The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
b-side
Thursday, January 10, 2019 — 5B
2018 was yet another whirlwind
year in the hurricane that has been
the last half-decade, but luckily
books, new and old, kept writers
from all beats on Daily Arts sane.
The Book Review asked a handful
of them to write about their favorite
moments with a book, literature or
even reading itself this past year.
“Just
Kids”
by
Patti Smith
My exposure to Patti Smith
before I opened the first page
of “Just Kids” was limited to
childhood car rides with my
parents and assertions by my
friends that she was their second
mother. I knew she had an album
called Horses, which I had never
consciously listened to, and thanks
to the person that lent me the
now treasured book (which I still
must give back) I was aware of her
relationship with photographer
Robert Mapplethorpe.
“Just Kids” sets Mapplethorpe
and Smith’s relationship against
the backdrop of the New York City
art scene of the late 1960’s through
the ’70s. It would be an easy task
for Smith to romanticize or brag
about her impactful presence in
post-Warhol New York, but she
never comes off as anything short
of sincere. Her genuine tone never
breaks: From her retelling of the
difficult arrival in the city to her
eventual stardom, she doesn’t ask
for anything from the reader other
than to listen to her and Robert’s
story.
Dispersed throughout the story
are Mapplethorpe’s photographs
and drawings. By placing his work
in her memoir, Patti is able to give
Robert a voice in the narrative to
which he can no longer contribute.
The reader feels her respect for
Robert and all of the renowned
artists she has the pleasure of
sharing spaces with. Often, these
artists come into her life on chance
encounters, such as when Patti
anxiously takes the stairs instead of
the elevator to a recording studio to
buy more time and runs into Jimi
Hendrix who calms her by saying
“parties make me nervous.”
Patti Smith’s memoir is a bay
window into a magical era in New
York City that she graciously opens
to us. “Just Kids” introduced me to
a world I wouldn’t have otherwise
known existed. Every five pages I
had to look up X location, Y person
or Z reference.
On the inside flap is a quote
by Joan Didion: “This book is so
honest and pure as to count as a
true rapture.” I’m with Didion.
“Just Kids” shook my core, in only
beautiful ways.
— Joseph Fraley, Blog Editor
“I Love Dick” by
Chris Kraus
When I read “I Love Dick,” I
avoided being seen with it. It was
like walking around with a bad
Redbubble sticker on my book.
And it’s not that I don’t love dick —
It’s that “I Love Dick” looks like a
nonchalant-sensational
attention
grab, and after so many annoying
unsolicited remarks I was pissed
off.
The first half of the book doesn’t
help much. Part one chronicles
the not-so-fictional relationship
between
author-narrator-
filmmaker Chris and her husband,
literary theorist Sylvère Lotringer,
as Chris pursues an unrequited
erotic crush on Dick, a renowned
cultural critic. Chris’s crush is
realized through a lengthy series
of letters she and Sylvère compose
to Dick, punchy epistles that wring
and wrap their feeling in enough
cerebral wit to render the obsession
safely translucent. They do some
kooky shit, they hurt each other,
they entertain you in the padding
of irony.
It could end there. Instead,
Kraus flips the table by writing
herself into the entire moment of
part two, rejecting the brand of part
one with so much conviction the
prose practically drops 15 degrees.
Chris’s letters to Dick morph
into personal journals, a turn of
direction that taps into the power
of her raw, unresolved feeling for
the first time. “Fifteen years ago …
whenever I tried writing in the 1st
Person it sounded like some other
person …” Kraus shares. “Now I
can’t stop … it’s just more serious:
bringing change & fragmentation
… down to where you really
are.” Chris Kraus encounters the
eroticism of her voice right there on
the page, and it’s hot.
What’s even hotter about Kraus’s
narrative coup is how masterfully it
identifies and resists gender bias in
the artistic community. She begins
by permitting her own discontent,
revisiting
instances
in
which
her work has been simplified by
language like “insincere” and
“quirky.” Instead of lapsing into
echo-chamber diatribe, however,
Kraus uses her intense feeling to
critically bolster a series of similarly
marginalized
female
artists.
Hannah Wilke, Coco Fusco and
Jennifer Harbury become motif-
contributors as Kraus weaves their
work into an originally networked
acknowledgement,
calling
to
mind the dynamic sampling of
Maggie Nelson’s “Argonauts,” a
comparison I rarely award.
It
seems
important
to
acknowledge how the uncanny
way I acquired and read “I Love
Dick” set it up to be a watershed
book in my personal library. It
was recommended to me by a
woman I have never met who
was hired to edit the letters I was
hired to write my students, then
read across the borders of varying
(united, psychological) states. The
stars of reading circumstance
certainly aligned, but I can’t shake
the feeling that this situational
voodoo is actually the work of
Kraus. The generosity of her truth
is so powerful it could wring
whatever stars of circumstance
into alignment.
— Verity Sturm, Book Review
Editor
Book moments that moved
1. Roma
Before I saw “Roma,” I didn’t
know I could be moved by piles
of dogshit in a carport. I never
noticed how the arrangement
of family members around a
television screen after dinner
can constellate the dynamics
of familial love. I didn’t think
about how much it means
when someone takes the time
to wake you up in the morning
— how intimate, how full of
love, that is. But I don’t often
know what image or scent or
sound will lay sudden siege to
my memory when I revisit sites
of significance to my past. Nor
do I know how to make these
sudden sieges of memory legible
to people other than myself.
How to articulate gratitude
to the inhabitants of these
memories, to express gratitude
for the ways they loved me
without
thinking.
Alfonso
Cuarón (“Gravity”) vindicated
me of these frustrations.
In
“Roma,”
Cuarón’s
intricate,
semi-
autobiographical ode to his
family’s
housekeeper
Lido
(to whom he dedicates the
film) as well as her role in
his
upbringing
amid
the
socio-political tension of late
20th-century
Mexico
City,
speaks the language of memory
and of honor to the women who
shape our upbringings more
fluently than any filmmaker
in recent memory. Penning the
story of Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio),
Lido’s
fictive
counterpart,
Cuarón
amplifies
quiet
sufferings and desires, arranges
before our eyes the unlikely
keys to memory, and wisely
selects certain doors to unlock
and others to leave shut out
of respect, reminding us that
in a terrible, beautiful world,
extraordinary love is just as
possible as extraordinary evil.
It’s as simple as that: “Roma”
will remind you that there is
a reason to live in this world,
and
people
—
specifically
our mothers, biological and
surrogate alike — to love and
love back and thank. It is a
welcome, well-timed reminder.
– Julianna Moranno, Daily
Arts Writer
2.
Spider-Man:
Into the Spider-
Verse
An awe-inspiring labor of
love for all involved, Sony
Pictures’s “Spider-Man: Into
the Spider-Verse” seamlessly
fuses
numerous
animation
styles
and
mediums
to
create 2018’s most visually
groundbreaking
film.
In
a
superhero genre oversaturated
with statuesque white men,
“Spider-Verse” follows half-
Latino, half-Black high schooler
Miles Morales as he slings webs
across the rooftops of a near-
future New York brimming
with multiculturalism. Spider-
Man’s new look never feels
like tokenization, and the film
is effortlessly modern as it
weaves hip-hop and R&B into a
classic orchestral movie score.
The result is a film that is sleek,
in-touch and absurdly fun to
watch.
It’s hard not to look at
“Into
the
Spider-Verse”
as
pioneering when it upends so
many classic superhero film
conventions. It’s delightfully
self-aware,
often
winking
at the audience as it pokes
fun at the superhero genre
with fourth wall breaks and
hilarious cameo performances
from John Mulaney (“Saturday
Night Live”) and Nicolas Cage
(“Mandy”). Despite the film’s
underperformance at the box-
office — more a testament
to
the
stigma
surrounding
animated movies than to the
film’s quality — it has fared well
through awards season thus far,
taking home the Golden Globe
for Best Animated Feature
Film. With any luck, the film’s
warm critical reception should
help to lend legitimacy to
animation as a medium that
extends beyond just children’s
entertainment.
– Max Michalsky, Daily Arts
Writer
3. BlacKkKlansman
Spike Lee, the most veteran
of directors behind the films in
our list, returns with a 2018 joint
that’s on-par with his best work
to date. “BlacKkKlansman” is
the dramatic retelling of the
story of Ron Stallworth, the
first Black police officer in
Colorado Springs, who went
on to lead an operation to
infiltrate his town’s branch
of the Ku Klux Klan. The
real “Ron Stallworth” in the
film is played by John David
Washington (son of Denzel),
though the “Ron Stallworth” in
the film is really acted out by
two different people, the police
department using the white
Adam Driver as the face of the
undercover-duo when meeting
with members of the Klan.
Lee creates an atmosphere
of a world on the brink of
either fire-and-brimstone or a
moment of empowered change,
and the film’s surprisingly
true-to-life premise sets up for
a harrowing finish, ripe with
intensity and implication.
– Stephen Satarino, Film
Editor
4. The Favourite
The
prospects
for
“2018-in-film”
were
greatly
improved in the month of
Dec., and a portion of that
excellence attributed to Yorgos
Lanthimos’s historical feature
“The Favourite,” a medieval
farce starring Olivia Colman as
a bratty Queen Anne, supported
by Emma Stone and Rachel
Weisz as two cabinet cousins.
Played straight and severe,
“The Favourite” finds funny in
a grandly costumed satire about
interpersonal cabinet relations
while war rages on across the
English Channel. Colman is a
befuddled, blundering queen
whose
personal
absurdities
Stone and Weisz must dance
around for the benefit of
both their country and their
pocketbooks.
Beginning
at
the bottom as a peasant in the
movie, Stone grabs the film by
the neck and puts on a display
with the same level of talent
and tact that landed her on the
top of the mountain in 2016.
A spectacle of costume and
character, “The Favourite” is a
must-watch for anyone aiming
to see the year’s best.
– Stephen Satarino, Film
Editor
5. A Star is Born
The
only
imaginable
explainable for why the A+
epic “A Star is Born” might not
be ranked on your top ten list
this year is if you haven’t yet
had the privilege of witnessing
(and being dazzled by) Cooper
and Gaga’s on-screen magic.
If, for some reason, the very
combination
of
pop-legend
Lady Gaga and dreamboat/
genius Bradley Cooper isn’t
enough to make you split for
the theater, let’s review a few of
the key rationales for why this
film is a non-negotiable must-
see for awards season (and for
life in general).
This list continues on the next
page ...
Film’s 2018 movie favorites
Ranging from graphic novels to memoirs to
longform poetry, the Michigan Daily Book Review
ranks their favorite titles published in 2018.
1. “The Great Believers” by
Rebecca Makkai
Rebecca Makkai’s novel “The Great Believers”
is a slick, harrowing novel. Alternating between
Chicago in the 1980s and Paris in 2015, the book
revolves around a large cast of friends and family
members, all of whose lives have been devastated
by the AIDS crisis. In the 1980s, a group of gay
friends is slowly winnowed as the disease performs
its heinous magic trick; over and over, the healthy
become sick and the sick become dead. In 2015, the
now-middle-aged sister of one of these men travels
to Paris to find her missing daughter. Tests and
treatments arrive too late for these characters, and
their lives are shattered, ended and emptied by the
disease. As the two stories unfold, it becomes clear
that each focus is the collateral damage of the other:
one in actuality, the other in memory. Makkai is
particularly interested in the micro- and macro-
legacy of AIDS. The disease ravages her characters’
interior lives as well as their bodies, and even those
who survive it are left with wasteland of untethered,
unconfirmable memory.
Sidestepping simplicity, Makkai deftly maneuvers
the crossed wires of desire and fear, infidelity and
devotion. The book is frequently heartrending but
never sentimental. Near the end of the book, when
one character tests positive for AIDS, he lists all the
things he’ll miss when he dies. In another writer’s
less skillful hands, this could have been mawkish,
but as is her signature, Makkai lets it be tenderly
simple. “The brutal wind on the El platform. Fifty
people huddled under the heating lamp. Pigeons
crowding their feet,” she writes. “The man at Wax
Trax! Records with the beautiful eyelashes. The
man who sat every Saturday at Nookies, reading
The Economist and eating eggs, his ears always
strangely red. The ways his own life might have
intersected with theirs, given enough time, enough
energy, a better universe.”
— Miriam Francisco, Copy Chief & Daily Arts
Writer
2. “The Recovering” by
Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison’s latest combines all the things
I’ve loved about her since her 2014 release “The
Empathy Exams” — a careful, insistent prose style,
a way with words that skips past pretense and
narrative tricks and a uniquely keen insight into
the human heart. “The Recovering: Intoxication
and its Aftermath” is an urgent, insistent read, an
examination not just of her own alcoholism, but
also of the nature of addiction itself. She weaves a
personal narrative through a tapestry of a larger
interrogation of what it means to want, to be out
of control. Jamison’s writing has a way of working
itself directly into the heart and brain of her readers,
rendering the space between the words she’s using
and the feeling she’s describing negligible. Reading
Jamison’s work feels not like an education but more
like an expansion — an expansion of empathy,
understanding, of capacity for hope. I trust her
writing to take me anywhere.
— Asif Becher, Daily Arts Writer
3. “Heavy: An American
Memoir” by Kiese Laymon
I read, was knocked to the ground by and wrote
about “Heavy” back in November, but have been
ruminating on it since. It’s the type of book that
sinks into your bones, adding some requisite weight
to every step thereafter, a reckoning I haven’t
experienced so viscerally since Ta Nehisi Coates’s
“Between the World and Me.” While Coates
addresses his book to his son, Laymon writes to
his mother, allowing room for more complicated
conversation on the Black body and the (physical,
verbal, psychological) violence it endures. In
particular, Laymon writes to identify the violence
deeply ingrained in his own family: where it began,
how it became codified and what it does to the
bodies that give and receive it.
Turning the pen towards oneself is an arduous
project, and the text is dense with Laymon’s moving
effort and care. Although difficult, “Heavy” is a
beautiful read. Laymon’s prose runs with tasteful
repetition and an eye for detail, allowing the music
of some moments and dashing imperative severity
to others. The movement of Laymon’s language
lends his book a sense of physical activity — one feels
like they’ve covered some distance at the end, and
the body is phantom-tired. “Heavy” is exhausting,
but necessarily so, as if creating the circumstances
necessary for recovery.
— Verity Sturm, Books Review Editor
4. “Florida” by Lauren Groff
“Florida,” Lauren Groff’s most recent collection of
short stories, is a menagerie of things made wild by
their environs. The setting of these stories — Florida,
of course — is a broken incubator for the extremes
of weather, emotion and beauty. Her characters
(wives, mothers, sisters, children) grapple with the
intrusive presence of their home state, an ambient
specter that is both gorgeous and grotesque. Groff
currently lives in Gainesville, Fla., and her intimate
knowledge of the state’s peculiarities is evident. In
“Florida,” pain and violence are inextricable from
the quietly fantastic landscape.
The best books of 2018
Read more at MichiganDaily.
com
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