the new ulysses corner
some depressing content, sorry
Friends! Forgive me for the radio silence. I have been slacking on my reading and cultural intake and finding the time and impetus to put finger to keyboard. But it’s time to get back on the bike. Only metaphorically, just to be clear, as people in my real life who saw my slinged-up arm in November know that I am now petrified of bicycles and the road in general.
All that being said, I’d be remiss not to mention that part of my writing absence can be attributed to a couple of other life activities (improv) and a project or two that you might learn about eventually ;) . Yeah, sorry to tantalize!!!! guess you gotta wait!!!! hehehehe
ALSO, content warning for the rest of this newsletter: I discuss a few pieces of media that involve child sexual/emotional/physical abuse should you prefer to stop reading here.
reads
Sula is Toni Morrison’s second published novel and thus the second on the #Toni2024 train. It follows three generations of a family of Black women and their respective developments into womanhood, often happening in a way that is often at odds with the community around them.
I found the explorations of female sexuality and independence in this novel to be really well-done, especially given the time and place of its publication. The three women of the family are all deviant from the norm in some way in their lack of male connection, but are seen differently in each scenario. As with The Bluest Eye, Morrison does an excellent job depicting the standards and abuse that exist for Black gender marginalized individuals both outside and within the Black community. For me, the hidden core of the novel is really the impact of mother/daughter relationships and female friendship on one’s life and development — or a lack thereof. That was quite powerful for me, resonating especially at the mic drop of an ending.
This was likely my own fault for picking this novel up and putting it down several times before really sitting down and reading it, but I didn’t find the first twenty percent or so of it as compelling as it could have been. It takes a little longer to launch into the story than is necessary, IMO, which rids us of some essential character development. That slowed my reading down quite a bit, though once it gets going, it really gets going.
Per usual with Morrison’s work, this is a book that will not soon leave my memory. 4/5 stars. Next up: Songs of Solomon.
I suck at participating in book clubs. I am terrible at following the rules (I read the whole book prior to our 200-page check-in or not at all) and at toning down my opinions (I’m sorry, I MUST tell you that this is technically poorly written). And, yet, my friend Drea started a book club and I love my friends and talking about books, so I joined.
Our first book was Riley Sager’s The Only One Left. It’s a mystery thriller about a caretaker accused of murder who is sent on assignment to an old woman ALSO accused of murder. So many layers! I’m of the belief that book clubs should either focus on a classic novel that I wouldn’t read by myself without motivation (clearly, I did a pretty bad job of running the very short-lived Ulysses reading group, may it rest in peace) OR a fun mystery that we can discuss theories about. So this felt like the perfect book club book.
While this was an entertaining read that I binged in a couple of sittings and gave me a few surprises, I was rather disappointed, and dislike it more and more upon reflection. The writing is a bit meh to begin with. It oscillates between a present-day narrative by the main character and a story that her murderous (!?) ward types out for her, which is never a format that works for me. Often, a book is most effective when it sticks to a single narrative perspective and/or storytelling device.
But, you know, with books like these, you expect to still be hooked on the plot. Which I kind of was, at least in the first half of the novel, which poses some intriguing questions and some unexpected twists and turns. As it goes on, however, and red herring after red herring is dropped in to the point where you’re just swimming in a fucking sea of red herrings, like, brother, it’s red herring season, you’ll be eating red herrings for dinner all summer because there was an influx of herring in the waters of Cape Cod this summer, I was kind of over it. This easily could have been about 150 pages shorter. There are so many fucking twists and turns at the end — only a couple of which were genuinely surprising — that the story starts to fold in on itself and actually become quite boring, if that makes sense. I actually LOL’d at the last chapter because it was so stupidly unnecessary.
Also, I strongly disliked the main character. I found her bland and quite irritating. Her actions are annoying and she had pretty much no driving motivation or personality or any empathetic qualities to make us understand why she is doing such annoying things. However, I didn’t like her any more or less than any of the other characters, as none of them were particularly well fleshed-out, either.
My pal Iroda puts it best: “It felt very Pretty Little Liars-esque; like pandering to what this white [male author] thinks women want to read while simultaneously insulting our intelligence by over-explaining and presenting women as manipulative, deceptive, violent, unable to process emotions, or straight up dumb.” Yeah, I can’t add anything better to that. 2.8/5 stars.
Yes, I’m about fifty billion years late to this one, which was completely unintentional because it was one of my most anticipated books of 2022 but I somehow never got around to it. In I’m Glad My Mom Died, child star Jennette McCurdy details her experience as a Nickelodeon star and the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother and members of the industry (namely Dan Schneider, who, coincidentally, I’ll be discussing in the next section). Some hefty content warnings for this one, namely for child emotional and sexual abuse, eating disorders, and substance use disorder.
I don’t need to tell you that this one is worth the hype. McCurdy is a great, snappy writer with the ability to unflinchingly lay bare her traumas within a genuinely entertaining narrative. It’s a surprisingly quick and easy read, especially given the subject matter; I wasn’t expecting to finish it in one sitting. Even though child stardom is not something most of us have experienced, I can guarantee you’ll relate to at least one of the many topics McCurdy presents here; she is able to deftly hold both her rare life experiences and her deeply human ones in tandem.
I also didn’t really consider what a nuanced, complicated portrait she’d paint of her abusive mother — given the title, I guess I was expecting some more vitriol (which would be incredibly justified). She speaks from the perspective of both her younger self who’s not understanding she’s being abused and from her present-day self in recovery from the horrible, horrible things her mother is directly responsible for, particularly her eating disorders. I thought that was really impressive.
As far as critiques go, I’ll say I was hoping for a bit more depth at certain points, and sometimes the narrative moved a little too quickly, which took me out of the story. However, I think this is a wonderful and important work of art and certainly one of the best “celebrity memoirs” — I don’t even really think this counts as that, it feels like more — I’ve read. 4.3/5 stars.
the new ulysses corner
Yes, fine, I admit it: I flopped on Ulysses (though now that I’m actually for real going back to school (hard launch!), maybe I’ll HAVE to read it under threat of academic failure?!?!?!). So we’re shifting gears to a totally different classic — Cain’s Jawbone by Edward Powys Mathers (published under the pseudonym Torquemada). As the cover reads, it is “The World’s Most Fiendishly Difficult Literary Puzzle,” which is kind of a sick nickname.
Basically, if you don’t know the premise, this was published in 1934 with the pages out of order. People have solved it over the years, but the solution has never been made public. To solve the mystery, you have to put the pages in order and identify each murder victim and their respective murderers by name. This is much, much harder than it sounds because every page is its fucking own thing.
My progress thus far (I don’t think anything here is a spoiler, but I’m sorry if it is):
I’ve set up a command center in my apartment where I put some of the pages together based on quotes that started on one page and ended on another. Then I read on r/cainsjawbone that you really can’t do anything with the order until you figure out who the characters are/what the plot is, which makes a lot of sense, so, never mind, but I do have like eight pairs of pages that will come in handy eventually.
I think this is something that everyone knows and I was just too dumb to realize, but there might be different narrators, which makes sense because I thought it was this one gay guy in love with his friend who also had fifteen million names and I was like, what? is this queer lit?, but it’s far, far more logical that there are multiple narrators and I’m just a moron, lmao. I have a list of like twenty names and I’m trying to decipher if any of them are real or if they’re some obscure reference.
The whole book is really fucking esoteric with lots of dense literary references and I’ve realized that this is probably important to figuring out who the murderers are, because, and I cannot believe I’m saying this because I’m literally continuing my studies in English literature in several months, sometimes I just skip over shit like that. Am I … bad at reading?
Again, I flopped really hard with the Ulysses book club, but if anyone wants to join in and solve this with me, I think it could be fun. You just have to motivate yourself on your own because I barely have enough energy to get myself to do this. <3
other media
reality television
So, so much has happened on the reality TV front since we last spoke. I think we just have to jump in with Couple to Throuple. This is exactly what it sounds like: groups of established couples enter a resort to add someone into their relationship. And, of course, it is a trainwreck. However, I appreciate that the trainwreck isn’t due to the show demonizing polyamory, but because of the typically nutty reality TV contestants on said show. I was very entertained for the first half of the season, but then there weren’t really any stakes or anything and no one seemed to quite understand where to go from here and it got boring.
I also have read quite a bit about the flaws of this show in its depiction of polyamory. Its main issue is the way the designated “singles” are treated as rather disposable; they’re all sequestered off until they’re “chosen” by a couple, who can dump them at will. It also doesn’t leave room for any depiction of polyamory that isn’t a closed relationship between three people. At the end of the day, fantastic television doesn’t always make for a fantastic representation of marginalized communities. But if they refine the formula a bit for next season, especially in giving the singles more autonomy and maybe eliminating all rules so that everyone could date each other, including the couples and the singles among themselves if they want to, it would be bonkers and also fantastic. I have faith!
Just when I think I’m done with Love is Blind, someone stays out until 5 AM with another contestant on the show who isn’t his fiancee and gets caught because of the location on his apple watch or something and reels me right back in. This is one of the most ridiculous seasons ever just based on behind-the-scenes drama alone. At least two participants came in with existing, long-established girlfriends and detailed plans to achieve fame.
There was some pretty dark stuff that emerged about said guys — domestic violence accusations at the forefront — which leads us all to wonder what on earth their background check department is doing. Sure, I know we’re casting people with deep insecurities and volatile emotions who are in no way, shape, or form ready for a lasting commitment, which provides us with endless entertainment, but isn’t there a line between mildly fucking with contestants for TV and pretty much torturing them? Especially considering all the very, very troubling lawsuits that have been levied against Netflix and production company Kinetic Content by former contestants.
Is this show fun anymore? Right now, I have a bad taste in my mouth, but when that fucking Detroit season airs in a few months, I will be sat on my couch with a plate of piping hot pizza bites in one hand and the stalwart reality TV-themed group chat titled “davina’s 75M listing” open for live updates in the other.
distressing documentary
Everyone’s been talking about Quiet On Set, a documentary about the harrowing world of child acting as told by former Nickelodeon stars, so I watched it all the other night. I had some issues with the documentary’s length and structure, though I did find it engaging and informative. Having watched a few days before reading I’m Glad My Mom Died (the doc totally reminded me to read it), I felt nothing but a deep, deep empathy and sadness for exploited child actors and anger towards the adults who they trusted to protect them and an admiration of their vulnerability.
The revelations it presents are pretty disturbing. Many discuss the abusive and misogynistic and just plain gross behavior of showrunner/king of tween programming Dan Schneider (unfortunately mentioned in this newsletter once more), who clearly had a weird fucking relationship with both the kids and adults he hired. Perhaps most heartbreakingly, it was revealed that one of Nickelodeon’s most well-known child stars, Drake Bell, was the anonymous victim of convicted sex offender and pedophile Brian Peck, a dialect coach on all of Schneider’s sets, and he laid out the extent of the abuse he suffered at Peck’s hands. This was horrific and saddening, and I cannot imagine what it must have taken to come forward.
Interestingly, however, the documentary only briefly touched on Bell’s own conviction of child sexual exploitation and further accusations of sexual assault and physically abusive behavior. Not exploring this in further detail (though I can imagine the only way he’d agree to participate in the documentary was if his own disturbing behavior was relatively glossed over) rid us of the opportunity to have a more nuanced conversation.
I think (or know, based on my unhealthy Reddit scrolling) that not addressing this can lead to problematic camps of thought. I’ve seen people online talking about how what Drake did to the unnamed minor in his case was “nothing” compared to the consistent abuse and assault he suffered at the hands of Peck, which has led to quite a bit of discrediting of his victim as well as harassment targeted at his ex, who has levied accusations of physical and emotional abuse against Bell. There is also, of course, a risk of dismissing or minimizing Bell’s trauma because of his own abusive actions, which is also not right. But I think there is obviously space to hold these experiences simultaneously, especially given evidence of the link between abuse experienced as a child and subsequent abusive behavior as an adult. There’s so much to be unpacked here, and I hope future pieces on this topic can provide us with room for a more complicated discussion.
Did not intend for this to get so dark. Thought it would be a fun return to writing after a few weeks off. Someone recommend me a really stupid book that I can hate-read and eviscerate next week so we can offset this. Cheers!