On Barbie, Percival Everett and literary re-education camps, and an invitation to my book launch
Dear valued customers!
How is everyone? I have been having an interesting time of late as last week I had my final look at my book before it goes to print, and for some reason this sent me spiralling into an existential crisis. Why did I write a book again? What made me think that was a good idea? What if people hate the book and by proxy also hate me and I am cast out from society to live out the rest of my days as a lonely hermit, pitied and reviled in equal measure until I am ultimately forgotten completely and left to die alone in a field, my body not even buried but simply lying there, unnoticed, until eventually my remains are violently consumed by a passing crowd of ravenous dogs and/or mice? WHAT IF THAT HAPPENS? Luckily I was able to quickly suppress these trifling doubts and I’m fine now, totally normal, emanating sanity from every pore, simply bursting with mental wellness.
Definitely not me
My book launch details have now been confirmed—if you would like to come along, it’s at Readings Carlton on 5 October at 6.30pm (it’s free but Readings asks for people to book, which you can do here). My delightful friend Louise Swinn has agreed to launch it, so we’ll probably do some sort of ‘in conversation’ thing where Lou asks me intelligent questions and I give moronic answers that I will still be regretting hours later as I lie awake in bed thinking about what a dumbarse I am enthral you all with my sparkling anecdotes. Anyway, hope to see you all there!
Television
Last week I went and saw the Barbie movie (OK, so it’s not technically ‘television’, but it’s on a screen and I feel like writing about it). I don’t see films that often these days, but I love Greta Gerwig and Ryan Gosling—Greta because she is charming and makes interesting movies, and Ryan because I have had the horn for him ever since I saw him being endearingly scruffy and fucked up in the excellent 2006 movie, Half Nelson (‘fucked up’ and ‘endearingly scruffy’ being the only two boxes you needed to tick to win my heart back in the early aughts—and, let’s face it, also today). Gosling has this way of looking at his female co-stars as though they are full and complete human beings rather than just as a collection of desirable body parts, and man, it’s so dreamy.
Alas, the mega-tan, hyper-blond, ultra-dopey version of Ryan we see in Barbie is not particularly dreamy (not fucked up enough! not remotely scruffy!) but he is, as always, very good in the role.
I have read quite a few serious think pieces about Barbie since watching it, many of which were highly enthused, some of which questioned why they were writing serious think pieces about Barbie at all, and some of which were critical of Gerwig for her claim to be ‘doing the thing’ (ie making a big budget corporate movie whose only reason for existing is to shift merch) and ‘subverting the thing’ (ie turning that movie into a critique of patriarchy and capitalism). Jessica Defino wrote a great piece about the dissonance between Barbie’s feminist messaging about beauty standards and its less-feminist marketing of Barbie-branded beauty products. Christine Smallwood in N+1 mag, meanwhile, translated Gerwig’s ‘doing’ and ‘subverting’ as essentially ‘[g]etting rich and not feeling feel bad about it’.
I found myself agreeing with…everyone. I think all the takes have some truth to them: it is a great, fun film, and it is also, by its very nature, impure—Mattel are, after all, both writing and cashing the cheques. But it is also just a movie, and not solely responsible for dismantling capitalism.
It’s not a perfect film, and there were times while watching it when I felt like I wanted a lot more than it was capable of giving—I found myself wishing for something weirder, spikier and more shocking, maybe something co-written by John Waters instead of Noah Baumbach.
In the John Waters Barbie movie of my dreams, Stereotypical Barbie is played by Edith Massey
Nonetheless, it was an entertaining viewing experience! There were many good jokes! The outfits were both ridiculous and cute! And what a soundtrack! It made feminism delicious! My partner described it as a bit like when you make cheesy pasta for your kids and you put some extra vegetables in the sauce. Sure, it’s not as healthy as an enormous bowl of pure spinach, but most kids just don’t want to eat an enormous bowl of pure spinach! Frankly, neither do I!
Although I’m not expecting it to bring about massive societal change, I do feel hopeful that a film like this actually does shift our culture a little. It is everywhere, so ubiquitous that almost everyone I know has seen it or is planning to see it, and to me there is something genuinely thrilling about a movie that is explicitly feminine in style and feminist in intent becoming such a massive hit. I know that it’s not the most radical of feminisms—Barbie’s feminism looks good in a mini-skirt and heels, she’s the kind of feminism which campaigns for equal pay but also must pretend to like it when the boss presses up against her ass in the office kitchen—but, in a world where 9 out of 10 people hold fundamental biases against women, and a quarter believe it is justified for men to beat their wives, I will take what feminism I can get.
Books
Last week I read Percival Everett’s hilarious, oddball novel, Dr. No:
Cover design by Jamie Keenan
The novel is narrated by a brilliant maths professor, Wala Kitu, whose academic career is focused exclusively on the study of…nothing. Because he is an expert on nothing, Wala is hired by John Sill, a billionaire who aspires to be a Bond-style villain, who wants Wala to help him steal nothing from Fort Knox so that he can use nothing to further his villainous plans. As Wala bumbles his way through Sill’s crazy plot, we encounter man-eating sharks, blundering government agents, quite a lot of casual murders, and a gruff, one-legged dog who talks to Wala in his dreams. It is ridiculous and mind bending, but so clever and so funny. I don’t remember the last time I have had such pure enjoyment from a novel.
With its blend of satire, politics, racial commentary, and a thrilling plot, it reminded me a bit of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s brilliant spy novels, The Committed and The Sympathizer—although Everett’s novel is a lot more absurd and less dense than Nguyen’s. I was thinking about what I love so much about these books, and I think it’s that all of them explicitly set out to entertain the reader, not just to educate them, or to be admired by them. They’re not empty, or dumbed-down in any way—in fact they’re full of ideas!—but they seem to have been written with the reader’s pleasure in mind, which is not a feeling I always get from literature.
On the other hand, they’re not pleasuring everyone. I had a conversation with someone recently who said they tried to read one of Nguyen’s books and hated it. This has happened to me a few times lately—that is, people have disagreed with me about books—and it’s made me think about how subjective our response to art is. I’m coming to realise that if I have a strongly negative reaction to a book which other people liked, it might not be because the book is objectively bad, but perhaps it is just not the book for me. This is quite a shift from my previous position, which was that if people don’t share my opinions about books then they are simply wrong and should be sent to literary re-education camps where they learn how to be better people. I like to think that it’s a sign that I’m maturing.
(NB I still think that if your favourite book is A L—— L—, sorry, but you belong in prison.)
Other Things
Some other things I have enjoyed recently:
Rebecca Solnit wrote in the New Statesman about a recent spate of books concerning George Orwell (it’s behind a paywall but if you register your email address you can read it for free). Solnit questions the value of judging figures of the past by contemporary standards, noting that ‘pretty much everyone from the past comes up short when measured by present-day standards’.
Rebecca Makkai invited us on a tour through about the batshit crazy interior design of a house up for sale in Vermont. I’m planning to set my next novel there.
JP Brammer wrote this fantastic piece a while back on Vanderpump Rules, which I forgot to link to last time. In case you’re wondering how my quest to finish all ten seasons is going, I just finished season six, meaning I only have…uh…ONE HUNDRED more episodes to get through. Aiming to get through these by the time my book comes out, because I am nothing if not goal-oriented.
Until next time,
Eleanor xx
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