i. What I'm reading & viewing in August
A few recommendations for this multi-genre loving community
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Our summer holidays happened in July this year, but I still spent (am spending) August in holiday mode after work — at the local swimming pool, down by the Rhine River, or with a cold drink watching films at home. Below are some of the texts that accompanied me on this journey.
All Hands on Deck (À l’abordage)
Guillaume Brac, France, Film, 2020
I viewed this film on MUBI, which is my favorite platform for foreign and indie films (even if the search function and interface are not always the most helpful). I hadn’t heard of the film before, so it was an unexpected treat while I just wanted an evening of light French viewing.
This gorgeous comedy shows us France vacationland for ordinary people. Picnics, dips in the river, nights at the local bar, struggles to find babysitters… The two love stories are completely fresh. One is a love-at-first-sight tale, where the guy from a different world runs after the girl to surprise her on a summer holiday with her parents and sister (only to be pretty much ignored from the start). The other is that of the sweet, ‘unloveable’ teen named Chérif (Salif Cissé) who connects first with a baby and then her mom, rather than the other way around.
The film is ultimately about letting go of expectations and societal pressures, about releasing oneself to a life of joy through simple pleasures and unexpected relationships.
To Walk Alone in the Crowd (Un andar solitario entre la gente)
Antonio Muñoz Molina (translated from the Spanish by Guillermo Bleichmar), novel, 2022
I loved this wild ride of poem-prose riddled with allusions to Poe, Baudelaire, Benjamin, Joyce, Melville, De Quincey, and other writers. The book is classified as a novel, but it’s something different — part memoir, part literary journal, part poetry…it is outside of classification.
There are poignant and shocking reflections with echos from current events around 2016, such as one after the Nice terrorist attacks (pp. 117-9):
I saw bodies flying like bowling pins.
I heard noises and screams that I will never forget.
…
I was paralyzed. I could not move.
All around me was sheer panic.
In discussing the feeling of loneliness and shock in the crowds of Nice, we understand the way the narrator also feels in the contemporary world. He floats through cities and loves to observe like a flâneur (Baudelaire) or like someone piecing together the world through architecture, history, and literature (Benjamin)…but has a haunting paralysis like the characters of Joyce’s Dubliners. He is always a kind of outsider and he is dealing with an unspoken grief, a strange time in his life.
The book is set just before the pandemic but seems to anticipate the alienation most of us have sense felt. And through this dissonance, the narrator also reflects on the love he has for his wife, often experienced as an abstract feeling that is completely private to the two of them, wherever they happen to be spending the night.
A couple other books I enjoyed this summer for very different reasons were No One is Talking About This (Patricia Lockwood, 2021) and Beautiful World, Where are You (Sally Rooney, 2021). I keep track of my book reading, more or less, on Goodreads. I’ve also been recommended to use StoryGraph, since it is not linked to Amazon (hoorah), but it is a little more problematic as an author. There are a bunch of alternatives, as well as a little notebook at home (which I’ve also tried, but I want to be able to take it everywhere). What do you all use, if anything?
When You See Yourself
Kings of Leon, Album, 2021
Recently, I’ve been returning to album listening. I know some of you never left it. I don’t have a record player, but I do welcome the change in Spotify default settings to un-randomize album listening (per Adele’s request), to gain the narrative and aesthetic experience determined by the artist. The change luckily coincided with Radiohead’s Kid A Mnsesia: “An upside-down digital/analogue universe created from original artwork and recordings to commemorate 21 years of Kid A and Amnesiac,” which made it immediately clear what all the please-play-it-in-order fuss was about.
This month, one album I picked up from last year is this one by Kings of Leon in anticipation of the music festival I went to last night in Zurich. The sound is similar to older albums; a fan can easily float into these songs as if they are already familiar, but with less edge. Maybe that sounds a bit boring, maybe it is, but I would add that this album is more varied and experimental than recent ones. Although it still lacks the edge of earlier releases, maybe this newer sound is more unifying or poetic move in their artistry.
As Jeremy Winograd says in an album review for Slant,
On the few occasions where the album’s tempo kicks up a notch, Caleb’s lack of gravitas is easily overshadowed by the band’s energy and synergy. “The Bandit” and “Echoing,” both buoyed by Matthew’s sprightly riffing, are the most rousing, organic-sounding rock songs that Kings of Leon have released in ages. Don’t call it a comeback, but with enough moments like those scattered throughout, it leaves the door cracked for the possibility of a new beginning.
The two songs named above are probably my favorite, but I do agree with the criticism of safe music. Still, I would disagree about his scathing take on the lyrics to “100,000 People”: “inspired by his father-in-law’s struggles with dementia, he uses up as much space describing the layout of the protagonist’s nursing home as he does getting at the song’s emotional core.” Personally, I love literature that uses place to effect and think the song is as much about a change in one’s home due to circumstance and what that means one gives up. “Parlor games and six o'clock news /
Hands of a stranger touching you”…these lines show an attempt at real life inside care home and the impossibility of creating it.
And anyway, I like evolution, even if it isn’t perfect. More on the concert next week.
The Believer Magazine
The Believer has been around since 2003. I used to love receiving the square journal with cardboard-like pages, including edgy writing, reading and film recs, and essays by writers such as Zadie Smith and Nick Hornby. I subscribed to the paper version back then after discovering it at a Harvard Square bookshop, and later subscribed to the digital version while living abroad. It was like entering a different world of artists’ mindsets. This month, I went back to some favorites, such as ‘The All: in praise of generalism’ (Ross Simonini) and ‘That Crafty Feeling’ (Zadie Smith).
But for a while now, the magazine was in trouble due to financial viability. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, The Believer Magazine is coming ‘home’ to McSweeney’s. They will have a special homecoming issue in November. I’m proud to say I contributed to this campaign and happy that supporters were able to protect this great literary journal from its demise and bring it back from transgression and look forward to receiving the next issue.
McSweeney’s submitted an offer to take back the publication that included maintaining paid internships for students and workshops with visiting authors, emphasizing the magazine’s literary mission and opportunities for students, something McSweeney’s management said they were encouraged to do by the university.
Although this offer initially fell through, the campaign eventually won. It’s a reminder that the arts can survive when we recognize their value.
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