Digging through Dorthys basket: The Women, Ugly Love, One Day, Normal People, My Dark Vanessa
5 pieces of cultural Doritos to enjoy
Dear Companions,
The dexterity with which we can jump from high to low brow is a source of species pride for me. This week provides a great example. I’m reading ever so slowly through “The Beginning of Infinity” by the Oxford physicist David Deutsch by morning, just to cram my head with lower budget storylines by evening. At the end of the day, when I finish something good—however bad—I miss it.
The ones I am sharing here are the ones I’m least embarrassed about, or to put it better: the ones that aren’t actually harming my healing process. So, not Love Island All Stars, for instance, which makes me feel like a potato sack for neurons.
What makes something bad good is that, while it may be wolfed down like fast food for the mind, it also conjures certain feelings that are not easily accessible. Youth, lust, parting, wayward hopes. Getting ghosted. One night stands. Memories of being lost, memories of when you really put yourself out there. A sadness, and an appreciation that you made it through turbulent waters.
But you have to commit. Like a Vivaldi concerto. You have to endure the beginning and trust, at some point, you will buy into the characters and the plot lines. In some instances, there is a pay-off. A fun ride. You get a twinge feeling. That choke up which you then compress and squeeze the most out of. Close your eyes, drift back to some night, some kiss, some time when your cheeks burned. It would be cynical to say these kinds of artists simply write to manipulate these feelings out of you.
Part of the fun is that they are pieces of art you’d imagine being able to create yourself. When I read Proust I wonder if Chat GPT was created in the 19th century. But with the mass market stuff you think to yourself: I could do this right? I could write about a drunk? A woman scorned? Or a relationship that panned out after 20 years of courtship. I could be surface, yet universal, about relationships, jobs, children, sex, illness, and it would bring escape to someone, somewhere, a mom, and that’s when I also remember— that mom is now me.
The Women
The Women is NYT best seller, a story about a girl who enlists in the Vietnam war to be a nurse. Innocence shattered. Redemption. A little research to make it a historical fiction. Simplistic, sure. Plot, average. But surprisingly a few noteworthy twists and turns. Towards the end, the formula really gets to work as a touching ode to the women who served in Vietnam, mostly ignored or forgotten. I grew attached to the protagonist and her many downfalls, and the friendships that saved her over and over. For a contemporary fast novel, I would consider this a good book, a good read—love scenes, drunk scenes, a bit of history sprinkled in, war, feminism, betrayal, friendship…not too shabby.
I don’t know exactly when, but I would read more of Kristin Hannah.
Ugly Love
I have to keep my eyes open so I can watch him watch me.
Compared with The Women, Ugly Love is a mediocre book about a young love and tragedy, except I’ll give the author daps on the sex pages. Definitely a woman’s book. I doubt this book could be digested by a boy. It would get stuck in the colon, only to be excised at the next colonoscopy.
If I had to make a recommendation, there are some edgier contemporary novels that leave an impression, like My Dark Vanessa, a Lolita-like novel and creepy account of abuse. I remember my heart rate accelerating while reading that book, thinking, this is pretty fucking good. (Incidentally, the author got one of the biggest paychecks for a debut novel, and there was some scandal over her copying some else’s work).
One Day on Netflix
One Day is a love story of Dex and Em, who meet on their graduation night and reunite every year on July 15. I watched because I thought it had the same actor as Normal People, but I just looked it up, and the guy in that (Paul Mescal) is entirely different. Still the main actor in One Day, Leo Woodall (White Lotus), is also hot so who cares.
I preferred Normal People to One Day as the superior trash-novel-with hot scenes-coming-of-age story adapted to a TV show, but just as in the case of the actors, if you like one, you’ll probably enjoy the other.
Ok, back to David Deutsch.
With much love from the Healingvrse,
Rebecca