Après le déluge
Hello from Los Angeles, where several days of heavy rains resulted in our losing power for about half a day and the loss of some large trees down the canyon. We have been lucky in our weathering of the storm(s), other than the blip in power, which was really not a big deal, and our dog, Hugo, loves the excitement. I guess it reminds him of all the cross-country road trips we used to take, everyone piled in together, him included, faint scent of panic in the air and the car as home base, where he can keep an eye on everyone and everyone is within sniffing or petting distance. But anyway that’s where our title this week comes from. That and Louis XV.
Speaking of ego, I’ve been thinking a lot about “unlikable” protagonists, lately. Maybe that’s because I just encountered one I liked enormously: Janet, from Elspeth Barker’s 1991 novel O, Caledonia. which Kirkus Reviews described in 1992 as a “Brontëan novel of Gothic nastiness.” Think Cassandra at the Wedding meets Great Granny Webster with a soupçon of Ignatius J. Reilly and the slightest dash of me age 10, all unbrushed hair and baby fat and big glasses and no real desire to do anything but read Greek mythology or YA novels heavily influenced by it. If that—and a moody, Scottish highland setting—sounds appealing to you, well, come sit by me. (For my mother, who is certainly reading this, rest assured that I was absolutely never as miserable as Janet!) I found it a near perfect delight, full of weighty, excellent sentences. And it’s SHORT! That never happens.
Another unlikable leading lady who it’s hard to stop watching: Suzie Pickles, from HBO Max’s terrific, vaguely unhinged I Hate Suzie, the second season of which is an “anti-Christmas Christmas special” that came out last month called I Hate Suzie Too. It’s not a low-anxiety show—each episode is basically a snowball rolling downhill into a panic attack—but Billie Piper is so good at flaying herself as a former pop culture princess brought low by her own self-sabotaging instincts. You can’t look away. Think Fleabag, think I May Destroy You. Not PG13, not unchallenging, not for the faint of heart! Watch from the beginning.
Other things I enjoyed recently:
This story about the person who wrote the poem at the end of Minecraft (which is a game I have never played and have a hard time imagining I will, which is not snobbery as much as a genuine lack of interest, sorry!) and what can happen when you make art for a commercial enterprise. Big takeaway: don’t sign anything you don’t want to. And always have your lawyer read it, whatever it is. If you don’t have a lawyer, get one!
I made this winter vegetable curry, it was good. Feels productive to be handling root veg / over a stove, especially while procrastinating on other, less immediately gratifying endeavors. Highly recommend, don’t skip the raita.
Words to the wise: “Who you are is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.”
Also, from the same post: “The belief that there is some future moment more worth our presence than the one we’re in right now is why we miss our lives.” There’s like 29 more of these gems in here! Only one is about monks and flatulence!
This story about the always admirably flinty Georgia O’Keeffe via the brilliant Calvin Tomkins and the 1974 New Yorker. Best followed up by looking at Alfred Stieglitz’s (occasionally sultry!) photos of O’Keeffe via the National Portrait Gallery. (Though I disagree that in 501 her expression is “longing,” but perhaps the author knows something I don’t.) We’re so used to images of O’Keeffe a certain way—gray, wizened, severe—it’s fun to see her young and fleshy, and to know she was steely even in full bloom. You can earn steely, but it seems that sometimes you can be born with it, too. (In this house “steely” is usually a good thing. Especially in a woman.)
The first of O’Keeffe’s paintings of greatly enlarged flowers appeared in 1924. To many people, the swelling forms and mysterious dark voids bore unmistakably sexual overtones, and any number of critics in discussing them made heavy use of Freud. O’Keeffe was offended. She had painted the flower image big, she later wrote, so that people would “be surprised into taking time to look at it” and would then perhaps see it as she did, in all its miraculous shape, color, and texture. “Well,” O’Keeffe wrote, “I made you take time to look at what I saw, and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower, and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower—and I don’t.”
Other recommendations! Making PLANS. Look up shows, plays, comedy acts. Buy tickets. Plan trips, now that the airports are mostly straightened out. Make list of restaurants you want to go to, all over town. Make those reservations for two or four or six, decide who you’ll invite later. Make a thing of it. Invest in experiences that make you happy. I went to two comedy shows last week and bought tickets to a play this weekend and plane tickets for a trip a friend is organizing. I’m thrilled with myself. Nothing makes me feel more engaged than being out in the world and seeing things and participating in culture. I am also still watching the excellent Station Eleven which makes me want to start or join a ramshackle theater troupe. Find me a better feeling than backstage magic of working together on something creative. You can’t! Also the costume design is beyond brilliant.
That’s all for now, I think. We’re back on our regular schedule! Let’s not jinx it, though.
Thanks for being here. I love you.