarkable sketch includes everything that’s great about this show, right down to characters with inexplicable idiosyncrasies like Tim Robinson’s adamance that doors must always be held open for him.

1. Ghost Tour

The funniest moment in ITYSL season 2 (and maybe the funniest moment in the history of the world) occurs in this sketch. Tim Robinson’s character has been admonished for his potty mouth during a ghost tour over and over again. The tour guide even said he’s ruining his job. But this poor man sincerely cannot understand why he’s in trouble. This is a tour for adults and he’s following the rules by using adult language. Like any good Robinson character, he truly believes that he’s the sane one and it’s the rest of the world that’s taking crazy pills.

So in his darkest moment, the man musters up his strength through tears and delivers the following query:

“Not trying to be funny. Not trying to get a laugh. I don’t want anybody to have the worst day at their job. But. Do any of these….fuckers….ever blast out of the wall and have, like a huge cum shot?”

Cue: riotous, damn near apocalyptic laughter. What a treasure and blessing this whole show is.

I Think You Should Leave season 2 is available to stream on Netflix now.

The post I Think You Should Leave Season 2: Ranking Every Sketch appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[terranoctis]

epic ii

As usual, there are spoilers for stories I’ve read below. You’ve been warned. Seemed fitting to finally finish up my writeup on the stories I read after the long day January 6th has been, and honestly rather fitting that the first novel I read this year was one about tolerance and diversity in an urban fantasy.

1. The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

I confess to being somewhat limited in my awareness of Russian folklore, but from what I do know from having read other books, I would say this novel is perhaps one of the best I’ve read in that vein. Arden writes fantastically in the way she weaves fairytale and folklore together to present a medieval Russian society that has magic and spirits. It’s a novel that reads much like an old folklore story while still having intriguing characters that drive the novel. Vasya is a strong and determined protagonist, and the way her interactions are written with the various spirits around her home, as well as the human characters are complex in ways that continued to surprise me throughout the book. It’s not an overly complex plot, but the charm of the novel lies in how it reads as a fairytale and is told beautifully in that same kind of folklore vein. I’m also struggling now to think if I’ve ever read a fantasy novel that has depicted snow as wonderfully as this novel, because I can’t recall a different one. It’s a novel that made me love curling up in bed, under my blankets, while I was exploring the Russian woods with Vasya. It felt like a fitting novel in the wake of the holidays in December (which is when I read it). I do think the ending could’ve been stronger, in terms of how the main conflict was resolved, but I also believe that it set up future stories. I’m excited to see how the rest of the trilogy plays out because I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I ended up staying up to finish this one because I wanted to keep reading.

2. Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

I love the general concept of The Wayward Children as a series, and I find that the concept of different worlds these children get lost in cements its foothold further with the twins Jack and Jill, moreso than in the previous novel. It’s not the longest read, but one that casts the magical aspects of world-traveling in a more somber light. The thing that surprised me more was that I felt this was less a tale of the horrors of the world Jack and Jill walked into than how it was a commentary about the monsters we become because of our upbringings. We learned from the first book in the series that Jill is a murderer, and this novel really cements how and why she becomes one, in all the confused nature of a child who wants affection. We see the way the neglect and the controlling nature of their parents drive the twins to act in certain ways that are out of the norm or are cruel. We see the way their natures are nurtured or twisted further based on the upbringings they receive in the moors; one receives mentoring and kindness, while the other receives twisted affections based only on loyalty. The story is presented as a gothic fairytale, and is wonderfully crafted, though it lends itself towards a type of cautionary tale. It feels somewhat incomplete, as we don’t get to see them returning to the world, but as a stand-alone tale of their loss of innocence... or rather, never being able to live through innocence because of their parents, it’s a strong read. I would dare say it’s a better read than the first because it allowed us to focus on a smaller cast of characters and the setting of the Moors with vampires and doctors who could bring people back to life was rather intriguing.

3. The Burning God by R.F. Kuang

Finally, the last novel to what has been one of my favorite series these last few years has been finished. It’s been rather rare for me to read fantasy novels written nowadays that write of the strains of militaristic war in both a brutal and tender manner, but R.F. Kuang has that down to a T. This may be because R.F. Kuang has done her research and study very much into the history of war in China and Japan (and in colonial warfare), but the trilogy and this novel are exceptionally well-written because of it. I recognize understanding of military campaigns and colonialism when I read it, and it’s well-conveyed in the novel. The story shines, however, because of the way the core characters are written. It’s anchored by the complex characterization of the main characters, which is the truly compelling part of the series. 

I’ve written several pieces before about how Runin, or Rin, is an anti-hero that truly would be the villain in any other story of this world. We sympathize with her because she is the protagonist we follow, but we understand as well the horrors of who she is becoming, down to the very end of the novel when she becomes the mirror of the man who hurt her and haunts her. The novel (and perhaps this trilogy), in a way, is about this desperate struggle of young soldiers who went to extreme measures to keep their country safe and united, only to understand that they’ve inherited a history of warfare and a bucket of problems from their predecessors. It’s about youth who fought for their ideals only to understand that their ideals would not yet be achievable due to the complexity of the world--and the trilogy ends on that note, with that ringing, cold reality. And we understand why, even if it’s such a painful ending. Sometimes, even forces like gods have to fall to the world or go insane before they recognize that. Even though Rin has a god in her head that is driving her insane, I also took her selfishness and insanity at the end as a presentation of post-traumatic stress disorder.

I think R.F. Kuang succeeds at writing suffering in her stories in a sympathetic manner, because I feel so much even when I recognize that such actions certain characters take are twisted. It’s a fitting ending, even if it’s such a fucking cold one. I knew from the very beginning of this trilogy that there wouldn’t be a happy ending for Runin. I hoped there would be for Kitay, but the truth is, he also stayed with her and chose that route, so there would never have been a happy ending for him either. No one wins in war. And sometimes violence is truly a cyclical story in more ways than one. 

This wasn’t a perfect novel and I don’t think it was my favorite of the series, but it’s one I deeply enjoyed immersing myself in. It was a strong, and in my opinion, a fitting end to what was a sprawling, wonderful trilogy about the monsters people can become for their ambition and ideals in war. Might have been kind of fitting that it was the last story I finished in 2020.

4. The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

I have heard numerous times that Jemisin is a brilliant writer, and though this is my first novel of hers, I can understand why such glowing praise has been given to her. This is an urban fantasy novel about cities being living beings, and the way it’s written is so utterly unique and charming that I can’t help but marvel at how she came up with it. I’ve read briefly that she might be inverting Lovecraftian themes, but as I’m less familiar with Lovecraft, I have no insight into my reading on that. Moreover, though I have an outsider’s view of New York City, I recognize this novel as one of the most elaborate love letters to New York City and its diversity I’ve ever read. I’m not a city girl, but if there is one city I love, it is New York--and this novel made me miss being in New York. 

It’s also a novel that is acutely aware of diversity in various ways and the reactions people have to diversity. I feel like this novel is one that is good to read in light of all the issues we have in institutional racism and how conversations are being held on extreme opposites in the spectrum, because Jemisin doesn’t shy away from it. One of the boroughs of New York, in fact, is represented by that kind of human who leans right, with prejudiced views given to her by alt-right parents and upbringings. It’s easy to forget that in a liberal city like New York how different conversations and views of the world are being had, but New York is a world in itself, of both people who have lived there all their lives and people who flock there from different cities. I love that the people who represent New York as living entities of the city are so very different--and that New York requires six people to represent it. Whether it’s Padmini as a non-citizen, Manhattan as a stranger to New York, or Brooklyn who has lived there all her life--there are so many walks of life in this city that are so emblematic of New Yorkers. And if anything, this novel is a hopeful story about that kind of diversity and how it comes together in adversity against entities that hope to bring it down. 

As my first novel of the year, I’m thrilled that it was such a brilliant read that weaves in matters that seem highly relevant to me and the society I live in. It was also one that seems to cast the conflict in shades of white supremacy and racism--or even just simple prejudices on various levels. Even the character that I’m prone to find a little more disdainful for being extremely conservative (Staten Island) I find a little sympathetic, because I’m witness to her upbringing and how people can twist those beliefs or hammer it in further (in this case, through the Woman in White and her desire to destroy the city). I’ve read numerous stories from fantasy and science fiction, but I don’t think I’ve read one that feels quite as modern or in the present as this one. There are many ways to interpret the whole concept of cities and the universes they kill for simply existing, but the complexity of it makes me fascinated. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of this trilogy and her other books, because she’s absolutely fantastic at worldbuilding and weaving in themes that make you think. Is it the most perfect novel? Do I think the last part of the novel has the greatest resolution? Not exactly, but still what a damn good read. 

It’s a novel where the main characters are all people of color and depicts a choice white character as a stereotype and an enemy. I suspect that may make some readers uncomfortable, but to those readers, I would ask them kindly to consider how many novels people of color have read over the years where they were marginalized, stereotyped characters. It’s the same kind of question those who denounced BLM movements entirely on the premise of All Lives Matter. Somehow this book feels like it mirrors our world and current events, even in a fantasy world. It feels more so, in the wake of BLM and the attempted coup that happened less than 24 hours ago.

As an aside, I love Veneza and Padmini.

[drinkthehalo]

Supernatural Season 12 - the Mary Winchester storyline

Of all the ridiculous things… I’ve fallen down the Supernatural rabbit hole.

Supernatural is the last fandom I’d have expected to sneak up on me. I stopped watching years ago and had been wishing that someone would put it out of its misery.

But then a few weeks ago, my friend mentioned that Sam and Dean’s mother was on the show as a regular character.  It piqued my curiosity.  A story that’s actually about the Winchester family, not the internal politics of Heaven or whatever random boring nonsense that caused me to stop watching?

So long story short - I was just in Shanghai (for the third time!) and when I wasn’t running around a dark hotel or drinking at a bar, I was waking up at 5am, jetlagged and half drunk, mainlining SPN. (Watching it in bed on my phone! Ha.)

To my complete shock, seasons 11 and 12 are GREAT. It's like the show took stock of everything it was doing wrong, remembered what had once made it awesome, and set about methodically fixing it.

If you are someone who also gave up on the show - watch 11x04 “Baby.” It made me laugh, made me cry, made me literally want to hug my television. It was such a gift to the audience, and a promise to do better. Proof that the show can still be absolutely wonderful when it puts in the effort.

Also, Dean Winchester. He’s one of the best fictional characters I’ve ever seen; he's so fucked up and he's also the most lovable thing ever. His combination of strength, fragility, competence, darkness, sweetness, silliness… His heroism and idealism and fatalism and self-abnegation… His joie de vivre, suicidal impulses, bitterness, weariness, ridiculousness and awkwardness… His badassery and heroism and codependence and tragedy.

Such a complex beautiful mess. Narratively, he is the gift that keeps on giving, the reason the show has lasted twelve years - you can just keep throwing stories at him and you get the most fascinating results.

I will be writing more about SPN. Sorry if you’re just here for the immersive theatre posts!

Here are my thoughts on the Mary Winchester storyline, which I LOVED -

It’s a complex, messy, fascinating story, where nobody is completely right and nobody is completely wrong, and you can sympathize with every character. It brings the show right back to the core of what made it good and interesting.

The three key things I loved about it:

I was pleasantly surprised at how it subverted my expectations

Mary herself was relatable, interesting, complex, and her choices raised intriguing ethical questions

Mary’s presence provided an opportunity to dive into the psychology and issues of Dean (especially) and Sam in a way we haven’t seen before

As soon as I heard that Mary was back, I was simultaneously afraid of the ways it could go wrong, and deeply intrigued by the possibilities it raised.

The most interesting thing the show had going on in its early days was the complexity of the boys’ relationship with their father. The success of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s career was a tragedy for Supernatural - once he was gone it just never had the same emotional intensity, though they did interesting things with flashbacks and time travel and pseudo-father figures.

But Mary - Mary has that same intense emotional resonance. She was the first character we saw in the Pilot, Dean’s deepest wish (in arguably the best episode of the show, 2x20) and Dean’s Heaven (5x16), the key to Dean’s character.

"I know [my mother] wanted me to be brave. I think about that every day. And I do my best to be brave." - Dean from 1x03 - what an amazing through-line to a story still unfolding twelve years later!

But… Supernatural doesn’t have a great track record with female characters. The original sin of the show - the reason I’ve always been a bit ambivalent about loving it so much - is how it portrays women as symbols that matter only in relation to men. The Pilot is egregious. Mary and Jess, in their ridiculous frilly white nightgowns, dying as motivation for the men to embark on their quests. In Supernatural, men have journeys. Men are subjects, with destinies, and “work to do.”  Men are multi-dimensional characters. Women are objects (in the early seasons - it’s gotten way better recently). We barely know Mary and Jess as characters, and don’t need to. Their deaths are not even about them; they’re about what they do to Sam and Dean.

Usually when Mary reappears in the show, it’s as a symbol, the embodiment of the ideal of motherhood. The love, safety, and care that Dean longs for. (Sam, interestingly, does not long for Mary the same way, both because he doesn’t remember her and because he had Dean as his mother figure. I have always adored that parallel, that Dean is like Mary and Sam is like John, which so subverts our expectations of how they present their gender roles, tough guy Dean and sensitive Sam.)

So my fear of season twelve was that we’d still see Mary a symbol. And THANK GOD they were smart enough to completely subvert that expectation, and make the story ABOUT the fact that Mary is an individual human being, not an ideal personification of motherhood.

When we meet this version of Mary, her whole world has been taken from her. Her husband is dead, her small children are lost to her. Her friends are thirty years older, or dead. I love how the show handles Mary’s reaction to the ubiquity of smartphones. It’s not a joke about moms being bad at technology. It’s profoundly disconcerting. It’s sad and strange, especially for a person so smart and competent to suddenly be in a world where she lacks foundational knowledge - it’s almost like everyone else speaks another language.  She doesn’t fit.

So she tries to find her way. She’s a fully-realized person, just as conflicted and complex as Sam and Dean, with her own goals, flaws, fears, vulnerabilities. (And THANK GOD she’s tough, not in need of her childrens’ protection.) 

I imagine myself in her position - with these two well-meaning, overwhelming adult children tracking her every move - and I completely understand her need to break away and carve a space for herself. The pressure and weight of their expectation, on top of everything else she’s going through, would be overwhelming.

As with the best writing in Supernatural, Mary makes choices that are not entirely wrong and not entirely right. Her embrace of the British Men of Letters is driven by guilt that her deal with Azazel destroyed her childrens’ lives, and her own need create a purpose for her life in this strange new world, and a sincere belief that it really will make the world a better place. It’s the same kind of complex psychological motivations that would drive Sam or Dean. (I have a whole other post brewing about that storyline, and about the unique and brilliant way that Supernatural’s handles moral ambiguity.)

Mary’s reaction to her adult children was so unexpected, but so right. One of those character-deepening twists that make perfect sense in retrospect.

Mary struggles with Dean, and connects more with Sam. This is what I mean about Supernatural being great at subverting expectations - because we’ve spent the entire series knowing that Dean is the one most shaped by Mary - the one who remembers her, who dreams of her, who longs for her, who can’t even say her name without flinching. And Sam is the one who doesn’t remember her - who tells Dean in the Pilot “If it weren't for pictures I wouldn't even know what Mom looks like.”

But it makes perfect sense. Sam, without the weight of a lifetime of expectations, treats Mary as an individual and tries to understand her needs. Dean struggles to see beyond what Mary means to him, and what he needs from her. Dean’s love is overwhelming, and suffocating.

There’s this great line in season twelve - I can’t remember where, but it’s when Sam and Dean are talking about the British Men of Letters, not quite agreeing or disagreeing, and Sam says something like “I know you think [whatever]” and Dean interrupts and says “WE think.” (Sorry, I need to rewatch and dig up the quote.) It’s borderline abusive, and it must be exhausting for Sam, to live with someone so overbearing that you’re not even allowed to have a different opinion.

The whole season deals with Dean’s abandonment complex - going right back to the heart of the Pilot, “I can’t do this alone.” Dean is so afraid of being abandoned that he clutches his loved ones way too closely.  We understand and sympathize because we know where it came from -  the death of his mother at four, the neglect from his father, twelve seasons of everyone he loves dying - but that doesn’t mean he would be easy to live with.

The line that kept running through my head when watching Dean this season is from Marilyn Manson - “When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed.”

Mary’s return is an incredible opportunity for character exploration and character growth for Dean. In many ways Dean is emotionally stuck at the age of four, unable to move on from the loss of his mother. He’s finally forced to recognize that his perceptions from that time were a tiny sliver of the truth, a four year old’s limited view.  Maybe these dreams need to be destroyed. You can’t live your entire adult life longing for the cocoon you were in when you were four. (Or, I mean you can, you’d be Dean Winchester, but it’s not healthy.)

Dean needed his mother’s love AS A FOUR YEAR OLD, and it’s devastating that it was ripped away from him, but for his own sanity he needs to move on. I love that Mary flat out tells him that he’s not a child anymore. He needs to hear it.

The other side of the story is Dean’s perspective, which is incredibly sympathetic. Supernatural does a brilliant job telling a complex story where no one is entirely right or wrong. Dean tries so hard. He knows he’s weird and socially awkward. He doesn’t want to scare Mary away. He wants so desperately for their relationship to work. The scenes of him angsting over what to text her are some of my favorite moments ever in the show. It’s so surreal and yet so truthful.

And I have to admit - as much as I loved Mary NOT functioning as stereotypical mother figure - I also LOVED when she finally found out how tragic the boys’ childhood was. It was completely cathartic for me as an audience member. Those boys went through more than any child should have to bear. Dean is so scarred by it, and he’s this amazing person so full of love and compassion and this beautiful vibrant light that has been twisted by these awful experiences he’s been through, and the audience has been watching him suffer for twelve years, longing for the equivalent of his mom to give him a hug.  (Just look at the bazillions of hurt/comfort fanfics.) The emotional payoff of that validation finally happening from his actual mother is enormous. Intense, and it would be indulgent if it wasn’t so EARNED.

I love that in their big conversation at the end of the season, Dean phrases it as all about what SAM went through.  Of course the entire audience is watching that scene going BUT DEAN. It’s Dean that Mary saves. It’s actually all about him, but he’d never say it.  Brilliant writing.

[swipestream]

The Black Thirst

‘There are girls here now, in this building, so much lovelier than I that I am humbled to think of them. No mortal man has ever seen them, except the Alendar, and he— is not wholly mortal. No mortal man will ever see them. They are not for sale. Eventually they will disappear. 

‘But the world never knows of these mysteries. No monarch on any planet known is rich enough to buy the loveliness hidden in the Minga’s innermost rooms. It is not for sale. For countless centuries the Alendars of the Minga have been breeding beauty, in higher and higher degrees, at infinite labour and cost— beauty to be locked in secret chambers, guarded most terribly, so that not even a whisper of it passes the outer walls, beauty that vanishes, suddenly, in a breath— like that! Where? Why? How? No one knows. 

‘And it is that I fear. I have not a fraction of the beauty I speak of, yet a fate like that is written for me— somehow I know. I have looked into the eyes of the Alendar, and— I know. And I am sure that I must look again into those blank black eyes, more deeply, more dreadfully…

–“The Black Thirst”, C. L. Moore

In C. L. Moore’s “The Black Thirst”, Northwest Smith is approached in secret by one of the fabled Minga women, a sheltered odalisque from a line of legendary beauties. Vaudir wishes to secure Smith’s services, an unheard of request from a secretive woman of beauty and virtue. Drawn by curiosity, Smith agrees, and meets Vaudir by the Minga castle’s back entrance, risking the wrath of its lord, the Alendar. The lovely Vaudir asks Northwest Smith to help her escape, for, by accident, Vaudir had met her lord’s eyes, and saw something utterly inhuman within his gaze. Now she fears that she will vanish like so many other Minga girls. But by telling him about the knowledge that has damned her, Vaudir recognizes that she has likely killed Smith as well. 

Despite Vaudir’s beauty, it is not her pretty face that suckers Northwest Smith into this caper. He demonstrates his resistance to her charms. Instead, it is mystery that lures him in. Minga girls don’t normally act like Vaudir–with reason, for spirit has been bred out of them. There is a vacancy in the Minga beauty that allows Northwest to resist, a beauty of form lacking spirit. As Northwest Smith’s encounter with Shambleau showed, it was her spirit and mystery that hooked him–and not the redhead’s Gorgon hair.

“Black Thirst” was written prior to World War Two, when science fiction and politics still had a fascination with eugenics not yet extinguished by the horrors of the Final Solution. Unlike contemporary science fiction stories like the Lensman series, “Black Thirst” delves into the potential horrors of eugenics, as the idea of humans bred like livestock is considered. But to what end? Where many of her contemporaries portrayed the guiding hand breeding generations of humanity as essentially benevolent, with the aim of improving the species, C. L. Moore instead worries that the breeder has a more sinister end in mind. A prized cow, no matter how exquisite a bloodline, may still end up on the dinner plate. And it is that fate that Vaudir seeks to escape–if she can.

C. L. Moore loves the Poisoned Garden trope. “Black God’s Shadow,” “The Black Thirst,” “Tree of Life,” and “Scarlet Dream” each feature their own dangerous garden, complete with hidden perils, heart-rending beauties, and doomed romances. This trope has a long history in weird fiction, tracing back to at least 1844 when Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” In it, a young woman, Beatrice, lives among a poisoned garden, guarded by her father and the poisonous plants. Giovanni falls in love with  her, but succumbs to the plants that have made Beatrice poisonous herself. The antidote he made to free her from the poisons of the garden instead kill her. (The text can be found here.) While “Black Thirst” is the purest example of Hawthorne’s influence on Moore’s storytelling, as it follows many of the same beats, the influence of the poisoned garden pervades her settings as a key element to the eeriness of her works.

Hawthorne is not the only Gothic influence upon C. L. Moore. In her “Afterward: On ‘Shambleau’ and Others,” found in The Best of C. L. Moore, she recalls the genesis of her first short story, “Shambleau”:

Midway down that yellow page I began fragments remembered from sophomore English at the university. All the choices were made at random. Keats, Browning, Byron— you name it. In the middle of this exercise a line from a poem (by William Morris?) worked itself to the front and I discovered myself typing something about a “red, running figure.” I looked at it a while, my mind a perfect blank, and then shifted mental gears without even adding punctuation to mark the spot, swinging with idiot confidence into the first lines of the story which ended up as “Shambleau.” 

For those who slept through English classes in college like me, Keats and Byron were second generation Romanticists, part of a movement of poets and authors that created, among other works, Gothic fantasies such as The Castle of Otranto and Frankenstein. Browning and Morris were Victorian poets (contemporary with the American romanticists Poe and Hawthorne) that adapted the lyrical and fantasy traditions of the second generation Romanticists into Victorian sensibilities. The distinction between the two periods is minor, as “One has difficulty determining with any accuracy where the Romantic Movement of the early nineteenth century leaves off and the Victorian Period begins because these traditions have so many aspects in common.” By her own admission, C. L. Moore had immersed herself in the classics from these men, and was familiar with the melancholy, mystery, individualism, and darkness that embodied their works and would soon be hallmarks of her own pre-Campbelline stories. In her Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry tales, Moore would become one of the last flowers of the Gothic tradition in science fiction, writing before Campbell’s twin revolutions in science fiction and fantasy removed these Romantic elements from American weird fiction.

  The Black Thirst published first on http://ift.tt/2zdiasi

[topmixtrends]

IN RETROSPECT, it seems clear that Norman Mailer, the author, director, columnist, TV personality, war veteran, and wild-eyed raconteur, developed a sense of himself over his varied career as playing the part of a character in a novel. As he wrote of himself in his enduring record of the 1960s war protest movement, The Armies of the Night: “His consolation in those hours when he was most uncharitable to himself is that taken at his very worst he was at least still worthy of being a character in a novel by Balzac, win one day, lose the next, and do it with boom! and baroque in the style.”

At several decades’ remove, Alex Gilvarry has taken Mailer up on his daydream (with apologies to Balzac), starting out with Norman Mailer and transmuting his essence into his own Alan Eastman. Eastman Was Here, premised on a trip to report the Vietnam War for the New York Herald that Mailer never in fact made, follows a once-celebrated author in the aftermath of his wife leaving him. To win her back, Eastman decides to venture out into harm’s way — or in the general direction of harm, where menace might be lurking in the streets outside his hotel in Saigon — and there encounters a talented, young journalist named Anne Channing. Not so much a story of the Vietnam War, Eastman Was Here explores the absurd excesses and shameful depredations of the masculine ego, somewhat in the manner that Jonathan Franzen renders his Lambert family patriarch vulnerable in The Corrections.

“Women commanded their own destiny,” thinks Alan Eastman, “unlike in his mother’s time. In fact, this is what he most admired about the women in his life. All of his past lovers had some big, commanding presence, an outward destiny, that made him feel the need to attach himself, for maybe that’s what made him happy.”

Well, at least Eastman’s heart is in the right place.

I set out to speak with Gilvarry, a friend, by first attending his book release party at McNally Jackson where he spoke with Saïd Sayrafiezadeh; then in Brooklyn at Greenlight Bookstore, where he was in conversation with his wife, Alexandra Kleeman. I wanted to hear what was said so that I didn’t ask the same questions when I got my chance. In the end, we discussed Eastman and Mailer, the place of the “macho male chauvinist” and obscenity in contemporary fiction, finding sympathy in satire, and the concept of authorial humility.

¤

J. T. PRICE: Eastman Was Here, like your first novel, From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, pivots between two seemingly incongruous “worlds”: in the case of the earlier book, fashion in New York City and captivity in Guantanamo Bay, and now in the current, high-wire literary salons and high-tension Saigon during the Vietnam War. What is it about spanning incongruous social spheres that attracts you as an author?

ALEX GILVARRY: I want a book to bring me into a world I’ve never been to before. That’s an amazing feeling when it happens, when as a reader you’re fully immersed. Many of the locations I write about attract me with their problems, their people, or through nostalgia. Like the literary world of the past. I’m not really nostalgic for the martini lunches and all that. But in the book there’s a point where Eastman takes a walk down old Book Row in New York and remembers his life and career in the ’50s. Those are the moments I’m looking for.

Was there a particular scene that served as the genesis of this book? That walk down old Book Row, now gone, is a vivid one for those of us who love old books.

Not really. I started at the beginning, in chapter one. An aging journalist in his house who has just been left by his wife of 10 years. It all started from there.

Satire often registers as unkind to its subjects. Several riotous set pieces aside, Eastman Was Here does not feel purely satirical. How did you find your right balance between satire and sympathy in writing Eastman?

I think because in my mind I wasn’t writing a satire. I was writing a roman à clef, like The Moon and Sixpence or something. All I was thinking about was the character and taking his story as seriously as possible, and maybe that’s where the sympathy comes from. It turns out this can be read as a satire, for sure. But I wrote it as a story based on real life.

Your character, Anne Channing, an intrepid photographer and war reporter, stands as a foil to Eastman’s washed-up celeb status. All the same, in the story, she confesses to feeling drawn to him. Stepping from the novel’s “reality” to our own real lives, what is appealing about Norman Mailer as a writer, in the books of his that you see as his best?

Anne Channing is attracted to Eastman in the way that we are sometimes attracted to people who aren’t good for us. I think we can all relate to that, at some point in our lives.

Mailer was first appealing to me as a controversial figure. I knew his reputation as a rabble-rouser and someone who would knock your teeth out before I had read any of his books. And then when I was in college I remember watching a screening of Town Bloody Hall in a literature class, and from that film, I found his reputation to be quite true. He talked very fast and sometimes didn’t make any sense to me …

Then when I went to the Mailer Writers Colony in Provincetown, I was forced to look at Mailer as a writer. To be honest, before this, I had no desire to read him. But there I discovered some good things and some you might expect. The contempt for feminism, the willingness to pounce on anyone who offended him. Though some of the books hold up. Like Advertisements for Myself — which shows the male mind and ego of a writer in the ’50s. And The Armies of the Night, which is a great snapshot of literary life and politics during the ’60s. Armies is probably the most relevant book to read today, as it shows a country divided and the meaning of protest and the doubts protesters may feel.

Yes, The Armies of the Night is terrific and relevant.

Isn’t it? That’s Mailer’s sweet spot. He’s learned humility. Arguably, not always present in his other work.

Also, The Executioner’s Song is really good for true-crime heads. So for anyone interested in those subjects, please, read him. His thoughts on ancient Egypt and good and evil and God I’m not so crazy about.

You and I have had beers before. Let’s pretend for a moment we’re having beers now. Norman Mailer, circa the late ’50s, walks into the bar and shouts out your name. “Gilvarry,” he says, approaching, “I’ll have you know that I read what you may call ‘a novel’ but I call…” and here he unleashes a string of choice obscenities while waving his arms around in aggravated ape fashion. How do you respond? (I’ve ducked bravely beneath a nearby table.)

[Laughs.] You see, writers like us today are not good at handling confrontation. So my initial instinct would be to duck under the table with you. But I suppose since there’s no way out, I’d tell him I read his last hand job of a novel, too, and found it as exciting as watching paint dry.

And things would only escalate from there.

Mailer, from what I learned from his friends and family, liked to spar a bit. You have to hit these guys back or they won’t respect you.

Once almost baited Sonny Liston into a fight, or so he claimed.

He also claimed that he was five foot ten. He liked to exaggerate.

Much fun is had in Eastman Was Here at the expense of Eastman’s Mailer-like ego, which made me think of the sensibility of the novel as somehow deeply informed by its opposite: authorial humility. How would you describe that quality, i.e., what does it mean to you? Say, within the context of, let’s call it, contemporary letters — our present-day book publishing scene?

That’s a very good read. You have to combat your ego with humility I think. It takes an ego to think anyone would want to read what you write. But I realize that it’s only a book, a novel, a fiction that I’ve written. In the scheme of things — considering all of media and entertainment today — it’s a very small spec.

I’ve heard you tell of the research you did for this novel, traveling to the Harry Ransom Center in Texas. What was it like studying the life and letters of a writer who moved during most of his career under the hot lights of literary celebrity and then to find that now, among the younger generation, he goes relatively unread?

You see, Mailer was important in his day and people treated him with importance. He was a literary celebrity, and he could do anything he wanted artistically or in journalism. (With the exception of writing in The New Yorker, I don’t think he had an easy time over there.)

Ah, The New Yorker. Holding the line, then and now.

Going into anyone’s personal and professional archive is a thrill. You get to know what they were really thinking about so and so. You get to see them at their most vulnerable and at their most proud. It’s an incredible adventure. But the best letters were not those regarding celebrity or literary fights. The best letters were those he might have sent to his first wife while he was stationed in the Philippines. You discover love and passion, and then you fast-forward and they broke up. This stuff can be heartbreaking. What a debt I owe to the Ransom Center.

Indeed. Beautiful, unexpected little recorded moments of consciousness. And reconciling that, as you read, with both his outsized reputation then and where he stands with the readers of today.

Yes, that’s pretty much what you begin to feel. But I was writing a novel so I was looking for ways into a very hardened, unlikable character. So I’m not saying, “Hey, let’s give these old dead white guys a chance!” For my purposes, in crafting a fiction, I found a way into a character. Reconciling with the way readers feel about Mailer today is hard to change. He wrote what he wrote, said what he said, hurt some people along the way. A reputation is not yours to control.

Is Eastman Was Here a feminist novel? I think it’s compelling, how even as an exploration of the grandiosity and excesses of male ego, the cover shows us a ghostly vision of a woman … as if that is what most constitutes, or haunts, Eastman’s interiority. (And in the story you write, yes, it is.)

Yes. It didn’t set out to be. But the women in this novel are feminists or embody feminist ideas because I believe in them too.

Nowhere in our contemporary lit landscape do we find a presence like Mailer — at least one as outwardly outrageous as he was. We might even say that the qualities of personality Mailer performed have been “repressed” within our contemporary scene. Meanwhile, the man sitting in the Oval Office has reared up in our collective consciousness like some sort of monstrous Mailer-esque id: an outer-borough born creature of tabloid celebrity, ego-driven, quick to hold grudges and pick senseless fights, scornful of “P.C.” culture, self-destructive, vain … yet also — decidedly unlike Mailer! — completely ignorant of contemporary literature. Maybe I’m getting a little vainglorious here, but in some sense, was Mailer as literary celebrity a sort of three-headed dog that kept darker forces of raging male id somehow at bay?

It’s a good thing that the qualities that Mailer exhibited, the macho male chauvinist, have been repressed. Not repressed, but cast out of literature, exiled altogether. A year ago I would have said that this had no place in politics either. My god, how wrong we were. Trump, by acting like an imbecile and a chauvinist, has signaled that hateful rhetoric and behavior is now okay. But this is beyond a culture war. Real policies are at stake in all aspects of American life and that’s what I want to concentrate my energy on now.

Here’s a passage from The Armies of the Night that I take to be Mailer giving a summation of his work:

He was off into obscenity. It gave a heartiness like the blood of beef tea to his associations. There was no villainy in obscenity for him, just — paradoxically, characteristically — his love for America. […] What none of the editorial writers ever mentioned was that that noble common man was obscene as an old goat, and his obscenity was what saved him. The sanity of said common democratic man was in his humor, his humor was in his obscenity.

On an immediate level, Mailer’s talking about himself. But is it true about America at large, do you think? By “casting out” that rollicking obscenity that Mailer sees as endemic to the sanity of common democratic man, does literature lose something?

When thinking of Donald Trump and the shameful America he envisions, there might be a bit of truth to this saying. But god, the “heartiness like the blood of beef tea,” what a terrible turn of phrase. So Mailer. Each book had some of his best stuff and some of his worst.

Beef tea. I’m going to have that taste in my mouth for the rest of the day. Eck.

¤

J. T. Price’s fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from The New England Review, Post Road Magazine, Joyland, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere.

The post “A Reputation Is Not Yours to Control”: A Conversation with Alex Gilvarry, Author of “Eastman Was Here” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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