Stay tuned…
Movies: seen on TV, probably on a streaming service, or on an airplane
Movies (seen in the cinema)
A work in progress.
Television
Documentaries and Reality Television
A work in progress …
Musicals and theatre
Concerts and performances
Books
Exhibitions
Musicals and theatre
Concerts and performances
Books
Exhibitions
Television
Documentaries and Reality Television
Movies: seen on TV on a streaming service or on an airplane
Movies (seen in the cinema)
Love Stories by Trent Dalton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’m going to go right down the middle with a middling rating of this book, with the stars mostly for the intention. It is clear that Dalton is a lovely man with a great big heart and the genesis of the book and many of the stories are truly heart-warming. But Dalton turns sugar into saccharine. He’s so in love with the idea of love, so excited about the project of capturing people’s love stories by sitting on a corner in Brisbane with a typewriter, that everyone sounds the same, with similar dialogue, language and opinions, as if they are all under the same spell.
Dalton loves to capture Aussie vernacular – sorta, kinda – and makes descriptions bigger than big: ‘heart the size of the Indian subcontinent’; ‘Mike Tyson meets Mad Max meets a meteorological phenomenon’; ‘more valuable to the United States of America than all the gold in Fort Knox’.
To my taste, this is distancing, rather than engaging, and basically, all too much. And yet, I could be annoyed by a paragraph and suddenly feel a tear coming on, which Dalton would love, since many of his protagonists cry because they are so happy (or in love, or touched, or sad). As most readers of the book loved it, I certainly won’t begrudge them this burst of positivity and love, written as an antidote to the confines of the COVID pandemic. And who am I to argue with the power of love?
The Collected Stories by Lorrie Moore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I think I was in university when I first discovered Lorrie Moore, reading Like Life (1990) and then liking it so much that I read Birds of America too (1998). Oddly though, when I bought her ‘The Collected Stories’, shortly after its publication in 2008, I never tackled it (it’s a big book after all; there’s a boarding pass in it from when I must started it on a flight to Moscow). So, it’s strange to count that 17 years have gone by before I grabbed it from the shelf again and finally read it through. Seventeen years!
It has been a strange experience reading the book from the perspective of middle age. And I read it strangely too. The book starts with four new stories and then has stories from four books, from the most recent (1998) to the oldest (1985). I’m not sure why I disliked the new stories so much that I ended up jumping to the oldest stories and reading them first and then moved towards the newer ones.
I sense that part of why I was fascinated by her writing in my university years and hitting 30 was almost in an anthropological sense. This was what life was like for bitter middle-aged women in America! Their partners have affairs, constantly. They are always going through divorce and get through the bitterness with wordplay and jokes. People in middle age are always making jokes.
But now, in middle age, I can see that most people that I know are not like Moore’s protagonists and that there is much that I dislike about them. The jokes come across as a way of hiding or avoiding emotion. While the people are always betraying each other sexually and having affairs, I honestly can’t discern why any of them would be together in the first place. They never seem to like each other or care for each other. And I also found it frustrating that they all speak in such similar voices. A male character is described as being a basic guy and not very thoughtful, but his thoughts, as described by Moore are as poetic and witty as the other characters. Most characters regularly engage in witticism and wordplay.
I also found myself struggling with a common tool, the story (or part of a story) that culminates in a revelatory metaphor or image. I remember as a young man, and as a young writer, that I was impressed with them the first time around. But now, I’m not so sure. Take the end of ‘The Jewish Hunter’:
‘If she had spurned gifts from fate or God or some earnest substitute, she would never feel it in that way. She felt like someone of whom she was fond, an old and future friend of herself, still unspent and up ahead somewhere, like a light that moves.’
This is flashy writing. She would never feel like she was a person who had spurned gifts from fate? Instead, she feels like someone, not herself, but a friend to herself, still … unspent. A light that moves? Honestly, I don’t get it. Especially the strange but banal ‘light that moves’.
The last story that I read in the whole collection was probably the strangest, ‘Like Life’, told often in dreams, a sort of dystopian world where it is illegal ‘not to have a television’ and there is a large group of poor and unemployed and sick who sell flowers. In the end, the protagonist’s romantic partner, who is actually more affectionate than most of the men in the collection but also has more threat and aggression is revealed to possibly be a serial killer. And then it was clear to me that Moore’s stories may not at all be aspiring to be a reflection of life at all but instead exaggeration, distortion and jokes, or perhaps a mood or a place inside your head.
And while I did feel at odds with the immense praise included on the covers, or indeed, in the reviews I’ve seen, including here, I also note that Moore is a beautiful writer, and a skilled writer. Her descriptions are original and engaging. And when the stories are emotional and the characters are connected together and care about each other, I was affected. I cared too. The stories about a woman character caring for her mother (and the one with the trip to Ireland) are wonderful and the stories about parents dealing with the illness of a child are beautiful and tragic. I found ‘Joy’ to surprise me in that not a lot happens in the story and yet I was moved and delighted.
And then I also realised that these stories work better for me with a good break in between. The wordplay and wit in smaller doses are amusing, charming and funny, rather than relentless. The characters, with time to breathe, may not be so similar to each other as I thought (or I can forget about the ones from the previous story and allow the new ones to exist in their own territory).
It is a little mundane to say that I didn’t like some of the stories much and I liked a few a lot. I recognise that Moore is a talented and powerful writer, who cares about politics and the human condition, and it gives me insight into the ways we can use humour and wordplay to create distance, as defence, to hide hurt, to relieve anxiety and stress, but also to lift our spirits and connect us. I’m glad that I read Moore’s collected works and as with any author, I can see that some aspects of her writing will work for some readers and some won’t, and sometimes it will depend, as it did for me, on what stage of life I am at, what kind of life experience I have had and how much and with which characters I can connect with.
The Book of Embraces by Eduardo Galeano
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
When I was first exposed to the Memory of Fire trilogy, it was a revelation. Here, in anecdotes both poetic and mythic, Galeano turned the history of the world around, centering voices that had been suppressed and hidden, introducing his worldview to a somewhat sheltered but curious 16-year-old. So, I’ve always kept Galeano on my radar.
The Book of Embraces is especially charming because it is smaller and more personal, and tells me more about Galeano, as much as it does the world. His progressive politics are clear and plain; in the wrong circles, his books must drive those neo-cons crazy! The book is accompanied with Galeano’s own illustrations, which are a world unto itself, topsy-turvy, surreal and engaging.
He was evidently such a good man. I’m glad he’s left his legacy to the world in books like this.
Be Near Me by Andrew O’Hagan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Because I’d raved about O’Hagan’s Marilyn Monroe book (as narrated by her dog, Maf), a new literary friend loaned me one of his favourite books, ‘Be Near Me’. To be frank, I was a bit confused by the whole experience. There is an immediate distancing because the narrator can be unlikeable, partly because of his own lack of self-knowledge. It’s evident early on that this fault is going to get him in trouble, and it’s like watching a slow motion car crash.
Thematically, there was also distancing. As a Canadian living in Australia, the complications of the class divides of the United Kingdom are often beyond me, and this is something that is a key theme of the book: privilege vs non-privilege; education vs non-educated; wealth vs poverty, and all of this on top of a clear English vs Scottish rivalry. And while I’ve certainly read enough stories about the British education system (so many novels set in Oxford and Cambridge, and their environs!), I feel distanced from that milieu as well. It comes through in the narrator’s attachment to ideas, history, philosophy, fine wine, and appreciation for classical music and art. I think of myself as worldly and well-read, but often, the narration of ‘Be Near Me’ made me feel like I was on the wrong side of the tracks, one of the ruffians in smalltown Scotland.
By why should this be? To say that I relate more to 50s North America, Hollywood and a narrator who is, for godsake, a dog, in the O’Hagan novel I loved, seems ludicrious. And in fact, I think what O’Hagan’s novel actually demands is objectivity. He offers an explanation for why the character gets himself into so much trouble, the more sympathetic and in-fact wiser character is his cleaner who values knowledge but comes from a modest background; he draws a truly diverse set of characters who cross classes and political ideologies.
All of this is amidst beautiful writing, and an urgency and narrative that drives the book, which I read rather quickly, considering my reading speed these days, slowed down by TV and other distractions. So, while themes of class divide and religion didn’t engage me, and the consequences of a repressed sexuality were not new to me, all in all, I’m impressed with O’Hagan’s inhabiting of his narrators, his willingness to tackle big issues and some lovely writing, imbued with not a small measure of melancholy and nostalgia.
But if you’ve read this far, and haven’t read his other book, ‘The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe’, please do so. It’s amazing.
