great(ish) pt 37: the myth of the Himalaya, hockey trivia, chairs
Hello! Today: an article about the myth of the Himalaya, Chloe Zhao's debut, a novel suffused with "hallucinatory eroticism" (and poetry) and some silly hockey trivia that is also a song.
Article: Can We See Past The Myth of the Himalaya? by Akash Kapur, published by the New Yorker in January 2021
I enjoyed listening to this essay/review reflecting on some recent and not-so-recent books about the Himalaya, interrogating why, and how, the specific natural world of these mountains has become seemingly separated from the people who live there for Western mountaineers: almost like a lieu de mémoire removed from its context. Kapur talks about cartography and Jamaica Kincaid, climate change and war. He also makes one of the wildest claims I have come across recently (that the 1802 Great Trigonometrical Survey of India was "one of the greatest scientific achievements of the age—and perhaps of all time"), which I have to both respect and disagree with.
Film: Songs My Brother Taught Me, written and directed by Chloe Zhao (2015)
Once again I went into this film knowing nothing about it apart from its director, which I have decided may well be the best way to go into a film. Zhao's debut is set in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and focuses on John, who is about to graduate from high school, his younger sister Jashaun, and their relationship to each other and their community. Both the dialogue and the story struck me as very naturalistic, almost improvised – which was mostly confirmed when I read this article/interview about the filmmaking process. I'm excited to watch The Rider next.
Book: What’s Left of the Night by Ersi Sotiropoulos, translated by Karen Emmerich (2015/18)
I re-read bits of What’s Left of the Night recently and decided that I still love it, and not just because it has one of the most vivid scenes of sublimated sexual desire I've read: a man looks at an armchair in a hotel lobby and gets lost in his fantasies. The man in question is the Greek (at least in language) poet Konstantinos Kavafis, and the place is Paris, 1897.
The premise of writing about Kavafis at this particular moment in history is like catnip to me and the novel combines several things that I *love*: long internal monologues where Kavafis tries to figure out how he feels about various aspects of his life; the aforementioned visceral descriptions of what the publisher calls "hallucinatory eroticism" and cityscapes; reflections on writing that somehow aren’t tedious in any way. All of this comes wrapped up in a historical novel. 1897 was the year Kavafis published his first poem, and his doubts (“Weak expression Poor artistry”) hang over the book. Writings about writing are not usually my cup of tea, but this... this is it.
If you're not into historical novels or Greek poetry, perhaps you'll enjoy David Hockney's illustrations of some of Kavafis' poems.
Other: To be honest I haven't done much other than making good life choices and, inexplicably, re-watching The Terror (+ putting on sunscreen, enjoying the outdoors and feeling good about not being in the Arctic), but hockey playoffs are about to start. Seven years ago someone turned one of the stupidest things to happen in a sport that is absolutely packed with stupid incidents into an autotuned song that I have played roughly 1000 times. For background, a hockey coach made his team fight another team, then tried to fight the other coach. These people are embarrassing! But I'm glad someone turned it into good content.
That's it! Bye!