On one star reviews, The Logies, Emma Cline, Hernan Diaz and ChatGPT
Hello darlings,
How are things? I have been having a somewhat busy time of it lately, trying to finalise my novel before it goes to print (which I think is supposed to happen in the next couple of weeks?? jesus fucking christ). It’s coming out in about eight weeks, so the stage I’m in now is a bit like late pregnancy, ie a heady mix of excitement and absolute terror. I’ve read the manuscript so many times now that I’ve lost all perspective and have no idea if I’m about to be blessed with a wonderful human baby who will enrich my life in countless ways (ie a book that people like) or if I’m in fact gestating a mutant monster covered in warts and pustules and whose driving purpose will be to mock me relentlessly with my own flaws and failures until I am utterly psychologically destroyed, a brittle husk of the woman I once was (ie a book that people people don’t like).
Unfortunately, even if some or even lots of people like the book, I guess it’s inevitable there will also be plenty of people who think the book is rubbish. I mean, even Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time gets 318 one star reviews on Goodreads (‘the worst thing ever written...torturous...death by quicksand’; ‘dreadful old twaddle’; ‘an unsurpassably irritating and interminable novel about parties and little French cakes’). Jane Austen does even worse—there are ninety seven thousand one star reviews of Pride and Prejudice on that cursed website, a number that made me actually lol. According to the haters, it’s ‘a book about Victorian snobs talking about snobby things’, ‘literary Twilight’, and ‘JUST A BUNCH OF BALLS’. Living novelists don’t fare any better—Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize winning A Visit from the Good Squad gets more than eight thousand one star reviews (‘dumpster filler’) while Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend gets over five thousand (‘a 1950s version of The Hills’).
This is either Heidi Montag from The Hills or Lila Cerullo from
My Brilliant Friend, I simply can’t tell them apart
I don’t want you to think I’m being falsely modest here, but there’s a fair chance that I am not as good a novelist as Proust, Austen, Egan or Ferrante—and regardless, even if I were as good as them, it’s basically written in the (Goodreads) stars that some people are going to hate my book! I guess my main focus from now until it comes out will be figuring out how to live with that. So far I have come up with the following options:
systematically ruin life of every last motherfucker who gives me a bad review
kidnap more successful, universally acclaimed author, perform dangerous face swapping surgery à la Nicholas Cage and John Travolta in Face/Off, revel in borrowed glory
retreat deep underground, scuttle about in the dark like a grimy earth crab, never again be perceived by human eyes.
Please let me know if you have any better ideas.
Television
Last weekend I tuned in to the Australian Television’s night of nights, the 63rd Annual TV Week Logie Awards. For my overseas readers who may be unfamiliar with the Logies, it’s basically our version of the Emmys, only drunker.
The vibe
Curiously, quite a few of the award winners didn’t bother to show up, and even for the ones who were there, the overriding emotion upon being handed an award seemed to be…slight embarrassment? I reckon this is partly because ‘winning a Logie’ sounds like a euphemism for hacking up a particularly choice bit of phlegm in the bathroom sink at the tail end of a lingering chest infection, and partly because winning at anything other than sport is famously antithetical to Australian culture and none of us approve of it. We’re a nation of losers, failures and underdogs, and that is how we like it.
The other thing a lot of winners and presenters did when they went on stage was to comment about how night was going on for so long. Even the host, Sam Pang (who was actually pretty good), did a bit at the start about how the attendees were all going to have an enjoyable two days together. Everyone was acting like the ceremony was a dull chore to be endured, which was odd to me, because I found it incredibly entertaining—but then again, I do love cringe comedy.
Live footage of Daryl Somers attempting comedy in front of a large crowd
of appalled onlookers
The landing of all Sonia Kruger’s weird jokes about her agent.
Me, during Todd Kenny’s song and dance performance
One thing I cannot endorse, however, was the choice to let Karl Stefanovic—morning TV host and perennial winner of the TV’s Most Mediocre Man award—do the tribute to Barry Humphries. I know Barry came out with some stupid opinions later in life, for which he was rightly criticised—but god, he didn’t deserve that. The man was a comedy genius, and letting Karl do a speech about his achievements was a bit like if they invited Milli Vanilli to perform Famous Blue Raincoat at Leonard Cohen’s funeral.
It’s four in the morning, the end of December
Uncool, 63rd Annual TV Week Logie Awards.
Books
I’ve read a couple of interesting books recently, both of which were essentially about money. The first was Emma Cline’s The Guest, which is about an escort who winds up grifting her way through the Hamptons for a week, and the second was Hernan Diaz’s Trust, which is about a finance tycoon and his wife in early twentieth century New York.
Like the Ottessa Moshfegh and Lauren Oyler novels I wrote about a few weeks back, The Guest features an amoral narrator, Alex, who lacks any particularly endearing qualities other than beauty. In Cline’s book, though, I found her character interesting rather than tedious. I think this may be because Alex’s careful indifference always feels very believable. We never learn exactly how she became who she is, but there is a sense through the novel that she has had to suppress any goodness or altruistic urges in order to survive. She steals, she lies, she uses people, and whenever she begins to feel something like pity or affection, those feelings are immediately quashed. It’s clear that she is like this out of necessity: she can’t afford to be kind.
Alex is an escort who is staying in the Hamptons with her wealthy older boyfriend. When things go awry, she needs to find a place to stay, and so she moves through the neighbourhood befriending, seducing, and conning people into inviting her in to their lives. It’s interesting to see this stranger in a rich land, the differences between the way Alex, with her tenuous access to life’s basic necessities (food, shelter, physical safety), moves through life compared with the seamless ease of the wealthy people around her. There’s a sense of impending disaster throughout the whole thing, which makes it a gripping read, and although I found the ending a bit unsatisfying I would definitely recommend.
Trust was not as immediately gripping, for me—but it became increasingly intriguing as I read on. The novel is made up of four manuscripts: the first is a mannered, Jamesian novel about the life of a wealthy financier called Harold Vanner and his brilliant yet mentally disturbed wife; the second is the partially completed autobiography of Andrew Bevel, the financier on whom that novel was based; the third is the account of Ida Partenza, Bevel’s secretary/ghostwriter; and the final manuscript is made up of the diaries of Mildred Bevel, Andrew Bevel’s wife. The novel explores ideas about truth and fiction, both in life and in finance, and the mythologies that people build around themselves. It’s beautifully written—particularly the last part, with Mildred’s voice—and the whole thing felt like peering into the brain of a brilliant and thoughtful person. I did not love it, exactly—something about its extreme formality made it difficult to get emotionally involved in its characters’ lives—but I can absolutely see why it won the Pulitzer.
Other things
Recently I’ve been messing around a bit with ChatGPT—in particular, I’ve been testing out its skills at writing jokes. To be clear, this is not because I want it to write jokes for me but because writing jokes is my favourite thing to do and I will be very angry if AI becomes better at it than I am. Anyway, here is how my initial testing went:
Me: Write a joke about farting
ChatGPT: Sure, here's a light-hearted fart joke for you: Why don't scientists trust atoms when they fart? Because they make up everything! 😄
Me: No, write a good joke about farting
ChatGPT: Sorry about that! Here's a funny fart joke for you: Why did the fart go to the party? Because it was ready to "toot" and "booty"! 😄
Me: Jesus Christ. Please tell me your funniest fart joke, like, something that is actually about farts and is also funny
ChatGPT: Alright, here's a classic fart joke for you: Why do farts smell? So that deaf people can enjoy them too! 😄
I suppose that last one might technically qualify as a joke, but the other ones… good god. I suppose the thing about jokes is that they often rely on ideas or images that are completely illogical and yet make perfect sense, and it seems like AI programs have yet to master doing these two things simultaneously. Frankly, I hope they never figure it out.
Until next time,
xx Eleanor
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