The Weekend Special

Pieces are given up to three Ellises (for fiction), McClellands (for essays), or Whitakers (for random picks). As with restaurant stars, even one Ellis, McClelland, or Whitaker indicates a generally positive review.

⏰ Fiction

“The Welfare State” by Nell Zink. No Ellises. push, pull, putting. Beyond me! I’m sure Zink is indicating all kinds of subtle things about the ways our cultures shape, but do not define, our quirks and prejudices. But why anything in particular that happens in this story happens, I couldn’t really say. Despite or maybe because it’s very brief, I kept drifting off and having to restart, and that probably didn’t help things; I haven’t read Zink before, though I’ve read some glowing reviews, and I found her prose style felt a bit like the floor’d been scattered with obscure, tiny, breakable objects – the game is not to discern them; the game is to try to avoid them, fail, and bleed a bit in the process. A random flashback to a recent Ferris wheel mishap is presented as an example of Julia’s cowardice, but the description is so specific it’s almost technical: “…the bolt attaching her gondola to the wheel (there were countless bolts in the wheel to allow it to be dismantled for transport, but only the one above the gondola seemed to hold her life in its hands) was an inch and a half in diameter and smooth, without visible rust.” It’s too dry to be zany, too bizarre to be mundane, too freighted with emotion to be deliberately understated… I suppose this makes Zink’s style unique, but for me the desired effect was completely opaque, and in lieu of understanding my eyes kept glazing over (and over and over).

Vroni’s rejection of Julia, which Julia takes well mostly because it baffles her, is, indeed, the sort of thing that happens in life; the absence of any strong feeling for either party, though, keeps it from being the kind of story one might try to learn a lesson from. (Is the whole story a joke: Julia is so superficial even a close friend dropping her for being too superficial doesn’t provoke a deep analysis? [Although we do hear she “once had a whole theory about Vroni” – presumably in the time between the dropping and this story being told, though it isn’t explicit.] If so, that’s just sort of mean-spirited.) Perhaps Zink’s point is anti-psychological; Vroni takes action while Julia worries, and gets away scot-free, happy, with healthcare. Julia, as an authorial stand-in, has the usual issue of seeming like a version of a basically decent person whose obscure flaws have been magnified out of proportion, which is not actually the way hard-to-like people are in real life: Most difficult people are difficult generally. Social overthinkers like Julia are not inherently more able to read people, but this doesn’t mean their social overthinking is morally weighted. I definitely don’t need any more didactic tales of friendship deepened¹, but Zink’s photo-negative, an opaque tale of friendship dissolved, doesn’t resemble anything in particular. Hopefully these two long paragraphs are enough to convince you that I did, at least, squint at it for a long time.

⏰ Weekend Essay

“What if Readers Like A.I.-Generated Fiction?” by Vauhini Vara. Two McClellands. impress, imitate, immigrant. Vara is a damn good writer, because something like half this essay is dumb bullshit and I still had a total blast reading it. Chakrabarty’s research is obviously misleading; the key thing to remember is that A.I. is not actually being judged against authors’ work but against grad students’ imitations of that work. Maybe the actual implication is that grad students are remarkably bad at imitating prose style? As with the Jeopardy trivia bot, the easily solvable edge case – how fast can you press a button? – provides enough of a margin that the computer looks better instead of just also shitty. (Even the best humans make poor reference-library substitutes, which is exactly why it’s fun to watch trivia.) Vara makes a game out of picking between her rough-draft writing samples and those crafted by A.I, something I bring up mostly because I got all four of them right, suckers!! Eat my dust! Apparently none of the nine “friends and fans” to whom Vara sent the sample did as well as I; I could bloviate about why it was very obvious to me which passages were human, but really the operative phrase, I believe, is git gud. The gap, throughout the piece, between Vara’s apparent amazement at bits of A.I. writing and my instinctive recoiling at same reminds me of the sociological phenomenon of visiting a Boomer’s house and turning motion smoothing off on their television. It seems that every technology which attempts to make new information out of nothing leaves a fingerprint which those who notice invariably find hideous, but which most people just can’t see. Do I think there is an ontological evil to this aesthetic of amoral mimicry? I dunno, really, but I do think that’s the question!

Anyway, Vara hardly touches theory or semiotics²; the second half of the piece is more of a literary history of individuality, which then extends into the future. Her hard-to-miss point: What A.I. does to the human experience is essentially colonialist and destructive, and literature itself must be part of the solution. But in her words it’s less a political tract and more a witty and sensible diversion, one that’s fair-minded toward the robots but doesn’t mince words as to their minders. Good clean likeable human fun.

⏰ Random Pick

“Letter from Washington” by Elizabeth Drew. (June 22, 1987). No Whitakers. Contra, constitution, course. I knew only the basics of the Iran-Contra scandal, and this is a capable and extremely detailed recap; I enjoyed reading it and filling in my knowledge gaps, but I can’t exactly recommend the piece, because it’s just so unbelievably long and it really is the news on paper. No particular access, no vivid scene-setting, just analysis of those involved, their actions and hypocrisies. Reagan’s anti-democratic authoritarianism, as is no surprise to anyone, has a lot in common with the current president’s in-many-ways-similar program, and Drew’s piece often felt both bizarrely contemporary and also old-fashioned, since the constitutional scandals are now far less hidden, if roughly equal in their egregiousness. I covered Drew on the Democratic primaries of a decade earlier; this was a better-written piece, and its lessons are not outmoded and, if anything, all too familiar.

I spun another one from the same issue, since I’d already covered Drew:

“Two Lemons … and a Peach” by Edith Oliver and Mimi Kramer. (June 22, 1987). Two Whitakers. detective, determined, delightful. A fun way to package theater reviews by two writers together – editors, take note! Oliver is quip-centric; each show gets a long description and a dashed-off dismissal, but somehow Oliver largely conveys the nature of their awfulness before she has to state it. Kramer, whose five years as a theater critic for the magazine came toward the beginning of a distinguished and continuing media career, turns in a rave for a one-act (starring Harris Yulin and Lois Smith – decades later, he’d win a Lortel directing her; he died in June of this year, while she’s still kicking at 95 – and featuring up-and-comer Sarah Jessica Parker) about esoteric New York intellectuals; I can’t quite make out the hook, but Kramer says it’s the best thing she saw all season, and I have a copy of the script waiting for me at the Strand, so I’ll be reporting back. The rest of E.S.T’s festival didn’t work as well for Kramer, but in a heartening contrast to the usual fate of arts orgs, E.S.T. is still kicking despite mishaps, major tragedies, and generally long odds; their last one-acts program was in 2022, but perhaps they’re waiting till the time is right for the next one. I saw and quite enjoyed one of their productions two years ago, and I’m sure I’ll go again soon. It’s always fun to read these old reviews and learn about some random slice of the city’s theater history, plus Kramer’s take is compelling regardless, especially the juxtaposition with the “hypocritical” You Can’t Take it With You: “where the Kaufman and Hart play pretends to bring the audience around to a celebration of nonconformity, it really banks on the fact that we all come into the theatre loving nonconformity anyway.” The new play “relies on the cosmopolitan tact with which we have all learned not to judge people’s actions or behavior and then asks us to do so.” A toast to nonconformity and judging, both.

🥐 Something Extra

I absolutely loved Everything is Here, an elegant, funny, odd little show about a retirement home – not too much sugar. Five fully embodied performances, direction that chose precision over punchline. The moments of opaque theatricality (which I actually found… pretty comprehensible?) seemed to turn off the crowd at my show – one of those awkward “I am the only person standing for the ovation” moments. Anyway… it’s gone now; as usual I’m a bit late.

At the galleries in Chelsea, among a few other things I caught the new Alex Katzes (huge, orange) and the new Jennifer Packers (evasive, tender) and was totally blown away by both. Two of our greatest painters. Both shows now closed; sorry if you missed them.

Sunday Song:

(from the Pitchfork year-end songs list)