Every so often, I post a list of things that have a hold on my thinking, experience, and interest. I imagine it as a way for readers to get to know me a little bit better (if you’d like), or perhaps as a different perspective on film and culture. Please feel free to share your interests and thoughts in the comments— I cherish the conversation.
CRITICAL THINKING
I am really enjoying Alissa Wilkinson's work as film critic for The New York Times. Wilkinson joined The Times as a critic near the end of 2023 and her work has been remarkably consistent— while we don't always read the text of a film in the same way, or feel the same way about how successful that text is, I feel like I have found a kindred spirit in her writing, her language and structure, her approach, her willingness to take serious films seriously.
Example? This review of “The Taste Of Things”, a film I think is actually about the beauty we can find in seriousness-- the care, attention, and commitment of art making-- demonstrates not only her commitment to the text of the film, but to the historical and cultural world that surrounds it. Reading her piece, I was immediately re-engaged with the movie that I experienced as a viewer, and then, my own thinking was elevated by writing like this:
In a phenomenological way, “The Taste Of Things” captures the joy of variety injected into mere existence: savory and sweet, hot and sour, juice and cream and astringency are not required for pure subsistence, but the rich range of taste we have created in our daily meals says something about human longings not easily put into words. This mystery, like love, is hard to parse: Though we know loss is entwined with the feast, we choose to savor it anyhow.
Reader, you can inject that paragraph directly into my veins, as they say.
In so many ways, criticism has been diminished by the dual threats of film marketing, which has reduced criticism in the public imagination to little more than a consumer guide (is the movie good or bad? Should I see it? How many Fresh Tomatoes does it have1?), and by how film discourse operates on social media, which is completely fine for sharing enthusiasms, passions, and ideas (like this newsletter, for example) but which is also pure cacophony, an environment where, too often, "takes" are conflated with actual, fully considered criticism, where differentiation of the quality of thinking is leveled by the great, streaming wash of "opinion" that floods us every day.
I find real value in criticism that gives primacy to the text and ideas of a film, because for me, that is where I meet the critic-- in dialogue with their interpretation, seeking to understand the fullness of the artist's work, their intentions and ideas, and then? My own thinking about them— how a work succeeds as drama, what is attempting visually, sonically, structurally, how the performances function in bringing characters to full, vivid life, etc. This is how I experience film, and when I find a critic who allows me to live this experience on the page, the thrill of recognition keeps me reading.
SEPTOLOGY
At the end of 2023, I picked up a copy of Jon Fosse’s novel Septology at my local independent bookstore. Fosse had just won the Nobel Prize for literature and, not having been aware of his work, I did a little reading about him and discovered that he is Norwegian2, has been writing for years (plays and novels), and that he supposedly has a uniquely simple yet affecting style. Septology, I read, was probably his greatest novel and was published in English over the course of the past few years in three editions3 in translation by the beloved American translator Damion Searls4. All of this piqued my curiosity, and so I decided to read Septology.
If you’re anything like me (why would you be?), you find yourself looking back upon your life with a mixture of gratitude and regret, and in the latter category, I have many, among them how I approached my studies in college which, it turns out, was an ideal time to dive into books and literary ideas with the same interest and seriousness I had (and continue to have) for film. The luxury of time, to be able to commit myself to study and attention and seriousness, was completely lost on me as a young adult as it is, I think, for many. And so, while I did read then, I experienced it as a chore, homework, and while some books did inspire me5, that feeling of books being “extra work” stayed with me for a long time.
While I continued to read books, I did so rather infrequently, focusing on contemporary fiction here, popular contemporary non-fiction there. But in the last few years, that has started to change— during and after the quarantine time of the COVID pandemic, and with my sons getting older and needing a little less of me during the hours of the day, I have found myself more drawn to books, reading more when I finally step away from work and family and allow myself the luxury of attentive, introspective time. And so, after a decent year of reading in 2023, I decided to pick up Septology and give a big, serious piece of contemporary fiction a try. I am so glad I did— Fosse’s book has completely transformed my mid-life approach to reading and books.
Septology is a seven-part book about a painter named Asle who lives alone in an isolated area of Western Norway called Dylgja (which translates to “secret” or “hidden”) and spends his time between bantering with his nosy neighbor Åsleik, driving alone back and forth to the city of Bjørgvin (aka Bergen) to deliver his paintings to the gallery that represents him, and checking in on his friend Asle, a painter who lives alone with his dog in Bjørgvin and suffers from alcohol addiction. Set over the course of the final seven days of Advent6, each day is represented by one of the book’s septology of “chapters”, Asle7 begins each day contemplating one of his recent paintings, a striking image that consists only of two lines, one purple and one brown, that intersect on the canvas in the shape of the “St. Andrew’s Cross” (essentially an “X”) and ends each day praying the rosary as he falls asleep.
Between waking and sleep, Septology concerns itself with the experience of Asle’s consciousness, moving between memories from his life (including childhood, young adulthood, school, and his relationship with his deceased wife Ales) and the experience of the present moment— staring out a window, driving in the snow, seeing a house or playground or street that reminds of him of his past, each experienced as an almost “out of body” contemporary present— Asle doesn’t just see things, he sees himself seeing things, floating above his narrative, in and out of time and memory and life.
But while Asle is the protagonist of Septology, his world is constantly intersecting with a multitude of possible worlds in which other versions of himself, past and present, converge within him— Bjørgvin Asle, on his deathbed as he grapples with his alcoholism, being not only a friend, but another possible self for Asle, whose own battle with drinking ended with the support of his late wife Ales and his conversion to Catholicism. Asle not only experiences these paths not taken, but also intersects with his memories of himself, seeing himself in the past see his present self in the past, for example, and other characters also have multiple, possible selves popping up throughout the book8.
But there is so much more here that must be read to be experienced—for example, Septology is also a book about faith that, for me as a non-believer, makes faith not only comprehensible, but meaningful9. Fosse’s writing is so spare and simple (which I love) but his structure is so tied to experience that all of the complexity I described above makes perfect sense on the page. Fosse presents the fullness of life as a combination of possibility, memory, experience, the cold reality of the present, and, crucially, repetition and routine, faith and art— all of them swirling in the mind to create the experience of living.
To say I loved this book is a gross understatement— it has transformed me.
Septology is, in my estimation, a Great Book, in the tradition of “The Great Books”, books which I have been avoiding reading or, in a few cases, re-reading, because I didn’t think I enjoyed the effort that went into reading them. However, like so many things, I think I was not the right person when I tried to engage with reading them before; I was not mature in the way I am now. I wasn’t ready, I think, but if anything, reading Fosse has reassured me that I am ready now.
A fire has suddenly turned on inside me— I have fallen down the rabbit hole of preparing myself to make up for lost time10, spending the rest of my days exploring great books. I am setting up a reading plan, creating lists of contemporary books I want to read and pairing them with classics11, making plans to read one or two of The Great Books in parallel with great new books, learning the habit of marginalia, keeping a book journal, watching YouTube videos about books and ideas and reading and planning and engagement with books, and of course, I am planning a deep dive into Fosse’s other books (Trilogy, Aliss At The Fire, Melancholy, Morning And Evening, and A Shining— all also translated by Damion Searls— are in my plans for 2024), basically doing all of the things I wish I had done when I had more time, the luxury of more attention to give, the discipline to discover more purpose. Oh, and music and films and theater and art, too. There is just too much for one lifetime, and so, I want to be selective and find a way to live and be the person I have always imagined I might have been. Thank you, Jon Fosse, for opening that door for me.
READING AS RESISTANCE
Not only have I fallen back in love with the challenges and joys of discovering and re-reading Great Books, I am doing so at a time when reading and literature are facing escalating attacks by the forces of ignorance, who continually threaten public institutions with extremist violence. As much as the media likes to frame the clash between complexity and ignorance as a both-sides “culture war”, it is not a “culture war” in the same way that the Oklahoma City Bombing was not a “civil war”; it is a one-sided campaign of fear and terror— in this case, let’s call it “cultural terrorism”. These campaigns have been designed by cynical, power hungry elites who want to reap the political benefits of stoking hatred among the ignorant. Here, they use entrenched conservative bigotry to uphold supremacist power by specifically targeting LGBTQIA+ people and communities of color in order to silence them and erase their history, ideas, and experiences from public life.
According to The American Library Association, a group I would have never guessed would be at the vanguard in the effort to fight for the First Amendment against supremacist authoritarian movements, 2022 saw 1,269 attempts to ban books from American libraries — in 2020, that number was a still outrageous 15612. The idea that the dumbest parent at every PTA meeting in America is seeking to dictate which books are available to my family is not only enraging, but laughably predictable as I know that, like all good wannabe fascists marinating in propaganda, the people most inclined to ban books are those that do not read them.13 The irony is the point14.
Of course, like any attack on the population, the asymmetry stands out— people who have the energy and self-certainty to run for school and library boards so they can control the experience of others and impose their views upon them stand against those of us who actually believe in freedom and expect it to endure. And yet we stand by, disbelieving that people would attack our protected rights by justifying their actions with such ridiculous pretexts. That asymmetry, between those who are using extraordinary amounts of time and energy and resources to ban books and those of us who are shocked but do and say little or nothing, is how we lose the things we thought we never could lose.
In addition to articulating this disbelief, my commitment to books is also a commitment to support books and reading, to model engaged reading and the seriousness of ideas, and the necessity we all have for the freedom to make our own decisions about what we read. Please support your local library, stand with those fighting against the emboldened ignorance of censorship, and by all means, read whatever your heart desires. Our family stands with you.
Joni Mitchell Never Lies
On a more positive note, I love seeing Joni Mitchell getting all of this much-deserved love for her performance of Both Sides Now15 at the 2024 Grammys, but I want to point out how much Joni’s later-career work as a performer working with jazz musicians remains centered in her recent performances. Her voice has been transformed by time and life, but her musicality remains on another level; her phrasing in the Grammys performance is clearly influenced by her work in a jazz context, a reminder of the career transformation she undertook when she moved from straight ahead folk singing to a more sophisticated and complex performances during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. That singer is still here and let me add— if I were a signer in my 80s and recovering from a very serious health event, the last thing I would want is for the band to take an already slow song and shift it down to half time. That move forces a completely new approach to the phrasing and sustained notes— it is harder to sing and requires more breath to sustain at this tempo.
And yet, here is Joni pushing past all of that and delivering a performance that leans into that jazz experience. But while the piano starts promisingly with a few Vince Guaraldi/ A Charlie Brown Christmas voicings, the band is pretty straight ahead with the guitars strumming the wrong chords16, strings playing complimentary chamber pop moments with the clarinet, before the piano starts adding blues inflected fills (which, uh no). Still, Joni is on another level as an interpreter and her phrasing, which starts off feeling a little talk/sing-y, fully arrives and carries this whole thing to a different place— how Nina Simone might deliver this song comes to mind here17. When Joni arrives at the end— “I really don’t know life…/ I really don’t know life at all”— that note on that “all” completely undermines the lyrical sentiment in the best possible way; only someone who knows music like Joni Mitchell would arrive there, the perfect landing for a beautiful performance, an expression of real, lived musical experience.
I see this tendency, to “rate” and “rank” and create hierarchies of films in my kids and the online culture in which they live and I have been working hard to be kind while removing this type of thinking from our conversations.
I say it again as a way to manifest it: A trip to Norway is my life’s dream and goal. It will happen. I don’t know when… but it will happen. 🇳🇴
They are: The Other Name (Septology I-II), I Is Another (Septology III-V), and A New Name (Septology VI-VII), each volume published separately and then recently published as a combined volume of I-VII, (which is what I own and read).
Searls, I discovered, learned the Norwegian written language of Nynorsk in order to translate Fosse’s work into English. Which, incredible!
The two BIG books that connected with me in my youth were Ulysses by James Joyce, which was the book that opened the door to the possibilities of literature for me while I was in college (in the same way Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas was a gateway for me into serious cinema in High School), and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, which was the first contemporary book I read that felt like a Great Book and in which I found a voice that understood my life, my worldview, my experience. I am planning a re-read of Infinite Jest this year, a way to connect with my younger self and see how much we’ve changed. The one BIG book that has connected with me in recent years is Moby Dick by Herman Melville which, it seems to me, only gets more and more relevant the older I get. Re-reading that one, too— soon, I hope! So much to read!
The story hinges on a Christmas dinner invitation, but no spoilers here…
The Dyljga Asle, if you will
Åsleik’s sister Guro is also doubled, for example, with both she and another Guro (who, like the “other” Asle, also lives in Bjorgvin) making sexual advances toward Asle, explicit in their desire for him and suggestive of their past experiences with him (or the other Asle, his double/ possible self).
This is no small feat; the book is a triumph of bringing the experience of faith— not religion, but faith— into meaningful, resonant relief. Even for an atheist like me.
Proustian reference intended— Fosse’s book seems a direct descendent of In Search Of Lost Time, and that book is my reading goal for 2025. Need to build my muscles up for that one.
An example: I am planning on reading the upcoming novel My Heavenly Favorite by Lucas Rijneveld, followed by a re-read of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov which, I am told, inspired Rijneveld’s novel. Or maybe I will flip the order?
COVID, but still.
Well, that’s probably unfair— these are likely the same people who felt they had to sneak a copy of Fifty Shades Of Grey into their Yankee Candle-lit bubble baths to spend some quality alone time with themselves ifyaknowwhatImean…Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
“Moms For Liberty” joins “Fair And Balanced” in the hallowed pantheon of group names inspired by the grotesque inversion of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, aka The NDSP, or as we know it, the Nazi Party.
Which, let’s be honest, isn’t even in the Top 25 best Joni Mitchell songs. Just sayin’.
Friends, I refer you to Joni’s history of alternate tunings and voicings, which are the defining feature of her genius on the guitar.
If only she were on piano!
The folk-jazz singer Sinnika Langeland released a first-rate album last year using Fosse's poems as lyrics.