on twenty twenty two
The Jacques Lacan Foundation by Susan Finlay, Everything Everywhere All At Once by Daniels, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent by Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten
22 Dec 22 | Issue 48
Although I write these newsletters for my own amusement — and if I'm brutally honest, to combat the feeling a loss of relevancy ageing brings — it's not done in a vacuum.
This being the season of goodwill, I'd like to give a gingerbread scented welcome to all you subscribers who have joined over the last few months. I see you and I appreciate you. Your belief that these missives might be entertaining enough to suffer weekly has given me the fortitude to write and publish through Covid, holidays, and binge watching Slow Horses.
Thank you for being my readers. "If you can't say it at Christmas, when can you say it, eh?".
I've waited till the end of the year for my best-of. I'm still puzzled why Spotify, Duolingo, and Reddit all publish their you-did-this-in-2022 lists at the start of December. It's not as if Mervin and Molly down in the data fulfilment department have to hand compile all the stats, then pop them into addressed envelopes. OK, I do get that Waterstones list is really buy-these-as-presents marketing.
Novel of 2022
The Jacques Lacan Foundation — Susan Finlay Buy Here 1
Like the last line in The Lives of Others — spoiler alert, so jump to the next paragraph if you don't want it revealed, or, if you want it completely ruined, watch the final scene below – I feel this book was written for me.
What I want is a really clever book, that makes me feel really clever reading it, but is enjoyable in a page-turning Harlan Coben, or lying-psychos-in-a-love-triangle psychological thriller sort of way.
I gave up on the new Cormac McCarthy 60 pages from the end. I know, shoot me. I was promised mysterious passengers and missing suitcases from a sunken plane. What I got was his notes on quantum scientists and well, I'm sure it's deep and profound, but it didn't make me feel clever.
I want to like Georges Perec. My friend Karl loves him. I tried I Remember. I couldn't. The 7th Function of Language by Laurent Binet is a whodunnit investigating the imaginary murder of semiotics theorist Roland Barthes. I lasted five pages. The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell is a novel made up of only questions. I didn't get to the end of the first page.
What did you expect Julian? Would be a fair question?
You can see why. Entirely my fault. There are successes. Two in fact. Tony White's The Fountain in the Forest is an actual whodunnit with a left wing heart. Its oulipo leanings tangle the relationship between writer and reader, but never interfere with a cracking plot. I knew Herve Le Tellier’s The Anomaly was conceptual, but so absorbed was I, only visiting the wikipedia page postread revealed the clever ploys he pulls off in its construction.
So the odds were quite low I would enjoy The Jacques Lacan Foundation. All the way to the end. I bought a copy after reading an excerpt on 3:AM. The novel starts with the phrase "Cunt". I felt we might be friends.
It's a book about wanting to be clever. It is clever. Without ever forgetting a good story is paramount. It examines language — hello Roland Barthes – but in a way everyone can get. No semiotics but the friction between American and English. I found myself laughing. I realised it was meant to be funny.
It is about surfaces. Is it enough to pretend? If you want to be enough, is that genuine? If you pretend all the time are you actually it? It examines the dual internal and external realities we live in. What the fuck are you on about you may ask, I'm pondering if Americans experience the same filmic disconnect when they visit Britain, or Paris — that surreal feeling when in an American city, familiar through hundreds of movies and tv episodes, of both being there and being an actor, an extra, in the show of the USA. How their architecture is loaded with cultural signifiers, through cliched representation in cop shows, melodramas, and sitcoms.
I kept reading, half expecting it to lose me, but out of the jocular references to psychoanalysts and cultural theorists (without ever needing Google to get them) a plot emerges. With twists. It pokes fun at hipsterville but acknowledges yes, actually they are cool, and we secretly want to be part of it, if only we could let ourselves pretend.
A love letter to the America we find cool because it owns popular culture, while America yearns to be cool like French nouvelle wave. There is no authenticity anymore, but it doesn't mean we can't invent a joyous fiction to live in.
PS buy a copy as soon as, the first edition is almost sold out, the next one wont have Kate Moss on the cover.
Film of 2022
Everything Everywhere All At Once — Daniels
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent — Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten
I hardly watch any Hollywood films. I search out those with subtitles. No need to spell out why (I know I’m pretentious). It's all too easy to write off American movies, citing studio rewrites reacting to audience previews, profitability predicating predictability. We forget that so much of the grammar in film making was refined in Hollywood. So I'm not going to pick something obscure and European, or Korean. I'm going to 'fess up and say the most enjoyable two films I've seen this year are American.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is meta in the sense it is everything everywhere all at once. It manages to be a sci-fi thriller, a mother-daughter relationship family drama, a kung-fu action film, a rom-com, an examination of the Asian American experience, a philosophical inquiry into where the choices we make in life lead us.
It was written by Daniels, as they like to be known, whose previous Swiss Army Man featured Harry Potter as a farting corpse. If you've seen it you'll know that for all its bottom humour it hides a melancholic take on the loneliness of contemporary life.
Bonus points this time for Daniels giving Jamie Lee Curtis and Michelle Yeoh fantastic roles, proving women over 30 can lead films. Also for getting Ke Huy Quan out of retirement. Like Spring Breakers the poster was enough to make me want to see it. I've watched it five times now. Anne six. Chances are you've seen it. You'll know it deserves at last two viewings. It's fast. Like Inception it only explains things once.
Aside from being everything everywhere all at once, you probably don't know it's also about what it's like to live with ADHD. I didn't either. Bryn, one of the friends I viewed it with – who simply said "wow" at the end — is recently diagnosed neurodivergent. So his radar on all things mental health is more finely tuned than mine, and spotted an interview in Slate where Dan Kwan talked about how the process of writing the script revealed that he actually has ADHD.
So I started doing some research. And then I stayed up until like, four in the morning, just reading everything I could find about it, just crying, just realizing that, "Oh, my God, I think I have ADHD." So this movie is the reason why I got diagnosed. I got diagnosed, I went to therapy for a year and then went to a psychiatrist. And I'm now on meds, and it's such a beautiful, cathartic experience to realize why your life has been so hard.
www.salon.com/2022/04/17/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-daniels-adhd
So even if you've already seen it, or dislike kung-fu films, or you fell asleep in it — yes, I have a friend who managed that — I suggest another viewing for the most entertaining explanation you're ever going to have on what it's like for someone living with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Also the everything bagel is actually a thing.
Here's a half hour talk by Like Stories of Old explaining why the film completely nails multiverses, nihilism, and how it feels to be alive right now.
I also have to include what is almost a companion piece, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Which you may have ignored, being a Nic Cage film. You would be wrong. Nic Cage plays Nic Cage in a meta romp father-daughter relationship family drama, which is also an action film, and an ouroboros as the film within a film you're watching becomes the film you're watching. I know. You have to see it to understand.
It perfectly captures the ridiculous male arrogance in thinking just being an old man impacts you with some form of wisdom and taste. I never thought a Nic Cage film would make me tear up at the end, but it's done it three times now. Also, it turns out Pedro Pascal may be the most likeable man on the planet.
Spotify tells me that my most listened song between January and November 2022 is Toro Y Moi's The Loop.
Songs listened to during December 2011 belong to the void of the everything bagel.
And if you can’t say it at Christmas… a nod of gratitude to friends for demonstrating qualities that guided me to walk a little more like this column talks, Nick for graceful team play, Zac for boundless compassion, and Dan for generous loyalty. Thanks also to Alex for mp3 encoding, Isabella for snowflake and grammatical correction, Anne for endless patience listening to half formed theories, and Fatima for illustrating each week’s figureheads. Toodle pip ‘22, hola ‘23.
This week featured
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniels_(directors)
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References
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