The Stars My Destination (1956)

Tiger! Tiger!
This science fiction novel by Alfred Bester was not anything like what I expected. I’ve been aware of it for decades, with a library roomful of other classic science fiction authors and titles I’ve been meaning to get to all this time. But honestly, the title this one is known by in the US, The Stars My Destination, always gave me pause. It sounded like something aspirational or inspirational intended to dignify SF. But no. In fact, Wikipedia says some consider it foundational to cyberpunk. That’s closer to the truth, along with Bester’s original title, published that way in the UK, a reference to the William Blake poem “The Tyger.” Indeed, this novel helped me get a better sense of that poem. It’s potent stuff. It’s not without flaws, notably its treatment of women, which ranges from unfortunate to very bad. And the revenge story on which it hinges is fairly weak soup as well. But this main character—Gully Foyle—is a ferocious survivor, his face covered with glowing Maori tattoos. He’s finely tuned, a human machine of reflex, transcending hero figures and mythical whatnot by the expedience of his single-minded focus on staying alive, out in cold space in barely imaginable, always hostile conditions. Among other things it’s fair to call this short novel pulpy space opera too, involving a 25th-century war among the humans who have settled 11 planets and satellites in the solar system. A teleportation ability called “jaunting” is a new but natural human skill that must be developed and trained for, still not entirely understood. It’s one of the ideas that keeps the action well-paced—exciting, even, which was revelatory for me about a 1950s sci-fi novel. It’s dated to the degree it’s a future based in Cold War dynamics—thermonuclear weapons are the standard for military-grade options—which is not really a future we imagine anymore. But Gully Foyle is something more abiding, a figure that works still today, a model of the antisocial antihero whose ethos and everything is about simply not dying. Bester’s novel works so well it practically overcomes all defects. Don’t be put off like I was by the New Age-sounding The Stars My Destination. Lay into it for the Tiger! Tiger! It might blow you away like it did me.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Titane (2021)

[Earlier review here.]

France / Belgium, 108 minutes

Director: Julia Ducournau

Writers: Julia Ducournau, Jacques Akchoti, Simonetta Greggio, Jean-Christophe Bouzy

Photography: Ruben Impens

Music: Jim Williams, Sixteen Horsepower, Kills, Severin Favriau, Caterina Caselli, Zombies, Future Islands, Lisa Abbot, Johann Sebastian Bach

Editor: Jean-Christophe Bouzy

Cast: Agathe Rousselle, Vincent Lindon, Garance Marillier, Lais Salameh, Mara Cisse, Marin Judas, Diong-Keba Tacu

Titane is the kind of movie that raises preposterous to art form, asking us to believe things unbelievable, simply asserting that they exist, with a simmering undercurrent of trauma unresolved. Agathe Rousselle as Alexia delivers a profoundly harrowing performance, throwing herself fully into the body horror. As a girl Alexia is in a serious auto accident that requires a titanium plate to be installed on her skull. It tells us nothing, it makes no rational sense at all, but presumably that is the explanation for everything that follows, along with compelling clues that her father has sexually abused her. As a young woman she is working as a lascivious model at auto industry shows, making love to the vehicles under the spotlight if not using them to masturbate. She loves cars. Soon there is a scene—after hours, after the show and after most of the people have gone—where she seems to be having sex with a car, which has summoned her to the garage with imperious honking.

Fetishizing cars this way hits differently for me in the 21st century, knowing better what cars are doing in terms of carbon pollution—even in 1996, David Cronenberg’s Crash might still seem like an innocent boy hobby, like memorizing stats from the back of baseball cards. Identifying and stack-ranking car models as they pass on the road always felt ridiculous, at least to someone like me who can barely make out even the most familiar ones—Jaguars and Mustangs is about the best I can do, and even then I don’t always get them. But now it seems worse than a frivolous pastime, more depraved, decadent in the worst sense. The next thing we know Alexia appears to be pregnant. And she seems to be leaking motor oil.

“There Are More Things” (1974)

[spoilers] This story by Jorge Luis Borges is from his collection The Book of Sand. It is formally dedicated “to the memory of H.P. Lovecraft.” There seems to be some confusion at Wikipedia about the dedication because Borges is elsewhere dismissive of Lovecraft. Is it a case like Scott Bradfield (and kinda sorta me), a reversal after a lifetime of bewilderment and disdain? It took me a second reading for Borges’s story to really click, but ultimately it is good at hitting the high notes of dread, piling on with humdrum detail. It’s short but requires a good deal of setup. Reports of glazing over are common among readers. I thought, as with Lovecraft, that it got better with familiarity, as the concepts settle in. You have to read this stuff slowly, more slowly than I can always manage. Borges indulges the Lovecraftian with a mysterious mansion changing hands, windows permanently covered, work that goes on all night, and strange furniture. I like the ending, but I see why some complain. Borges foreshadows monsters more and more intensely, and just at the moment we are about to see them—the story stops. “... I heard something coming up the ramp—something heavy and slow and plural. Curiosity got the better of fear, and I did not close my eyes.” That’s how it ends. No attempt at further description is made (which I must say is not very Lovecraftian). By the literary rules under which I’m pretty sure Borges is operating, this first-person narrator survives the encounter to tell the tale. We know that (or we think we know that)—and, further, he tells it calmly, soberly, thoroughly. What did he see? One element of Lovecraft not used here is the tendency for characters to be high-strung and/or go mad. It’s an interesting omission on Borges’s part. Exactly what he is up to with this story I don’t know—a general hallmark of his work. It’s a reasonably good facsimile of Lovecraft overall and strikes that mood well. Why doesn’t the narrator tell us what he saw and how he escaped? Perhaps, I like to think, because he thought it might drive us mad, turning us as the readers into that element of Lovecraft, tittering mindlessly at the throne of chaos where the thin flutes pipe (with apologies to Destroy All Monsters). The title is from Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare’s Memory
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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

They said 50,000,000 Elvis fans can’t be wrong (on Elvis Presley’s second collection of gold records in 1959) so maybe the same principle applies to the second movie in the Avatar franchise? About the 2.9 billion who saw the first? They can’t be wrong? I don’t know. I saw a 3D IMAX version of that first one some double-digit years ago, with all the many folks (and me) ridiculously wearing the 3D glasses and gasping in wonder. Every generation seems to get its turn at the buying end of 3D as the future of cinema. I was duly impressed and inclined to defend it in a general way, the problematic auteur James Cameron notwithstanding. What’s wrong with a hit? I even looked at it again a few years later across the living room on my not-so-big TV and still liked it then, perhaps some kind of lingering hangover effect from the wonderful theater experience. But certainly things about the blockbuster rankled as insipid—looking at you, “unobtanium”—and they’re not particularly better in this sequel. I never thought the putdown of “Dances With Wolves in space” was that insightful, maybe because I like Dances With Wolves, even with all its problems, including a running time close to four hours. And speaking of long, I spent half my life the other day looking at a non-3D non-IMAX streaming version of the 2022 Avatar sequel. The Way of Water (which is over three hours) spends nearly an hour reprising the situation established in the first one, then shifts gears from the forest culture of the planet Pandora to the sea culture. Native forest Pandorans are tinted blue whereas the sea tribes helpfully have teal skin, for easy identification during the pitched battles. There’s probably nothing I can say to convincingly encourage or discourage anyone about seeing this movie, particularly at this late stage of the affair. It’s all world-building and big battles, with the now-usual blockbuster dose of family feels sprinkled in. Those inclined may find it wise to keep a hanky handy. In the first one, if it was there, I missed that Pandora is a moon of a larger gas giant type of planet. They make good use of it here as periods of light and darkness are dramatically affected, with a regular (daily?) event called “Eclipse,” functioning something like our tides. There’s also a lovable whale-like creature with specific interesting features who must suffer from human stupidity. Among other things, The Way of Water is a condemnation of game hunting. I can allow that in many ways its heart is in the right place and now and then it even rises to the level of entertainment. I thought The Way of Water was mostly boring but, you know, how can 2.9 billion people be wrong?

Ironweed (1983)

Even after the first two novels in William Kennedy’s series based in Albany, New York—Legs and Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game—I wasn’t entirely ready for the plunge into alcoholism that Ironweed delivers. It’s almost certainly the most famous in the series, which spans eight novels published between 1975 and 2012. Kennedy is still alive too, so there could be more, although note he is now 96 years old. Ironweed won a Pulitzer and other awards and ended up on multiple lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century. You may, like me, have heard of it but not known it was part of a series. Kennedy is a very good writer and storyteller—I’m not sure Ironweed is my favorite of the first three, but it’s the least shaggy, a very short but fully packed novel that reaches severe depths as well as heights. It tells the story of the return to Albany after 22 years of Francis Phelan, Billy’s runaway father. He ran because he dropped his third baby, which caused its death. He ran because he had a career as a professional baseball player, a third baseman who could hit and field too. Perhaps most of all he ran because he was and is an alcoholic, a certifiable bum at story’s start and finish. For various reasons stories of profound alcoholism tend to trigger me to contempt and despair. I barely survived the movies Barfly and Leaving Las Vegas, for example. So I struggled with a lot of the events recounted among these down-and-outers and their very hard lives. There’s a beautiful scene where Francis returns home and is welcomed and many wounds healed—and nothing goes wrong. After I finished the book and looked it up on Wikipedia I found it has a structural resemblance to Dante’s Inferno. An opening headnote from that source might have alerted me. I love how Kennedy loves Albany (more than I think I could ever love Albany), with prose that sings across vernaculars, from the argot of gangsters to the poetics of literature. With Dante’s underworld journey supplying its spine, Ironweed becomes a little more pretentious. And yet—it’s one I am more tempted to revisit to trace through its sources more carefully. The novel felt strangely episodic as I read, but now I see there may be larger patterns at play in its background. Lots of meat for such a slender volume.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.
William Kennedy, An Albany Trio

15. Doors, The Doors (1967)

[2010 review of “Light My Fire” here]

Decades after the fact, the Doors remain controversial. To a significant number of people, they—specifically the singer, Jim Morrison—are preening, drunken buffoons. I recently happened to see some quotes on social media by David Crosby before he died, deriding the Doors hard. Good grief, man. David Crosby! He should talk. Even Jim DeRogatis, in his wide-ranging psychedelic rock compendium Turn On Your Mind, dismisses the Doors as non-psychedelic. On one level I see the point. They were a bit silly and perhaps too mindful of the top 40 charts, if that’s your issue (“Light My Fire,” #1 ’67; “People Are Strange,” #12 ‘67; “Love Me Two Times,” #25 ’67; “The Unknown Soldier,” #39 ’68; “Hello, I Love You,” #1 ’68; “Touch Me” #3 69; “Love Her Madly,” #11 ’71; “Riders on the Storm,” #14 ‘71). Later they turned convincingly more to bluesy fare, but this debut LP harks much to the source of their name—The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley’s 1954 memoir of psychedelic experience. The album opens with the rousing “Break On Through (To the Other Side),” which makes you want to, and it closes with 12 minutes of something called “The End,” a wandering exercise that dramatizes the Oedipal situation with a thudding foot and other stuff too. “The End” may not be the kind of thing you’ll be tempted to play on repeat. But I bet you like the way it kicks off the movie Apocalypse Now. In between, the album is a smorgasbord of little happy surprises. The seven-minute “Light My Fire” is moving toward if not already in the category of songs, with “Stairway to Heaven,” “Maggie May,” and their own “Riders on the Storm,” that we have likely heard as much we need to by now. But try this long version of “Light My Fire” one more time. Sit and listen to it. You don’t have to do it a second time, but you might be surprised how much is still there in terms of mood, tone, and explosive movement. I also love their version here—and especially that they thought to do it at all—of “Alabama Song (Whisky Bar),” the Brecht/Weill song from one or another of their operettas. Among other things it emphasizes that the mood-altering substance of choice by the Doors (certainly Morrison) appears to be basically booze and sex. They’re not mine, at least, for sex, not the way the cover of Willie Dixon’s “Back Door Man” means it. But fair enough. I’m more by way of the mainstream psychedelic camp of weed and acid. It doesn’t mean I can’t get with what’s being put down here and find my mind blown on the way.

The Exterminating Angel (1962)

El ángel exterminador, Mexico, 95 minutes

Director: Luis Buñuel

Writers: Luis Buñuel, Luis Alcoriza

Photography: Gabriel Figueroa

Editor: Carlos Savage

Cast: Silvia Pinal, Enrique Rambal, Luis Beristain, Jacqueline Andere, Jose Baviera, Tito Junco, Ofelia Montesco, Claudio Brook, Nadia Haro Oliva

For the record, and FYI, director and cowriter Luis Buñuel has no fewer than six titles in the top 200 of the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?, a roundup of critical opinion from around the world: Viridiana, #88; The Exterminating Angel (my favorite), #138; Los Olvidados, #139; the inestimable Un Chien Andalou, #149; L’Age d’or, #166; and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (my other favorite), #172. A seventh, Belle de jour, is trailing not far behind at #256. He’s obviously a very big deal among cineastes, partly for his dedication to surrealism and the originality of it, partly for his caustic treatment of religion and capitalism, partly for a prolific, globe-trotting career that saw him making pictures in Spain, France, Mexico, and elsewhere—and partly because he’s pretty good at making movies.

Among other things, The Exterminating Angel shows a lot of skill unrolling the premise. It starts with a dinner party—how many Buñuel pictures involve (and mock) the genteel dinner party, attended by the upper-middle class as they strain after more social class? In fact, the picture is a bit dull in the first third as they gather and work their status symbols, though it is enlivened somewhat by slapstick and sarcasm. For some reason all the servants, including the cooks, are leaving. They can’t explain themselves but only apologize. And they will not stay. But the host and hostess make do and muddle through with the only servant left, a butler. After the dinner the group retires to the parlor for brandy and more polite intercourse. They’re a bit bored but not yet inclined to leave. The hours peter away until finally, around 4 or 5 a.m., the hosts, eager to break it up, offer them rooms in the mansion. But they prefer to undress and bunk down where they are. So do the host and hostess. It’s not until the next morning, when the group wakes and starts thinking about breakfast, that they realize they are somehow trapped there.

Turn On Your Mind (2003)

All fans of psychedelic music (whatever “psychedelic music” means exactly) will want to look into this wide-ranging and eccentric survey by Chicago rock critic Jim DeRogatis. It’s actually a second edition of his first effort on the topic, Kaleidoscope Eyes from 1996, expanded not just to account for the intervening years but also to continue casting the net wide. He has ideas that don’t comport with mine, for example naming Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys as the #2 greatest psychedelic album of all time (or at least his #2 favorite). I love Pet Sounds but have never heard it as psychedelic at all. It’s hard to imagine Terence McKenna grooving in the jungle to “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” DeRogatis also gives short shrift to the Doors and Sonic Youth, artists with an obvious (to me) foot in psychedelics. But he also broke things open for me about whole new fields of psychedelic potential by giving Brian Eno his own chapter. And I would have said punk-rock has so little in common with psychedelic as to be practically anti-psychedelic, but then he names Pere Ubu, Wire, and the Feelies and I can see the point. Then he raises Julian Cope (of the Teardrop Explodes), Robyn Hitchcock (of the Soft Boys), and XTC, and, again, I can see the point. When it gets down to cases I diverge from his takes fairly often, but I appreciate the touchpoints. Once you expand psychedelic music beyond the time period generally agreed on, approximately 1966 to 1970, you start to see the sky is the limit. You spend more time thinking about the sky too. DeRogatis, in 2003, was plainly a rockist in the poptimist scheme of things. His focus is not psychedelic music but more specifically psychedelic rock, and he indulges a lot of righteousness on the point. He might grant some psychedelic music as mind-expanding, but it must also rock to win his approval. Whether something rocks is an eye-of-the-beholder thing if anything is (or ear-), but again I take his point. I like my psychedelics to rock too. Turn On Your Mind is also one of those sweeping views of rock and rock ‘n’ roll history that spurs a lot of list-making. I came away with something close to 200 albums I wanted to hear immediately, or hear again—in the latter case, sometimes for pleasure and sometimes for reassessment. So far I’m having a blast and I’m barely out of the classic period. Read the book, turn on your mind, and have a fun time.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.