Last Week’s New Yorker Review: August 5, 2024
Last Week’s New Yorker, week of August 5
"A line like ‘I will never be able to find my way out of this forest’ needs a twinge of fear."
Must-Read:
“Forbidden Desires” - Alex Ross is a prose-opera pro. Opens with a wonderful paragraph-sized lesson in the changing role of recitative – complete with the joke that “nothing officially exists until it is named in German”, which helps the term literaturoper stick in one’s head. That leads into a description of a sung rant which is instantly among my favorite Ross lines: “…notes splatter all around him, like wine spilling from his cup.” From there, it’s “just” another Ross review – which is to say, word-perfect, rich and concise. The leading contextualization helps his sonorities reach the back row; the ending, which finds a second thread that “tied the weekend’s operas together,” keeps the room reverberating.
Window-Shop:
“Blood Relatives” - Heidi Blake takes the silencer off the Whitehouse Farm murders. Impossible not to read this in concert with Rachel Aviv’s recent piece, also on a seeming innocent sentenced in the U.K. The pieces deepen each other considerably: With the knowledge of how, as Blake quotes a scholar, America has “‘this real commitment to innocent people not being convicted’” which Britain apparently lacks, Letby’s case and the extreme prejudice it faced in the public eye suddenly makes more sense. Likewise, with the knowledge of Letby’s impossible trials, Bamber’s unheard claim to innocence feels like part of a long and vicious history. There are certainly differences; for one, Letby’s Wikipedia page1 is an ongoing grease fire of bad-faith pedantry, while the Whitehouse-murders wiki page hasn’t been edited once since this story dropped. That’s because little of this material seems new, precisely; the case for Bamber’s innocence has been made before, if perhaps not in such strong terms. What brought Blake to this story now, besides the magazine’s almost fetishistic devotion to the genre of miscarried justice, is a little unclear. The piece earns its length on its own terms, but that length does make it feel almost like a binge-watched miniseries; the way Blake circles back to the same moments and pieces of evidence intensifies that “previously on…” effect. Still, if you like this sort of thing – and I do; indeed, miscarried justice is the only kind of true crime I begin to understand the appeal of2 – you’ll devour this. Unlike in the Aviv, which dwelled on the horror of dying infants to the point of nausea, the focus here is mainly on aftermath; dead children, still, and plenty of blood, but nothing to leave you sleepless. Some of those bloody details are so bizarre as to beggar belief, though; Ann, the first to suspect Bamber, generally has an air of gothic horror about her, like an East England Mrs. Danvers, and her total lack of aversion to the sanguinary, even in circumstances where its presence is personal, is so ominous one half expects her to reveal fangs. Blake shows great restraint in keeping things journalistic – too much voice and this could turn into Midnight in the English Garden of Good and Evil. Which, on the other side of the scales, wouldn’t be the worst thing.
“State of Play” - Helen Shaw resists resistance onstage in France. It’s difficult to describe experimental theater without sometimes making it sound tacky and trite, and sometimes it is those things, which makes the task harder. Shaw tries to keep things respectful as she addresses shows with “a full-company impersonation of an autistic boy dancing”, a Ukrainian choir singing “‘Give us what was promised’” while “moving in a flying wedge, like F-16s in formation”, a four-hour show whose last quarter is “ickily narrated by adults pretending to be children”, and an elderly cast taking “a group snapshot with an urn”. She likes that last show, actually, and a few of the others, but her enthusiasm is less convincing than usual – she sounds worn out: French fried.
Skip Without Guilt:
“Out There” - Rebecca Mead riffles through Gillian Anderson’s files. Quite good on Anderson’s history with addiction, and the immersion into Blanche DuBois that brought those experiences uncomfortably back to the forefront. The idea of an actor getting lost in a character is a powerful one, but corny – press-tour-y – when handled wrong; Mead threads the needle. Elsewhere, though, Anderson, like many a talented actor, seems fairly ordinary and not especially interesting. Her drink of choice, “alcohol-free beer mixed with stevia-sweetened lemonade”, is the closest thing Mead can find to a quirk; it’s not really enough. In its last third, the piece turns toward Anderson’s new project, a book of anonymous sexual fantasies, and Mead manages what must be the least sexy treatment of kink ever on the page. Instead of any actual discussion of fantasy dynamics, we’re treated to a long disclaimer that the new book doesn’t broach the really taboo, so as not to make anyone feel “unsafe” – apparently, Anderson is “an avatar of the scrupulously mindful, identity-affirming, progressive sexual politics of today.” Thus is the sex symbol transformed into an avatar of politics. The timid and manufactured nature of Anderson’s project, which was pitched by her agent based on inquiries from publishers, means it really reflects very little about her at all. Even her fantasy is anonymized. There’s no sugar in this lemonade!
“Playing the Numbers” - Victor Lodato is odd and even. Doesn’t do anything formally interesting with the “childhood memoir” space it inhabits. The connection between the writer’s OCD and his mother’s gambling addiction is pretty literal, and the story’s scope is limited. Some of the thoughts Lodato puts in his child-self’s mind feel too retroactive: he says, at one point, “I understood then that there was a warning here. It seemed that if you didn’t express yourself you ended up a prisoner” – but this phrasing is obviously coming from an adult perspective, even if the emotion isn’t. The ending is especially admissions essay-esque. Lodato’s found the right length for the story he’s telling; he does a good job balancing detail with summation. But he hasn’t hit the jackpot.
“The Fin and the Fury” - Katherine Rundell says it’s safe to go back in the water. I feel like the reclamation of sharks as cool creatures who are not especially dangerous to humans is almost as much of a trope, at this point, as the original Jaws-inspired terror. Rundell is a good stylist, and I like her lede. But the rest of the piece feels incredibly obvious and unnecessary. Are there really any readers who still need to get this memo? I’m unconvinced. And the ending paragraph pivot toward the real villains – believe it or not, it’s ExxonMobil! – is, frankly, condescending. Rundell is new to the magazine; I hope her next piece finds something meatier to chomp on.
Extra Bad:
“Born Again” - Michael Luo says they’ll never make a monkey out of me. I get that Inherit the Wind isn’t aiming for historical accuracy, but… does Luo give any details here that substantially altered my understanding of the Scopes trial from its depiction in that film? Not really! Maybe that film isn’t the cultural touchstone I think, but I’m still not sure the trial needs this rushed, surface-level recap. Luo is reviewing a book which itself seems to be rushed and surface-level, plus full of over-obvious connections to the present moment. Luo could spare at least a few lines of critique for what seems like pretty obvious presentism. Instead, after his recap he pivots to talking about fundamentalism – specifically about David French, who gets a couple soft-focus paragraphs, and Luo’s view that the left is “contemptuous of faith… even as their own beliefs become an altar unto themselves.” Come the fuck on. The left isn’t “contemptuous of faith”, they’re contemptuous of the use of faith as a tool to enact regressive policies! The idea that I hate David French because he’s a Christian, and not because he’s an anti-abortion, anti-trans, pro-war nutjob who’s also a smarmy douchewipe, is exactly what he wants you to think.
“Unconventional” - Anthony Lane says come as you R.N.C. what happens.3 Pee eww! If you thought Lane doing smug, flippant riffs on superhero movies was bad, wait till you see Lane doing smug, flippant riffs on triumphant fascists! I’m not sure exactly what this moment demands, but knowing smirks and incessant dad jokes aren’t it. Despite a few obvious edits to make this piece less dated, it was obviously near-finished before Kamala triumphantly emerged from her coconut shell, and Lane makes the classic blunder of assuming that the present moment’s mood is actually meaningful and not ever-shifting to the point of basically being random. Lane focuses entirely on the look of things, which is a fine way to critique fascism, assuming your critique goes beyond “it’s all so tacky!” Would you believe that Lane doesn’t get much further? One especially cringeworthy description of a female pol’s voice – “I can’t have been the only one who flinched at the macaw-like sound… She has five children and eleven grandchildren, which must cost her a fortune in earmuffs” – is, one, not funny, and two, pretty sexist! There are so many things to attack these people for; I have no problem with low blows, but can’t we avoid poking fun at immutable character traits? The rest of the piece isn’t much better; Lane has no actual perspective to offer, just a lot of British-accented gawking. Look away!
Letters:
Jill writes in regarding Richard Brody, who I was frustrated with for criticizing a summer blockbuster as “impersonal”. “I think that he draws from an essay by Jean-Louis Comilla and Jean Narbini called ‘Cinema/Ideology/Criticism,’ their statement on what the Cahiers du Cinema was supposed to do as criticism and criticizing specifically the capitalist economic system in which films are created in. ‘This being said, the question we have to ask is: which films, books, and magazines allow the ideology a free, unhampered passage, transmit it with crystal clarity, service as its chosen language.’ And that the point of criticism is to show what a film is blind to, and how are they shaped by the ideology, how the film operates critically on the level of signifiers and signified, how is the political subject matter weakened by the absence of the technical/theoretical work on the signifiers, and to point out the gap produced between film and ideology by the way the film works, and show how they work. Anyway, after having read this piece I had an ‘aha moment’ with Brody’s reviews and at least can see where he is coming from even though I also get annoyed at grump Brody.”
To be honest, I see Brody’s lens as encompassing a pretty wide variety of sources; I can tell he’s a close reader of Bazin and such, but I don’t see him as an acolyte. I do understand and appreciate that he assesses everything with the same fairly rigid perspective; he’s not engaging in the kind of reparative readings that are lately in vogue (and may sometimes serve to overemphasize the latent subversion in deeply orthodox films) – he wasn’t even willing to give Tár’s ambiguity the benefit of the doubt. Still, such a thing was once called taste. I forgive all that – my nitpick is really much smaller. I think his focus on a very specific kind of emotional accuracy – a kind which is visible on acting faces – leads him to disregard the deliberate elision of this sort of emotion as a shortcoming, when in fact it can be a tool. Again, I don’t think Brody is blind to that – I think he intentionally ignores the technique; I’m not sure whether for reasons of ideology or just plain taste. High or low, I hardly ever agree with his taste (I’ve managed to see all three of his favorites of the year so far in theaters, and found all three totally admirable but not hugely successful) but I love his emphasis on original visions. I do wish, though, that if his writing was at long last going to be published in the print magazine, they’d pick reviews of the weird little indie flicks he loves! Instead, there’s been a baffling insistence on running his takes on action blockbusters (seriously: four in a row!), which are, if you know roughly his perspective, incredibly predictable, largely for the reasons I just outlined. That’s an editorial failure – not really Brody’s fault. Bring back the BrodyMeter.
Simon says: