The Big Time (1958)

Fritz Leiber has a big reputation in horror and science fiction circles, but I haven’t read enough yet perhaps to be impressed myself. This very short mess of a novel (about 100 pages, a length sometimes considered a novella) won a Hugo (for “Best Novel or Novelette”). Wikipedia says it a nice way: “The Big Time is a story involving only a few characters, but with a vast, cosmic backstory.” That backstory is basically time travel, which can change history and erase people (who can then be “resurrected” somehow). It’s an interesting concept but explanatory exposition is scant here. These characters are similarly in a place, called “a Place,” which requires explanation. But, again, in medias res, baby. Catch the clues and keep up. It started to feel make-believe in childish ways. The Place, by the way, has affinities with Samuel Beckett’s let’s call it universe. It’s possible that reading The Big Time again, knowing what I learned the first time, might open it up more impressively for me. People see something in it. It won a Hugo and is included in a Library of America anthology of science fiction novels. There are some gems among the nine novels gathered there—notably Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination and Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man—but more often they felt slight to me and poorly done. The Big Time could maybe have been bigger and more descriptive, which I hate to say in this era of bloat—big novels part of big series. It was kind of refreshing to see a novel coming in at 100 pages. But it is dense and work to fathom. For about the first 20 pages I could barely make out what was even happening. There’s something that stinks a little of the MENSA mentality going on here, the arrogance and contempt. I’ve seen it in science fiction before. Maybe it’s a tradition. I’m thinking here of Philip Jose Farmer, to name names. And maybe Fritz Leiber too. All I can say about what I’ve read of Leiber is that it usually leaves me cold, but I’m thinking I should give it or him another try. All that love. There has to be something to it. But tastes in genre can often be stubbornly individual, I guess. Ramsey Campbell is another even more extreme example of my lack of understanding.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)

The Wall (1979)

The other day I saw a social media post asking about albums worth listening to in their entirety, from beginning to end. I was surprised to find this double-LP behemoth among the most frequently mentioned, not least because I had spent the summer playing it that way and found myself crawling up the walls, so to speak. “Dreary blob of audio,” I noted one day. The other odd factor for me was that I never had listened to it that way in the first place—I never owned it (nor Tusk by Fleetwood Mac, for that matter, the other big burger from that autumn). I liked “Another Brick in the Wall” and “Comfortably Numb” enough that I did not turn them away when they came up on the radio. In retrospect this is where the Roger Waters takeover was complete. Pink Floyd had looked to me like a bloat job anyway since at least Dark Side of the Moon, though I’ve since found some (not a lot of) interest in Wish You Were Here and Animals. Waters wrote every bit of the music on The Wall and also scripted the freaking 1982 movie directed by Alan Parker (Midnight Express, The Commitments). I saw it when it was new and it left me, er, uncomfortably numb from the assault of bleak paranoia. The grit felt ground into grime. The album is just a lot of weak sauce. I wonder if anyone mentioned to Waters that “Goodbye Blue Sky” scans way too close to “Goodbye Ruby Tuesday” in the clinch of the chorus. But the song also has some effective moments of tension, so all right. “Vera” harks to Vera Lynn, the iconic World War II UK singer who hit with “White Cliffs of Dover” and especially “We’ll Meet Again,” for a weird-toned moment of genuine nostalgia (I think) in this mess. “The Trial” strains for the Kurt Weill note. And I don’t know about you, let alone Waters, but I do not find children singing “We don’t need no education” to be at all a comforting sentiment. The only saving grace about this puffed-up operatic strudel may be that the libretto is essentially incoherent (except the occasional lines and dramatic readings about public school failings). You have to study The Wall, including a look at the movie, to get the heavy bring-down vibe. My recommendation is don’t study it. In fact, I think you can skip it altogether—I know, 50 years too late again. The one bright spot musically is David Gilmour who steps in, seemingly only when Waters allows it, and chips in some very enjoyable guitar solos and the best music here.

Jeff Buckley, “Forget Her” (1993)

[listen up!]

Word is that Jeff Buckley specifically wanted this song left off of what turned out to be his only album, the 1994 Grace. “Forget Her” is a bittersweet breakup song, plurality of emphasis on the bitter, and Buckley wanted to stay friends with his former and presumably worried she would not react well to it. But I’m glad it finally made it out. It’s too good not to release. Anyone who’s had a broken heart (viz., everyone) is likely to feel this down deep. “Don’t fool yourself / She was heartache from the moment that you met her,” he wails. The dramatic scene is that he’s walking the streets, walkin’ after midnight so to speak, to stop his weeping. It’s the terrible moments at the first of the break, when eating and sleeping is self-denied and a kind of catatonic state descends. No appetite, no stopping the brain. On the Kubler-Ross scale of grief, the singer is flitting between anger and bargaining. Indeed, a case can be made that choosing to leave the song off the album was itself a bargaining ploy. None of that is my business or has much to do with why and how this song goes right through me. I have my own history, of course, and this song opens up some of my own darkest, saddest days. It’s cathartic, in a way—certainly I’ve had my daily infatuations with it. It has often stolen up on me unexpectedly one way or another. More than that, at this point, it’s a reminder I survived, made it past, and found happy places for myself that are reasonably free of grudges and resentment. I hope Buckley got there himself before his sad, untimely end. He was obviously a sensitive soul in many ways on many levels and deserved the peace. This beautiful song is one example of what was lost.

Project Hail Mary (2026)

I usually try to avoid comparisons between novels and the movies based on them, not for any particular noble motives but because I don’t often get to books before I see the movies (indeed, if I ever even get to them, looking your way Traumnovelle). This case is an exception—I know Andy Weir’s third novel is reviled by a certain cohort of SF cognoscenti and equally beloved of other readers who may favor entertainment in SF over heavy themes. I can understand how Weir’s jokey, heavily online voice can put off people looking for intellectual heft, but a friend pressed Project Hail Mary on me earlier this year and it turned out to be just what I needed at the time—funny and entertaining yet satisfyingly full of scientifically plausible and complex ideas. Alas, the movie, even at its punishing length near three hours, necessarily simplifies a lot of what is easily the greatest strength of the novel. A mysterious space algae has begun to consume energy directly from the sun, in enough quantity that it will affect the climate on Earth, cooling it to a degree that will likely wipe out human life if not all life. A whole region of the Milky Way has been affected, except for one star about 11 light-years away. A suicide mission is slapped together, sending Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) with two others to investigate and report back—report back via smaller probe ships, that is, because there’s only enough fuel for a one-way trip. There Grace encounters another ship on the same mission. The two throw in together—ultimately Project Hail Mary is a first contact story approximately cubed—and accomplish the mission, though not without many bumps in the road. The movie keeps its explanations lucid but truncated—I have a sense the people who will get the most out of the movie will come into it having already read the book. That’s what I suggest, noting that the movie is not really necessary. You’re probably better off reading the book again, but there’s enough Hollywood magic going on here to make it worth your time. Gosling is just plain good, as always, even in these obvious paycheck blockbusters he’s inclined to do. The story is fun but also realistic about scientific possibility and quite creative and imaginative in addressing the limitations. I mean, that’s mostly Weir, and it’s mostly better in the novel. But if you like movies you’re sure to have a good time here if you already know and like the book. Good with popcorn.

Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste (2003)

This Lester Bangs collection, edited by John Morthland, was intended as a nonredundant companion to the collection edited by Greil Marcus and published in 1987, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. Altogether that’s about 800 pages of the original gonzo rock critic. As a general rule the Marcus collection contains most of the hits—including the famous faceoff with Lou Reed and the previously unpublished piece in which Bangs disinters Elvis Presley’s body and reaches into his guts for undigested pharmaceuticals—whereas this later collection more documents the workaday product of the rock critic: scads of record reviews, including one of Bob Dylan’s Desire in which he takes Dylan to task for making shit up. It’s kind of refreshing to see (see also Dylan’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech), but we should remember Bangs regularly made shit up himself, albeit with qualitative differences from what Dylan does. There is a sympathetic meditation on Sid Vicious and his ugly end. We find out much more about Bangs’s status as a jazzbo. There is a great feature piece and interview with Captain Beefheart. In many ways, somewhat surprisingly, Bangs is a stern moralist, although it is sadly somewhat undercut by his life as an alcoholic and drug addict, his death in 1982 at the age of 33 the result of a Darvon overdose. It’s been long enough now that another factor has come into play. I wonder a lot about what he would make of subsequent developments, even about the artists he knew like Lou Reed and Miles Davis, and certainly all kinds of things since then. His literary tastes strike me now as wrong, elevating Charles Bukowski and William Burroughs above all others. He even slags Allen Ginsberg (but not Jack Kerouac). This is all wrong according to me. Some of Bangs’s experimental writing is found here, but not as much as in Carburetor Dung. Full disclosure, that’s a good thing by my lights. That stuff has generally not aged well. But Lester Bangs remains in spirit an important model for anyone considering the commitment to being a rock critic. He’s cheerful enough often enough about being out of touch or at odds with the mainstream, acknowledging his own “bad taste.” You could do worse on primers about how to rock critic.

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

The Great Dictator (1940)

USA, 125 minutes

Director / writer: Charles Chaplin

Photography: Karl Struss, Roland Totheroh

Music: Charles Chaplin, Meredith Wilson

Editors: Willard Nico, Harold Rice

Cast: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, Reginald Gardiner, Henry Daniell, Billy Gilbert, Maurice Moscovitch

Getting back to this movie after decades, I was reminded of the old chestnut that “history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes” when a character named Epstein showed up. He’s Jewish and a powerful financier who must be turned to for assistance by the fascist and openly antisemitic regime of Tomainia, which is basically Germany in director and writer Charles Chaplin’s clonking sendup. Chaplin is Adenoid Hynkel, the Phooey (Fuhrer) of Tomainia, which happens to be in an uneasy alliance with Bacteria (Italy). The Tomainian swastika is two X’s, called the double cross. You can tell Chaplin was not holding back here (though an editor or collaborator might have come in handy). For a 1940 Hollywood picture it’s unusually blunt about its points, which is not to say always inspired. Chaplin also plays a Jewish barber and veteran of World War I who lives in the ghetto of an unspecified Tomainian city (he probably couldn’t think of a Warsaw gag ... where are Mad magazine writers when you need them?). The Jewish barber must endure the problems you would expect.

The picture is bloated at over two hours, ham-handed to an infinite degree (did I mention Rome here is called Aroma?), and so self-righteous it verges on chest-pounding narcissism, which are reasons I haven’t been back to it in a long time. In retrospect, this is the beginning of the end for Chaplin. I hated to see it and all that followed—some, admittedly, with bright moments, but it was also the period when he ruined The Gold Rush by trying to add sound. Still, nevertheless, I could not deny that The Great Dictator hits different in 2026. That’s what made the details of a relatively background character named Epstein so eerily remarkable.

“The Erl-King” (1993)

Elizabeth Hand offers some interesting ideas in her long story, such as reaching for Andy Warhol and his Factory clan, featuring a sort of glitter-era rock star figure who seems to exist somewhere between Robert Fripp and the Moody Blues. I wasn’t much persuaded by it, or more often felt vaguely embarrassed it was even being attempted. But there are also lots of things to like, including, paradoxically, that someone is making the attempt at all. The magic is positively Merlinesque. The rock star’s name is Lie Vagal—“Lie” from Elijah and no idea about the last name, though it’s a pretty good rock star name overall. His neighbor, or tenant—it’s complicated—is Aurora Dawn (another good name), a hanger-on Lie knew back in the day, now washed up, middle-aged, and drunken. Think Nico in the ‘80s. Exotic animals populate the story, as rock stars are wont to go for, which draws Aurora’s daughter Linette and her best friend Haley, staying with her for the summer, to Lie. As the plot develops it becomes silly with reveals that are only unlikely, if not entirely unexpected. Lots of details are planted as foreshadowing for what’s to come. The structure of the story tends to make everything feel obvious or hard to believe or both. Did I mention Vagal is mentally ill? Sounds like schizophrenia. He hallucinates and thinks he sees, or is actually able to see, mythical creatures such as fairies and this Erl-King. This stuff is basically not for me, except maybe the rock star part, a theme Hand has also pursued elsewhere. Hand seems to be reasonably well regarded, winning her share of awards and nominations. This story veers closer to fantasy than horror for my taste but I suspect I will be running into her stuff again. “The Erl-King” does have some nice girl power elements, which is always good to see, though perhaps faint praise on my part. I would label it as a kind of “classy” horror, closer to gothic but not as skilled as the best gothic. Just evoking a sort of semi-contemplative mood. But I always appreciate the attempt to bring decadent rock culture into the horror mix.

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Seventh Annual Collection, ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
Story not available online.

Spike Jones & His City Slickers, “William Tell Overture” (1948)

[listen up!]

In my Dad’s bachelor days after World War II he became a record collector. Instead of the 33-1/3 10-inch and (mainly) 12-inch LP he more favored a different type of album, boxed sets of three seven-inch 45s. With six songs these albums were closer to what we would now call EPs. I wish I could remember more of the artists (George Shearing was one) but as a kid the one that caught me up was the bandleader and novelty specialist Spike Jones—who, remember, in their song “Up on Cripple Creek,” even the Band seemed to endorse. Jones’s version of Rossini’s “William Tell Overture” is pure controlled chaos, starting from the usual trademark razor-sharp performance by Jones and orchestra—no multitracking or overdubs were available in 1948 recording studios, it had to be played, flawlessly, the way you hear it. That is combined with ... a horserace?! Yes, and in the running are horses named Cabbage (“leading by a head”), Girdle (“in the stretch”), Banana (“coming up through the bunch”), Mother-in-Law (“nagging in the rear”). Apartment House (“with plenty of room”), and, of course, Beetlebaum. My appreciation of this whack job actually started with my appreciation for the “William Tell Overture.” I was never particularly into the Lone Ranger TV show, for example, but tuned in whenever I could for the theme song. Eventually my siblings fell in with me on playing and overplaying this, shrieking at the various gags, and bellowing, at top volume, “Beetlebaum” (eventual winner of the race, spoilers). No doubt it annoyed the hell out of my parents. In addition to the Rossini and the horserace, the song features barking dogs, clanging kitchen utensils, thunderclaps, mellow chirping birds, cowbell, bicycle horns, crashing objects falling down, a man gargling a sappy melody, horse whinnying, and more. “It’ll either be a photo finish or an oil painting.” In its way it is exhausting.

Dune (1965)

I had a nice time finally getting to Frank Herbert’s massive worldview of desert planet Arrakis, the first and rather large installment in the Dune franchise—six novels by Frank, a dozen or more by his son Brian with Kevin J. Anderson, a handful of short stories by these three, and who knows what-all out there in the fan fiction wilderness. It must rival Cthulhu by now for world-building impact. I was most impressed by the complexity of the vision, which drills and drills into Arrakis, with visions of a future social order writ large. Depressingly feudal, yet plausible enough. Powerful economic and political forces colliding in slow motion over the planet’s primary export, a “geriatric” drug called “spice,” created by monstrous sandworms the size of whales and dinosaurs. Somewhat prescient for 1965 perhaps, the conceit of spice is as a metaphor for oil, hence in part the heavy and intriguing touches of Arabic and Muslim culture. Then there is the main character, Paul Muad’Dib, who harks to T.E. Lawrence up to and including the epic 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia. I’ve heard it both ways on this first Dune novel all my life. Even those most positive about it tend to acknowledge you have to get through the first hundred pages, and refer to the handy (or, in the case of the kindle product, not so handy, boo hiss) glossary. I saw what they meant, relied on context, and plodded along. It picks up momentum eventually—before much action can occur it has a lot to tell us about the history and ways of Arrakis. I’m not surprised Herbert the elder had five more finished novels and more planned. Dune comes as some kind of inflection point when the classic SF of the ‘40s and ‘50s began giving way to the SF New Wave. The sources of Dune are closer to the classic SF mode, in a way, but the vision was every bit as big or even bigger than what we’d got from Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, or Robert Heinlein. I liked Dune and got the impression it would reward rereading. I’m probably going to try the next novel in the series, Dune Messiah, and see about the rest from there. I do hear of people giving up before they get to the sixth. I’m quite late to Dune, on which it’s likely you know already where you stand. But I’ll still recommend reading it. You’re likely to get something out of it, and probably it makes the movies more legible too.

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

Zombies, “Maybe After He’s Gone” (1968)

[listen up!]

The Zombies’ second album, Odessey and Oracle (with one of the most famous misspellings in rock), sputtered out of the gate but eventually became an acclaimed must-hear album of the ‘60s. Its reputation is as a classic of psychedelia (note cover). Multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Rod Argent is likely the most famous member, going on to the band Argent and a top 5 hit with “Hold Your Head Up" in 1972, and then a solo career (as if “Argent” wasn’t already that). He wrote just under half the songs on Odessey, including the album’s one hit, “Time of the Season,” a signature song for the Zombies which reached #3 in 1969. Bass player Chris White wrote the rest of the songs and, while they go many places and are uniformly good, some are not remotely psychedelic. “Maybe After He’s Gone” is one such, pretty much standard unrequited love business on its face. The lyrical frame and song arrangement somehow elevate it to an impossible poignancy. The singer is really into his girlfriend: “She told me she loved me / With words as soft as morning rain.” Unfortunately, she is done with him and has left for another. The singer, in a swelling chorus, finds pathetic solace in unlikely hopes: “Maybe after he’s gone / She’ll come back, love me again.” We have all been there and know how it goes. You almost have to fight yourself not to tell him, or try to tell him. The chances are good he wouldn’t listen anyway. He would probably even hold it against you. “Maybe After He’s Gone” captures an indelible moment of pathos that cannot be faked, is not soon forgotten, and can leave listeners just a little uncomfortable. It’s beautiful.

Eno (2024)

This odd documentary about Brian Eno is billed as “generative” (as opposed, they say, to AI), which means, according to the PR, there are some 52 quintillion distinct random versions—“no viewing is the same twice.” I don’t know how this technology works. Are there 52 quintillion possibilities in physical media or on streaming platforms? The Criterion Channel seems to have answered that for the moment: no. What they’re doing instead is posting a new version every month (for as long as it’s there and I don’t know how long that is). If you look carefully, there’s a credit in the picture for Criterion and the month. I looked at the June, July, and August versions, and it’s perfectly possible I will make a monthly habit of it for as long as I can. The three I saw, each running about 80 minutes, were indeed distinctly different. I’d guess less than half the scenes I saw in any one of them were in more than one. Roxy Music, for example, was severely underplayed in the July version. Eno’s love of Fela Kuti and a brief scene where he gives his full name (Brian Peter George St. Jean-Baptiste de la Salle Eno) were in all three. Also discussions of the Oblique Strategies deck of cards, though they varied. Some recurring scenes occur at different points in the picture. Thus among other things it all seems to be unpredictable by design. It’s refreshing and obviously it fits with Eno’s cybernetic ambient aesthetic in a wry sort of way, but I do have some concerns. It’s clear there is a good more than 80 minutes’ worth of material it can plug in, likely much more. How much goes unseen? How many viewings are recommended for a fuller sense? What are they doing at the Criterion Channel—hitting the scramble button and taking the first version given, or screening more than one to help sort out the better from the good enough? I think it’s safe to say Eno is primarily for Eno fans who already know his work and biography. In fact, there’s a 2011 documentary, Brian Eno – 1971-1977: The Man Who Fell to Earth, that’s probably worth checking into first. While it only covers the ‘70s it is over two and half hours and full of great music and useful information. I suspect the more you know about Eno the more you are likely to enjoy this peculiar exercise—and seeing multiple versions is arguably important too. The interviews are great and so is the music but I found myself missing things I saw only once, such as an anecdote involving Joni Mitchell. Eno may be for fans only, but fans will likely be gratified, especially if they see more than one version. For me, it’s on to September.

“I Do Not Hear You, Sir” (1958)

Avram Davidson was a prolific oddball midcentury genre writer and satirist who specialized in science fiction and fantasy and perhaps most notably the spaces between. He worked in the early ‘60s as editor of Fantasy and Science Fiction. This story from an Alfred Hitchcock-branded anthology is a good example of the way science fiction often intruded on horror in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Like Cornell Woolrich’s “Someone on the Phone” from 1949 or Robert Aickman’s “Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen” from 1953, it’s also dependent on a certain uncanniness associated with communicating intimately by voice across great distances. Telephones and radio still had the potential to be unsettling—and do to this day, in some cases, as the mysterious ham radio numbers / letters broadcasts attest. But this story is more along the lines of gimmicky and preposterous, like a Twilight Zone episode that can’t quite find its groove. First there’s a convoluted frame story that has the main character in desperate straits for money. He’s defrauded the wrong person and needs to make it good. Even if he can he’s still likely to be murdered. Then there’s something about an inheritance that isn’t worth enough. But there is this mysterious box he hasn’t really figured out yet. It turns out to be a telephone into the 18th century and he’s able to call people like George Washington (who doesn’t sound like any George Washington I’ve ever heard of). But he can call each person only once. How in the world this is supposed to help him I have no idea, but he gets busy calling Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, and others. Really what’s needed here—and I’m not sure there’s anything that can save this story—is some of that H.P. Lovecraft tempo and detail. What is this machine? Why do American Revolution elites have it? Is this something about masons? Unknown, unknown, unknown. In the end they can’t help our hero and all’s not well that doesn’t end well. This story is a weird mix of brash ‘50s cynicism with schoolbookish American history. I do not understand. It does not compute. It may be more the type of story I claim to like—with little explanation—but in this case I must reserve the right to change my mind.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories My Mother Never Told Me, ed. Robert Arthur
Story not available online.

35 Shots of Rum (2008)

35 rhums, France / Germany, 100 minutes

Director: Claire Denis

Writers: Claire Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau

Photography: Agnes Godard

Music: Tindersticks

Editor: Guy Lecorne

Cast: Alex Descas, Mati Diop, Nicole Dogue, Gregoire Colin, Julieth Mars Toussaint, Adele Ado, Jean-Christophe Folly

I’ve seen a handful or so of pictures by director and cowriter Claire Denis and have to admit they often leave me mystified. That is notably the case with Beau Travail, a much-acclaimed picture I see turning up on all kinds of best-ever lists, though it left me cold. For all its allusive beauty it is ultimately a French Foreign Legion picture with most of the cliches intact, just more gritty and beautiful. Trouble Every Day was an oddly unpleasant vampire show that did not live up to advance billing. On the other hand, I love White Material and its examination of postcolonial Africa, playing it like tense horror. 35 Shots of Rum, by contrast to all the foregoing (she gets around), is set in suburban Paris and far more domestic and meditative, observing bonds of a fractured family and work group and apartment building community as things inevitably shift and change. Time, life, all that.

Lionel (Alex Descas) is a widower in his 50s who works the commuter trains, riding the complexities of the rail lines which we see in hypnotic shots from his view, tangling and disentangling. He lives with his grown daughter, Josephine (Mati Diop), who has an advanced degree in anthropology. It’s unclear when or how her mother, his wife, died but it feels like it’s many years in the past. They still feel her loss, as a road trip to visit her grave late in the picture shows. Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue) is a neighbor who drives a cab for a living. She and Lionel have a history and she still has feelings for him, and motherly feelings for Josephine too. Tensions exist between them, but a good deal of sincere affection too. Rounding out the main four in 35 Shots is the brooding, somewhat standoffish and self-mysterious young man Noe (Gregoire Colin), who also lives in the building.

“The Delicate” (1994)

[spoilers] Here’s what Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, editors of the anthology The Weird, have to say about this story by Jeffrey Ford: “Although his fiction comes at the weird sideways, some of his stories, like ‘The Delicate’ (1994), enter the weird with complete abandon. It’s a short, sharp shock of the grotesque.” It is definitely short, only three pages, a riffing free-form assault by some life form called “The Delicate” (which, by the way, appears to have nothing to do with any Michelle Shocked album). The description is compressed and vividly effective, which at least is more than you get from various masters of the weird. “He comes in the latter days of afternoon, through blowing snow, dressed in black, while Schubert’s ‘Eighth’ plays magically in the background.” I like the Schubert detail, but come on. Still, I have to admit there is something inspired in this brief screed. Ford’s imagination is on fire and his voice mostly in control. It could be a vampire, this Delicate. Blood-sucking seems to be involved. The woman he “ingests,” however, has something in her—perhaps taken deliberately?—that turns him into a dog. This all happens in a place called Absentia. Next comes Pharsalus, the hunter, “in from the wilderness.” Absentia sounds like the last outpost of civilization before the North Pole. Pharsalus adopts the dog that used to be or still is the Delicate. Demons are a danger in the wilderness. Winter seems to be called Night and spring Morning. We spend relatively a lot of time with Pharsalus. The Delicate becomes a human-like dog and fights with Pharsalus, who loses and dies but wounds the Delicate, who is soon on a rampage, ingesting townspeople two at a time. I’m enjoying the story more rereading it slowly and somewhat reassembling it here. The army is sent in to get him. What army? Unclear. It all feels Roman to me in a way. “They collect the creature into a plastic bag and freeze-dry him. His remains are taken to Spire City in the Sunbelt where they are stored for the edification of future generations. The funding never comes through to study the crumbs of the Delicate, so he lies in a bag on a shelf and waits.” That’s how it ends. A wild ride but doesn’t add up to much more than that last image maybe.

Jeffrey Ford, The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant: And Other Stories
The Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
Listen to story online.

Paloma Faith, “Crybaby” (2017)

[listen up!]

Paloma Faith’s first single from her fourth album kept reminding me of “The Boy Is Mine” by Brandy & Monica, which I see (hear) from a side-by-side listen is about the arpeggiated figure (if I’ve got the term right) played on what sounds like a harp, or maybe some keyboard—glistening, spidery, quite lovely. Listening more closely, I must admit I found the misspelling of the title setting off frustrated copy editor peeves. It should be and by the usage it is “Cry, Baby,” with or without a comma (author’s choice). I looked up a “lyrics video” to clarify, and things got more confusing as I found it given there as “Oh go on and cry baby, crybaby,” as if the singer is encouraging the display of emotion but also mocking the tearfulness and the crier. But that doesn’t fit with the tone of the song and I’m willing to call more misspellings on the part of the video too. The song, according to Wikipedia and it seems plausible enough because why not, is about toxic masculinity. Says Faith, it’s "a conversation between a man and I, and the song questions whether global conflicts would cease to exist if men successfully dealt with their feelings.” OK, whatever, I don’t hear it that way, but I see the point and it’s fair enough to call the whole thing a muddle. The main point is that it’s a catchy, beautiful, and endearing pop song with the harp figure going and Faith churning it out in full warm clarion voice. I think I’m on board with the general sentiments too but as I say that’s a little muddled. Who cares anyway? A message is not often the point of pop music.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)

Shirley Jackson’s last novel is often called a masterpiece and that’s fair enough, except I’m more inclined to think of Jackson as a short-story writer and “The Lottery” as her masterpiece. ISFDB relegates this short novel to “non-genre” and Wikipedia classifies it as a mystery. No one seems to know what to do with it, including me, though I have no objection to the masterpiece label. It’s about a family with many dark secrets. The darkest may be the one kept by Mary Katherine “Merricat” Blackwood, age 18, the first-person narrator. The Blackwoods have long been resented by the locals for being rich and aloof. A few years before the time of this story someone poisoned the entire family with arsenic in the sugar bowl. Only three survived: Merricat and her sister Constance, who didn’t take sugar with the berries that were served, and Uncle Julian, who barely survived the poisoning and is now disabled and in a wheelchair, with mild encroaching dementia. Merricat is the one most able to go into town twice a week for groceries, but she has to be careful or the townspeople will hassle her. I’m not going to give it away but it’s not hard to figure out who did the poisoning, which is readily revealed at about the beginning of the last third of the novel. Constance was charged with the crime but acquitted, leaving the Blackwoods more isolated and reviled than ever. One day their unpleasant cousin Charles shows up and makes an attempt to take over the family. He’s mostly interested in their money. Merricat can’t stand him and wants him to leave, but he intends to stay. Eventually the conflict leads to the house catching fire, destroying the upper floors. Firefighters—who also hate the Blackwoods—arrive to put out the blaze and the rest of the town shows up to watch and catcall. “Let it burn,” is their sentiment. After the fire is under control a riot breaks out. The townspeople enter the home and destroy everything in it that they can. The fire and the riot are amazing, vivid, painful scenes. The entire novel is suffused with intense tensions. In some ways it’s hard to know why We Have Always Lived in the Castle even exists, it is so full of hate and rage and pointless fury. But it’s also powerful and unforgettable—as good as any reasons to exist.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)

A Session With Gary Lewis & the Playboys (1965)

Around the time I was 11 I got a paper route and joined the Columbia Record Club for the usual deal: a dozen or so albums upfront for almost nothing and then an expensive commitment that never seemed to end (I had a round 2 in the CD era). The club did not have much to offer by way of the Beatles, my main interest, but I got the US version of the Hard Day’s Night soundtrack and an Alvin & the Chipmunks album of all Beatles covers. I also got albums by Cher, Jay & the Americans, Gene Pitney, Johnny Rivers, and more. Sometimes it wasn’t easy even picking out enough freebies. I would say now that the prize of the pack was Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence, an album I voluntarily return to that still holds up and then some. But in 1966 I might have pointed to Gary Lewis & the Playboys. I got all three of their first albums (all released in 1965, all clocking in under 30 minutes each) and I listened to them quite a bit. The formula, hardly unique to this band, tended to be two or three hits and/or original songs otherwise matched, to get to the mandatory dozen, with rock ‘n’ roll covers of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s: Chuck Berry, the Coasters, Bobby Darin, the Kinks, Bobby Rydell, the Searchers, Bobby Vee, so on so forth, giving me an oldies education foundation. And the originals, many of which became top 10 hits, were good: “This Diamond Ring” (cowritten by Al Kooper and intended originally for the Drifters), ”Count Me In,” “Everybody Loves a Clown” (written by Lewis, Leon Russell, and producer Snuff Garrett), “She’s Just My Style” (also written by Lewis, Russell, and Garrett, with Al Capps), and “Sure Gonna Miss Her.”

The one exception now, the one big hit I have the hardest time calling good, is “Save Your Heart for Me,” a knockoff of the much better “See You in September.” “Save Your Heart” seems ultra-dippy to the max to me now, but the fact is it was one of the first three singles I ever bought (as I think I’ve noted elsewhere the other two on that momentous occasion were Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe” and the Beatles’ “Help!” b/w “I’m Down”). Yes, liking “Save Your Heart for Me” that much embarrasses me now, though I also admit I don’t really mind hearing the song. And of course it also embarrasses me that I was so nutty for Gary Lewis & the Playboys in the first place, but honesty is the best policy around here. Here we have an example of the original “guilty pleasure” problem, though now the pleasure is chiefly nostalgic I suppose. My esteem did not have anything to do consciously with Gary’s famous father (which probably did have something to do with their big showbiz success). Jerry Lewis has never appealed to me much. In fairness, however, I should note I was also into superstar kid group Dino, Desi & Billy at the time (respectively, son of Dean Martin, son of Desi Arnaz, and neighbor kid), who had top 30 hits in 1965 with “I’m a Fool” and “Not the Lovin’ Kind.” It’s possible I was starstruck and don’t remember it that way. By all rights, I should have been embarrassed about any enterprise using the word “playboy” in 1965 but it’s perfectly possible that it was an appeal for me anyway and I have suppressed that memory.

In the ‘90s I picked up a Gary Lewis & the Playboys greatest-hits anthology on CD. They had more and better hits than I remembered, but still only maybe a third of that collection is worth revisiting. I haven’t been near the original albums in decades, an opportunity streaming has afforded me. So, right, I would not remotely call A Session With Gary Lewis & the Playboys—their second LP and the most successful by chart standards—a great album or even a particularly good one. But it’s not terrible. “Count Me In” is one of their best singles, “Without a Word of Warning” is a pretty good original (written by Lewis, Russell, and Garrett). “Little Miss Go-Go” is another original (written by Russell, Garrett, and Louis Yule Brown) but more of a blatant Beach Boys ripoff. “Voodoo Woman,” written by Bobby Goldsboro (!), is very silly but maybe, because it is so silly, the best example of a very silly theme that runs through whole swaths of rock. The covers include Ricky Nelson (“Travelin’ Man”), Everly Brothers (“Walk Right Back”), the Yardbirds (“For Your Love”), Freddy Cannon (“Palisades Park”), and Del Shannon (“Runaway”), five solid lessons in rock ‘n’ roll. They are nowhere near the originals, but if Gary Lewis & the Playboys were only a gateway to the greater glories, well, that will just have to do.

Kesha, “Praying” (2017)

[listen up!]

Curmudgeon incoming: my problems with the pop warbling mode started with Whitney Houston and accelerated in the new century with the coming of TV’s performance competition reality show American Idol, which prized vocal technique and histrionic stagecraft above melody and arrangement. It was deeply alienating for someone reared on the Beatles and Tommy James and, I firmly believe, it’s a misnomer to call it pop music. But by 2017 I was making or trying to make my accommodations and sufficiently softened by then that “Praying” could reach me. It was Kesha’s first single in something like four years. It starts exactly as what I don’t like, all full of its own faux humbleness, with churchy piano chords and Kesha sneaking in at low volume, low energy, laying the ground for the wall of emo to come. I don’t know Kesha’s other work well, but Wikipedia tells me this lead single from her third album can be taken as a departure (from her “dive bar party anthems,” per Vox’s Caroline Framke). Some even characterize “Praying” as a comeback. The high pitch of drama—even the idea that prayer is the recommended necessity for the situation at hand, whatever that somewhat murky situation is exactly—somehow wears down my innate objections, as the overwhelming attack kicks in and washes over me like redemption. When the drums come in full at about 2:25 the song is fully ablaze and roaring. Kesha says it is about forgiving our trespassers. Others hear the calls for forgiveness more as cold brushoff, the moral equivalent of saying “thank you with a capital F.” I mean: “I hope you find your peace / Falling on your knees.” Me, I just get lost in the sweltering gospel texture and hope it works out right for everyone involved. Pray for it, even.

The Sheep Detectives (2026)

The Sheep Detectives is rated PG for “thematic material, some violent content and brief language,” but I felt like I was watching something absolutely suitable for the entire family on a summer outing, perfect for the drive-in if you’ve still got one near you, with both jokes that are surprisingly funny and events that are surprisingly moving. And it’s packed with stars, both live and voice: Bryan Cranston, Hugh Jackman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Patrick Stewart, Emma Thompson, etc. Jackman plays George Hardy, a struggling sheep rancher who despises the town butcher. Every night he reads chapters from mystery novels to the flock, who bleat satisfaction in unison. They love story time. When humans aren’t around they speak English to one another, as funnee talking aminals are wont to do. They are a bunch of irresistible charming characters. Lily (Louis-Dreyfus) is an expert in mystery stories and usually sees developments coming before they get there. Sir Ritchfield (Stewart) is a pompous strutting ass who’s wrong about everything. Sebastian (Cranston) is a proud loner with a complicated background. Cloud (Regina Hall) extravagantly admires her own beauty and always thinks it’s the maid who committed the crime. There are more, all distinct, along with sheep acting like sheep and a whole thing about “winter lambs,” which they say are often rejected by the flock. Then, unexpectedly, Hardy turns up dead. At first police call it a heart attack but before long Lily and the sheep are on the case. The police investigation is led by Officer Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun. Succession, The Perks of Being a Wallflower), who reminded me of Don Knotts. Basically the plot from that point is a takeoff on the Agatha Christie style, with a handful of suspects—including an obvious one who just as obviously won’t be the miscreant—and, eventually, a confrontation with an explaining detective that leads to the revelation of the culprit. Lily and the other sheep are well-versed in these stories. They see all the wrinkles coming before they get there. They are always hanging around the periphery, helping to guide Officer Derry to the truth. No one seems to think it’s strange the way these sheep are just hanging around. Consider bringing a hanky to this show because somehow it gets credibly intense in the second half and you will likely need it. I was prepared for something a little silly, and hopefully entertaining, but I came away from it all wrung out in the best ways. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, your heart may go pit-a-pat. Big franchise potential here too, for better or worse.

The Terror (1917)

[spoilers] This short novel is one of Arthur Machen’s more effective tales, at least until it gets to the end and starts offering up the explanations, which unfortunately are lame. But until then it made me nervous more than once. “The terror” is a series of murders and fatal accidents no one can explain. It is set in 1915 and very much mindful there’s a terrible war going on. A fair amount of the speculation on who’s doing it focuses on the suspicion that German agents are somehow embedded in the Welsh countryside, wreaking havoc. But there’s very little evidence of their presence, and the circumstances of some of the deaths rule that out entirely. A serial killer (our modern term) is the most popular theory but there is also evidence pointing away from that. Plus the victims are killed by different methods, which is unusual for such a fiend. Two deaths occur in a similar timeframe but separated by too much distance for one person to do both, so eventually that is ruled out too. Law enforcement types arrive and impose curfews and limit people’s movements—no one allowed near the cliffs where people have fallen, for example. But that also has limited effect on the ongoing terror. Among other things you can really feel Machen’s anxieties about the war. This is not Machen’s only story from that time with the element. See particularly “The Bowmen,” which single-handedly established a sense of divine intervention assisting Britain and the Western allies. For most of The Terror Machen keeps piling on and, as I said, piling on effectively and skillfully. It’s often scary. This may be in part because we know Machen was a spiritualist whose stories often indulge the ineffable and the powerful, against which we poor pitiful humans have little defense. As the tension flies high so do our expectations, until it’s a perfect mystery and hard to imagine what it could be. I stuck with it knowing Machen can deliver on this kind of stuff. Alas, not this time. It turns out to be antiwar animals in allegiance, all kinds of animals—birds, bees, beasts of the fields, etc. They are alarmed and indignant about all these years of the Great War, later known as World War I (because humans just had to do it one more time). I mean, I don’t blame the critters. I’m outraged and indignant myself, even born many years later. But still, The Terror is ultimately a little too lame.

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

The Chronic (1992)

I’m normally opposed to the very idea of “guilty pleasure,” which is usually about toxic social pressures and often involves hit pop songs—KISS fans secretly liking the Carpenters and Olivia Newton-John, stuff like that. In a natural development people have come to pride themselves on their guilty pleasures. But for me, in the case of Dr. Dre’s auspicious debut album, both parts of the term apply. I genuinely feel guilty about liking this set so much. Swearing a lot is just the start of it. All the N-words hamper singalongs. The sexism goes beyond mere sexism and proceeds directly to misogyny (“Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks,” etc.). Powerful automatic weapons, grotesque street violence, and swaggering Black-on-Black crime are frequent themes. The sex talk and scenes are so explicit they verge on revolting, viz., the “walnuts / chestnuts / deez nuts” skit. Speaking of skits—as I was just last month, complaining about them—they bust out all over here. I admit they have their moments even as my general objections to skits stand. One, “The $20 Sack Pyramid,” is nearly three minutes. “The Doctor’s Office” is a full minute and coarse as it can be. I worry about my neighbors when I start sneaking up the volume on The Chronic, which brings us to the “pleasure” side of the equation. I take it as entertainment so I can evade the problematics, as a full-on musical revue complete with comedy interludes. The only thing missing is a guy spinning plates at the top of sticks. I know it’s a tough balance here. The comedy may not land reliably, but “The $20 Sack Pyramid” is lacerating social critique. As for the songs, all team-written by Death Row principals, they just roll from one great one to the next, with fresh hooks and poised raps and melodic jams and no question about who they are or what they’re doing. You have to accept that to get to the wonders of, say, “A [N-word] Witta Gun,” with its ominous chorus “Who’s the man with the master plan?” Full disclosure, I mostly missed Dre until Eminem opened his catalog for me 10 years on. I was all over Snoop Doggy Dogg at last then too. But here I am squeamish to engage, or reproduce, the language featured on this album, which I find entertaining and even funny more often than I would think. It’s not hard for me to play the whole thing at once—mostly enjoyable, with its pitfalls, most of the way. Maybe a little long. They push the Death Row label constantly and attack with announcements like: “This should be played at high volume, preferably in a residential area.” You know what to do next, despite perhaps feeling guilty about it. P.S. I also admit, somewhat sheepishly, that I love the cannabis positivity. Inspirational line: “Make my bud the Chronic, I want to get fucked up.”

Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

Rocco e i suoi Fratelli, Italy / France, 179 minutes

Director: Luchino Visconti

Writers: Luchino Visconti, Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Vasco Pratolini, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Massimo Franciosa, Enrico Medioli, Giovanni Testori

Photography: Giuseppe Rotunno

Music: Nino Rota

Editor: Mario Serandrei

Cast: Alain Delon, Renato Salvatori, Annie Girardot, Spyros Fokas, Max Cartier, Rocco Vidolazzi, Katina Paxinou, Roger Hanin, Paulo Stoppa, Claudia Cardinale, Corrado Pani, Claudia Mori, Suzi Delair

Rocco and His Brothers is classified as an “epic melodrama” on Wikipedia, which I suspect is as much about its length as it is about, say, Nina Rota’s shimmering if too occasional score. The movie is BIG by design. The story is about the migration of a family of peasants, the Parondis, one mother and five brothers, from rural southern Italy to the modern urban environs of Milan. The family patriarch has died and the farm no longer supported the family anyway. The results are predictable at a high level, but Rocco and His Brothers is more about the details, which are often surprising. (See La Notte for more on modern Milan. See The Grapes of Wrath on migration.) There are five brothers and each gets a section of the movie: Vicenzo (Spyros Fokas), Simone (Renato Salvatori), Rocco (Alain Delon), Ciro (Max Cartier), and even little Luca (Rocco Vidolazzi), though that is more by way of a coda to the picture.

The main conflict here, a towering and epic one, is between Simone and Rocco, egged on by a bad woman with a good heart, Nadia (Annie Girardot with the most sparkling, riveting performance in the whole thing). On arrival in Milan, Simone quickly finds himself with a promising boxing career, which immediately goes to his head. This is also a boxing movie, I should say, and of course mandatory for aficionados of boxing movies. Simone’s thoroughgoing rottenness is a main theme here—you think he’s bad, but he only gets worse. He wins bouts and swaggers around with a lot of cash and an eye for the babes. He’s reluctant to do anything to help the family. He’s selfish. But he falls hard for Nadia, whose biography is practically shocking. I mean, it seemed sufficiently lurid to me. They don’t call this an epic melodrama for any old reason.

“That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French” (1998)

I think this story by Stephen King may represent an interesting point in his career: the moment he went from being underrated to being overrated. From about this point on he started winning more and more serious literary awards and recognition. That’s no reflection on the story. It’s a good one. But it is some reflection on its publication in the New Yorker. I’m not sure it’s his first for that magazine and at this point it’s probably not his only. The premise is not particularly original—the French term in question is “déjà vu” and you might be able to imagine the rest—but it does show King’s deep knowledge of horror literature, resorting to a very nicely modulated stream of consciousness sort of attack. Start with the title, an actual line of dialogue which sets the whole dreamy tone. King has tried and failed with dreams before, but this is one that works. It saws away on familiar fears of flying but skillfully applies misdirection by making it a private rented jet, raising class resentments. The occasion is a middle-aged couple and their 25th wedding anniversary. The husband has made them comfortably wealthy. Perhaps they can be forgiven a little for splurging. These are details that emerge. The main arc of the story takes place on the road from the airport to the resort where they are staying. The woman is consumed by an extended experience of déjà vu. But she’s mostly wrong. She sees what is about to happen, or thinks she does, little things like the look of a mailbox around the next bend. Sometimes parts of it come true but usually not. It’s hard to know what to make of it. The story runs its route a few times: she wakes from a nap on the plane, and then the road to the resort. There is a gnawing dissatisfaction between them that is sad and sadder. The ending is something of a genuine surprise. It does not feel strained. We realize what has happened at almost exactly the same time as the woman. King plays perfectly fair, distributing clues but distracting us from them. It’s nicely done, with no gore and a minimum of mayhem. King has never stopped being prolific, and at my most recent check-in point, 2011’s 11/22/63, he was still in fine form. I follow booktubers reading him systematically with great interest because I’d like to narrow down his catalog after about 1990. I know I don’t like King enough to read all of it. But I like finding a little gem of his like this, because it gives me strength to contemplate taking on, say, the Dark Tower series.

The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror: Twelfth Annual Collection, ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
Listen to story online.

Blur, “Song 2” (1997)

[listen up!]

I used to hear this song on the radio and wonder who it was—it never seemed to be announced, or I didn’t notice if it was. At 2:02 it doesn’t last long, a flashing blast over and done before you know it, but utterly perfect in its way. It’s an irresistible banger practically by definition and in 1997 it was also easy to hear it as grunge, or perhaps a parody of grunge, with the studied soft / loud dynamics. “I feel heavy metal” indeed. I was surprised when I finally found out it was Blur. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing they would do. I had them slotted in my mind with XTC and generally cerebral new wave. Of course, if it’s a conscious parody of grunge the departure in style makes a certain sort of sense. Word is the band intended it originally as a prank on the record company, but wouldn’t you know, they liked it and set about making plans to release it as a single. And then, wouldn’t you know, it became a UK and MTV hit, winning awards and attention. Never a top 40 hit in the US, it didn’t fit on classic rock stations either. Alternative rock radio is where I heard it played a lot, living at the time in Seattle, land of the grunge. I never took it as a goof, or if so an inspired one. I admit the song has lost some of its impact for me over the years from overexposure—I can recognize it now even just by the opening drumkit. Ain’t that the way, but if it hits me somewhere by surprise it can still be rousing. If you haven’t worn this one out yet for yourself, get to it and knock yourself out. I envy you for that. Play loud, of course.

Notes From Underground (1864)

It’s not hard to understand why this short novel is widely considered a starting point for reading Fyodor Dostoevsky. It’s short and, perhaps most importantly, it’s a good example of his narrative style (when he finally gets to a narrative). I read it and didn’t like it when I was about 20, but it may (or may not) stay with me longer now even if it hasn’t been so easy getting here. In many ways Notes From Underground is Dostoevsky pure and you may like the ranting style sans narrative more than me. You obviously have to get here, if you are reading Dostoevsky, but I think it can wait. Crime and Punishment is a better place to start, if it doesn’t have to be short (or The Double, if it does). Notes From Underground has some intellectual heft, as an existential or otherwise philosophical treatise. I can certainly see how this leads directly to Nietzsche—it often felt like I was rereading him, which is admittedly remarkable—and even to Kafka. Not for nothing was Dostoevsky included in somebody’s list of the four great sick men of Europe (I think it was J.D. Salinger’s list and I’m guessing the fourth is Kierkegaard). For me the first part of Notes is a slog, a blistering rant about even the most basic elements of social life. The anonymous first-person ranter extols the virtues of the will over the tediously suffocating rational, even if the will is perverse and self-destructive. It’s a natural human right, or something. It often feels like he is railing against the terms of existence itself, heady and bracing with lunatic assertions. The second part of Notes is more the Dostoevsky I like, when our unpleasant ranting narrator—unnamed, for that modern existential flourish—is seen in action with acquaintances and a sex worker who is just being drawn into the life. The narrative momentum may still be fragmented, but it has some great scenes of painful social interactions, one of Dostoevsky’s great abilities as a writer. I sympathize with our guy’s reclusiveness and even to some degree with his resentments. But I draw the line at his cruel and vindictive behavior (nonetheless understanding the impulses). At that point Notes becomes an amazing freakshow spectacle, at which we can only gape in astonishment. All these harrowing and maddening terms of existence—that’s what Dostoevsky does best and still, arguably, better than anyone else. Notes From Underground stands with his greatest, but you might have to exercise some patience at first, or anyway I had to.

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

Paisan (1946)

Paisa’, Italy, 126 minutes

Director: Roberto Rossellini

Writers: Sergio Amidei, Federico Fellini, Klaus Mann, Marcello Pagliero, Alfred Hayes, Roberto Rossellini, Rod E. Geiger, Vasco Pratolini

Photography: Otello Martelli

Music: Renzo Rossellini

Editor: Eraldo Da Roma

Cast: Carmela Sazio, Robert Van Loon, Dots Johnson, Alfonsino Pasca, Gar Moore, Maria Michi, Harriet White, Renzo Avanzo, William Tubbs, Dale Edmonds, John Whaling Allen, Dan, Roberto Van Loel, Cigolani

Film critics and historians appear prone to grouping director and cowriter Roberto Rossellini’s pictures into trilogies, even if they were not exactly intended that way. Paisan is thus the second in his so-called Neorealist trilogy, with Rome, Open City (1945) and Germany, Year Zero (1948). But not only is Paisan a genuinely standalone picture on its own, it is also composed of six separate episodes with six separate stories and casts. As the trilogy’s name suggests, the pictures are united mainly by the formal aesthetic, which in turn was imposed in the first place by conditions of low-budget financing and a country literally in ruins from war. From Rossellini to Bicycle Thieves to Jack Webb and beyond I come to the aesthetics of neorealism already in favor: shooting on the fly, casting amateurs, studying the underclasses—better without agenda, as Rossellini generally did it (though also implicitly pointing ways toward social reform).

I like the structure of Paisan almost as much as the little separate stories. The larger arc is the liberation of Italy by Allied forces, which started in 1943 and continued until it helped bring the end of the war in 1945. Just so, Paisan starts with the invasion of Sicily and advances north. The stories are not specifically about the progress of the war but rather just wartime stories involving ordinary soldiers and civilians caught in extraordinary situations. In the first a young woman whose father and brother have been missing for days, Carmela (Carmela Sazio), is drafted by invading US forces who are trying to root out dangerous nests of Nazis in a contest of urban warfare conducted at night. The movements of the US soldiers and the Nazis are complicated, information is lacking, mistakes are made, there’s no time to think, and the entire episode is all done in maybe 25 minutes. All the tales here are approximately the size of a Twilight Zone episode. The rhythms are formative but familiar.

Flaming Lips, “Do You Realize??” (2002)

[listen up!]

Things that this former official rock song of Oklahoma would like you to realize: That you have the most beautiful face. That we’re floating in space. That happiness makes you cry. And, perhaps most important, that everyone you know ... someday ... will die. In the “official music video” directed by Mark Pellington—another among those rare music videos that actually enhance a song I already like—an elephant is shown falling over on that last line, a shocking, absolutely quiet moment that drives the point home with simplicity, sensitivity, and a weird serenity. In fact, the video is full of stuff that doesn’t seem like it would work but instead is somehow tremendously moving. Yes, the intro and outro are too long—let the song play! And I’m not sure what to make of the animal costumes. Co-songwriter and Flaming Lips principal Wayne Coyne walking around strumming an acoustic guitar is the only band member shown. He’s on a Las Vegas street full of bright, flashing lights, accompanied by a phalanx of four models in baby-doll negligees and two very tall people wearing rabbit costumes. Why does this tableau of seven work as well as it does? It just does. I can’t say exactly why it all reaches me, but it does, which helps me realize, as the song would like me to, that happiness makes you cry. These lines, these images, are so absurd and yet so beautiful—the lights, the elephant, the prancing models, the somber giant rabbits, the song’s sentiment—they often make me cry somewhat against my will as I compulsively play the video on repeat, helpless not to. I’m sure I’m overselling it here, but Wikipedia notes that the song, from the album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, “is one of the group's most accessible and popular.” YMMV, but honestly I don’t see how it could.

The Bride! (2026)

This movie reminded me again that Mary Shelley’s reputation, along with regard for her 1818 novel Frankenstein, has continued to grow almost exponentially even within my lifetime. Here she is a brooding cackling witchy ghost figure who appears to so-called “The Bride,” offering mocking counsel and support. Jessie Buckley plays both The Bride and Shelley in what seems to be intended as a bravura tour de force over-the-top rereading of the Frankenstein story. And Buckley is impressive, a main feature of the picture and carrying it with talent and charisma. But it feels more like showcase than performance. Much of the movie is that way, in fact, heaving with ideas intriguing and otherwise in a very busy stew that never manages to quite come off. Maggie Gyllenhaal wrote and directed it and it’s full of stars: Buckley, Christian Bale, Annette Bening, Penelope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, even brother Jake Gyllenhaal as Ronnie Reed, an unconvincing song and dance star of the 1930s. He’s no Fred Astaire, not even close. The Bride! sets out to retell the bride part of the Frankenstein story, based partly on Shelley’s novel and partly on the Universal Frankenstein franchise of the time. For better or worse, the vibe is generally more out of Badlands or the Raymond Pettibon cover for the Sonic Youth album Goo (“I stole my sister’s boyfriend. It was all whirlwind, heat, and flash. Within a week we killed my parents and hit the road”). As long as we’re dwelling in the 1930s the picture also slips in obvious references to Bonnie and Clyde. But there’s more. The picture also reaches for Herman Melville’s brilliant Bartleby story, because why not? The Bride offers up a regular refrain of “I would prefer not to.” Buckley also plays the role with a kind of Tourette’s variation. She doesn’t swear but erupts in thesaurus-like streams: “Freeze!” she says at one point, holding a gun on people. “Firm up, stiffen, thicken.” I thought The Bride! had a lot of potential with all of its various elements but there might actually be too many of those elements, from Melville to the 1930s setting to the Frankenstein legend itself. The picture is unfortunately not greater than the sum of its parts but some of the parts are pretty good. Approach with caution.

Batman: Year One (1987)

I had a pretty good time revisiting this Barman story written by Frank Miller and illustrated by David Mazzucchelli. I happened to have the four Batman comics on hand (#404-407) as opposed to any of the later graphic novel reprints. It was interesting to see all the extras—advertisements, promotions for other comics, and letters from readers (which often included street addresses!). But the print job was murky and often difficult to read. The main arc is about the arrival of Commissioner Gordon to Gotham City, where eventually he makes his alliance with Batman. It also shows how Bruce Wayne developed and took on the role of Batman. Miller’s narrative style is brooding, dense, and creative. I don’t think he came up with some of the best ideas himself, but he uses them well. One narrative thread, in boxes colored yellow, is Gordon’s internal dialogue. Another, in white boxes with cursive lettering (particularly hard to read), represents Batman’s and/or Wayne’s thoughts. Lots of basics to the legend are here: the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents in a street crime, the whole “I will become a bat” scene, and some focus on Catwoman. Robin would not come until after this first year. Probably because Miller is involved, Batman’s fighting style is loaded up on martial arts technique. Mazzucchelli’s art is evocative but almost primitive, with simple lines and heavily saturated color. It’s possible it is better in one of the graphic novel treatments. I don’t like Year One as much as the previous year’s The Dark Knight Returns, written and penciled by Miller with his Daredevil inker Klaus Janson. I also liked it more the first time I read it many years ago. But it is solid Batman fare even if some of its elements are overused by this point. Year One was an important part of the renaissance of the dark Batman, signaled in many ways by the attachment of “the” to his name: the Batman. It’s worth looking into because Frank Miller’s work is genuinely worth looking into. If I say I’m a little tired of the Batman now it’s mostly because this dark Batman has been so overdone in the years since, in the movies as well as the comics. I miss the goofy Batman that predated the 1966 TV show, which was also goofy but in a different, “campy” way. For the dark Batman, Year One remains essential.

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

Vampyr (1932)

Germany / France, 75 minutes

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer

Writers: Sheridan Le Fanu, Christen Jul, Carl Theodor Dreyer

Photography: Rudolph Mate, Louis Nee

Music: Wolfgang Zeller

Editor: Tonka Taldy

Cast: Julian West, Sybille Schmitz, Maurice Schutz, Jan Hieronimko, Henriette Gerard, Albert Bras, N. Babanini, Jane Mora

Danish director and cowriter Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc, Ordet) based his vampire story on the Irish horror writer Sheridan Le Fanu’s essential 1872 collection, In a Glass Darkly, which includes “Carmilla,” the famous lesbian vampire story. It’s an important point of distinction from the more popular vampire source of the time, which, of course, was Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published 25 years later in 1897. Stoker’s epistolary novel was responsible informally (later settled legally) for F.W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu and then, in 1931, for the kickoff of the Universal horror franchise, Dracula. In fact, Vampyr was required to wait for its release until after Dracula and then Frankenstein. These are all notably slow and very quiet dream movies, perhaps Vampyr more than any of them, which moves like thawing syrup. It often reminded me of Eraserhead, which makes me wonder how much influence it might have had on David Lynch.

The star, Julian West as Allan Grey, was the primary source of funding for the picture in exchange for the role. His real name was Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, a French-born member of Russian nobility. In that way Vampyr is a kind of vanity project—in a way perhaps even more so for Dreyer than the baron. Pursuits into horror literature have traditionally not often won respect and admiration. Dreyer may have been taking a kind of calculated risk with his career, moving from Saint Joan of Arc only four years earlier to these creatures of the night.

“The End of the Garden” (1991)

I thought this short story by Czech author Michael Ajvaz was charming and fun. As the editors Ann & Jeff VanderMeer say in their introduction to it in the anthology The Weird, “Ajvaz comes by the ‘weirdness’ in his fiction through dark humor and absurdity.” Some credit may also need to go to translator James Naughton. There’s a precise use here of “monitor lizards,” which are better known to us (or me) as “Komodo dragons”—a big lizard species (possibly multiple species). I don’t think about them much, but yes, now that my attention is drawn to them, they’re pretty weird. Something goes off in my own lizard brain. The repetition of the term “monitor lizard” does a lot of work here, and effectively. They are at once a dream element and a point of humor, used almost rhythmically. They are all over this story, starting with a cry for help our first-person narrator hears on the street. When he enters an apartment to respond he finds a woman wrestling on the floor with a monitor lizard. He rushes to assist her until he realizes it is the monitor lizard calling for help. In the dilemma facing him—which of them to help—he invokes the philosophers Kant and Hegel. I would probably be wondering how the monitor lizard could talk, but that’s me. Ajvaz’s voice puts the story over. The narrator is some kind of innocent, but also intellectual, a kind of affable absent-minded professor raconteur. His story is interesting and we want to hear more. He goes dithering off on questions of philosophy and always returns to monitor lizards. He separates the woman from the fight. She goes to her bookcase “holding neatly arranged rows of adventure novels by Alexandre Dumas pere and Paul Feval pere,” pulls out a volume—and it is At the End of the Garden, authored by the narrator. “I have never written a book in my life,” he says. Among other things this story is a great dream tale. Absurdity is handled remarkably well, with a light and playful touch. Too often it can be thunderingly obvious. So I really liked this story. Would I like more from Ajvaz? It’s hard to say but I’m inclined to think I would because his voice and the humor are so good here. Will I seek him out? Hey, I’ve got a lot on my plate. I’d certainly be interested if more fell my way.

The Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
Read story online.

Kinks, “Lola” (1970)

[listen up!]

EDM artist Moby has earned a reputation in recent years for putting his foot in his mouth—just ask Natalie Portman. The latest came earlier this year when he named this song in an interview with the Guardian, responding to a question about music he can no longer listen to, calling it “gross,” “transphobic,” and “unevolved.” Predictably enough, Kinks main guitar man and occasional songwriter Dave Davies fired back, citing trans entertainer Jayne County’s endorsement of the top 10 hit song’s influence on her. Fair enough, but for context you only have to turn to David Reuben’s bestselling Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (* But Were Afraid to Ask), a middlebrow Q&A sex manual published the year before in 1969 which was tremendously popular—later a Woody Allen movie. Trans issues were so far beyond the horizon at the time that Reuben is basically silent on anything related to gender identity, reducing transsexuality to the rather different transvestism, or cross-dressing, which he argued was practiced mainly by married heterosexual men with families (see the Woody Allen movie for the idea, a strange one). That’s the world the Kinks, of all people, were stepping into on a concept album from 1970. Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One was intended among other things as the band’s return to their hard-rocking bona fides, after several years of turning out albums with twee pop masterpieces (and that, of course, after initially busting down the walls of rock ‘n’ roll and making the world safe for rock with “You Really Got Me,” “All Day and All of the Night,” “Tired of Waiting for You,” etc., etc.).

I can see it both ways on “Lola” now: it was a thrilling rock song at the time and that side of it holds up well. It’s a Ray Davies song—the guy can write them. But the nuance of the lyrical thrust, such as it is, was basically over my 15-year-old head. They seemed to be playing the scenario for laughs, as a farce, and that’s how I took it, though somewhat uneasily. I understood it was trucking in outrageous taboo sexual themes but I took that more as pose. It feels sleazy, I think that’s the main thing Moby is complaining about, where nowadays respect and dignity are what’s on the menu for the LGBT+ community. But the mysteries of sexuality often make respect and dignity kind of party poopers in the clinch, giving up sexual charge for social acceptance, and who can blame anyone for that? There’s still some sexual charge to “Lola,” but it definitely feels dated, on the wrong side of right behavior. The song now hits as less than liberatory in most ways, though I can believe it could sound that way in 1970 and echoes are still there. And it’s not a bad rocker at all, a worthy addition to the Kinks catalog and a stone classic by any metric. I just don’t put it on very often and it sounds strange in public settings. One last odd detail: I recall at the time that Coca-Cola was incensed by the use of their name in this song and took legal action. It was hastily patched over in the studio as “cherry cola.” The versions on my streaming service now, however, are all once again “Coca-Cola.” I wonder when that happened? P.S. I love the comic book “official music video” on youtube. Worth a look even if you are like Moby and can’t stand to hear the song anymore.

Bring Her Back (2025)

I thought I saw promising signs to this one going in. The cowriting and codirecting team of the Philippou twins from Australia, Danny and Michael, previously gave us the raucous Talk to Me (and both incidentally were associated as crew with the revelatory Babadook). Sally Hawkins is a featured player, an actor who has worked well with Mike Leigh (Vera Drake, the amazing Happy-Go-Lucky), Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water), and others. And the reviews I saw were favorable, if not enthusiastic, with a 7.1 ranking on IMDb from 128,000 viewers (I generally handicap rankings on IMDb for horror movies a full point, meaning Bring Her Back had the potential for 8.1 quality). Its reputation, in fact, made me a little afraid of what was increasingly a mandatory viewing. You can see I put it off awhile. Indeed, it’s not a picture to be looked at during dinnertime, as it has many gross and harrowing scenes of extreme violence and abuse. I should have remembered that Talk to Me bore themes of grief, depression, and trauma in its plot, because once again, in Bring Her Back, contemporary horror has rooted itself in grief, depression, and trauma. In this case, Laura (Hawkins) has become deranged by the death of her daughter Cathy, who was blind and drowned in their swimming pool (which has been drained during this movie, making it a dangerous concrete hole in the backyard). Laura was a social worker before Cathy’s death. Now she is a foster mother. In many ways this is a movie about the importance of the vetting process of foster parents. Laura takes in a blind Asian girl, Piper (Sora Wong), and, under some duress because Laura only wanted the girl, Piper’s older brother Andy (Billy Barratt), who looks like Mark Hamill in 1977. Laura also has another foster living with her, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), who is a certain model of creepy horror movie kid, Deliverance style. The rest is mostly tiresome working out of the grief. I can’t tell you any of the details because they would be spoilers. The Philippous can supercharge their scenes with lively, kinetic energy, but I kind of wish they’d lose the grief, depression, and trauma business. Nothing that way in this movie felt remotely real, only more like pink frosting.