Lady Chatterley's Lover

Lady Chatterly's Lover

DH Lawrence, 1928

My inner rebel wants to write a whole review here, without mentioning sex.

There is more description of the coal mining industry and the “gruesome” nature of the industrialized Midlands of England, and the metal effects of World War 1 than of sex. Granted, porn was not yet an acceptable form of entertainment in Modernist England and America, but, really, people. If I have to read one more review of the sex content of Lady Chatterley's Lover I may have to write strongly worded letters to the reviewer.

I worry, though, that I am only getting snippets of review, that, perhaps, I am reading the passion for or against writ sex in a spin zone where publishers and publicists are peddling more copies of this treasure of a book. To which I say “Fuck you” and would probably add “Cunt” in there somewhere too. If they will get worked up over these words, written in the basest collier vernacular of the time (Hello, Mark Twain disciples, this might be a second bible for you!) but are you really going to toss out at least 200 pages of subtle social criticism because you are too faint hearted?

Bloody hell.

Lawrence is, as far as my uneducated view can see, the British version of Hemingway. His language reflects the warbling, ornate entrails of Victorian everything, as Hemingway uses the sparse, bruising inheritors of Stephen Crane and Dreiser. Sometimes he goes a sentence or paragraph too far in making his point, as Hemingway does one too short. In this way they are both writing for the intelligentsia of the time. Both write about men and women wrecked by World War 1. Both even write about sex, and the desire for it. Hemingway just didn't have the balls (and in The Sun Also Rises, quite literally) to go all out with it.

Other things Lawrence doesn't hold back on are extended metaphors. He used the phrase “bitch goddess success” so many times frustration levels rise to orange and I start wondering if he didn't write this book with the purpose of killing his career. Around this, clearly his favorite illustration of the zeitgeist, he spins as many dog metaphors as possible. This person is a dog, this person another dog, they have dog like features and our eponymous hero, the Lover, Oliver Mellors, has a loyal dog which follows him. He starts following Lady Constance Chatterley around like a bitch in heat, which she does accordingly. It amounts to this wrecked generation being abased to animal level.

At which point, is it really surprising that Connie falls to the animalistic level of infidelity? Or Mellors encourage it? Or Sir Chatterley condone it?

Yep, that's right. Lawrence writes a novel about an affair so detailed that you know all the cuckold's feelings on the topic as well. It's both sympathetic and admonishing to all parties concerned. Above all the affair is merely an extended metaphor in and of itself to the real thesis of Lawrence's: “World War 1 destroyed the minds and souls of all touched by it, here are the reasons.”

But I overlook one thing. This is what everyone was using extended metaphors for at the time. So, the sex itself was the groundbreaking thing. Fair enough. Can we still read the other 200 pages?

Am I wrong? Have I read too many Anne Rice novels, too much Anais Nin? Am I desensitized to sex, or is there something more here? If you only know Lawrence and Lady Chatterley's Lover for it's sexual content, you haven't read it. Tochka.

Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2

Jon Favreau, 2010

Disclaimer : I am in love with Rober Downey Jr.

I'll try to be unbiased.

But I adore Sam Rockewll (they even let him dance! Do yourself a favor and watch "Moon"), and Don Cheadle (voice to melt you, body to make you go grrr...) too. Now if Marvel convinces John Cusack and Adrian Brody to support Edward Norton in the next Hulk movie, I will sell my soul to them.

Not Mickey Rourke though, especially not as a Russian. He does the accent pretty well, but he does not look the part. And his hair --- what? Gwenth Paltrow can be fun and snippy as Pepper Potts, but something about her puts me off. I love looking at Scarlett Johansson, but she can't act her way out of a hat box. Also, she has this weird butt-thrust posture that tries being sexy, but just comes off as off balance. Without them, Iron Man 2 would have been perfect, and humanity doesn't stand for that.

So, equalized, we have a sequel. Longer, more effects, new threats blah blah blah. At times the melodrama threatens to subsume the balance, but usually something light and slapstick pulls it down. Like between Tony being kicked out of his old CEO office and finding the key to the universe, he has to carry a 3D city model home in his roadster. On the cusp of the third act, between the darkest point (symbolized here in a self-perpetuating motion paper-weight thing) and the first step to victory, Tony has humor. He's the hero we need in these Empiric days. Even so, Favreau insinuates just enough pan flute that I almost cried when Tony (Downey Jr.) has his emotional climax three minutes later.

The biggest problem is just the looseness of it. Like almost all sequels, it's just not as tight. I'm trying to finger it, but there aren't scenes I'd cut out. Even the big action scenes aren't too long, really. All the drones landing in the final action scene morphs perfectly into a rhythm that is often lacking in action films not starring Zhang Ziyi. The Friend on Friend scene with Rhody steals a suit is only long because of necessary dialogue.

It's probably the over-explanation of everything. Literally every plot development gets explained at least once blatantly by one or another character. I realize that by using words like “ostensibly” (see below) I am in a bracket above the average viewer of comic book films, but come on people. The screen on that diabetes reader machine said “Blood Toxicity: 19%”. If you can't figure out what is going on here, you need read some more Aesop fables. If you can't see that Natalie Rushman is playing a whole different role than that of simple secretary when she lays out Happy Hogan in the boxing ring, you haven't ever seen an action movie or a detective movie before.

Ostensibly, Tony Stark is being poisoned by his own creation, knows he's dying, gives away his company and gets sloppy with his suit while dealing with a suddenly greedy government. He has a new assistant, Natalie Rushman (Johansson) who turns out to follow up on that tantalizing nugget of awesome after Hulk (yes, Marvel turns out to have contemporary genius over DC: planning and management).

So much so that not only does Hulk have a way open, but Iron Man is set for at least 5 movies in this run with Downey Jr. One would almost think his producer wife may have designed the whole thing herself to keep him occupied.

I don't follow Marvel, but the characters are pretty fun, and seem well enough developed. The relationships, while not complex like a Russian novel, are indeed engaging. Tony doesn't follow up on the hot chicks (various) only to sacrifice the hard won trust and affection he has with Pepper Pots (Paltrow). Natalie Rushman, the obvious sex bomb centerpiece, doesn't seek to seduce anyone. And Samuel L. Jackson puts in a cameo as the mysterious ringleader of the Avengers, Nick Fury. He and Tony actually haggle over what the organization is, what Tony and Iron Man's place in it will be, and act generally, uncliche. I didn't know it was possible.

Oh wait. Stan Lee is one of the writers.

Oh wait. I already mentioned the obvious planning going into all this.

Huh.

Usual editing mishaps and stuff. The usual questionable abilities of various things. But overall, damned enjoyable. Just block out some glaring offenses to your average intelligence.

Une Femme est une Femme

Une Femme est une Femme

Jean-Luc Godard, 1961

Fun even if you don't speak French and don't have subtitles.

I'm pretty sure this pseudo-musical was designed to showcase the cuteness and prettiness of one Anna Karina (not to be confused with the more notorious Karenina of Russian/feminist/novel/Oprah fame). The more obstacles get thrown in her way, the cuter her pouts, shouts and pancake flipping antics become.

Jean-Luc Godard's (of French New Wave fame...ie. This movie is a keystone of his) uber-feminine plot gracefully blends traditional and mod views on feminism. As Angela, Karina stirs it up with bright aplomb. Angela is a burlesque dancer whose biological clock has starting ringing with a vengeance. Her live-in boyfriend, Emil, wages against the idea of having a baby, they fight and Angela raises a bluff that their mutual friend would be more than willing to help her out in this problem.

That's it. The whole plot. Nothing else really happens. At least that my non-French ears can pick up. It's almost two hours of haphazard singing and dancing where the music will unexpectedly drop out, or one foley track of footfalls, or a car, or bird, or page turning, will be all you can hear. Since the characters are so edgy (who in Hollywood would ever make a burlesque dancer someone light and breezy) and the experimentation with the sound is so off beat—literally—the plot doesn't have need or time to develop beyond this. The whole thing is almost a single set piece.

The introduction alone is fifteen minutes long. It gives all the character development and exposition you need. Then credits are given with self-aware poses by Angela and the friend she may or may not sleep with later. And the cartoonishness does not end there.

When the couple argues about whether to have a baby or not, Godard injects Bugs Bunny-esque squeaks, springs, rim shots, canned laughter, and horns. If he wants to lend strength to a statement, he puts some echo on it. Clearly, Godard thinks little of the musical genre. Clearly, he likes the idea of mocking the status quo as much as he likes looking at our heroine.

At the height of the plot, she and this friend are in a Paris bar, trying to get in the mood. Since this is Godard's stab at the musical movie genre, the friend soothes Angela by putting a franc in the jukebox. While the quirky French pop song plays it's length we watch Karina's range of caricatures of Distress. Each new face in a new shot. What would otherwise fall into a boring morass of overwrought melodramas, thus stays all of adorable, self-deprecating and interesting.

Godard doesn't stop at sound. Like Woody Allen's Annie Hall there is a scene where subtitles show what the characters are thinking at each other. Interiority unconfined to montages and lengthy monologues or, in the case of standard musicals at the time (Oklahoma, Seven Brothers for Seven Sisters, Fiddler on the Roof) five minute solos.

He also experiments with colored lighting. Although he will perfect his technique in Contempt with Brigitte Bardot, you can already see a stylized genius. Blocking wise, Godard actually has Angela flip a fried egg into the air, run down the hall to answer the phone, say something like “hang on a minute” and run back to catch the falling egg. As with everything, the editing is less obvious. Quick cuts of characters' expressions to keep up pacing and emphasize interiority: Emil at the strip club, apparently waiting for Angela's show, shot of stripper fully dressed, shot of Emil—nonplussed. Shot of stripper less one layer, shot of Emil—nonplussed. Until the stripper's in a thong. We know Emil is a loving and considerate boyfriend because of this sequence; he doesn't show emotion until Angela comes out.

Because of all this overt choice in colors and sound one need not speak French to know what's going on. Even though the average American would be bored and off put by the starts and stops in music and sound, they would understand almost every word (and if not every word, then definitely the plot line). They won't get the jokes that the book covers give in a bedroom fight, but they'll get there is a fight using book covers. Either way, it's pretty damn funny. Especially, with the thunder storm going on outside to build up the cartoon tension.

If Godard had chosen just one of these to run with, and kept to a serious film he would have had something sensible for critics to talk about forever. With all of them, I bet film scholars are floored, if not just baffled. It'll take awhile for Une Femme est une Femme to resurface to mainstream criticism, but it's still fun.

Jenny and Johnny

Jenny and Johnny

Jenny Lewis and Jonathon Rice

2010

That's right. I am almost on time with this one. The new, eponymous, album has been out and available for less than a week. Thanks to my aunt Kristin, and her sending me an iTunes card for my birthday, I made my first digital music purchase! Woo. It was easier than my GenX hangover soul had anticipated. I was rewarded with – a bit above average pop music.

Jonathon Rice is known as Jenny's boyfriend, and Jenny Lewis is known for her agnostic gospel music with band Rilo Kiley and her two solo albums. These 5 – 9 albums, depending how you count them, are never not brilliant. They also have really nice guitar layering, Jenny on rhythm guitar and singing, and some highly talented man (Mward or Blake Sennet, Elvis Costello) on melody guitar. Her vocals absolutely steal the show, and she's one of the few artists I want the entire discography for. Even Led Zeppelin made music I'm not hot on enough to keep em around.

At least I have hindsight with Zep, they've released all they're going to do (No, Robert Plant will not rejoin them, no, that drummer-son is no excuse). But Jenny is still producing a bunch. And this may be where we depart as worshipped and worshipper. I admit, I was expecting more of the same, if not, more of lovable stuff to sink my teeth into. Even her worst things on Under the Blacklight and Acid Tongue were fun and full and it only took me a couple listenings to get into. This whole album seems like that.

What made her music above average were shrewd lyrics and hypnotic vocals. The music, without a superior musician helping, is basic enough that even I can play it on the guitar. I thought at first this Johnny would be the next filler of that role, but he doesn't add much except to harmonize. The harmony is pretty good though. His voice is of a timber, or something else technical, that works beautifully, melts into Jenny's that you don't find with her other partners. It works. But it cuts the hypnotic power of Jenny's solo voice in half, reducing the vocals to just above average and vaguely interesting. Even then, if these two develop their singing relationship and they use real harmony, and not just singing the same thing at the same time, they could really have something.

The other side of Jenny I adore: lyricist. This woman is brutal with her beliefs and extended metaphors. She is not afraid to use death threats, impersonate teevangelists, hookers, and 15 year old hitch hikers. She is unaplogetic for breaking up with people, and doesn't whine when she, herself, is dumped. Not only is it rare, but her book of collected lyrics could very easily stand as a contemporary sort of Bible for the agnostic zeitgeist of GenXers like me and Millenials like the bulk of her fans.

And it's not all lost. Romanticizing Los Angeles in its dark and glittery glory is still on the plate, they have a song called Switchblade, and Big Wave is a critique on idiots who live on credit. Showing fun ironic and surprising choice chops, they chose David Hockney's painting A Bigger Splash for this socio-political almost protest song.

There is not too much a lack for emotional brutality: one of them doesnt “think two heads are better than one” and one of the two “will forgive you if [they] outlive you” and not a second before. There's even a lovely image of snake bite that shows up in at least half the songs, and then cemented on their homepage and myface page with a snake infinity symbol. Nice. I like this longer lasting show of thought consistency. Shows they aren't just screwing around and kinda dumb like various artists out there. You'll notice the big ones (Zep, Gaga) really know who they are and even if their sound changes, their singer/song writer personalities do not (hobbits, fame).

As good as that is, there is some preachyness here that didn't exist before. I cannot accept a bible thrust on me. Thus I like Church of England but not most Catholicism. So when the leader of my church says

“If you don't believe in history then take what you're given” I get a bit uneasy, but then I hear :“If you lose your fear of god, then you're an animal” and I'm a bit queasy. They're telling me I'm below them? Or is the animal metaphor a good thing? Are my leaders animals? Do they show their teeth to everyone? I... uh...

Whoever writes their publicity stuff (both Jenny and Johnny seem shy of publicity unless they're really performing) makes a serious note and devotes a paragraph to to pointing out this is NOT Rilo or Jenny Solo. It's a new creation and it's exactly what they want it to be: mainstreamish, popish.

I guess the important thing to note here is that Johnny is not just another man Jenny leans on to take her solo work to the next level, he's her boyfriend, and really, her equal in musical output quality. So, the album is called “I'm Having Fun Now” and maybe she is. Maybe this is more important for her. And that's a good thing. I like my prophets to enjoy what they're doing. Besides, I have to keep buying what she (and whoever, I hope she knows it doesn't matter to us) puts out since I don't yet know when it's going to truly start sucking.

A Change in Altitude indeed.

A Change in Altitude

Anita Shreve

2009

At my mother's insistence, I have made my first venture into the world of non-snob lit. I have often wondered how bad writers become writers, popular writers, respected writers. Published writers. I consider myself pretty good, a bit lazy in craft and theory, and badly in need of a diligent editor, but pretty good. But, am I published? Am I cared for by thousands of women who thank me and implore me to connect with them again and again? Hell no. Thus, it is time I cut out this engrained snobbishness brought on by being raised to know my Valkerie truer self, and becoming addicted to intelligentsia college bilge.

And you know? Ms. Shreve is not bad. Yes, her exposition is obvious and she spends so many pages on describing people's clothes and appearance and obvious traits that she seems more like a writer of Sweet Valley High chain novels, yes her language is consistently basic, and sometimes the pace is slow, dialogue always pretty blasé. Nothing ever stands out in the book, and I have to wonder if there isn't a certain talent in that. I mean, she works in about 20 swahili terms into her 336 page novel, and I doubt anyone else could make this feat appear natural.

I imagine, and will explore a bit more, that this is the plateau of literature between The Devil Wears Prada and Infinite Jest that hits the smarter edge of your average reader. People who are damned intelligent and just don't care to be intellectual about it. It doesn't seem like too bad a place to be. There's for sure more of them than there are off-the-deep-end narrative nerds.

Shreve follows a pretty standard Everywoman through the overly analytic thoughts of, I don't think I'm out on a limb here, every woman. Shreve ignores emotions a woman's psyche wants to ignore until, just like in life, they get brought up. The genius of this is not just pciking and choosing these things, but exagerrating them.

Instead of her heroin, Margaret, ignoring the annoying/flattering crush a married man has on her and having it come to nothing, that very willful ignorance causes the death of that man's wife! This of course leads to strain in dull Margarets fresh and adorable marriage. The rest of the book (up to death takes maybe a third) is dealing with that and both symbollically and realistically getting over it.

In order to do this, Shreve weaves in half of Kenya's stereotypes and a couple genuine seeming characters who seem actually to have been researched from somewhere in history and almost developed into classic characters, readers will wonder about and chew on forever. Shreve doesn't ever make that cross over herself, though. It's sad, she seems so close to taking this Margaret from Everywoman to Jane Eyre, but doesn't. Why? Margaret has a hobby turned profession (photography) and complex meditations verging on the detail Milton gives Eve before she loses Paradise; Margaret embarks on all sort of adventures, initiates and follows through on all sorts of things which just don't quite develop her. Two thirds of the way, a reader who took one psych class once can tell Margaret has developed a form of major depression, but she doesn't ever develop anything else. No matter what she does, the way she things and the way she deals with things don't change or adapt. Argue for one or two instances maybe, or that “just because she doesn't change doesn't mean she's a bad character” and yea, sure you're right, but she will never ring in your imagination the way Becky Sharp or Emma Bovary or Constance Chatterly, or even April Wheeler does. The Everywomen of other books will haunt you, Margaret __________... Mc something (literally Mc something. The name is mentioned once, in conjunction with her husband and I can't believe how perfectly I can only remember she is Margaret Mc something.)

Point is, yes, it's a lovely study of far off Kenya with all sorts of references to names of lesser known plants and animals and the swahili phrases and the names of tribes, but I just can't bring myself to feel like this Kenya stuff was simply a set drop to make an otherwise boring human being seem interesting. And it doesn't even work.

That said, I did enjoy it. I guess I don't have to want to scribble all over my books with exclamations and epiphanies and connections all the time.

American Splendor.... uh, I don't know... I'll just get on with my job which I hate and maybe tell you about it later. Jazz is good.

American Splendor

Shari Springer Berman
Robert Pulcini

2003

HBO doesn't do bad things, and I'm a comic nerd. Go figure I'm drawn quickly then, to American Splendor, this cool looking, new (ha, I'm so behind the curve) movie.

The introduction is brilliantly put together: Super heroes, comic script, little boxes and gutters of the comic itself. Original, recorded straight off the vinyl Amazing Stories sort of music... I shifted my butt around in excitement. Doesn't get better than witty, self-deprecating, comic-oriented stuff with good music! Glad I wore the comfy pants. All that jazz.

They say, or have said, or have been known to say, that if you like a movie in the first 10 minutes, you'll like it forever, and vice versa. If this were true, American Splendor was shooting right into the top 20 at least of Erika's Bestest.

Cut immediately to a stylized soundroom where the only color is an glass of orange soda. The real life Harvey Pekar is doing, and receiving direction on the intro voice over we just heard. The Meta Meter shoots through the roof. Cool. I'm a Post Post Modern sort of girl, I can dig it.

The rest of the plot and film, though, pings back and forth between this painfully realistic style, like we got in The Savages and Dreiser novels (which, awesome enough, Pekar as Guy Playing the Real Guy (something only Paul Giamatti can do) derides later in the film) with the Guy Playing the Real Guy and this uber clean Gattaca colored Real Guy set.

The uber reality of it all does everything it can to be awkward too. Giamatti must have studied a bit of Chaplin and mime to get papers to cram that awkwardly and phones to not sit in cradles that on cue. It's where the humor is. But, like with writing that is bad, the more awkward you force characters to interact, the more the humor dims.

By an hour in, the audience has been let down to the depression that Pekar and his character, Pekar, feels about the routineness of everything. Every once in awhile there's a glimmer of the splendor in living such a typically humdrum American life, but the continued meta narrative (see Giamatti walk to the set of Letterman, watch Pekar on Letterman, see Giamatti come off the set of Letterman) bogs itself into a pander to Pekar himself, and kind of an ass kissing of him in a way that made me wonder why, if he let into Letterman so hardcore in the eighties, then why is he letting this happen?

Long story short, there's barely any plot other than shooting the comic with actors, and continuously proving it so with shows of the page, and framing the actors with the original gutter.

Though, with a comic so stagnant and depressing that Alan Moore had to make a caricature of it in his own comic Promethea, what else could I have expected.

It's good; well put together, beautiful editing, acting, all that. . . it's just as bleh as the subject matter.

Chick Lit

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/08/25/129423107/women-who-read-are-not-marshmallow-peeps-and-other-humble-suggestions

This woman has a point.

I'm reading Anita Shreve for the first time, and it most certainly is not The Devil Wears Prada. Unless the page of purposely awkward trying on of hiking boots for an ultimately lethal climb up Mount Kenya with some British Ex-Colonists, counts as Shoe Porn.

It doesn't.

No, the plot is great. The characters obviously fleshed out. The relationships complex. The women are photographers -- creators! not the objets d-art. Awesome. So, not Chick Lit. I'll give you.

However. These things that are great are all told to the reader. I am an intelligent person, and a damned discerning reader. Personally, I'm almost insulted when I find out the plot is great, characters fleshy, relationships complex, when the exposition spends 60 pages telling me so in no uncertain terms.

The difference, Ma'am, between Chick Lit and seriously taken NYT revered contemporary literary fiction is the reader is allowed to make up their own minds about these things. And if, like Franzen, you are good at it, your reader will come to the conclusions intended.

Women do it too. Don't worry.

Zadie Smith, White Teeth -- Go!

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaids Tale

Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

Alice Munro

Mary Gaitskill

Ursula Leguin

Isabella Allende

Maybe you just want a separate type of Easy To Read/By Women type of fiction? Somewhere for Anita Shreve/Jodi Picoult? Nicholas Sparks might want to me on your list...

Why do we have to keep arguing about stuff like this? Can't we just get along?