Into the Weeds Wednesday
Aug. 30th, 2017 05:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bWhat I’ve Finished Reading
How To Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass by Aaron Foley is just what it says on the box – a partly funny, largely earnest beginner’s guide to Detroit real estate, culture, and politics, heavy on the lists and organized bathroom-reader style with huge fonts and lots of conversational section headers. It’s geared primarily toward cheap-rent and cutting-edge-seeking young entrepreneurs and artists with vague ideas about “revitalizing” neighborhoods with their presence.
Foley is a funny and affectionate chronicler of Detroit and Detroiters. It’s nice to read a book that’s honest about the real problems of the area without being cynical or despairing, and optimistic without being willfully naive. For me it’s also a source of that simplest of pleasures, Places I Recognize! In A Real Book!
My only real complaint is about the chapter called “Being A Woman in This Town.” Foley, a gay man, opens by declaring his unfitness to write this chapter and his total lack of the titular experience. But since the chapter title has already been written, he goes on to fill it out with 1) some fairly dubious greeting-card boilerplate about the unusual capacity of black women for love and 2) a brief biography of Monica Conyers, a Detroit city councilwoman convicted of corruption. IN CONCLUSION, being a woman in Detroit is pretty rough sometimes, but also women are strong, so this is for all you ladies out there being strong and not taking bribes! Foley! If you were dead set on including this chapter, maybe you could have invited a guest writer?
Nothing much happens in Less Than Angels, but it’s oddly cozy and enjoyable in approximately the same way Supergirl is enjoyable – right down to the ubiquitous clumsy relationship talks, though in this case the clumsiness and the clichés are clearly a deliberate attempt to portray uncertain people struggling to express themselves, rather than having been written by an algorithm or whatever is going on with Supergirl. The anthropology department’s golden boy leaves his older live-in girlfriend for a naive young undergraduate who admires him, and meanwhile the wealthy grant-fund donor skips town before any grants can be awarded. A guy who has been sitting on his notes for years finally burns them and feels better about the book he isn’t going to write. There is a small Greek chorus of undergraduates spouting their callow worldly-wisdom about everything that happens. I’ve already forgotten most of it, but not in a bad way.
The anthropology stays pretty non-specific throughout. Hardly anyone goes anywhere paritcular or learns anything about it; they all do field work in “Africa” and “Africa” is just a metonymy for the characters’ own failure to see themselves with objectivity, or something like that.
What I’m Reading Now
Room at the Top by John Braine! This is a book about social climbing, I guess. The main character has just moved from a shabby mill town to a considerably less shabby town with more than one industry. He’s just gotten a new job and he’d like to start having nice things and keep on having them. He isn’t going to be a zombie like the rest of his living dead ex-neighbors. This use of the word "zombie" ten years before the Romero Revolution sent me to Wikipedia for likely zombie reference points. The 1932 movie White Zombie, starring Bela Lugosi as an evil mill owner using reanimated corpses as cheap labor, might be a good candidate.
Joe is doing all right in his new life. He’s met some flirtatious older women and he’s about to take a girl to a show. A rich girl! Whom he’s determined to steal from her rich boyfriend! I don’t know, this is starting to sound like a prequel to Look Back in Anger. I hope that’s not what it is because everyone was miserable in that play and no one ever got any sleep with all the shouting and trumpet playing.
What I Might Read Next
Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny, about a perpetual student who gets mixed up in . . . something strange? I'll find out soon. Plus more of Freedom Riders, which I'll write about eventually.
How To Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass by Aaron Foley is just what it says on the box – a partly funny, largely earnest beginner’s guide to Detroit real estate, culture, and politics, heavy on the lists and organized bathroom-reader style with huge fonts and lots of conversational section headers. It’s geared primarily toward cheap-rent and cutting-edge-seeking young entrepreneurs and artists with vague ideas about “revitalizing” neighborhoods with their presence.
Foley is a funny and affectionate chronicler of Detroit and Detroiters. It’s nice to read a book that’s honest about the real problems of the area without being cynical or despairing, and optimistic without being willfully naive. For me it’s also a source of that simplest of pleasures, Places I Recognize! In A Real Book!
My only real complaint is about the chapter called “Being A Woman in This Town.” Foley, a gay man, opens by declaring his unfitness to write this chapter and his total lack of the titular experience. But since the chapter title has already been written, he goes on to fill it out with 1) some fairly dubious greeting-card boilerplate about the unusual capacity of black women for love and 2) a brief biography of Monica Conyers, a Detroit city councilwoman convicted of corruption. IN CONCLUSION, being a woman in Detroit is pretty rough sometimes, but also women are strong, so this is for all you ladies out there being strong and not taking bribes! Foley! If you were dead set on including this chapter, maybe you could have invited a guest writer?
Nothing much happens in Less Than Angels, but it’s oddly cozy and enjoyable in approximately the same way Supergirl is enjoyable – right down to the ubiquitous clumsy relationship talks, though in this case the clumsiness and the clichés are clearly a deliberate attempt to portray uncertain people struggling to express themselves, rather than having been written by an algorithm or whatever is going on with Supergirl. The anthropology department’s golden boy leaves his older live-in girlfriend for a naive young undergraduate who admires him, and meanwhile the wealthy grant-fund donor skips town before any grants can be awarded. A guy who has been sitting on his notes for years finally burns them and feels better about the book he isn’t going to write. There is a small Greek chorus of undergraduates spouting their callow worldly-wisdom about everything that happens. I’ve already forgotten most of it, but not in a bad way.
The anthropology stays pretty non-specific throughout. Hardly anyone goes anywhere paritcular or learns anything about it; they all do field work in “Africa” and “Africa” is just a metonymy for the characters’ own failure to see themselves with objectivity, or something like that.
What I’m Reading Now
Room at the Top by John Braine! This is a book about social climbing, I guess. The main character has just moved from a shabby mill town to a considerably less shabby town with more than one industry. He’s just gotten a new job and he’d like to start having nice things and keep on having them. He isn’t going to be a zombie like the rest of his living dead ex-neighbors. This use of the word "zombie" ten years before the Romero Revolution sent me to Wikipedia for likely zombie reference points. The 1932 movie White Zombie, starring Bela Lugosi as an evil mill owner using reanimated corpses as cheap labor, might be a good candidate.
Joe is doing all right in his new life. He’s met some flirtatious older women and he’s about to take a girl to a show. A rich girl! Whom he’s determined to steal from her rich boyfriend! I don’t know, this is starting to sound like a prequel to Look Back in Anger. I hope that’s not what it is because everyone was miserable in that play and no one ever got any sleep with all the shouting and trumpet playing.
What I Might Read Next
Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny, about a perpetual student who gets mixed up in . . . something strange? I'll find out soon. Plus more of Freedom Riders, which I'll write about eventually.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-30 11:46 am (UTC)Look Back in Anger came first, but Room at the Top was also part of the New Wave movement of the time (esp. in stage and cinema), and misery, anger, cynicism and generally some misogyny were required ingredients. They also merge a bit with the generally as miserable but less misogynistic kitchen sink movement. Or in short, British cinema was a barrel of laughs c.1958-1962, but I find it all of fascinating in ways I can't explain and sometimes resent. cf. also Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and A Taste of Honey, among others. And Rachel Roberts.
(I'm not sure exactly how they intertwined with the literary scene; I haven't read any of the book versions, whether originals or novelisations of the plays - I don't know which way round they are? I have watched Room at the Top, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, something else I'm not sure of (maybe it was Look Back in Anger but idk) and A Taste of Honey. The movement strongly influenced Verity Lambert, too, who when casting for Doctor Who had seen William Hartnell in This Sporting Life (with Rachel Roberts), and it's that kind of style that introduces the show in the first ep of Unearthly Child, where Susan is under discussion as a problem pupil by two teachers who evidently have a social conscience (and actually has echoes of Girl on Approval, a kitchen-sink-drama (with Rachel Roberts, obv., and my man James Maxwell) that was the first attempt to cover realistic foster-children in UK film.)
Er, sorry. *coughs* I find it fascinating! (It's also where one of the big divides between US and UK TV lies, as well, because TV here came into proper being in the New Wave era, made by people strongly influenced by it, and oftenlooking for working class input (especially in ITV). I think that gap closed again a while back, but it tells even in our soaps, with ours being very lower-class affairs - Coronation Street being our longest-running TV soap-opera - set among the working class residents of a northern mill town. I don't think it ever boasted Rachel Roberts, though. She was Too Famous. I mean, the big divide is theatre-centric opposed to film-centric and also having Money for the budget, but British theatre and film was busy being northern and gritty and miserable, and it was all revolutionary and excellent and got into TV too.)
However, when it comes to reading it - rather you than me! Although, certainly from what I remember from the film versions, Room at the Top is way more on the cynical side (probably comes out the other side somewhere, it's so cynical), so hopefully should be more enjoyable than just the angry young men stuff.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-30 10:26 pm (UTC)It is fascinating! I always enjoy learning about UK TV history from your comments; I don't even resent that you've made me curious about far more TV than I could ever watch in a lifetime. :)
(and actually has echoes of Girl on Approval, a kitchen-sink-drama (with Rachel Roberts, obv., and my man James Maxwell) that was the first attempt to cover realistic foster-children in UK film.)
I did not know that! I might have to watch Girl on Approval just to see if I can see the roots.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-31 07:23 am (UTC)Whereas Osborne was (at least at the time). I've also watched some of the TV series Man at the Top, from the 70s, and has some of the same quality (and I don't think is particularly misogynistic, so much as super-cynical about Joe and his lack of morals!)
It is fascinating! I always enjoy learning about UK TV history from your comments; I don't even resent that you've made me curious about far more TV than I could ever watch in a lifetime.
Aw, thanks! I am reasonably reliable on UK TV, although my New Wave stuff is a lot from long ago Media Studies and therefore probably inadequate and suspect. But definitely where there's kitchen sink stuff, there you find Rachel Roberts. ;-)
I don't know if Girl on Approval was a direct influence, but there were some similarities (including a missing pair of scissors) that amused me, and probably Verity Lambert would have seen it, if she was into that kind of thing. It's very obscure and not easy to get hold of, but This Sporting Life is better known, presumably more available and is absolutely where Verity Lambert found her Doctor - and then she just had to work on persuading him to be in the show. :-)