My Culture Fix - 06/07/22

The book I'm reading
A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G Summers, a debut by a Victorian literature PhD about a New York restaurant critic and "female psychopath", a psychological phenomenon which she discusses in the first-person narrative, stylised as a sort of prison diary. She's a cannibalistic serial killer, in her early 50s. The book, therefore, is comparable to both American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and Hannibal by Thomas Harris, though in my opinion more interesting/funnier than the former and less pulpy than the latter.
 
The book I wish I had written
Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote. It's the perfect romantic comedy, both romantic and funny without ever being silly or even lightweight.
 
The book I couldn't finish
Those Barren Leaves by Aldous Huxley. It's about a group of people trying to recapture what they suppose was the joy of an earlier time, but are unable to. I had to give it up during an interminable scene of the main character whingeing on and on (and on) about his landlady. I may try it again someday, though, because there did seem to be an irony going on that I might have missed at the time.
 
The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
Any of the six novels by Jane Austen. I've read them in bits and loved what I've read, but have been until fairly recently a very disorganised reader. I recently bought a cheap-and-cheerful set (pictured) which I plan to work through.
 
My favourite film
I have several, but an underrated gem is Pleasantville (1998), starring Tobey Maguire (pre-Spiderman) as a boy who's sucked into the black-and-white world of a '50s TV sitcom, alongside his sister (Reese Witherspoon).
 
My favourite play
4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane, though it's really more a poem than a play. It poses a unique challenge to directors who try to stage it.
 
The last film that made me laugh
The Black Phone. It's generally a very dark horror film, but as I recall there are a couple of moments of neat black comedy.
 
The lyric I wish I’d written
"And oh, I couldn't understand it
For I felt I was rich" - Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Clothes
 
The song that saved me
Disorder by Joy Division. It made me realise that I wasn't alone in my thoughts.
 
If I could own one painting it would be . . .
There's a painting of HP Lovecraft that's seared in my memory, but I can't remember who painted it, nor can I seem to locate it anywhere. I saw it on the internet. It's of Lovecraft shambling through snowy woods at night, in an old cloak like a witch, his face sickly and green. There's a house with a lighted window in the background. The painting's called The Outsider, after one of his short stories. I find it intensely moving, and wish I could find it again.
 
My guiltiest cultural pleasure
Georgette Heyer, maybe. She was a romance novelist, but a really good historical writer as well. As a kid visiting the public library, I was always too embarrassed to get near her books, because they were kept in the romance carousels in the centre of the ground floor. And as a teenage boy, just being seen in the library is embarrassing enough!
 
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these artists and authors . . .
Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Ian Curtis, John Clare, and Robert Lowell, just so they could talk about their respective experiences of mental health issues.
 
. . . and I’ll put on this music . . .
Light jazz. Something artsy but uplifting.
 
The movie I’m looking forward to
Love and Thunder, the new Thor movie, just because it looks like what I think that a comic book film should be: fun and smart and cheesy. I also just need something lighter this weekend, after seeing The Black Phone last Sunday.
 
I wasted an evening watching . . .
Sex and the City 2. I find terrible, corporate trash like that weirdly fascinating, but it certainly didn't enrich my life in any way, beyond making me appreciate how a movie can last 2 and a half hours without having any plot or character development.
 
The film I walked out on
I'm not sure that I've ever walked out on a film. But I should have walked out on that Dukes of Hazzard adaptation with Johnny Knoxville.
 
Overrated . . .
"Literary" fiction in the current year. A Certain Hunger is the first new book I've read that feels like an actual novel, as in it's about something other than the author's desperate need for recognition as an innovator.
 
Underrated . . .
Genre writers. To paraphrase Kingsley Amis, a lot of genre writers are better by any standard than a lot of literary ones. But because literary books are supposedly high art, their writers are the ones who wear "the top-grade laurels".