Between Heaven and Hell - Peter Kreeft (1982; 2008)

The world recently lost Sinead O'Connor (she was 56). Last night, I watched a documentary on her. I was ten years old in her heyday, and my experience of her largely centered around comparisons between our hairstyles: I often opted for buzz cuts at the time and people often chided me that I looked like her. I might have seen her rip up the photo of John Paul II on SNL, but the meaning of the action was lost on me at the time. 

On the last day of last year, it was Pope Benedict XVI's turn (he was 95), and the documentary seems to indicate that both Popes played roles in covering up the rampant sex abuse in the Catholic Church. I always considered John Paul more respectable than Benedict, and the documentary does pause for a moment to acknowledge more specific actions by Benedict, but neither seem nearly infallible as our current Pope who, while not perfect, is certainly the most admirable in my lifetime thus far. 

However, I still read Benedict's obituary in the Wall Street Journal. For better or worse, I waded into the comments, and certain elements of his philosophical views were discussed. For there are different shades to Christianity and Catholicism that may lead to vastly different views on what it means to live a Good Life. 

One person mentioned Between Heaven and Hell, perhaps comparing Benedict's ideology with that of C.S. Lewis, in this book. I can't recall and I have nothing further to say on Benedict, but this is how I came to reserve this book at the library. 

***

This book is 115 pages long and was renewed from the library 8 times. Like Aliss at the Fire, that should be all you need to know about how compelling I found it. The conceit, or concept, however, was compelling enough that I wanted to check it out.

In essence, this book is a 3-person play. It might be more interesting to see it performed as a play, but then again I would probably find it maddening. For this is not a story, per se; rather, a dialogue between famous personages in a certain setting.

The setting is purgatorio and the date is November 22, 1963 and the players are John F. Kennedy, Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis.

That alone was compelling. Particularly since November 22 remains a date of many birthdays in my circle. I recently found out that my younger brother will turn 44 on 11/22/33 and I considered this some sort of numerological omen. This year will bring the 60th anniversary of that date, and so a review of this book seems timely. 

We all know that President Kennedy was assassinated on 11/22/63. Many of us know that Aldous Huxley died that same day (a hero to just as many of us as Kennedy was). However, I did not know how Huxley died, and so one of the more titillating parts of the book arrived in the epilogue:

"The three deaths were as different as the three lives had been, and providentially perfect templates of the three philosophies of life that had motivated them. Kennedy was murdered by an assassin; for he who lives by politics may die by politics, as 'he who lives by the sword will die by the sword' (Matthew 26:52). Huxley died of an LSD overdose while experimenting with mystical experience; for he who lives by man-made mysticisms will die by man-made mysticisms. Lewis died of bone disease, a few years after he had taken the pain of his dying wife's bone cancer out of her body and into his, beside her bedside; for he who lives by the Way of Exchange will die by the Way of Exchange. Like Christ, he offered God his own life for hers, and on November 22, God accepted the offer." (122)

That excerpt lets the cat out of the bag: it is clear that Kreeft ascribes to the viewpoints expressed by C.S. Lewis in this text. Now then, I had no idea that C.S. Lewis also died on this same day (nor that he was also known as "Jack" by his friends), and I have very little knowledge of him in general. A friend had recommended The Screwtape Letters to me, many years ago, and that is something I've been meaning to get around to for years, and hopefully one day will. I see him like I see J.R.R. Tolkien (whom I also haven't read), but further towards philosophy than fantasy on the storytelling spectrum. 

I'm not aware of Huxley's religious affiliation but it seems clear that Buddhism is his lodestar. It's worth noting that Huxley is far more incidental in this book than the other two. The primary dialogue in this book is between JFK and Lewis; there is a second dialogue between Huxley and Lewis that is quite a bit shorter, and probably also the best part of the book, though that isn't saying all that much (for me, personally). 

*

One problem I had with this book was the epilogue, for it revealed the book to be Christian propaganda. Now I am raised Roman Catholic and went to Catholic School for 10 years and I am a lapsed Catholic but I greatly enjoyed seeing the Vatican and felt that there should be some kind of birthright trip in order to bolster participation in the Church and to redeem itself from its sordid history--for that sordid history is quite probably the most damning lie over the past 2,000 years of human progress. We believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and we expect him to forgive us all our sins--so I guess that means we can do some of the most horrible things imaginable, go to confession, and get a clean slate, and we're all good? It's a convenient way out of personal accountability. It's a license to behave badly. Nobody is perfect, and believe me, I am not perfect, but this purported forgiveness of sins is problematic insofar as it can lead to a delusional sense of morality. Now of course, we do not encourage people to sin, we encourage them to love their neighbors as themselves, to love God and hold Jesus up as a role model and try to exhibit the goodness that he represents. But we fail and they all know we are going to fail and they all know they fail, quite inveterately. And they want money, lots of it. There's the aspirational part of the Catholic Church and there's the functional part of the Catholic Church and while there is a certain sense that they have acknowledged this "problem" and are taking steps to stop such crimes from happening in the future, some of the hypocrisies of the Church temper such encouraging feelings. Pope Francis, however, has been about as good a Pope as he can be, working within the political framework of the Institution. 

Kreeft may not have had any idea that such things were happening in 1982, but most certainly should have in 2008. I believe this is conveniently ignored in the epilogue. Then again, this is not exactly a recommendation to convert to Catholicism because it is the One True Way (though it feels that way). 

Really, Kreeft wanted to write a philosophical dialogue, much like Plato did for Socrates. Socrates did not author any works, nor did Jesus, and they are lumped together in this book as "sages" (along with Buddha, Confucius and perhaps Lao Tzu). Other people have to tell their story. Kreeft considers Plato to be singular: "It is surely an almost clumsily obvious piece of divine providence that the father of all philosophy, who wrote nothing of himself (like Jesus and like Buddha), should have history's greatest philosophical poet, Plato, as his biographer." (120)

In Between Heaven and Hell, C.S. Lewis plays the role of Socrates, and JFK/Huxley play the role of Glaucon, albeit more challenging "pupils." The dialogue itself is a Platonic dialogue for beginners on the purported divinity of Christ. There are dialectics in it, and it is not like reading a play. It is not really entertaining. It is somewhat informative. It is an educational tool. The pages have glosses on them that summarize the main point of that section of dialogue ["Jesus, the guru to the Jews?"; "Six crucial differences between Jesus and the gurus"; "(1) God as personal"; "(2) God as Creator"; "(3) God as knowable"; "(4) God as good, not 'beyond good and evil'"; "(5) What must I do to be saved?"; "(6) Hell."]

I don't know what else to say about this book. Based on the above, you can decide for yourself if you want to read it. I don't really recommend it, unfortunately. If you haven't read Brave New World, please, do yourself a favor and read that instead. I also read The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (ironic that the title for this book is so similar; its debt is owed to Lewis, not Huxley) and would recommend those over this. And you need to read Republic or perhaps other things by Plato to "get" this. In short, there are many other texts that one could read that will offer the same or similar revelations.

This is, however, the type of book that can be assigned in high school or college-level philosophy courses. It is useful in its own way. It's short enough that it can fit easily into any syllabus. And the famous people ostensibly add a layer of human interest to the proceedings. 

But ultimately it is propaganda. Though Lewis's argument ultimately "wins" the debate at hand, the debate is fixed from the start. Credit Kreeft for examining Christianity through a philosophical lens and offering up his own Defense of Christianity, but know that he reveals himself to be a zealot in the epilogue and post-script.  Fortunately, the players do not opine on the sin-status of homosexuality, but perhaps if written today, the issue would find its way into the text. 

One excerpt to give a flavor, on knowing that miracles can't happen:

"Lewis: I might ask you what Professor Kirke asked Peter: How do you know that? Has science proved that miracles can't happen? But I've put that line of argument into another of my books, Miracles....No, I didn't think you had read it...and I'd rather follow out the psychological line of argument now. The point of my reference to Lucy was to show that like Lucy and like Buddha, Jesus says incredible things, and like Lucy and like Buddha, Jesus is a credible person. So we must either believe his unbelievable claim or disbelieve his believable personality, his personal credibility.

Kennedy: Let's examine his personality, then, though I'm not sure where it will take us. I do know something about human nature, and human history, and great men of the past. I too wrote a book, you know, Profiles in Courage. No? You haven't read mine either? Well, we're even then. But go ahead with the argument.

Lewis: Let us divide all people into four categories....

Kennedy: Oh, oh. Here we go again. Black-or-white thinking.

Lewis: But surely there are categories. The only question is whether they are appropriate, fitting to the real. 

Kennedy: I don't like divisions among people. 

Lewis: But all categories are divisions, classifications, outlines. 

Kennedy: Putting people into classes has done immense harm throughout human history. 

Lewis: Really dividing people, yes. But not mentally dividing them. For instance, to mentally distinguish male and female is good, and necessary (how confused we would be if we couldn't, or wouldn't, as some seem to nowadays). But to really divide them, to isolate them, is usually bad. In fact, to unite them most fruitfully, you must mentally divide them most clearly: vive la difference, and all that. (52-53)

That is one of the more entertaining sections of the book, so be aware that it is not always as intriguing. Miracle is an odd word. It can refer to a miracle performed by Jesus (turning water into wine) or an unbelievably good event. It is not a miracle that the Cubs won in 2016 but many people referred to it as such. It is a miracle when terminal illness is cured, and such situations have been known to occur (exceedingly rare and improbable as they are). There are miraculous survivals, and there are miraculous achievements, but a true Miracle--well, to witness one would be the greatest proof of divine forces at work in this world. 

*

Once many years ago during sailing school, I had been put in an Optimist, which is a 1-person boat. The bay was rather rough that day, and while I agreed to take an Optimist, I was very scared. I didn't tell anyone and I kept it to myself and wanted to be brave and prove to myself that I could handle the rough conditions, that my boat wouldn't capsize, but I prayed in my head that something would prevent me from being forced into that situation. 

Fortunately, someone soon offered me the alternative of getting into a Beatle-Cat instead. I accepted that offer, and crewed the boat with two other people, and saw a few other schoolmates in Optimists, bailing water out of their vessels. I felt that God had answered my prayers and saved me from a dangerous situation. 

* 

In hindsight, I was easily convinced. I was still technically in Catholic School at the time, and after going away to boarding school, alone, I did not attend nearly as many services. Many of my classmates were Jewish, and other religious viewpoints entered into my worldview. By the end of high school I defined myself as Agnostic (and I still do, from a certain angle).

Shortly before college, then, a certain incident of running into a certain person at a certain specific time, under rather improbable circumstances, a coincidental encounter of the highest kind, convinced me of proof of divinity in this world. People bandy about the phrase "butterfly effect" and we cannot know how real it is, but ultimately, that is the more accurate explanation for the reality of our existence. Cause and effect, intentional choices, accidents, conflicted decision-making---all affect how we move through this world and comprise the substance of our experience. Perhaps God put everything in place at the beginning, and let human beings do what they would, and that is about as far as I am willing to go. 

In other words, Kreeft (and Lewis, really) did not convince me to embrace Catholicism wholeheartedly and without reservation. I wasn't looking for that from this book; I was looking for a modern philosophy book. And while this is a simplified and streamlined version of one, there are other texts that may impart wisdom that do not quite feel like a fait accompli from the start. As a "reboot" and variation of the Platonic dialogues from a more modern perspective, it is not a failure.  

Grade: C+

The Shards - Bret Easton Ellis (2023)

Flying Houses is no longer a book review blog; it is a blog devoted to reviewing the books of Bret Easton Ellis. I kid, but this is just our third [book review] post of 2023, and the first post was for Glamorama. In that review, I suggested that Glamorama was, in fact, BEE's greatest novel, and upon re-reading, I had second thoughts. I revised that opinion to Less Than Zero. And right when I posted that review, The Shards was released, and I saw that it was longer than Glamorama, and I knew it had something to do with his earlier life, around the time he was putting the pieces of Less Than Zero together, while still in high school.

I had also listened to this podcast and recalled certain nefarious details of violent crimes being committed in Los Angeles around that time that reached closer towards Ellis's social circle. I do believe there was a serial killer on the loose, but will need to relisten to reference this with any kind of specificity. I will say that this podcast is interesting to listen to both before and after reading The Shards, because the host tends to conflate the characters in Less Than Zero with friends and acquaintances from Ellis's life. While that may have been true, The Shards takes that as a cue to present a more extreme example. 

It is not unlike Lunar Park, in this respect, which is Ellis casting himself as the protagonist. Unlike Lunar Park, it takes place in the past, and at first blush, it is far more believable. 

I might as well just come out and say it: for the first 200 pages or so, I felt completely convinced that this was Ellis's greatest novel. It basically is Less Than Zero, writ-large, and four hundred pages longer. But by page 400, that feeling started to wane. At its conclusion, I had to place it in slot #2 behind Less Than Zero. I feel confident in stating it is his 2nd best, and LTZ is only #1 because of its rapid-fire style and cultural/industry impact. By contrast, The Shards is the epitome of a slow burn.

***

Over the first 200 pages, Ellis does the best work in his career. This is saying something. Because it felt like he "lost it," really, since Glamorama, and that is now *twenty-five-years* in the past. But Glamorama is still a really fucked up book, and arguably he had "lost it" since Rules of Attraction, which was a follow-up that walked along similar lines as Less Than Zero, and now here, The Shards has as well. Ellis was a baby when he wrote those first two books. Now he is approaching senior citizenship, and while still one of the most famous American authors, this is the "comeback" that he hasn't ever particularly cared about making. He still has it, he never lost it, even though White made it seem like he had become a cranky old man and mostly interested in "yelling at clouds." 

He didn't "lose it," but his r'aison d'etre shifted. Things changed after Glamorama. Lunar Park is a truly bizarre novel, far from an abject failure, but an attempt at a genre exercise, or rather a nudge in the direction of genre fiction. It was his ode to Stephen King, and so too The Shards owes a certain debt to King. While Lunar Park mined quiet domestic bliss with a hazy undercurrent of nameless dread, it felt more suggestive than visceral. It would fall into the horror genre, but it was not an aggressive example of such. (Note: I haven't read Lunar Park more than once, I used to have a copy in 2006 or so, but I think I lent it and never got it back; so my memory of it is "hazy," too.) 

After that, there was Imperial Bedrooms, the sequel to Less Than Zero, but similarly, a genre exercise--this time "detective fiction" or "crime noir." It was enjoyable and fun, amusing, but felt like something of a truc, somewhat slight, almost like he was writing it to cash in on previous success. Then he apparently did work in film, most notably The Canyons, which I barely recall seeing. Then there was White, which was his first book in 10 years, a collection of essays, a good portion of them previously published. And now finally in the opening pages of The Shards, he pulls back the curtain to explain this career trajectory:

"After that night [which involved a panic attack and ambulance ride in 2006] I abandoned the project and instead wrote two others book during the following thirteen years, and it wasn't until 2020 that I felt I could begin The Shards, or The Shards had decided that Bret was ready because the book was announcing itself to me--and not the other way around. I hadn't reached out to the book because I spent so many years pushing myself away from the dream, from Robert Mallory, from that senior year at Buckley; so many decades spent pushing away from the Trawler, and Susan and Thom and Deborah and Ryan, and what happened to Matt Kellner; I had relegated this story to the dark corner of the closet and for many years this avoidance worked--I didn't pay as much attention to the book and it stopped calling out to me. But sometime during 2019 it began climbing its way back, pulsing with a life of its own, wanting to merge with me, expanding into my consciousness in such a persuasive way that I couldn't ignore it any longer--trying to ignore it had become a distraction. This particular timing had coincided with the fact that I wasn't writing screenplays anymore, that I had decided at a certain point to stop chasing that game--a decade of being well compensated for TV pilots and scripts for movies that would mostly never be made--and I briefly wondered if there was a connection between the book beckoning to me and the new lack of interest in writing for Hollywood. It didn't matter: I had to write the book because I needed to resolve what happened--it was finally time." (6-7)

The book thus introduces itself in grand fashion, and its propulsive energy does not abate until roughly the halfway point. It gets a lot of mileage out of autofiction. Autofiction can be a cheap, lazy device, not unlike voice-over narrative in film--but I have a soft-spot for voice-over narrative in film, and so too for autofiction, because it can sometimes best explore the artist's intent and motivation, and offer the most profound insights they've uncovered over the course of their career. It can feel lazy if you are trying to write a 5 paragraph essay on symbol and metaphor in this book, when you need to do literary detective work and interpret the "text" through a pre-determined lens (Feminist, Queer, Marxist, etc.). You can't do that with this book. It's like a big piece of candy. Less Than Zero is basically a pixie stick, and The Shards is basically a giant pixie stick. While the characters and motifs here are all "arch" and have a certain intellectual underpinning (primarily Ellis's admiration for Joan Didion), it is lurid, graphic, gory, prurient, and yes, cliched. 

But what separates it from the rest of his oeuvre, like Less Than Zero, is the era, and his ability to create atmosphere out of it. Ellis was the same age, or even younger than the characters in Less Than Zero when he wrote it. He writes this about 40 years later, and he inhabits that same perspective brilliantly. 

There are two novels here: one is a coming-of-age novel about a senior year in high school and getting ready to get away from everyone and starting a more authentic life; the other is an 80's slasher flick about teenagers doing drugs and having sex and getting slaughtered by a killer on the loose. The magic of the novel is that Ellis ties them together seamlessly. He does this so well that the reader will constantly question whether it is really autobiographical. At least this was the case for me. 

I will do my best to avoid spoilers here but the novel is at its best when it is working from this perspective: Ellis knows his own notoriety and presence as a faded literary icon, and he fashions an origin story befitting that perfectly. The narrative detail from the period is so precise and intricately observed that one cannot discount its veracity. 

***

This does, however, lead to my sole criticism of the book, which is that it moves slow. This is probably intentional. I didn't mind all that much. But others have criticized this book for some of the dialogue, that it becomes inane and cliched and devolves into "basic" tropes. Yes perhaps, but so did all 80's movies, and while I do think this is a Great Novel, I have trouble putting it on the Best Books list. 

This a book of two halves, similar to Glamorama being three "parts" of varying quality. The first half of this book is just stellar. It really does announce itself as being the book that everyone should be reading as their 2023 summertime beach read. Maybe it wouldn't get shortlisted (or even longlisted) for the Booker Prize, but it's a lot better than Gone Girl (which I liked too!). There is actually more in common with that book than appears at first glance. BEE hasn't had a "hit" since American Psycho, to put it mildly incorrectly--a Glamorama film could be a dazzling misunderstood classic if adapted, like some people sometimes say about Southland Tales (that odd Donnie Darko 2007 follow-up that is mostly forgotten but which may be sort of brilliant) . The Shards finally would make for the best adaptation for a multitude of reasons (including societal repression in the early 80's vis-a-vis mainstream depictions of gay/bi relations; the movie would have no audience in 1985 with an "openly closeted" narrator; in 2023, it is practically required that award-winning films must focus on some marginalized identity, though yes, these are rich white kids, so maybe it's a no-go) because it is a pure genre exercise that has a real human story underpinning it. 

This review is getting bogged down in parentheticals and comparisons and box office musings and semi-colons; suffice to say, it's the most mainstream thing he's done so far, and while it may be less ground-breaking than Less Than Zero was at the time, it doesn't come off as "padded" or "parasitic" as some might have considered Imperial Bedrooms, which even though I liked it a lot, definitely mines Less Than Zero for all it is worth in an attempt to re-ignite interest in oeuvre and work. That didn't come off in a way that made a dent in the larger cultural conversation. 

And this probably won't either, but it's a much better candidate. I will lament that more people will not read this novel, because they won't know what they are missing. It's got to be made into a movie (it already is "in development" as an HBO series, actually)--the only problem is that BEE is also the main character and I can't recall a big movie where the author writes about themselves (in this particular way) and also has a movie made about that. There are memoirs, for sure, but this isn't a memoir. 

***

PLOT: 1980's Los Angeles, serial killer on loose, paranoia, "numbness," Quaaludes, stereotypical high school politics, secret gayness. CAST: Bret, Thom (jock, prom king), Susan (prom queen, class President), Debbie (girlfriend to Bret, daughter to Terry, major film producer/"open secret" married gay), Matt (harmless stoner/slacker, "close" with Bret); Ryan (sidekick to Thom, also on football team, "close" with Bret); and Robert (the new kid that drives the majority of the action of the novel).

[Would like to pause here for one moment to acknowledge a small detail about Robert: it is often remarked that he was in a "facility" just outside of Jacksonville, IL. I doubt that many people reading this post (or book) have been to Jacksonville but I have. It's such a weird detail. I wonder if BEE has been there. It's not a place I'm anxious to revisit, but there's more there than in some of the surrounding towns (Florence--pop. 9, where I stayed in a ABNB that Abe Lincoln allegedly stayed at in the late 1850s; Pittsfield, more charming and bigger than Florence, but empty)--though it's all chains and big box stores on a strip. It's the middle of nowhere basically. But Robert also went to school in Evanston, IL and moved to L.A. for confusing reasons that are ultimately explained (by his aunt, whom he stays with and mildly disturbs).]

Most of the characters are students at Buckley, a famous fancy private high school, which seems like the L.A. equivalent to the Dalton School in NYC. It's not a boarding school, crucially, and it is often observed how much freedom they all had when they were 16 or 17 and had a car to drive around L.A. They live at home with parents, but parents are never there, or if they are, they seem to let their kids do whatever they want. Bret's parents are separated, and details about his father are glossed over. His mother, too, for she spends the entirety of the novel on a seemingly endless trip to Europe, and Bret lives alone in a house in Sherman Oaks with their dog (Shingy) and a maid that comes by on weekdays (Rosa). 

Of course, it's not an endless trip to Europe, as the novel seems to concern two months in particular--September and October--though it may be November by the end of the novel. 

This is the only scene with Bret's mother:

"I grabbed my mother and fell into her arms weeping when she appeared at Laurie Wright's house early Tuesday morning to take me back to Mulholland in a black limousine that was waiting curbside in front of the residence on North Hillcrest." (572)

BEE has always been a writer very concerned with specific time and place, and again, anyone that has lived in L.A. for any limited amount of time will be able to envision the events more clearly. This may annoy some readers, however, as certain stretches of the novel read more like Google Map directions than a literary thriller. 

This is forgivable, as are many other aspects. Yes, BEE's high school experience is rather basic and feels lifted out of a John Hughes film except set in L.A. But, after re-listening the podcast, it is quite clear that this novel is very true to life in a certain sense. Just to hear him talk about his girlfriend at the time, and her father, and the two classmates that he got "close" with--the experience feels directly transposed onto the novel. Robert Mallory is essentially a plot device and really the entire novel is just Bret being suspicious of him. 

From a certain angle, there can be a lot to take apart, and it doesn't feel like the work of a literary master, but if we consider Stephen King that, this is every bit as good as anything King has ever done.

Ellis writes about his love for King in this book, and his attendance at an opening day screening of The Shining figures as a crucial detail throughout the novel. King's villains are not often serial killers but demonic spirits and "triggered" humans. While here, there definitely is a serial killer, and graphic descriptions of their "offerings," his experience of that is mostly through Los Angeles Times reporting, not his own detective work. He suspects Robert is the killer (I don't think that's a spoiler) and he undertakes his own detective work on him, but not as directly on the murders themselves (apart from one of the victims). 

I'm wary of spoiling anything here, but the spoilers are mostly about who dies when, and shifts in relationships between characters. Ellis takes the opportunity to depict a "me too" experience and essentially minimizes the hurt and pain that many victims express in the wake of such "casting couch" incidents. He does this by writing about himself in that position, and it may be disingenuous, or maybe not. 

Many times, authors write thinly-veiled autobiographical novels, and readers and critics subtly acknowledge the elements that appear taken from their own lives. But when one writes an "openly autobiographical" novel, it gives one license to write about more questionable behavior and avoid moral opprobrium. No, one cannot call Ellis a "me too" apologist, because as a victim (whether or not he actually was--and I don't think anyone wants to presume that he was not, for it certainly lends credence to the idea that his early literary stardom was a byproduct of said incident, though this seemingly only relates to a screenplay deal, not a book deal), we must believe, or at least give the benefit of the doubt (even rich white male ones). 

Writing a novel like this also takes a "quiver" out of the critics' arrows: we don't analyze that Debbie is real-life Ellis's girlfriend, because we know she was, after what he said in the podcast (this must be intentional--all of Ellis's work, including what he says about himself on podcasts, is all of the same part). Instead, we analyze how much of this book really is autobiographical, and after reading, we should know. 

The ending, while somewhat anticlimactic, despite having a real climax that probably would be good on film, also leaves some unanswered questions, including a rather chilling one. There are things I like and don't like about the ending, but on balance I see it as "adequate." It's not an Ernest Hemingway ending (i.e. significantly better than the rest of the novel). It's not as puzzling as the ending to Glamorama, but feels vaguely unsatisfying, maybe because it feels a little unrealistic (i.e. how easily and simply it ends, with such little investigation). 

I am not sure it belongs on the Best Books list, but it is very close and I think I probably would put it on there. On that note, I now need to read yet another Ellis book, so I can have an actual review of Less Than Zero on FH, and truly assess if it is still his best novel. Both might go on the list, and while this may not be better, it is a close second, and probably better than The Rules of Attraction, which I now hope will get similar treatment, and a book-length exploration of his time at Bennington College. 

It's one of the limited few books (along with Why We Sleep) that I checked out from the public library, needed to return, and felt comfortable purchasing for the personal library (which is not very large--as the personal library is Flying Houses itself--and most books are rented and not bought, here). That is the last thing I can say as a testament to its quality. 

Grade: A-

Aliss at the Fire - Jon Fosse (Transl. Damion Searls) (2004; 2010; 2022)

This book is 74 pages long and I received it as a gift on New Year's Eve and it took me 71 days to read. 

I should have finished it sooner. I took it with me to Spain, and I spent most of that time reading The Shards, not this. I feel guilty about this, and so the only thing I can do is explain myself. I try to pride myself on having wide-ranging tastes, and being open-minded towards more experimental literature, but in reality, my imagination is rather limited. I tend to be self-obsessed and look for personal connections in art to elevate (or justify) my own experience as a human being in this world. I would like to try to understand others better so that I can be more compassionate towards their sensitivities and struggles, but I also have my own, and they are not often considered "worthy" of transmogrification in art. Here, that struggle may be "grief," or perhaps death itself, which is something that all of us share, and so this should mean something to us all--but the method of communication has to fit the message. Unless there really isn't one.  

This is a really strange little book. It bears something of a resemblance to the final section of Ulysses. It has no punctuation, save for question marks (and more limited exclamation points--but see below). New sentences are denoted by capitalization, but these are generally lines of dialogue, and beyond that, only proper nouns are capitalized. So there are no sentences, really. Someone compares it Waiting for Godot in a praise blurb on the back (technically, "The Beckett of the twenty-first century" - Le Monde) and that is a fair estimation of its plot. Except instead of Godot, Signe (?) is waiting for Asle to return.

I thought it was Aliss that was waiting for Asle to return but looking back at the first page it does appear the protagonist of this novella is Signe, the woman, who is looking out the window of her home on some Thursday in 2002, thinking back to a date in 1979 when her husband went out to the fjord near their home in a flimsy rowboat. He never returned (I think) and so she continues to wait, 23 years later. 

The book might have been a little more interesting if she had taken edibles or acid or mushrooms or something, because it does become "trippy." It essentially consists of an extended hallucination where the woman (I will call her that because the book mostly just says "she") looks through the window and see various things, generally closer to the shore, that appear to be distant events from the past. (If you don't mind, I'm going to read the wikipedia page now, because sometimes we need cliffs notes to confirm uncertain understanding.)

Before that, though, the translator's note does offer some clues, and may "sell" the book better than this review: 

"The Norweigan title of this novel is Det er Ales, which means 'That's Ales' or 'It's Ales'; the woman's name in the original is Ales, not Aliss. Unfortunately, this Norweigan name coincides with the English word for a type of beer, and would certainly be interpreted that way in a title without other context: It's Ales would come across as a very different book than the one Fosse wrote. Since publishing this book in 2004, Fosse has written a Trilogy and Septology with multiple characters named Asle and Ales, so the decision might have been different now, but a dozen years ago I decided I needed to change Ales's name and the book's title. This second edition follows the first English translation, published in 2010, but readers should know that Aliss is another one of Fosse's characters named Ales." ([77])

Not much more helpful, though the 2nd paragraph of the note may be more illuminating:

"Back then I emailed Fosse to ask what the name Ales meant to him and what he wanted the title to convey. I had noticed that the book's first burst of short sentences, after forty or so pages flowing by without a full stop, included the sentence 'Det er Ales,' so the title should refer to that moment in the book, but what else? Fosse told me that Ales was a very old-fashioned name, 'maybe your grandmother might have known an old woman names Ales'. He himself had a great-great-grandmother named Ales who was known as a 'wise woman', a healer. She really did heal people, and the sick came to see her from far and wide; at one point she was called in to see a local priest, to talk about her 'practice', but there was no punishment. About the title, Fosse said: 'It means Ales is spreading out over the whole universe.'" ([77])

So it appears there are actual sentences. Let me try to find them:

I'm super proud of myself now:

".....and she takes the stick over to the fire and she puts the stick with the sheep head on it into the flames and while the boy dangles in her arm she moves the sheep head back and forth in the flames, and then its wool catches fire and blazes up and then a burnt smell goes up, burning, and then she dips the sheep head in the water of the fjord before she puts it back into the flames, and again that burnt smell, and then she moves the sheep head back and forth, back and forth in the flames. That's Aliss, he thinks, and he sees it, he knows it. That's Aliss at the fire. That is Aliss, he thinks, his great-great-grandmother, he is sure of it. It's Aliss, he was named after her, or rather after her grandson Asle, the one who died when he was seven, the one who drowned, he drowned in the bay, his Grandpa Olaf's brother, his namesake. But that is Aliss, in her early twenties, he thinks. And the boy, about two years old, that's Kristoffer, his great-grandfather, the one who would later be Grandpa Olaf's father and also the father of the Asle he was named after, his namesake, the one who drowned when he was just seven years old, he thinks and he sees Kristoffer start to cry dangling there in Aliss's arm and she puts down the stick with the sheep head on it and then she sets Kristoffer down  on the shore and he stands up and stands there unsteady on his little legs, and then Kristoffer takes one careful step, and he stands, and then he takes another step, and then he falls on his side and shrieks and Aliss says no, why do you have to try to stand up, can't you just sit quiet, Aliss says, and she puts down the stick and she picks up Kristoffer and holds him tight to her chest
  You good little boy, you're a good little boy, Aliss says
  Don't cry now, don't cry anymore, that's a good boy, she says
  and Kristoffer stops crying, gives a little sob, and then he's happy again and Aliss puts him down on the same stone as before and she picks up the stick with the sheep head again and starts to burn it, moves it back and forth in the flames. And again Kristoffer stands up. And again he takes a careful step forward. And then another. And Aliss stands there, moving the stick with the sheep head on it back and forth in the flames. That is Aliss." (33-34)

Actually, the sentences continue onto page 35, but end there. I excerpt something so long to provide a flavor of the text and perhaps you can see why it was difficult for me to summon the will to ensconce myself within it.

The wikipedia page is not much help because it does not exist, but there is one for Jon Fosse, which notes that he suffered a serious accident at age 7 that brought him close to death and significantly influenced his later writing. 

And so perhaps Aliss at the Fire is a puzzle one has to solve: it must be semi-autobiographical in some form or shade, Asle (the great-grand-uncle) died at age 7, I think, and Aliss is portrayed as something of a healer, in the vision that Signe/Asle has.

Yes, the book shifts perspectives between Signe and Asle at a certain point, and then there is later Brita (who I think is ancestor-Asle's mother, or current-Asle's great-great-grand-aunt), who gives a boat to Asle for his 7th birthday (Kristoffer, Asle's older brother, is apparently there too).

To say this book is enormously difficult and confusing is an understatement. It is extremely boring, to a ridiculous degree.

I said some of these things to my friend that gave it to me as a gift, and he told me that Fosse's masterpiece is 700 pages long and very similar in style and tone to this, and opens up with an image of a person watching paint dry, presumably drawn out over several hundred pages. So this all feels intentional but something of a cruel joke on readers. 

Yet this is High Art, and does tend to lend credence to a fractural and mystical reality. Asle may have drowned too, like his great-grand-uncle, but he has also lived in the same house that his ancestors lived in, and so this may be considered a ghost story. It also bears a certain resemblance to a short story that I wrote a five paragraph essay on in high school called "Yellow Wallpaper." I got a C- on that paper. That story is about the frayed mental health of a subjugated woman; this story is not necessarily about madness, but a vision, seeing things that aren't there, or might be there, and the reality of things we experience when we are alone, in a house, we hear certain noises and see certain flashes of things and our experience is the only reality of them, as no other person is there to witness them or confirm that reality--it may just be in our minds.

So perhaps Aliss at the Fire is a success, because it made me think all of these things, and I do think its "message" (if it has one) may be profound. Yet on the metric of 'le plaisir du texte,' it did not provide an enjoyable experience. Perhaps neither does grief, or dying, but still, this is not a cogent meditation, this is an experiment in language and form, and the translation lends it a further air of mystery. Yet perhaps it is all too real, if one lives alone in a house in Norway, looking out at a fjord, waiting for a missing person while the hope of their return is all but lost.

2023 Academy Award Nominees for Best Picture

Certain people that fashion themselves cinephiles to one degree or another sometimes make an effort to see all of the films nominated for Best Picture in any given year. This is a difficult thing to do. I am sure I have done it at several points before, most likely when the Academy limited the nominees to 5 films. I cannot recall the last time that I saw them all. To demonstrate this, I am going to check all the old Best Picture nominees going back to the year when I last saw them all (before they announced the winner).

I think it's probably 2008. Semi-ironically, that is the one year that I lived in Hollywood. So it makes sense (easier to get advance screeners there), and in any case, it was much easier to see them all up until 2010. Now it is something of a bigger project. 

I've never undertaken it before, and there are not many days left (it's currently March 6 and I have 4 left to see), but I'm going to see what I can do. I've shifted my efforts from films and movies (there is a difference) to books, because long-form reviews of books are more acceptable (and generally safer on the "spoiler" issue). It's much easier to see a movie than read a book and Roger Ebert used to bang out film reviews in 90 minutes and I'm not going to write full-scale "Ebert reviews" for each film but I'm going to do what I can this week, because sometimes there are moments where it feels appropriate to dust off the film cricket hat. The movies and films will be addressed in the order they were seen, and this post will be updated either up until they are all seen, or March 12, which is when the winner will be announced. If I can complete this project on time, I will rank them all as if I were a voting member of the Academy, filling out a preferential ballot. No grades or stars or numbered ratings--you should be able to tell how I feel about each. 

Everything Everywhere All at Once 

Released April 8, 2022, EEAO quickly developed redoubtable buzz and became a box office sleeper hit. It made $500,000 in its opening weekend and went on to gross $73 MM in the US and $104 MM worldwide. Now, those are not Avengers numbers, but they aren't bad for a $25 MM budget. It is the third highest grossing of the Best Picture nominees, and the only one that isn't "record-breaking" in some way. It's not a Blair Witch level of success vs. budget, but it feels every bit as successful as Avatar or Top Gun, and probably more successful than Elvis even though that made more than twice as much and didn't have that much bigger of a budget.

Everybody loves this movie and I am no different. I watched it twice, and it was better on the second viewing. I am looking forward to the third. Michelle Yeoh is less likely to win than Ke Huy Quan, but they, along with every single other member of the cast turn this into a completely unpredictable multi-layered extravaganza (terrible word for a review, I know, but in this case it is accurate) that makes little-to-no sense, thumbs its nose at the "Multiverse" and one-ups it, even as that franchise has done everything in its power to make people think their movies are films and not theme park attraction blueprints. 

Pretty much everything is good about EEAO, except viewers may experience whiplash and confusion upon first viewing. There is a ton of subtext to it, but mostly, it's Michelle Yeoh. This is a career-defining statement in a similar way that Birdman was for Michael Keaton, with each film "advancing" from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Batman. CTHD was groundbreaking at the time, and so too, is this: it could be the weirdest movie ever nominated for Best Picture. It seems to reflect on the entire history of cinema, with more recent "modern classics" like Kill Bill, CTHD, Ratatouille, The Matrix, Marvel movies, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (as this is Quan's long-due comeback from his iconic turn there) all referenced, and it's better than all of them. There has been an "Asian renaissance" in cinema over the last several years, and while I cannot say this is better than Drive My Car, it is certainly a lot more entertaining and engaging, and it is probably better than Parasite.  

The Banshees of Inisheran 

2022 was a wonderful year for me, professionally. Personally, it was far from the best, as I spent a good bit of it estranged from a dear friend. Without getting into too much personal drama, let us just say that seeing this film provided an emotional balm that few cinematic experiences are able to offer. I had a similar experience with Drive My Car, and earlier, Toni Erdmann. This isn't a three-hour foreign drama, however, and the light-hearted tone keeps it from becoming gruesome or depressing. This is a follow-up to the excellent In Bruges in the same way that The Interview was a follow-up to the excellent Pineapple Express. Except this is better than In Bruges and hits a deeper emotional core. You already know that Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play off each other well, but this film pushes them back about 80 years into the past and from Belgium to Ireland. It feels like a play. And plays, unlike films, are more laser-focused on providing such catharsis to the audience, to stir something in them and make them uncomfortably-moved as they watch the actors live out on stage something they've felt deeply in themselves. In this way, the film delivers, and few of the other nominees have accomplished the same. 

Elvis

On March 2, 2023, I watched Elvis. I liked it better than I thought I would. Not that I don't like Elvis. While I am not a superfan, I have always found him amusing and feel that his ghost haunts Memphis, TN in a truly remarkable way. There are not quite as many impersonators these days, it seems, and so it was time to bring him into Generation Z. And so what you have here is a relatively true-to-life biopic of a music icon...with a Doja Cat song on the soundtrack, twenty minutes deep. This is a Baz Luhrmann film, and for me personally, this was better than Moulin Rouge and not quite as good as Romeo + Juliet. Much has been made of Austin Butler, and while I am not yet sure if I am going to pick him for Best Actor, it is quite likely I will. It's a great performance, and probably better than that of Ana de Armas, doing another icon from the same era (excellent in its own right). Rami Malek won for Bohemian Rhapsody and I thought Taron Egerton won for Rocketman but I was mistaken and Joaquin Phoenix once won for Walk the Line and so I think it is a strong possibility that Butler also wins. The movie itself is about as good as one might expect. Baz Luhrmann always has a comedic sensibility in his films (i.e. flashiness, interpolating the new into the old), but Elvis could have used some broader comic relief. The funniest line to me was Elvis mispronouncing the name of the group the Byrds. His relationship with his mother, which is one of the most interesting things about the movie, is depicted in abbreviated form, rather than as a throughline and theme, as it should have been. But if you make it to the final scene, I do not believe you will remain unmoved.

Top Gun: Maverick

On March 3, I watched Top Gun: Maverick. I never saw the original despite my family owning a VHS copy of it and being rated PG. Maybe this is because I didn't care about being in the military, for better or worse, even though my Dad was in the Navy. Apparently, the "Top Gun" program is part of the Naval Air Force Academy, not the Air Force itself. This is one thing I learned in watching the sequel, which is an odd movie I would never consider Best Picture material until a few years ago. 

Now then, the main thing about this movie is that it was a huge box office hit (along with Avatar). Big box office is not a problem for the Oscars. Yet in this case, there is a certain narrative that involves Tom Cruise saying "no" to streaming ahead of the regular schedule, and it being a gamble that pays off big time. Much has been made of Steven Spielberg congratulating Tom Cruise for bringing people back into theaters.  Apart from the business aspect, the movie isn't bad, and it's worth noting that Cruise is doing some of the best work of his career in his late 50's. 

No, this is not Magnolia and he is not nominated for Best Actor, and he shouldn't be for this, and frankly, whatever next Mission Impossible movie comes out will probably be just as good. But there have already been like six of those movies and this is just the 2nd Top Gun and will probably be the last (we hope, though it seems increasingly unlikely that any successful film with any kind of franchise potential will not get a sequel for the sake of not ruining a good thing). The scene with Val Kilmer is probably the reason this is nominated for Best Picture and while it is too brief for him to get Best Supporting Actor nomination, expect Kilmer to get one of the biggest ovations on Oscar night, for his accomplishments and contributions to cinema shouldn't be discounted. 

Tàr

On March 4, I watched Tàr. I had been wanting to see this film for nearly five months, since it had come out in theaters. It did not jump to streaming until fairly recently, and I watched it on Peacock. I knew it was divisive, and I expected to come out on the "love" side, and for the most part, I do. This is an Art Film, and the first thirty minutes will test anyone's intellectual capacity. It should do for music conservatories what Black Swan did for ballet. It should be required viewing, for them and for any art students generally.

The intellectual philosophizing in the film is nearly unprecedented, and Mahler aficionados should love it to death. It is "about" a lot of things, and there is not much of a plot until you realize there's no plot to any of our lives, just events, and experiences we go through leading up to events. Blanchett is good in everything and has probably surpassed Meryl Streep in terms of cultural renown. The question is whether this is the best performance of her career. This is her 8th nomination, and she has won twice. She should win for this, because few actors in history have ever undertaken the degree of preparation that she did here. I would be curious to know who could compare. The only problem is the movie is something of a downer, as Art Films tend to be, and isn't especially emotionally satisfying to the viewer. Its ending is not the ending to Elvis, basically, but it's also quite beautiful in its own way. 

All Quiet on the Western Front

On March 5, I watched All Quiet on the Western Front. It is nominated for Best Picture because apparently there always needs to be a war movie nominated for Best Picture. It is also nominated for Best International Feature and it seems obvious it will win that one. The opening sequence illustrates that the filmmakers were looking to do for WWI what Steven Spielberg did for WWII at the opening of Saving Private Ryan. But it's only about five minutes long; I don't think it lasts ten. And it feels weirdly juxtaposed, almost as if the filmmakers are saying, "give us an Oscar for this." It's an adaptation of a widely-read novel--one I haven't read, unfortunately--and from what I can tell, has been adapted twice already, in 1930 and 1979. The 1930 version is probably quite fascinating and I'd be interested to see it after having seen this, as the source material has not changed. I have not seen anyone talk about the 1979 version favorably, so it's probably fair to remake it, and there may be some timing to it, as we constantly try to say that xx foreign policy situation will develop into WWIII, China/Russia, etc. But fighting will never be like that again, anyways. Of course, there is horrifying and gruesome violence, of course, there are a few heartbreaking moments (the plot of the film, from what I can tell, is really about which friends in their group will survive), and of course, it's a good movie, but 1917 pretended to be "one continuous take" and Dunkirk at least had a shorter runtime, so I slightly prefer them. Actually, this was probably about as "engaging" as 1917 and similarly impressive in its technical aspects. This isn't something, however, like The Thin Red Line or Apocalypse Now or Platoon or Full Metal Jacket or Born on the Fourth of July or The Deer Hunter - all of which offer something "extra" to the usual cinematic tropes of war movies. Even lacking such, it's perfectly fine, but I'm a bit surprised by the nomination here on top of the International one, and query whether Netflix really just needed to have one of their originals in the category. 

Triangle of Sadness

On March 6, I watched Triangle of Sadness with a friend. Somehow, incredibly, I lost the review I just wrote of this, and it's horribly depressing because it was pretty good. Of course we all agree that editing makes writing much better, but when you lose the original, rewriting a new one from memory is stressful. That said, I mentioned that this is the English-language debut of an acclaimed Swedish director, that I saw Force Majeure and liked this better, found it more engaging and entertaining, and questioned whether it is appropriate to nominate for Best Picture merely because it is in English, rather than Best International Feature (I cannot recall any English-language films in the Best International Category). 

Also mentioned that, like AQWF, this is a good film, but demonstrates that the Best Picture category is now available to "merely good" films rather than the "great" ones--it is good to acknowledge and include more filmmakers, but it has resulted in a bloated ballot. The category worked fine when there were only 5 nominations, and it's odd that most other categories (if not all) each have five nominees.  I mentioned that this same friend and I watched Another Round together a couple years ago and probably would both agree that it is superior to this; perhaps today, that would be nominated for Best Picture. 

Finally, declared that this was basically The White Lotus: the Movie, except that it goes even further and devolves into an allegory on class and privilege. It is absurdist, and while it is amusing and sometimes thought-provoking, it is over the top (i.e. Woody Harrelson's Marxist "Captain" reading his written reflection on workers' rights through a P.A. system as their boat is bombed by pirates). I'm still not sure what happens at the end, and I think it's meant to be open-ended, and perhaps that air of mystery is why it landed in this category. But I really think it's just because people love White Lotus and this had a very similar vibe. 

Avatar: The Way of Water

On March 7, I watched Avatar, because I'd never seen it before, from beginning to end, and felt if I was going to do this project the right way, I needed to properly prepare and get up to speed for the sequel. Right now I am expecting to make the only actual theater trip for this project in about three hours, and while Avatar is a fairly decent movie, this does not make me any more excited for the coming hours. In short, background research is complete. 

On March 8, I watched Avatar: The Way of Water in 3D at a Regal Cinema. It is nearly 30 minutes longer than Avatar. It may be the longest movie I have ever seen in a theater. Regardless, it might have felt shorter than the first one--except there was a family with several young kids that never got the memo that you're not supposed to talk during movies. This half-ruined the experience for me as I ruminated on how annoyed it made me, and how I should have been more compassionate--but they literally talked the entire way through the movie. 

In any case, this was definitely a movie to see in the theater (even though at $22, it will also be the biggest investment of this project). The visuals were, in fact, very impressive. I have seen a few other movies in 3D in recent years but this made the best use of the technology (4D might have been even more fun for it). But this is exactly the issue: Avatar literally is a theme park ride, and one hopes that Disney will now make a 2nd ride, a water ride. Only three movies in history have made more money than Avatar: The Way of Water, and two of them are also directed by James Cameron. The Academy does not need to tell more people to see this movie, but it should tell them to see it in 3D by lavishing technical awards on it. (Putting aside the notion that it looks like pure CGI, and that Kate Winslet and Sigourney Weaver are more or less unrecognizable, despite apparently modeling for computer animation.) 

The story is basically the same as Avatar, but slightly more compelling. Instead of mining the planet Pandora for precious materials that are worth $20 million per kilo on Earth, the "sky people" (i.e. human beings from Earth, the year being roughly 2170) are hunting whale-like creatures that contain a precious fluid that stops aging and goes for $80 million per vial. The two main characters from Avatar now have a family with four kids and so that is another theme here. They have run away from the forest, as they have been tracked there by humans, and escaped to the ocean. One of their sons bonds with one of the "whales" that saves his life and that relationship is probably the best part about the movie (in the same way that Sigourney Weaver was probably the best thing about the first one). In short, I liked it better than expected, but mostly for the visuals. I might go to see Avatar 3 or Avatar 4 in 4D. 

The Fabelmans

On March 9, I watched The Fabelmans. A friend asked what it was about and I said, "Spielberg family basically. His growing up/To say more would spoil it." And yet I check the Vanity Fair article from where the above still is lifted, and it totally spoils the film. I generally encourage most people to avoid spoilers, because for me at least, even seeing a movie once takes something away a second time--they get burned into my brain in a way that keys in memorization, and they don't feel as new to me. Spoilers jumpstart this process ahead of time, leading me to anticipate some kind of turn, and when it happens it's not as powerful. 

Luckily I did not spoil this for myself and I would not spoil it for you except to say I knew enough about Spielberg's family from watching one doc on HBO (which is something of a career retrospective, and quite candid) that I had a sense of what this film might be like. And yes, much as it pains me to praise something by someone who definitely does not need anymore accolades, this is very good and worth seeing, on most every level. It has its share of light moments but ultimately it felt heavier to me than the other nominees (yes, even AQWF, which as noted above, also owes a debt to Spielberg). 

This also underscores the strength of the Best Actress category: Cate and the two Michelle's all deserve to win (Ana de Armas is remarkable in her own right in Blonde and let's not get into Andrea Riseborough here, it's not fair because I haven't seen To Leslie, though obviously I will, eventually). Of course, Michelle Williams gets a special boost for her excellent turns in Venom and Venom: Let There be Carnage (both criminally underrated), more so than Cate Blanchett gets a boost for being in Thor: Ragnarok. It's really hard for me to say which is my favorite but I have to go with Cate Blanchett because I felt like I could identify the most with her Tàr (ignore what that says about me). 

Joyce Carol Oates slammed this movie and said it was "remarkably mediocre," comparing it to made-for-TV movies with inane dialogue and exaggerated acting, though even she had to acknowledge David Lynch's cameo as a good scene. Yes, JCO wants to be hipper than thou and this is not a super-hip film, but it's better than that. Lynch is great in his small role (arguably as good as Judd Hirsch, with far fewer lines--and Hirsch's role skirts the edge of "minimal presence required for Oscar nom") but Michelle Williams is the real standout here. The film will have to win at least one award; it probably resonated for me emotionally more than any of the others (yes it brought me closest to tears). 

Women Talking

On March 10th, I watched Women Talking with a friend--late, around midnight.  This is undoubtedly the "smallest" of the nominees and the most difficult to review. It basically is a play. Much has been made of its color palette, and given the setting, the costumes, the makeup (or lack thereof) and the subject matter, a drab sepia tone befits the proceedings. That is, the women are being attacked--more specifically, drugged and raped in their sleep--and so they congregate to vote and decide on one of three options: do nothing, stay and fight, or leave.

It is not necessarily a spoiler to say they are part of an ultra-conservative Mennonite colony, but certain facets of this cultural identity account for the some of the more surprising and powerful moments of the film. The performances by all of the women are stellar, and the script beautifully juxtaposes their personal story with a larger meditation on society as a whole. The screenplay is written by director Sarah Polley, and adapted from a novel by Miriam Toews, which was based on a true story. The events in question took place in Bolivia, and though the setting is likely transplanted to North America (the precise location of the colony is never revealed), it could happen wherever such communities with backwards rules persist (even in Brooklyn).

Few people saw this movie, and though it is likely to draw a bigger audience, being nominated for Best Picture, it will only ever be seen by a small fraction of the number of people that saw Avatar: The Way of Water or Top Gun: Maverick. It is the only other Art Film besides Tàr. It's probably the most gut-wrenching in terms of subject matter, but due to its monotone aspects, also the most likely to put a viewer to sleep. There are moments of humor in it too, and though it is nothing of the spectacle of some of the bigger-budget nominees, I could see it being a special experience in a theater. Unfortunately, that time may have passed (it would have been the 2nd of the films to see in the theater on the list, but it was added temporarily to Amazon Prime this weekend and so I opted for that format), and yet it may have not, because this is a film that is tailor-made for the stage as well, and so the experience of being in the same room as these women as they are talking may yet become a reality. It's the first selection I've made on my ballot. It may not be the most entertaining or amusing of the nominees, but it may be the greatest demonstration of a perfectly realized (and streamlined) vision.

Rankings:

My personal favorite preferential ballot:

(1) Tàr
(2) Banshees of Inisheran
(3) Everything Everywhere All at Once
(4) The Fabelmans
(5)  Women Talking
(6) Top Gun: Maverick
(7) Avatar: The Way of Water
(8) Elvis
(9) Triangle of Sadness
(10) All Quiet on the Western Front

My predicted preferential ballot for Academy voters*

(1) Everything Everywhere All at Once
(2) The Fabelmans
(3) Banshees of Inisheran 
(4) Top Gun: Maverick
(5) Women Talking
(6) Triangle of Sadness
(7) All Quiet on the Western Front
(8) Avatar: The Way of Water
(9) Tàr
(10) Elvis

*I really have no idea how accurate this is according to current buzz and reserve the right to modify after completing my own ballot. 

This was a worthwhile endeavor, I'm glad I did it because I wouldn't have seen at least half of these, and not nearly as quickly. None of these movies and films are bad, and there truly is at least one here for everyone. It made me reassess the state of cinema. Despite the increasing tendency towards the blockbuster sequel, original and imaginative films continue to be made. 

Glamorama - Bret Easton Ellis (1998)

Of all the writers covered on this blog over the past 14 years, Bret Easton Ellis (or BEE as he is semi-affectionately known in literary circles, the counterpoint to DFW) has more appearances than most. To do the oeuvre exercise: Less Than Zero has not been reviewed, but I've read it multiple times and now believe it is still his best. I used to tell people that Glamorama was the best. Now, I don't necessarily renounce that, but as far as recommending his books go, I would recommend Less Than Zero over Glamorama. (And to follow up on the question posed in the review of his previous release, no, Glamorama does not make it onto the Best Books list; it's likely that Less Than Zero would.)

I'm not sure I'd recommend Rules of Attraction over Glamorama, but maybe, depending on how much you like your books to fuck with you. Rules of Attraction and Less Than Zero are rather straightforward narratives where Ellis's appeal should be clear to most readers: the books are relatively short, "punchy," dialogue-heavy, "cool," and their words seem to spool off the page--they're not page-turners in the traditional sense but they're quick reads if you "get" them.

American Psycho is his only book that I never finished, and feel with that book, he was trying to "develop" as an artist, and it certainly has the reputation (to say nothing of the film, which has its own referents in Glamorama) to prove it. Ellis was a star from the moment he debuted, and while his work was "gritty" from the start, he went over the top with it. I think I've heard him say that the book was a metaphor for cocaine and that makes sense. And it would make sense for Glamorama, too.

That said, this is a much better book than American Psycho. Maybe I am just jaded about American Psycho because I saw the movie enough times for the source material to be demystified. I think everyone remembers the first time they saw that movie, and it was one of the few times you could say a super controversial book also became a super controversial movie, and I don't think anyone understood the ending. Over time, now, I know that the ending is basically an admission that he has been fucking with the reader all along.

That is not the case in Glamorama, and its ending mystified me as well. To compare it to the rest of the oeuvre, Lunar Park is another one that was read-and-not-reviewed, my copy is lost, and it's something of an anomaly in the oeuvre (a faux-autobiography styled as an homage to Stephen King), but probably just as good as Glamorama, probably a better book to recommend for the so-called "average" reader. Imperial Bedrooms was the sequel to Less Than Zero, and I enjoyed it for the fan-service it represented, and still think it would make an amazing movie, even 12 years later, but I'm afraid that ship has sailed. I have no qualms about recommending it. Conversely I did not recommend The Informers and I do not think I'm alone in that, but it's an interesting read if you are an Ellis fan. I wouldn't read it as a model for the perfect short story, but there are probably two or three in it that are more decent than most. There was also White, which is similar to The Informers in being an anomaly, slightly better because Ellis is a better essayist than short story writer, but maybe slightly worse because he also seems to be "baiting" the reader and burnishing his newfound reputation as a cultural curmudgeon. 

He's talked about Glamorama (1998) as his favorite novel of his own, and how it is also the most hated of his works. True, it is easy to misunderstand, and in the same way that I think American Psycho (1991) is easy to misunderstand. 

***

They are both very shallow books on the surface. The first one is littered with fashion: any brand name you can imagine is going to be referenced somewhere. This one is littered with celebrity: pretty much anyone who was anyone in 1998 (and a surprising number of more "obscure celebrities" that seemed plucked out of BEE's personal circle, that have evolved in the cultural conversation over the ensuing decades) is mentioned here.  

More importantly, perhaps, it references my preferred racer in Mario Kart 8:

"'Shhh, I'm playing,' I tell her. 'Yoshi's eaten four gold coins and he's trying to find the fifth. I need to concentrate.'
'Oh my god, who gives a shit,' Alison sighs. 'We're dealing with a fat midget who rides a dinosaur and saves his girlfriend from a pissed-off gorilla? Victor, get serious.'
'It's not his girlfriend. It's Princess Toadstool. And it's not a gorilla,' I stress. 'It's Lemmy Koopa of the evil Koopa clan. And baby, as usual, you're missing the point.' 
'Please enlighten me.'
'The whole point of Super Mario Bros. is that it mirrors life.'
'I'm following.' She checks her nails. 'God knows why.'
'Kill or be killed.' 
'Uh-huh.'
'Time is running out.'
'Gotcha.'
'And in the end, baby, you...are...alone.'
'Right.' She stands up. 'Well, Victor, that really captures the spirit of our relationship, honey.'" (25)

***

Plot: novel concerns Victor Ward, who is a 27-year-old male model, previously seen in a small supporting role in The Rules of Attraction. He lives in Manhattan and he dates another model named Chloe Byrnes, and he has an affair with Alison Poole, who is Damien's (I forget his last name) girlfriend. Victor is opening a new nightclub with Damien. Victor is the lead singer of an alternative rock band and barely involved and quits the band in the one scene they have. He goes to the Tower Records at Broadway and 4th St. and encounters Lauren Hynde, who went with him to Camden College (and has a much bigger role in Rules of Attraction). They hook up after. 

These are the first 200 pages of the novel. They all concern preparations for opening the nightclub. It's very stressful, but with shallow concerns about who is on the invite list, who is going to show up, and whether it will be a success if they don't. Ultimately, Damien finds out that Victor is having an affair with his girlfriend and there is a scary scene where he threatens him and then eventually somehow sends Victor into the actual plot of the novel, which really starts on a cruise ship from New York to London. 

The novel is comprised of six parts, each part consisting of a number of chapters that count down to 0. This was vaguely clever. At the very end of Part 1, Chapter 0,  Ellis paints the scene at his protagonist's apartment:

"On my desk: free drink tickets, a Cohiba cigar still in its container, a Clash CD--Sandinista!--unopened, a check to Save the Rainforest returned because of insufficient funds, last year's Social Register, a baggie of psilocybin mushrooms, a half-empty bottle of Snapple, a roll of Mentos, an ad ripped from a magazine of Tyson promoting a new lip balm and the dragon tattoo etched on his bicep that has a Chinese inscription on it that translated means 'don't trust anyone' and an old fax machine and falling out of the fax machine at this moment is a slip of fax paper that I pick up and read. 
On it:

nie Marais, Christopher Lambert, Tommy Lee, Lauren Hutton, Claire Danes, Patty Hearst, Richard Grieco, Pino Luongo, Steffi Graf, Michael J. Fox, Billy Crudup, Marc Jacobs, Marc Audibet, the Butthole Surfers, George Clinton, Henry Rollins, Nike, Kim Deal, Beavis and Butt-head, Anita Hill, Jeff Koons, Nicole Kidman, Howard Stern, Jim Shaw, Mark Romanek, Stussy, Whit Stillman, Isabella Rossellini, Christian Francis Roth, Vanessa Williams, Larry Clark, Rob Morrow, Robin Wright, Jennifer Connelly, RuPaul, Chelsea Clinton, Penelope Spheeris, Glenn Close, Mandie Erickson, Mark Kostabi, Rene Russo, Yasmen, Robert Rodriguez, Dr. Dre, Craig Kallman, Rosie Perez, Campion Platt, Jane Pratt, Natasha Richardson, Scott Wolf, Yohji Yamamoto, L7, Donna Tartt, Spike Jonze, Sara Gilbert, Sam Bayer, Margaret Cho, Steve Albini, Kevin Smith, Jim Rome, Rick Rubin, Gary Panter, Mary Morris, Betsey Johnson, Angela Janklow, Shannen Doherty, Molly Ringwald, O.J. Simpson, Michael DeLuca, Laura Dern, Rene Chun, the Brady Bunch, Toni Braxton, Shabba Ranks, the Miller Sisters, Jim Carrey, Robin Givens, Bruno Beuilacqua de Santangelo, Huckleberry Finn, Bill Murr (212)

It is just amusing sometimes to see who Ellis decides to namedrop. It seems rather random. The world depicted in this novel is a familiar one--our 1998 reality--but turned upside-down; it has a sort of "Alice in Wonderland" type-feel, if Lewis Carrol had been a tabloid journalist. 

***

There are a number of Ellis tropes and motifs that recur, though these may be more limited to this novel and AP. Mistaken identity is one of them. Being seen at places one has never been. The idea that one is so bland and superficial and generically attractive that one blends in with everyone else in that cohort. In this case, however, it's more real: photoshopping technology for the average consumer user is now available. 

There is a film crew that follows Victor around. The film crew may or may not be imagined. 

There is hardcore sex and violence, which may only be in this and AP. Ellis does drop into the genres of both "erotic fiction" (several scenes, though one more drawn out and vaguely surprising) and "torture porn" (which he arguably created in AP, which would soon be capitalized upon by an entire generation of horror filmmakers). Sometimes we can get lurid on Flying Houses but I feel it may be best not to excerpt one of these, as they are not particularly interesting.  But yes, Ellis is capable of working in these genres if he wants to. 

There is the comedie humaine element to his oeuvre, which is blended with the mistaken identity trope and his own personal semi-autobiographical wink-winks, most particularly in the character of Christian Bale/Russell. 

***

It is worth a brief excursion into Christian Bale's career to properly understand his role in this novel, because quite clearly, he is the one celebrity that plays a more meaningful role. (Both Joaquin and River Phoenix and Skeet Ulrich would be the others, but Bale actually moves the plot forward.)

Now everyone knows that American Psycho (2000) was Christian Bale's breakout role, and many people know that he was also a child actor, notably in Empire of the Sun (1987) and Newsies (1992). He had other small roles, but gained more widespread recognition after notable roles in Little Women (1994) and Pocahontas (1995--voice work, but a key character) and then having his biggest role yet as an adult in Velvet Goldmine (1998), which is an odd film but somewhat required viewing for so-called cinephiles, as it is a Todd Haynes film. (Bale would later play one of the iterations of Bob Dylan for Haynes in I'm Not There, which is a slightly better movie, though Cate Blanchett steals it as she tends to do.) 

But in 1998, he was likely most famous for his casting as Patrick Bateman. The film's development was closely watched by people in the industry (or say, young aspiring filmmakers teetering on 17) because AP was such a controversial novel and so any adaptation of it would be controversial too. Early reports reflected an NC-17 rating, which is terrible for commercial prospects but alluring to those not able to get into the theater (see also Requiem for a Dream). Ultimately while the film was not an enormous success (few adaptations are), it was widely seen, and I think people look back on it and see an Oscar-worthy performance, because Bale completely owns it and kills it. It's not surprising that he has won multiple Oscars since. 

And of course, BEE must be very well apprised of the status of the film, must have met Bale, must have known that Bale would make or break AP the film, and he was writing Glamorama throughout the course of that film's development:

"Behind us, walking out of the front entrance of the apartment on Avenue Verdier, are Palakon, Delta, Crater--all in overcoats and sunglasses--without the Japanese man. They maneuver past us, walking purposefully down the block, conferring with one another. Jamie barely notices them since she's preoccupied with staring at Russell. But the director stops walking towards me and stares at Palakon as he passes by, and something in the director's face tightens and he worriedly glances back at me and then once more at Palakon.
'It's a favor,' [teaching Victor French] Russell says, putting on Diesel sunglasses. 'I'm between roles, so it's cool.'
'He's between roles,' I'm saying. 'He's waiting for a good part. One worthy of his skills.'
'Listen, I gotta split,' Russell says. 'I'll talk to you later, man. Nice meeting you, Jamie.'
'Yeah,' Jamie says tentatively. 'You too, Christian.'
'Peace,' he says, moving off. 'Victor, I'll be in touch. Au revoir.'" (433) 

There are also a lot of drugs in this novel, as with any Ellis novel, and so blending in this weird version of reality with Bale who may or may not be a double agent or just a doppelganger (to say nothing of the 1-2 film crews that are making a movie tracking the plot of the novel), adds to the hazy sense that Ellis was reflecting on the reality of his experience as an aging wunderkind (this was published as he turned 35, which is not old but felt older back then) and that he was completely zonked out while writing it and it's super messy and sloppy and doesn't hold together and is mostly just there to make the reader go "WTF" in the same way as AP, both novel and film. But that's not a charitable view. This novel is better than that, but like I said, difficult to wholeheartedly recommend.

***

If one takes the novel seriously, the comparisons to Tom Wolfe and Don DeLillo on the front cover are not unreasonable. In a way, this is the anti-Underworld, and also vaguely predicts 9/11, and includes Semtex as a plot device. Many historical figures are depicted, but DeLillo's work is more realist than fabulist. 

It's not a spoiler to say that Victor gets involved in international terrorism and espionage, and perhaps its unfair to say the novel becomes more pedestrian once the plot becomes apparent, because that is also when it starts to resemble a "page-turner." This novel took me forever to read this time, months and months. Of course my personal life affected it, but I read it much more quickly in 2004, perhaps because I was anxious to write a novel that could mimic Ellis and get noticed and start an actual career doing something that is ostensibly very exciting and personally rewarding. I guess this time I just didn't care as much, and while it's not like 2023 is vastly different from 2004, it sort of is. In 2004, this was still Ellis's latest work, and many of the celebrities had not shifted in their cultural weight. 

Now, Ellis is preparing to release a new novel, and since we have basically covered his entire oeuvre here, it is inevitable that it will show up here soon. (Actually, this novel is coming out in two days--I swear this wasn't planned!) Ellis has been "problematic" for about 30 years, but White revealed him to be problematic in the "woke-era," and so it will be interesting to see how "controversial" people consider The Shards. 

Is Glamorama his best novel? No, in this critic's opinion, that is still Less Than Zero, much as I'd like to say this is his best. I wanted to like the novel more. Frankly, it annoyed me a bit this time around. I didn't care as much. I even remember liking Part 2 (the whole cruise ship voyage) much better the first time. Once the plot kicked in (I said 200 pages above, but it's probably around page 400 that you have a better idea of what's going on---though again, Part 6 of the book also tears down that understanding), I plowed through more of it, but I couldn't love any real element of it beyond the semi-autobiography and literary experimentation. I love the bold swings it takes, I admire them, but it only briefly felt satisfying, and in those moments I wanted to care most about the characters, they are revealed to be just another part of the film that is geared towards getting an emotional response out of the reader/viewer.

I wanted to excerpt a passage that illustrates this, and I wanted to mention the use of "Champagne Supernova" in the novel and question whether Paul Weller really is a contributor to that track, but instead will just say that I appreciate Ellis for opening up that curiosity, and feel it is appropriate to post this now, because we do care a little bit about remaining relevant here, even when there are six months between reviews. And yes: this should still be made into a movie, but now it will have to be a period piece--and that's not a bad thing for this author.