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A Year in Reading: 2024
Welcome to the 20th (!) installment of The Millions' annual Year in Reading series, which gathers together some of today's most exciting writers and thinkers to share the books that shaped their year. YIR is not a collection of yearend best-of lists; think of it, perhaps, as an assemblage of annotated bibliographies. We've invited contributors to reflect on the books they read this year—an intentionally vague prompt—and encouraged them to approach the assignment however they choose.
In writing about our reading lives, as YIR contributors are asked to do, we inevitably write about our personal lives, our inner lives. This year, a number of contributors read their way through profound grief and serious illness, through new parenthood and cross-country moves. Some found escape in frothy romances, mooring in works of theology, comfort in ancient epic poetry. More than one turned to the wisdom of Ursula K. Le Guin. Many describe a book finding them just when they needed it.
Interpretations of the assignment were wonderfully varied. One contributor, a music critic, considered the musical analogs to the books she read, while another mapped her reads from this year onto constellations. Most people's reading was guided purely by pleasure, or else a desire to better understand events unfolding in their lives or larger the world. Yet others centered their reading around a certain sense of duty: this year one contributor committed to finishing the six Philip Roth novels he had yet to read, an undertaking that he likens to “eating a six-pack of paper towels.” (Lucky for us, he included in his essay his final ranking of Roth's oeuvre.)
The books that populate these essays range widely, though the most commonly noted title this year was Tony Tulathimutte’s story collection Rejection. The work of newly minted National Book Award winner Percival Everett, particularly his acclaimed novel James, was also widely read and written about. And as the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza enters its second year, many contributors sought out Isabella Hammad’s searing, clear-eyed essay Recognizing the Stranger.
Like so many endeavors in our chronically under-resourced literary community, Year in Reading is a labor of love. The Millions is a one-person editorial operation (with an invaluable assist from SEO maven Dani Fishman), and producing YIR—and witnessing the joy it brings contributors and readers alike—has been the highlight of my tenure as editor. I’m profoundly grateful for the generosity of this year’s contributors, whose names and entries will be revealed below over the next three weeks, concluding on Wednesday, December 18. Be sure to subscribe to The Millions’ free newsletter to get the week’s entries sent straight to your inbox each Friday.
—Sophia Stewart, editor
Becca Rothfeld, author of All Things Are Too Small
Carvell Wallace, author of Another Word for Love
Charlotte Shane, author of An Honest Woman
Brianna Di Monda, writer and editor
Nell Irvin Painter, author of I Just Keep Talking
Carrie Courogen, author of Miss May Does Not Exist
Ayşegül Savaş, author of The Anthropologists
Zachary Issenberg, writer
Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection
Ann Powers, author of Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell
Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Reading the Waves
Nicholas Russell, writer and critic
Daniel Saldaña París, author of Planes Flying Over a Monster
Lili Anolik, author of Didion and Babitz
Deborah Ghim, editor
Emily Witt, author of Health and Safety
Nathan Thrall, author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
Lena Moses-Schmitt, author of True Mistakes
Jeremy Gordon, author of See Friendship
John Lee Clark, author of Touch the Future
Ellen Wayland-Smith, author of The Science of Last Things
Edwin Frank, publisher and author of Stranger Than Fiction
Sophia Stewart, editor of The Millions
A Year in Reading Archives: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
The Great Fall 2024 Book Preview
With the arrival of autumn comes a deluge of great books. Here you'll find a sampling of new and forthcoming titles that caught our eye here at The Millions, and that we think might catch yours, too. Some we’ve already perused in galley form; others we’re eager to devour based on their authors, plots, or subject matters. We hope your next fall read is among them.
—Sophia Stewart, editor
October
Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera, tr. Lisa Dillman [F]
What it is: An epic, speculative account of the 18 months that Benito Juárez spent in New Orleans in 1853-54, years before he became the first and only Indigenous president of Mexico.
Who it's for: Fans of speculative history; readers who appreciate the magic that swirls around any novel set in New Orleans. —Claire Kirch
The Black Utopians by Aaron Robertson [NF]
What it is: An exploration of Black Americans' pursuit and visions of utopia—both ideological and physical—that spans the Reconstruction era to the present day and combines history, memoir, and reportage.
Who it's for: Fans of Saidiya Hartman's Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments and Kristen R. Ghodsee's Everyday Utopia. —Sophia M. Stewart
The Third Realm by Karl Ove Knausgaard, tr. Martin Aitken [F]
What it is: The third installment in Knausgaard's Morning Star series, centered on the appearance of a mysterious new star in the skies above Norway.
Who it's for: Real Knausgaard heads only—The Wolves of Eternity and Morning Star are required reading for this one. —SMS
Brown Women Have Everything by Sayantani Dasgupta [NF]
What it is: Essays on the contradictions and complexities of life as an Indian woman in America, probing everything from hair to family to the joys of travel.
Who it's for: Readers of Durga Chew-Bose, Erika L. Sánchez, and Tajja Isen. —SMS
The Plot Against Native America by Bill Vaughn [F]
What it is: The first narrative history of Native American boarding schools— which aimed "civilize" Indigenous children by violently severing them from their culture— and their enduring, horrifying legacy.
Who it's for: Readers of Ned Blackhawk and Kathleen DuVal. —SMS
The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich [F]
What it is: Erdrich's latest novel set in North Dakota's Red River Valley is a tale of the intertwined lives of ordinary people striving to survive and even thrive in their rural community, despite environmental upheavals, the 2008 financial crisis, and other obstacles.
Who it's for: Readers of cli-fi; fans of Linda LeGarde Grover and William Faulkner. —CK
The Position of Spoons by Deborah Levy [NF]
What it is: The second book from Levy in as many years, diverging from a recent streak of surrealist fiction with a collection of essays marked by exceptional observance and style.
Who it's for: Close lookers and the perennially curious. —John H. Maher
The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister [F]
What it's about: The Haddesley family has lived on the same West Virginia bog for centuries, making a supernatural bargain with the land—a generational blood sacrifice—in order to do so—until an uncovered secret changes everything.
Who it's for: Readers of Karen Russell and Jeff VanderMeer; anyone who has ever used the phrase "girl moss." —SMS
The Great When by Alan Moore [F]
What it's about: When an 18-year old book reseller comes across a copy of a book that shouldn’t exist, it threatens to upend not just an already post-war-torn London, but reality as we know it.
Who it's for: Anyone looking for a Sherlock Holmes-style mystery dipped in thaumaturgical psychedelia. —Daniella Fishman
The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates [NF]
What it's about: One of our sharpest critical thinkers on social justice returns to nonfiction, nearly a decade after Between the World and Me, visiting Dakar, to contemplate enslavement and the Middle Passage; Columbia, S.C., as a backdrop for his thoughts on Jim Crow and book bans; and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where he sees contemporary segregation in the treatment of Palestinians.
Who it’s for: Fans of James Baldwin, George Orwell, and Angela Y. Davis; readers of Nikole Hannah-Jones’s The 1619 Project and Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, to name just a few engagements with national and racial identity. —Nathalie op de Beeck
Abortion by Jessica Valenti [NF]
What it is: Columnist and memoirist Valenti, who tracks pro-choice advocacy and attacks on the right to choose in her Substack, channels feminist rage into a guide for freedom of choice advocacy.
Who it’s for: Readers of Robin Marty’s The New Handbook for a Post-Roe America, #ShoutYourAbortion proponents, and followers of Jennifer Baumgartner’s [I Had an Abortion] project. —NodB
Gifted by Suzuki Suzumi, tr. Allison Markin Powell [F]
What it's about: A young sex worker in Tokyo's red-light district muses on her life and recounts her abusive mother's final days, in what is Suzuki's first novel to be translated into English.
Who it's for: Readers of Susan Boyt and Mieko Kanai; fans of moody, introspective fiction; anyone with a fraught relationship to their mother. —SMS
Childish Literature by Alejandro Zambra, tr. Megan McDowell [F]
What it is: A wide-ranging collection of stories, essays, and poems that explore childhood, fatherhood, and family.
Who it's for: Fans of dad lit (see: Lucas Mann's Attachments, Keith Gessen's Raising Raffi, Karl Ove Knausgaard's seasons quartet, et al). —SMS
Books Are Made Out of Books ed. Michael Lynn Crews [NF]
What it is: A mining of the archives of the late Cormac McCarthy with a focus on the famously tight-lipped author's literary influences.
Who it's for: Anyone whose commonplace book contains the words "arquebus," "cordillera," or "vinegaroon." —JHM
Slaveroad by John Edgar Wideman [F]
What it is: A blend of memoir, fiction, and history that charts the "slaveroad" that runs through American history, spanning the Atlantic slave trade to the criminal justice system, from the celebrated author of Brothers and Keepers.
Who it's for: Fans of Clint Smith and Ta-Nehisi Coates. —SMS
Linguaphile by Julie Sedivy [NF]
What it's about: Linguist Sedivy reflects on a life spent loving language—its beauty, its mystery, and the essential role it plays in human existence.
Who it's for: Amateur (or professional) linguists; fans of the podcast A Way with Words (me). —SMS
An Image of My Name Enters America by Lucy Ives [NF]
What it is: A collection of interrelated essays that connect moments from Ives's life to larger questions of history, identity, and national fantasy,
Who it's for: Fans of Ives, one of our weirdest and most wondrous living writers—duh; anyone with a passing interest in My Little Pony, Cold War–era musicals, or The Three Body Problem, all of which are mined here for great effect. —SMS
Women's Hotel by Daniel Lavery [F]
What it is: A novel set in 1960s New York City, about the adventures of the residents of a hotel providing housing for young women that is very much evocative of the real-life legendary Barbizon Hotel.
Who it's for: Readers of Mary McCarthy's The Group and Rona Jaffe's The Best of Everything. —CK
The World in Books by Kenneth C. Davis [NF]
What it is: A guide to 52 of the most influential works of nonfiction ever published, spanning works from Plato to Ida B. Wells, bell hooks to Barbara Ehrenreich, and Sun Tzu to Joan Didion.
Who it's for: Lovers of nonfiction looking to cover their canonical bases. —SMS
Blue Light Hours by Bruna Dantas Lobato [F]
What it's about: Through the emanating blue-glow of their computer screens, a mother and daughter, four-thousand miles apart, find solace and loneliness in their nightly Skype chats in this heartstring-pulling debut.
Who it's for: Someone who needs to be reminded to CALL YOUR MOTHER! —DF
Riding Like the Wind by Iris Jamahl Dunkle [NF]
What it is: The biography of Sanora Babb, a contemporary of John Steinbeck's whose field notes and interviews with Dust Bowl migrants Steinbeck relied upon to write The Grapes of Wrath.
Who it's for: Steinbeck fans and haters alike; readers of Kristin Hannah's The Four Winds and the New York Times Overlooked column; anyone interested in learning more about the Dust Bowl migrants who fled to California hoping for a better life. —CK
Innie Shadows by Olivia M. Coetzee [F]
What it is: a work of crime fiction set on the outskirts of Cape Town, where a community marred by violence seeks justice and connection; also the first novel to be translated from Kaaps, a dialect of Afrikaans that was until recently only a spoken language.
Who it's for: fans of sprawling, socioeconomically-attuned crime dramas a la The Wire. —SMS
Dorothy Parker in Hollywood by Gail Crowther [NF]
What it is: A history of the famous wit—and famous New Yorker—in her L.A. era, post–Algonquin Round Table and mid–Red Scare.
Who it's for: Owners of a stack of hopelessly dog-eared Joan Didion paperbacks. —JHM
The Myth of American Idealism by Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson [NF]
What it is: A potent critique of the ideology behind America's foreign interventions and its status as a global power, and an treatise on how the nation's hubristic pursuit of "spreading democracy" threatens not only the delicate balance of global peace, but the already-declining health of our planet.
Who it's for: Chomskyites; policy wonks and casual critics of American recklessness alike. —DF
Mysticism by Simon Critchley [NF]
What it is: A study of mysticism—defined as an experience, rather than religious practice—by the great British philosopher Critchley, who mines music, poetry, and literature along the way.
Who it's for: Readers of John Gray, Jorge Luis Borges, and Simone Weil. —SMS
Q&A by Adrian Tomine [NF]
What it is: The Japanese American creator of the Optic Nerve comic book series for D&Q, and of many a New Yorker cover, shares his personal history and his creative process in this illustrated unburdening.
Who it’s for: Readers of Tomine’s melancholic, sometimes cringey, and occasionally brutal collections of comics short stories including Summer Blonde, Shortcomings, and Killing and Dying. —NodB
Sonny Boy by Al Pacino [NF]
What it is: Al Pacino's memoir—end of description.
Who it's for: Cinephiles; anyone curious how he's gonna spin fumbling Diane Keaton. —SMS
Seeing Baya by Alice Kaplan [NF]
What it is: The first biography of the enigmatic and largely-forgotten Algerian artist Baya Mahieddine, who first enchanted midcentury Paris as a teenager.
Who it's for: Admirers of Leonora Carrington, Hilma af Klint, Frida Kahlo, and other belatedly-celebrated women painters. —SMS
Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer [F]
What it is: A surprise return to the Area X, the stretch of unforbidding and uncanny coastline in the hit Southern Reach trilogy.
Who it's for: Anyone who's heard this song and got the reference without Googling it. —JHM
The Four Horsemen by Nick Curtola [NF]
What it is: The much-anticipated cookbook from the team behind Brooklyn's hottest restaurant (which also happens to be co-owned by James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem).
Who it's for: Oenophiles; thirty-somethings who live in north Williamsburg (derogatory). —SMS
Seeing Further by Esther Kinsky, tr. Caroline Schmidt [F]
What it's about: An unnamed German woman embarks on the colossal task of reviving a cinema in a small Hungarian village.
Who it's for: Fans of Jenny Erpenbeck; anyone charmed by Cinema Paradiso (not derogatory!). —SMS
Ripcord by Nate Lippens [NF]
What it's about: A novel of class, sex, friendship, and queer intimacy, written in delicious prose and narrated by a gay man adrift in Milwaukee.
Who it's for: Fans of Brontez Purnell, Garth Greenwell, Alexander Chee, and Wayne Koestenbaum. —SMS
The Use of Photography by Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie, tr. Alison L. Strayer [NF]
What it's about: Ernaux's love affair with Marie, a journalist, while she was undergoing treatment for cancer, and their joint project to document their romance.
Who it's for: The Ernaux hive, obviously; readers of Sontag's On Photography and Janet Malcolm's Still Pictures. —SMS
Nora Ephron at the Movies by Ilana Kaplan [NF]
What it is: Kaplan revisits Nora Ephron's cinematic watersheds—Silkwood, Heartburn, When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail, and Sleepless in Seattle—in this illustrated book. Have these iconic stories, and Ephron’s humor, weathered more than 40 years?
Who it’s for: Film history buffs who don’t mind a heteronormative HEA; listeners of the Hot and Bothered podcast; your coastal grandma. —NodB
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The Philosophy of Translation by Damion Searls [NF]
What it is: A meditation on the act and art of translation by one of today's most acclaimed practitioners, best known for his translations of Fosse, Proust, et al.
Who it's for: Regular readers of Words Without Borders and Asymptote; professional and amateur literary translators alike. —SMS
Salvage by Dionne Brand
What it is: A penetrating reevaluation of the British literary canon and the tropes once shaped Brand's reading life and sense of self—and Brand’s first major work of nonfiction since her landmark A Map to the Door of No Return.
Who it's for: Readers of Christina Sharpe's Ordinary Notes and Elizabeth Hardwick's Seduction and Betrayal. —SMS
Masquerade by Mike Fu [F]
What it's about: Housesitting for an artist friend in present-day New York, Meadow Liu stumbles on a novel whose author shares his name—the first of many strange, haunting happenings that lead up to the mysterious disappearance of Meadow's friend.
Who it's for: fans of Ed Park and Alexander Chee. —SMS
November
The Beggar Student by Osamu Dazai, tr. Sam Bett [F]
What it is: A novella in the moody vein of Dazai’s acclaimed No Longer Human, following the 30-something “fictional” Dazai into another misadventure spawned from a hubristic spat with a high schooler.
Who it's for: Longtime readers of Dazai, or new fans who discovered the midcentury Japanese novelist via TikTok and the Bungo Stray Dogs anime. —DF
In Thrall by Jane DeLynn [F]
What it is: A landmark lesbian bildungsroman about 16-year-old Lynn's love affair with her English teacher, originally published in 1982.
Who it's for: Fans of Joanna Russ's On Strike Against God and Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story —SMS
Washita Love Child by Douglas Kent Miller [NF]
What it is: The story of Jesse Ed Davis, the Indigenous musician who became on of the most sought after guitarists of the late '60s and '70s, playing alongside B.B. King, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and more.
Who it's for: readers of music history and/or Indigenous history; fans of Joy Harjo, who wrote the foreword. —SMS
Set My Heart on Fire by Izumi Suzuki, tr. Helen O'Horan [F]
What it is: Gritty, sexy, and wholly rock ’n’ roll, Suzuki’s first novel translated into English (following her story collection, Hit Parade of Tears) follows 20-year-old Izumi navigating life, love, and music in the underground scene in '70s Japan.
Who it's for: Fans of Meiko Kawakami, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Marlowe Granados's Happy Hour. —DF
Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik [NF]
What it is: A dual portrait of Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, who are so often compared to—and pitted against—each other on the basis of their mutual Los Angeles milieu.
Who it's for: Fans or haters of either writer (the book is fairly pro-Babitz, often at Didion's expense); anyone who has the Lit Hub Didion tote bag. —SMS
The Endless Refrain by David Rowell [NF]
What it's about: How the rise of music streaming, demonitizing of artist revenue, and industry tendency toward nostalgia have laid waste to the musical landscape, and the future of music culture.
Who it's for: Fans of Kyle Chayka, Spence Kornhaber, and Lindsay Zoladz. —SMS
Every Arc Bends Its Radian by Sergio De La Pava [F]
What it is: A mind- and genre-bending detective story set in Cali, Colombia, that blends high-stakes suspense with rigorous philosophy.
Who it's for: Readers of Raymond Chandler, Thomas Pynchon, and Jules Verne. —SMS
Something Close to Nothing by Tom Pyun [F]
What it’s about: At the airport with his white husband Jared, awaiting a flight to Cambodia to meet the surrogate mother carrying their adoptive child-to-be, Korean American Wynn decides parenthood isn't for him, and bad behavior ensues.
Who it’s for: Pyun’s debut is calculated to cut through saccharine depictions of queer parenthood—could pair well with Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby. —NodB
Rosenfeld by Maya Kessler [F]
What it is: Kessler's debut—rated R for Rosenfeld—follows one Noa Simmons through the tumultuous and ultimately profound power play that is courting (and having a lot of sex with) the titular older man who soon becomes her boss.
Who it's for: Fans of Sex and the City, Raven Leilani’s Luster, and Coco Mellor’s Cleopatra and Frankenstein. —DF
Lazarus Man by Richard Price [F]
What it is: The former The Wire writer offers yet another astute chronicle of urban life, this time of an ever-changing Harlem.
Who it's for: Fans of Colson Whitehead's Crook Manifesto and Paul Murray's The Bee Sting—and, of course, The Wire. —SMS
Stranger Than Fiction by Edwin Frank [NF]
What it is: An astute curveball of a read on the development and many manifestations of the novel throughout the tumultuous 20th century.
Who it's for: Readers who look at a book's colophon before its title. —JHM
Letters to His Neighbor by Marcel Proust, tr. Lydia Davis
What it is: A collection of Proust’s tormented—and frequently hilarious—letters to his noisy neighbor which, in a diligent translation from Davis, stand the test of time.
Who it's for: Proust lovers; people who live below heavy-steppers. —DF
Context Collapse by Ryan Ruby [NF]
What it is: A self-proclaimed "poem containing a history of poetry," from ancient Greece to the Iowa Workshop, from your favorite literary critic's favorite literary critic.
Who it's for: Anyone who read and admired Ruby's titanic 2022 essay on The Waste Land; lovers of poetry looking for a challenge. —SMS
How Sondheim Can Change Your Life by Richard Schoch [NF]
What it's about: Drama professor Schoch's tribute to Stephen Sondheim and the life lessons to be gleaned from his music.
Who it's for: Sondheim heads, former theater kids, end of list. —SMS
The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer [NF]
What it is: 2022 MacArthur fellow and botanist Kimmerer, an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, (re)introduces audiences to a flowering, fruiting native plant beloved of foragers and gardeners.
Who it’s for: The restoration ecologist in your life, along with anyone who loved Braiding Sweetgrass and needs a nature-themed holiday gift. —NodB
My Heart Belongs in an Empty Big Mac Container Buried Beneath the Ocean Floor by Homeless [F]
What it is: A pseudonymous, tenderly comic novel of blue whales and Golden Arches, mental illness and recovery.
Who it's for: Anyone who finds Thomas Pynchon a bit too staid. —JHM
Yoke and Feather by Jessie van Eerden [NF]
What it's about: Van Eerden's braided essays explore the "everyday sacred" to tease out connections between ancient myth and contemporary life.
Who it's for: Readers of Courtney Zoffness's Spilt Milk and Jeanna Kadlec's Heretic. —SMS
Camp Jeff by Tova Reich [F]
What it's about: A "reeducation" center for sex pests in the Catskills, founded by one Jeffery Epstein (no, not that one), where the dual phenomena of #MeToo and therapyspeak collide.
Who it's for: Fans of Philip Roth and Nathan Englander; cancel culture skeptics. —SMS
Selected Amazon Reviews by Kevin Killian [NF]
What it is: A collection of 16 years of Killian’s funniest, wittiest, and most poetic Amazon reviews, the sheer number of which helped him earn the rarefied “Top 100” and “Hall of Fame” status on the site.
Who it's for: Fans of Wayne Koestenbaum and Dodie Bellamy, who wrote introduction and afterword, respectively; people who actually leave Amazon reviews. —DF
Cher by Cher [NF]
What it is: The first in a two-volume memoir, telling the story of Cher's early life and ascendent career as only she can tell it.
Who it's for: Anyone looking to fill the My Name Is Barbra–sized hole in their heart, or looking for something to tide them over until the Liza memoir drops. —SMS
The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami, tr. Philip Gabriel [F]
What it is: Murakami’s first novel in over six years returns to the high-walled city from his 1985 story "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" with one man's search for his lost love—and, simultaneously, an ode to libraries and literature itself.
Who it's for: Murakami fans who have long awaited his return to fiction. —DF
American Bulk by Emily Mester [NF]
What it's about: Reflecting on what it means to "live life to the fullest," Mester explores the cultural and personal impacts of America’s culture of overconsumption, from Costco hauls to hoarding to diet culture—oh my!
Who it's for: Lovers of sustainability; haters of excess; skeptics of the title essay of Becca Rothfeld's All Things Are Too Small. —DF
The Icon and the Idealist by Stephanie Gorton [NF]
What it is: A compelling look at the rivalry between Margaret Sanger, of Planned Parenthood fame, and Mary Ware Dennett, who each held radically different visions for the future of birth control.
Who it's for: Readers of Amy Sohn's The Man Who Hated Women and Katherine Turk's The Women of NOW; anyone interested in the history of reproductive rights. —SMS
December
Rental House by Weike Wang [F]
What it's about: Married college sweethearts invite their drastically different families on a Cape Code vacation, raising questions about marriage, intimacy, and kinship.
Who it's for: Fans of Wang's trademark wit and sly humor (see: Joan Is Okay and Chemistry); anyone with an in-law problem.
Woo Woo by Ella Baxter [F]
What it's about: A neurotic conceptual artist loses her shit in the months leading up to an exhibition that she hopes will be her big breakout, poking fun at the tropes of the "art monster" and the "woman of the verge" in one fell, stylish swoop.
Who it's for: Readers of Sheena Patel's I'm a Fan and Chris Kraus's I Love Dick; any woman who is grateful to but now also sort of begrudges Jenny Offil for introducing "art monster" into the lexicon (me). —SMS
Berlin Atomized by Julia Kornberg, tr. Jack Rockwell and Julia Kornberg [F]
What it's about: Spanning 2001 to 2034, three Jewish and downwardly mobile siblings come of age in various corners of the world against the backdrop of global crisis.
Who it's for: Fans of Catherine Lacey's Biography of X and Joshua Cohen's The Netanyahus. —SMS
Sand-Catcher by Omar Khalifah, tr. Barbara Romaine [F]
What it is: A suspenseful, dark satire of memory and nation, in which four young Palestinian journalists at a Jordanian newspaper are assigned to interview an elderly witness to the Nakba, the violent 1948 expulsion of native Palestinians from Israel—but to their surprise, the survivor doesn’t want to rehash his trauma for the media.
Who it’s for: Anyone looking insight—tinged with grim humor—into the years leading up to the present political crisis in the Middle East and the decades-long goal of Palestinian autonomy. —NodB
The Shutouts by Gabrielle Korn [F]
What it's about: In the dystopian future, mysteriously connected women fight to survive on the margins of society amid worsening climate collapse.
Who it's for: Fans of Korn's Yours for the Taking, which takes place in the same universe; readers of Becky Chambers and queer-inflected sci-fi. —SMS
What in Me Is Dark by Orlando Reade [NF]
What it's about: The enduring, evolving influence of Milton's Paradise Lost on political history—and particularly on the work of 12 revolutionary readers, including Malcom X and Hannah Arendt.
Who it's for: English majors and fans of Ryan Ruby and Sarah Bakewell—but I repeat myself. —SMS
The Afterlife Is Letting Go by Brandon Shimoda [NF]
What it's about: Shimoda researches the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII, and speaks with descendants of those imprisoned, for this essay collection about the “afterlife” of cruelty and xenophobia in the U.S.
Who it’s for: Anyone to ever visit a monument, museum, or designated site of hallowed ground where traumatic events have taken place. —NodB
No Place to Bury the Dead by Karina Sainz Borgo, tr. Elizabeth Bryer [F]
What it's about: When Angustias Romero loses both her children while fleeing a mysterious disease in her unnamed Latin American country, she finds herself in a surreal, purgatorial borderland where she's soon caught in a power struggle.
Who it's for: Fans of Maríana Enriquez and Mohsin Hamid. —SMS
The Rest Is Silence by Augusto Monterroso, tr. Aaron Kerner [F]
What it is: The author of some of the shortest, and tightest, stories in Latin American literature goes long with a metafictional skewering of literary criticism in his only novel.
Who it's for: Anyone who prefers the term "palm-of-the-hand stories" to "flash fiction." —JHM
Tali Girls by Siamak Herawi, tr. Sara Khalili [F]
What it is: An intimate, harrowing, and vital look at the lives of girls and women in an Afghan mountain village under Taliban rule, based on true stories.
Who it's for: Readers of Nadia Hashimi, Akwaeke Emezi, and Maria Stepanova. —SMS
Sun City by Tove Jansson, tr. Thomas Teal [F]
What it's about: During her travels through the U.S. in the 1970s, Jansson became interested in the retirement home as a peculiarly American institution—here, she imagines the tightly knit community within one of them.
Who it's for: Fans of Jansson's other fiction for adults, much of which explores the lives of elderly folks; anyone who watched that documentary about The Villages in Florida. —SMS
Editor's note: We're always looking to make our seasonal book previews more useful to the readers, writers, and critics they're meant to serve. Got an idea for how we can improve our coverage? Tell me about it at sophia@themillions.com.
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It’s Not You, It’s Us: Apartment Hunting in Brooklyn
1.
What you do when apartment hunting online, and what a lot of people do, I imagine, is you plug in your preferred neighborhood/price range/amenities/etc., and then out pops a long list of results that you further refine by imagining a very specific and very fictionalized narrative involving a version of yourself that isn’t necessarily true right now but could be true if you lived in apartment X. No, you’ve never wielded a wrench for any longer than the time it takes to pass it to your dad, but why couldn't you fix a fixer-upper? Or be the kind of person to share one bathroom with six other roommates? Or live with a Ukrainian family that’s gone for five months out of the year, but whose kids you’re expected to babysit as per your new rental agreement?
I asked myself these questions a few weeks after my girlfriend came home one night (while I was sautéing garlic shrimp in our L.A. apartment) and told me that it was over. We’d lived together for 10 years in eight different apartments on two separate coasts, and although she said that it might not feel like it right now, this was going to be a good thing. She said that now, I’d finally be able to move back to the city I loved: New York.
2.
Returning home to your parents' house after a breakup is a little bit like crawling back into the womb 30 years after you’re born: it’s kind of embarrassing and unpleasant for everyone involved, but once you get settled it’s really not that bad. Mom turned into a kind of gastronomic DJ, taking nightly requests and cooking up a few of her greatest hits, while dad hovered around my bedroom and offered sage advice like, “We never really thought you guys were all that compatible to begin with,” and “When do you think you’ll start looking for your own place?” -- which is around the time I happened to stumble across a 2-bedroom townhouse in Park Slope for $900 a month. It had crown moldings and vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows above the doors. It was the first place I found where you didn’t have to superimpose better versions of yourself onto the provided pictures. You could be mediocre at best, or even obnoxious, and still take full advantage of that atrium overlooking the backyard. So I emailed the owner and got this reply:
Dear David
I thank you for your interest in my house and assure you that I and my daughter from London who has lived there for 10 years with me love it as much as you will. Rest assured that it is in excellent condition and that included in the price are heat, hot water, cable, central air and free Wi-Fi! However, there is one thing you should know before I can rent to you my daughter’s apartment, whose name is Rosemary, and has been sick in the hospital with a very rare illness...
The letter went on like that for a few more paragraphs, explaining that the money was needed up front in order to secure both the apartment and, conveniently, to help cover the cost of Rosemary’s hospital bills.
Having been living at home I’d had the opportunity to catch up on a few movies I’d been meaning to watch, namely Captain Phillips on DVD, and I couldn’t help but imagine a gaunt, Somali man sitting in the pirate’s equivalent of an Internet café. I wondered if these sorts of schemes ever worked and if so on whom?
“Hey Dad,” I said. “Check out this amazing apartment I just found.”
After reading the letter my Dad looked up and raised his eyebrows like wire-transferring $900 U.S. into Mrs. Potter’s Western Union account was something I might want to consider.
“I mean it’s sad,” he said, “that her daughter has cancer of the meninges, but David: You’d be a fool to walk away from that price.”
My sister said that in her experience, you couldn’t really rent a Brooklyn apartment if you weren’t already living in Brooklyn and that yes, it was a catch-22, but that was why so many couples were prematurely moving in with each other and inevitably breaking up, and then being forced to live with their exes while trying to find another place, which was exactly the situation my sister was in now. She said that if I didn’t mind a little awkwardness with regard to her ex boyfriend occasionally stopping by, I was more than welcome to sleep on her couch. Also, she said she’d been thinking a lot about our similar situations and, at least financially, didn’t it make sense if we lived together?
It did. And we’d actually done this for six weeks once before when she was living in Chelsea and I was in college. We got into a fight one night and Lauren ended up throwing my books out her 7th-story window and I ended up trawling the streets of SoHo at 3:00 in the morning hoping that something bad but-not-too-bad would happen to me so that she’d be riddled with a lifetime of guilt and regret. But we were older now. We were more mature. We had learned from out past mistakes and we could -- no, we would -- live together.
So I showed her a place I’d found online with tin ceilings and exposed brick walls I thought she’d like, and a stand-up Jacuzzi that later, she’d tell me, looked like it belonged on a porn set.
“Do you think it's a Somali scam?” she asked (apparently she had also just watched Captain Phillips on DVD).
“Maybe it’s like a gem,” I said.
“Maybe it’s a scam and we’re going to get murdered when we show up,” she said.
“It’s on 9th Street,” I said. “Ninth Street is super-busy. You can’t get murdered on 9th Street, I don’t think.” “Don’t bring your financials,” she said. “And don’t bring cash. What’s this person’s name?”
“Who?”
“The person we’re going to meet before we get mugged.”
“Hana,” I said.
“Hana what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well can’t you find out?”
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
“Because that’s weird,” I said. “I’m not going to ask her what her last name is. She sounds nice and I thinks she’s a real person and I don’t want her to think that we’re weird.”
“Dave,” my sister said. “You’re my brother. And we’re about to go look at a porn set to see if we want to live there.”
3.
When I met Lauren outside of the apartment she hugged me and asked if I was ready to get gang-banged.
Hana showed up a few minutes later and to our relief, she was not a Somali pirate at all. She was from Croatia, I think, or somewhere vaguely Slavic where people have high cheekbones and long, blonde hair. I wondered if she was looking for a roommate and if she’d ever tried garlic shrimp before.
We followed her up a quickly sketched staircase and inside where it looked exactly like the photos except smaller. Smaller exposed cooling ducts, smaller tin ceilings, and smaller porn vibes.
“There’s a urinal in the bathroom,” my sister pointed out.
“Yes,” Hana told us. “This is very unique to this apartment. No other apartment has urinal like this.”
I walked into the bathroom and my sister nodded at the stand-up Jacuzzi. Later she would tell me that it reminded her of a Winnebago shower, or a shower where “murders happen.”
“Do you have the dimensions of this room?” Lauren asked, standing in the smaller of the two bedrooms.
I looked at Hana who was shaking her head. She was so cute, Hana. So pretty and nice. I probably would’ve fallen in love with anyone if they promised not to leave me after ten years. Talking out of the side of her mouth she said, “I don’t know exactly, but I’m about four feet this way?” She spread her arms and touched her fingers against one wall and then, to our delight, she began to spiral in lazy circles across the length of the room. I didn’t know if we were supposed to clap when she was finished, but a few mental calculations later and she announced that the whole thing was maybe eight feet by six?
“Perfect!” I said.
I wondered if Hana measured everything like this, or just apartments. I guessed that she was probably my age. Did she have a boyfriend? It would be weird to ask. She mentioned something about living in Queens. I could probably live in Queens. I could live anywhere so long as my apartment was measured in pirouettes and tour jetes.
Lauren widened her eyes.
“Can we come back tomorrow and take some measurements?” I asked. It would be like a second date.
4.
“So? Well? What did you think?”
“What did you think?” my sister said when we were outside, walking.
“Beautiful,” I said. “A little foreign, but I really loved it.”
“What about the urinal in the bathroom?”
“It’s unique,” I said.
“Also, did you notice that there were speakers in the walls? And how there were wires draped all over the floors? And how you couldn’t open that one closet? And the lights in the hallway were blue? Why were they blue? I felt like I was at a nightclub.”
“Huh,” I said. “I didn’t notice.” I pictured inviting Hana over for some clubbing when my sister was out.
“I think we’d get murdered in that bathroom,” Lauren said, and then she shook her head. “I’m really sorry, Dave. I don’t think I can picture myself living there.”
She said that she was already in talks with another real estate agency and that I was kind of on my own now, so I texted Hana and told her I couldn’t meet her for measurements. At least I was breaking it off with her instead of the other way around.
5.
The next afternoon my Nike Fuelband said that I had already walked 15 miles. I ruptured something along the top of my foot because of the 10-year-old Pumas Mom told me not to wear, and then I drank 2 liters of coconut water in order to rehydrate, only to find out afterwards that coconut water can be a really powerful laxative for some people -- but I’m getting ahead of myself.
It was 2:30 when I limped into the real estate agency that had a dusty neon sign out front that was only partially lit. Inside it smelled like burnt coffee, but coffee that had pockets of morning breath in it that I kept accidentally walking into and then, like a tired boxer, weaving away from long after I’d already been hit.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Hello,” a voice said.
Someone, about my age with slicked back hair and an expression that can only be described as dripping, pulled open a room divider that I’m almost positive was his bed sheet. He shook my hand, introducing himself as Anthony and then offered me a seat long after I’d already taken one. He looked sad, Anthony did, like he hadn’t rented an apartment in months, and he kept glancing over his shoulder at a fish tank that had a plastic model of Manhattan’s skyline in it, but no discernable fish. I wanted to help him out, to make him happier, and he said he wanted to help me too, so we agreed to meet somewhere on the other side of town where he told me he had a place that was exactly what I was looking for.
He pulled up in a silver Town Car and sat in the driver’s seat for a really long time. He looked sadder than he did before, and occasionally we’d catch each other’s eye in the rearview mirror and I’d smile at him and he’d look away like he hadn’t seen me. He was shuffling papers and giving off the impression that he was very busy; so I tried to look busy too, fake scrolling on my iPhone, whose battery had just died.
Eventually he got out of his car, crossed the street, and handed me a clipboard.
“What’s this?”
“You have to sign it,” he said. “It’s company policy.”
“What for?”
“Because we’re walking into an occupied residence and this states that you’re not going to take anything.”
“What would I take?” I asked.
Anthony looked at me like he was going to slit his wrists.
“You’d be surprised,” he said.
The address of the apartment he was going to show me was three streets and one avenue away from the address that he told me to meet him at, and I felt like he was leading me to some Batcave that only he knew about. I wondered if he ever blindfolded his clients, or spun them around in circles, or threatened their family if they talked, but he didn’t talk much, he just lumbered forward, sighing heavily every couple of blocks. I wanted to ask Anthony questions like why was he sadder than before? And wasn’t it nice to get outside? And what was he doing in his Lincoln town car that whole time? But he was stopping in front of an apartment across the street from a cemetery now and pulling out a ring of keys.
“All right,” he said. “You ready?”
6.
The hallway was barely wider than shoulder width and when we reached the top of a long, narrow staircase, Anthony knocked on a door and then took a few steps back. He was sweating so I smiled and said something stupid like, “Hot, huh?”, which made him visually sadder.
Was this the apartment I was going to get murdered in? Would Anthony murder me? Or would he try to help me if I was getting murdered? I’m not sure that I would help him, honestly. I think I might offer some advice over my shoulder as I was running away like, “Stay positive,” or “Thank you for all your help.”
He opened the door and we walked into the kitchen where there were two twin redheads sitting on a blow-up chair in the corner of the room.
“Oh -- hello,” I said.
“Hi,” they said in unison.
“This is the kitchen,” Anthony said. “Pretty good size. Decent refrigerator. Good space all around.”
I nodded, wondering why there were redheads in blow-up chairs, and if this was what Anthony had been so upset about. I felt that on the one hand if I looked at them directly, they might lunge at me, but if I didn’t look at them they would do something worse, so I spent the whole time pretending to be impressed by things I wasn’t actually impressed by, like how the windows opened almost all the way, and how there was very little water-damage under the sink, and how the smoke detector was actually a smoke detector/carbon monoxide detector, while secretly I was watching them in my periphery.
It must have been 80 degrees outside and 95 in here. Anthony was sweating. The redheads were sweating. I was sweating.
“How do you guys like living here?” I asked, figuring that if I kept them talking it would be harder for them to sneak up on me.
“Good,” one of them said.
“Nice,” said the other.
I remembered seeing something on an episode of Oprah once about how prisoners that appealed to their captor’s humanity had the greatest chance of escape so I told them that I was just getting out of a 10-year relationship and then followed Anthony into the bedroom. The only reason I knew it was the bedroom was because there was a blow up mattress on the floor. Later, I’d realize that the twins’ penchant for inflatable furniture had nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with that narrow hallway we ascended when we first walked in. Real furniture was not an option in this junior 1-bedroom apartment that was across the street from a cemetery.
I couldn’t really picture myself living here. But I tried anyway. I had a premonition of standing in the middle of a pretty-decent sized kitchen, sautéing garlic shrimp for my blow-up girlfriend.
“Here’s the bathroom,” Anthony said, opening the shower. The tiles were covered in scum and there was a sizable puff of red hair clogging the drain.
“Want to see the basement?”
I shook my head.
“Decent-sized storage,” he said.
I shook my head again and we left.
7.
Outside, Anthony wanted to know what I thought of the place, so I lied and said that I thought it was really nice, which made him smile. He told me to put down a deposit to make sure that nobody else took it and I lied again and said that I would, and then told him the truth, and said that I had to go.
My next appointment was conveniently located within walking distance from the cemetery, and although I felt my stomach lurching, I figured it was just residual fear.
I was going to meet Kiki, a 30-year-old nurse-in-training who had complimented me so many times in her reply email, I almost didn’t care what her apartment looked like.
When I got there two girls were sitting on Kiki’s stoop.
“Kiki?” I asked.
The first girl shook her head and explained that they were waiting for Kiki also.
“Ah, double-booked,” I said, trying to make small talk.
The girl who was talking to me, and who was now touching my shoulders a lot, looked exactly like the actress Lindsay Lohan if Lindsay Lohan got stung by bees. Her quieter, larger counterpart, who I nicknamed Silent Bobbie, said nothing at all -- didn’t even look up -- she was too busy being engrossed with The Simpson’s game on her phone.
“If worst comes to worst,” Lindsay said, “we might have to arm wrestle you for the place.”
I smiled.
“Or mud wrestle,” she said.
I smiled again.
“Or we could have a dance off,” she said. “Or a staring contest.” She widened her eyes, and put her face close to mine, so I laughed uncomfortably, hoping to concede defeat.
“So what do you guys do?” I asked.
“Oh, we’re comedians,” Lindsay said.
The whole time we were talking, Lindsay kept touching my shoulders and chest and telling me things about myself that I already knew like how I was wearing a button down shirt, and how my hair had some product in it but not a lot, and that my sunglasses were aviators. I felt more self-conscious than flattered, really, and spent the whole time scanning the street for signs of Kiki.
When she finally showed up she was wearing an all-spandex outfit and carrying a rolled-up Yoga matt under one arm and walking a black lab, whose name, she said, was Goose.
“Hi Goose,” the girls sang, dropping to their knees and scratching Goose’s ears and rubbing Goose’s belly.
Silent Bobbie, who had said nothing up until this point, was now telling Kiki how much she loved dogs and Lindsay was saying, “I don’t love all dogs but I really love this one!”
I couldn’t believe it. I was being thrown under the proverbial bus. We hadn’t even set foot into the apartment and already we were elbow deep in mud pits.
“I like dogs too,” I heard myself say.
I squeezed between the two of them and got down on Goose’s level and started petting her head at the exact moment Kiki stopped watching me.
“So let me give you the grand tour,” she said. “Come on Goose!”
“He’s licking me so much I don’t know if he wants to go,” I laughed.
8.
I hated the thought of living with Kiki -- couldn’t imagine doing it -- the whole place was dark and cluttered and she’d turned her living room into a makeshift bedroom where she said that she and her boyfriend spent most of their time. Still though, a certain part of me wanted her approval. I wanted her to pick me over Laurel and Hardy over there. I wanted to win at apartments -- to be crowned the Reigning King of Roommates.
Maybe I was looking at it the wrong way. Maybe Kiki and her boyfriend and Goose and I could snuggle up on their makeshift bed and watch Saturday morning cartoons. Had I told her that I could cook? I could make Sunday brunch for everyone! I could over-function like I had in my last relationship. Under special talents on my imagined resume I could write: will consider indentured servitude.
As I was leaving, I couldn’t help but remember what my ex-girlfriend said during those last few weeks when we were breaking up.
“It’s not you,” she told me. “It's us.”
9.
My last interview was with an incredibly soft-spoken girl named Sara who had the odd and distracting habit of rolling her eyes back into her head and fluttering her eyelids whenever she spoke. She arrived at the front door barefoot and braless under a blue cotton dress, and was so quiet, it should be pointed out, that the sounds my stomach was now making, occasionally drowned her out.
I, by contrast, felt like I was yelling at her, that my every movement was taking place at hyper-speed, and that I was giving her the impression that I was so ecstatic about this closet-sized bedroom she was showing me, I might induce in her a seizure or a stroke. She said that we could move all of the cleaning supplies off of that shelf in my would-be bedroom, and that I could sometimes use the living room, but most of the time she’d prefer that I make myself scarce. Also, she said, the rent was $1,300 a month.
“Do you maybe want to sit down and talk about some of your interests and what you like to do and maybe what you expect out of me as your roommate?” she asked.
My stomach made a sound like it was going to the bathroom inside of itself, and then I don’t remember much after that. It happened in bits and pieces, really: me doubling over on the F train and running down Atlantic Avenue and tumbling into my sister’s apartment, past her living room and into her bathroom, where I sat down for the first time all day. I checked my phone for any new emails.
Dear Dave,
You seemed like a really great guy but unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to work. All the best in finding someone. Sara.
10.
The place that I eventually settled on was a clean, well-lit studio off of 5th Ave, about the size and shape of a small rectangle. The girl that showed it to me texted me before I came over to say that her friend was visiting from out of town and that they’d had, “A really rough night,” the night before. I asked her what time we could meet after 12:00 and she said, “Sounds great!”
“1:30?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “240 7th Street.”
I figure that if I ever get a chance to tell my ex-girlfriend about my new apartment, I’m going to be honest with her. I’ll say that it’s better than the first two places we moved into when we were kids, but that it can’t compare to some of The Greats we ended up living in together while we were growing up. Dad mentioned on the phone the other day that I didn’t have to worry about rolling out of bed and stumbling into the bathroom anymore; now I could just roll and go. But all of my books are within arm’s reach, and whenever my neighbors throw a party in their backyard, I can’t help but sit in my window and pretend like I was invited. I’ll say all of this, but I’ll also say that I like it, because I do. I’ll say that like a lot of New York apartments, mine is decidedly small: wherever I go, I’m already there.
Image Credit: LPW
Based on a True Story: The Fiction-Free Finalists for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar
There are, for my money, only two worthwhile moments in that perennial PR orgy known as the Academy Awards. The first comes when actresses prance down the red carpet in their vomitous million-dollar get-ups and an interviewer poses that weirdest of questions, "Who are you wearing?" The second moment comes when writers, who spend 364 days at the bottom of the Hollywood food chain, get to belly up ever so briefly to the big banquet table. The Oscar for Adapted Screenplay is almost enough to convince me that the horror stories are untrue. Some people in Hollywood actually do read.
In years past, the works of a galaxy of gifted novelists have inspired Oscar-winning screenplays. They include Edna Ferber, Louisa May Alcott, Margaret Mitchell, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, James Jones, Jules Verne, Harper Lee, Henry Fielding, Boris Pasternak, Mario Puzo (twice), Ken Kesey, Lillian Hellman, Larry McMurtry, E.M. Forster (twice), Jane Austen, James Ellroy, John Irving, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Cormac McCarthy.
This year, alas, the source material in the Adapted Screenplay category is immaculately fiction-free. This year all five finalists turned for inspiration to non-fiction -- memoirs, reportage, even earlier screenplays. The reason, I suspect, is that writing an adapted screenplay is an act of alchemy. Essentially it's the act -- the art? -- of transmuting ink on paper into gold on the screen. It's a maddening thing to try to do, which is why the five most magical little words in Hollywood are Based on a true story.
The key words here are "based" and "true." "Based" gives the filmmakers a few acres of wiggle room, freedom to massage the truth to their artistic and commercial ends. And "true" stories, in both books and movies, are usually easier to write, make, and sell. They're also less likely to dazzle and amaze -- effects that are achieved, more often than not, by an imagination that's off the leash. Which is to say a novelist's imagination.
This year's five nominees for the Best Adapted Screenplay spring from material that varies widely in tone and quality. This source material is not all bad, by any stretch. But there isn't the handiwork of an untethered imagination in the pack:
Before Midnight
This is the contender with the thinnest pedigree. Written by its director, Richard Linklater, and its two stars, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, it's the third installment in the ongoing 20-year romance between two adorable bohemians named Celine and Jesse. Under the Academy's arcane rules, sequels count as adaptations because they're based on previously published material, namely earlier screenplays. The dialog once again has a breezy, improvised feel, but the writers insist that what's on the screen hewed strictly to a taut script. "You can't cut things out of this screenplay," Delpy said. Maybe not, but as adaptations go, it's all a tick too inside-baseball for me. Maybe the Academy needs a new category for Perpetually Evolving Screenplay.
The Wolf of Wall Street
Terence Winter's script for this Martin Scorsese film was inspired by a memoir by Jordan Belfort, a kid from Queens who made millions running a shady stock brokerage, lived a life of excess that would have made most Roman emperors quail, then crashed and burned and went to prison. Belfort's memoir exhibits an appreciation for the cost of luxury goods that puts him in a league with Balzac. He lives on a diet of Quaaludes, cocaine, Xanax, and adrenaline, and he wears an $18,000 gold watch, walks on $120,000 Edward Fields carpets, pays his chambermaid $70,000 a year and his chauffeur $60,000. But there's no mistaking Belfort's prose for Balzac's. Here's Belfort walking across the trading room floor, listening to his salesmen bark into their telephones:
Fuck this and fuck that! Shit here and shit there! It was the language of Wall Street. It was the essence of the mighty roar, and it cut through everything. It intoxicated you. It seduced you! It fucking liberated you! It helped you achieve goals you never dreamed yourself capable of! And it swept everyone away, especially me.
(Full disclosure: This is not only the language of Wall Street. I once worked in a similar bucketshop in Los Angeles, selling oil leases in Oklahoma that, for all I knew, didn't even exist. The things my fellow brokers and I barked into our telephones were echoes of Belfort's mighty roar.)
Winter's script for Wolf came in at a hefty 150 pages, well above the 100-or-so-page average. (A rule of thumb is that each page of a script translates to one minute of screen time.) The bloat of the writing shows: the movie runs, at full throttle, for three hours. But in this case bloat is not a dirty word. This is, after all, a story about success and excess, American-style, and Winter and Scorsese decided wisely to leave restraint off the menu. As Winter told an interviewer, "Very early on, we just said, 'We're just going to go for this, 100 percent, the whole way.'" And that's precisely what they did. Thanks to some superb performances, especially by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, the sheer foamy hog-wallow exuberance of this lifestyle becomes both humorous and strangely joyous, almost admirable. We all dream of throwing the rules of decorum and decency out the window, but these guys, for a brief glorious bawdy moment, actually went ahead and did it.
12 Years a Slave
John Ridley spent four years turning Solomon Northup's 1853 memoir into a screenplay. It came in fat, too, at 157 pages, much of it lifted directly from Northup's account of living as a free black man in upstate New York before getting kidnapped in Washington, D.C., then sold into slavery in the Deep South. I'm guessing that this screenplay will win the Oscar because the only thing Hollywood loves more than those five magic little words is a story that allows a movie to ascend to the high moral ground. Some dragons are irresistible to Hollywood, such as the Holocaust, racism, big government, terrorists, pirates, the gun lobby, big pharma and, now, slavery. But there is a dark little problem at the heart of this noble exercise. Ridley's script is built on an appeal to counterfeit outrage: It asks us to feel bad for Solomon Northup because of the scalding injustice of having his freedom yanked away from him. But is his condition more appalling than the condition of his fellow slaves, fresh off the boat from Africa? This movie wants to say yes, but I say no. There is no way to calibrate pure evil. It is seamless, implacable. The high moral ground, it turns out, can be a slippery place.
Philomena
Martin Sixsmith has worked as a foreign correspondent with the BBC, a novelist, and a spin doctor for Prime Minister Tony Blair. In 2004 he met an Irishwoman who told him that her mother, Philomena Lee, had given birth to an illegitimate son in 1952 and been forced by Roman Catholic nuns to put the boy up for adoption. Sixsmith began investigating the claim and learned, as he wrote recently in The Daily Mail, that half a dozen convents "continued to send regular parties of so-called orphans to the U.S. for almost two decades. And no wonder -- the trade was a lucrative one." Sixsmith also learned that Philomena and her son spent years looking for each other, but the nuns did nothing to facilitate their reunion. The nuns, according to Sixsmith, regarded unwed mothers as "moral degenerates."
Sixsmith's book, Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search was adapted for the screen by Jeff Pope and the English comedian Steve Coogan (who plays Sixsmith in the movie). The movie adds another wrenching chapter to the Catholic Church's long history of perfidy, and it has reduced audiences to tears. For his part, Coogan told an interviewer that his long career as a comedian left him hungry for something more than laughs. "Acerbic asides don't really feed the soul," he said, adding that the movie is "partly a conversation I'm having, out loud, about challenging my own cynicism."
Captain Phillips
Billy Ray adapted his script from A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea by Richard Phillips with Stephan Talty. The book's subtitle is like one of those trailers that lays out the entire plot of the movie it's trying to sell -- it says it all, which is to say it says way too much. We're back in Dragon Country, this time the baddies being a gang of Somali pirates who board a container ship captained by a solid citizen played by -- who else? -- Tom Hanks, an Everyman who does heroic things. It's a perfectly fine story, and what winds up on the screen is perfectly workmanlike. That's not faint praise, but it's a long way short of glowing.
The message is clear: This year, Hollywood screenwriters need to mix more fiction into their diet.
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