Read, Listen, Watch

The Boston Globe has published a list of what they think are the 100 Essential New England Books.  There are certainly a number on the list that I’ve read or certainly been meaning to read.  I’d also be curious to see what determined their rankings.  They left off one of my New England favorites, The Witch of Blackbird Pond.  I have a feeling, I may come up with a few more, once I have a chance to mull it over. What do you think?

It all started in high school journalism class. Everyone, it seemed, got into Chuck Palahniuk at once, and a flurry of book exchanges and lunchtime discussions soon became a constant interruption to our newspaper goings-on. I suppose it could have just been ‘that age’ where sixteen-year-olds all of a sudden discover that Fight Club (“the coolest movie ever!” thought all of our sixteen-year-old selves) was a book before it ever was a movie. This meant, we soon realized, that there were more stories like it out there, all spawned from the freaked-out, twisted-up mind of its sharp-tongued creator, Palahniuk. After Fight Club, I read Invisible Monsters, which my friend Nova has called the ‘girl version of Fight Club’. I’m not sure I agree; it is, however, my favorite book by him. Lullaby didn’t really do it for me, and Choke – well, Choke was Choke. I’m generally not one to shy away from a book because it’s too graphic, but… well it was a lot. There were lots of things about it that I liked – but it’s not my favorite. Lately, I checked out Diary from the library after finding my way to the section in Snell with Palahniuk. It ended up being a choice between that or Rant, which Palahniuk claims as an ‘oral biography’. Whatever it was, it didn’t read very interesting in the first few pages. Diary, however, did not disappoint when it came to interest-piquing, Palahniuk-characteristic, body-fluid filled fiction. His propensity for the simultaneously fantastically revolting combined with the intense human yearning and drama of his characters, all topped with a flagrant disregard for the conventions of either realism, science-fiction, or fantasy, make for an at once gripping and horrifying story. The novel is about a woman named Misty – pathetic, used, unloved – whose husband just died, and whose island home of Waytansea Island (when she was brought there by her husband, it was a quaint, picturesque Cape Cod-like community of serenity) has become degraded, poor, and forced to open itself out to the ravages of tourism. When Misty begins to paint again after years of stopping, her paintings have an almost hypnotically-powerful force. When she finds a years old diary of a young woman whose life seems oddly to echo her own, it becomes clear that the island and the townspeople have plans for her that she may be powerless to overcome. Sometimes funny, sometimes touching, sometimes macabre, pathetic, pessimistic and at times downright nauseating, Diary is a story of the most absolute of failure – betrayal, resentment, deception, murder, evil, weakness – in all its unsavory glory, and the voice of Palahniuk – unflinching and unrelenting – documents it all, with mind firmly in the gutter, and tongue firmly wedged in cheek.

Last year, on an absolutely crazy whim, I decided to get Wilderness First Aid certified. My roommate, in her last year of college, was trying to figure out what she wanted to do as a career once she was of free class-taking and homework-doing. We all started toying with the idea of her being the perfect Adventure Travel leader – she was extremely active, friendly and outdoorsy. Many of the programs we found, however, required that the candidate be certified in Wilderness First Aid. I decided to come along for the ride. The thing is that I had never even really been camping, if you want to know the truth. I mean, really. I’ve been to cabins and I’ve slept in tents, but the tents were never really in the wilderness and … I mean, cabins? Even I feel like that’s a bit of a cop-out. It was very intimidating, then, for me to come to this little weekend getaway with all of these intense youth-leader outdoorsy types (this class was specifically for people who lead youth groups… they gave us an exception but were nonetheless confused by our presence) who had been hiking and camping and otherwise frolicking about in the outdoors for years on end – and were in fact even in charge of the outdoor frolickings of other! So when things turned out perfectly fantastic, when I ended up learning a lot, getting to talk to really interesting and awesome people, and developing a new appreciation and thirst for outdoor adventure, I was pleasantly surprised. Imagine how much more delighted I was when I had this fantastic chat about books with our Wilderness First Aid certifier, who turned out to also be a high school English teacher. His favorite book, he told me, was Mount Analogue, a allegorical story about mountain climbers. I thought it was pretty endearing that he managed to combine his two – at first glance uncombine-able – loves, and eager to experience the combination of one of my tried and true favorites with a new interest, I vowed to seek it out. It took me a while to find it because I kept spelling it ‘Analog’ and cursing at Google when nothing would come up. But I finally discovered that it’s an unfinished novel by French surrealist Rene Daumal. Immediately, I did as any good little, well-trained Northeastern student would do – I NUCAT-ed it. Alas! It wasn’t to be found! Nor was it at the BPL in Copley – the search for this book was becoming ironically similar to the fruitless search of the men in the story. Luckily, Emily helped me discover the inter-library loan option on the library’s website and – success! – two libraries in the system carry it! So the day ended with a library lesson learned, everyone was happy, books were distributed. Goodness: such power.

Last week I half-heartedly – in the course of my Netflix Watch Instantly browsing – and completely by chance, started watching the french film L’Appartment. Imagine my tickled surprise when, about three minutes in, I realized that the uncanny resemblance it held to the 2004 American film Wicker Park couldn’t be an accident. Sure enough, a quick Wikipedia confirmed that Wicker Park (Josh Hartnett, Diane Kruger, Rose Byrne) was based on the 1996 film starring the Vincent Cassel (known in America for Eastern Promises and the Ocean’s X stuff) and Monica Belucci (The Passion of the Christ, Matrix: Reloaded, Shoot ‘Em Up). As a lover of Wicker Park both for its incredible soundtrack, as well as its eerie ambience, I committed to L’appartement, eager to discover if the original  would stay true to the parts of Wicker Park I knew and loved, while tightening up some of the pieces that have always left me uneasy, confused, and just downright angry. L’Appartement makes more sense, I’ll give it that. The ending is less ‘Hollywood’, and has a nice mixture of cathartic closure and bizarre twists. And while I love the precious slow-motion finale scene from 2004 of Josh Hartnett chasing through the airport for Lisa while Coldplay’s The Scientist rings in the background, I must admit that it defeated the purpose of all the unexpected empathy that the film up until then seemed to be collecting for the Lisa-rival character. The French film resolved that better. Also, Daniel, a character whose role I never fully understood in the American version, enters the film again in the French version and makes him seem less like the confusing tack-on character he was in the 2004 film. I remember watching Wicker Park in the theater in 2004. Days later, after getting over the thrill of the soundtrack (Strange and Beautiful by Aqualung, We Have a Map of the Piano by Múm, and an incredible cover of The Scientist by Danny Lohner and Johnette Napolitano) I realized that although I loved the movie, I didn’t like any of the characters that ‘won’, and that I didn’t approve of the ending in the way I approve of fairy tale endings, which was how the film tried to make its ending out to be. I had too much pity for the characters left behind, and couldn’t help feeling that the proverbial underdog of the film – and true hero – had been cheated by the plot. The French version certainly does a 180 in terms of which female character it favors, (although there’s still the poor abused cuckold minor character (Luke, or Lucien) that neither version seems too compassionate toward). In general, I feel as if the ’96 film – while much less pretty sounding or looking (those ’90s clothes, hairstyles and lighting styles are hard to overlook), is much more meaningful and has more to say. Wicker Park with Josh Hartnett is like one big American music video – pretty sounds and pretty people with the perfect prince and princess getting together in the end, while the whipping girl is left thrust to the side. I love music videos, don’t get me wrong. But I also love a good meaningful, fiery death. And while the American version has the ambience of the former, only the French version can give me the latter. Here’s a music video drawing from Wicker Park scenes for Postal Service’s cover of Phil Collins’ ‘Against All Odds’ and here’s a detailed essay comparing the two from cinemademerde.com. I should warn you: there are spoilers. Also, whoever wrote this found the 2004 soundtrack annoying, so beware; they can hardly be trusted.