Reading, Watching 05.12.24
The Marriage of Reason and Squalor
This is a regular feature for paid subscribers wherein I write a little bit about what I’ve been reading and/or watching. Hope you enjoy!
This morning, I’ve got for you:
A.S. Hamrah on “corporate nostalgia” films.
Alexander Cocotas on the wacky world of German philosemitism.
Frank Stella explains it all.
Paul Auster, political writer?
But first off, it is my solemn duty to remind you that When The Clock Broke: When The Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s is out in just a little over a month—June 18th. It’s currently available for pre-order online or you can ask your local bookseller to stock it.
Here’s a sample of some of the early press the book has received:
“This book is a whirlwind.” —Bijan Stephen, The Whitney Review of New Writing
"Lively and kaleidoscopic." —Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker
"[A] fascinating shadow story of the 1990s." —Ezra Klein, The Ezra Klein Show
"Lucid and propulsive . . . [When the Clock Broke is] woven throughout with astute analysis of the period’s political commentary . . . Ganz's dry wit is ever-present . . . This is a revelation." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A searching history of a time, not so long ago, when the social contract went out the window and Hobbesian war beset America . . . Ganz makes a convincing, well-documented case that everything old is indeed new again. A significant, provocative work." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
In Fast Company, the incomparable A.S. Hamrah takes a wry look at Jerry Seinfeld’s new film Unfrosted and the wave of “corporate nostalgia” films:
…The films are sold as nostalgic, but is anyone actually nostalgic for any of these things, or for the shameful addictions they engendered? If you lost money investing in Beanie Babies, or if you were inordinately sad when the Blackberry disappeared, these are probably not feelings you want to revisit. In this uniquely unbearable moment in pop culture, in which Hollywood doesn’t know what stories to tell because everything has been degraded by an addiction to the exploitation of intellectual property, turning to the drama of product naming and sales success is comforting most of all to studio executives. Oppenheimer, it should be noted, was the story of a product launch, too. It showed a group of men taking a risk on the biggest bomb in history.
The nostalgia factor is an optical illusion. It’s not atomic destruction we are nostalgic for, nor addicting children to face-smearing goo, finger-coating dust, or Gameboys. It is massive success through licensing and franchising we love and want in on. The bourgeois-to-billionaire class that Jerry Seinfeld is part of doesn’t even go to movies anymore, as he pointed out. To understand why these movies are made we must study the executives who greenlit them, because public taste is no longer reflected in the mass production of culture at this level. How did we get the masses to eat Pop-Tarts? Now there’s a story. And in the case of Unfrosted, one that is not lying about being futzed with, rewritten, fudged, and made up.
In The Baffler, Alexander Cocotas reveals the truly bizarre extent of Germany’s fetishization of the Jews. It has to be read to be believed:
Some years ago, a friend of mine was invited to a Shabbat dinner. The attendees all gave the appearance of being religiously observant. They knew the hymns, the men wore kippot, one even had payot. The hosts insisted that my friend recite the various blessings. Through a chance comment during dinner, he discovered he was the only Jew in attendance. They were Germans who enjoyed enacting Jewish rituals, and wanted a Jew to unwittingly give his blessing.
The great American artist Frank Stella died on May 4. Here is a clip from Emile de Antonio’s 1972 documentary Painter’s Painting of hyper-articulate Stella explaining his work:
Another death: author Paul Auster shuffled off this mortal coil on April 12. When I was young, I was a dedicated reader of Auster. In fact, he was probably one of the first literary authors who I responded that wasn’t shoved down my throat by school or an importuning friend. But I haven’t read an entire Auster novel or memoir in probably ten years or more at this point. When he died, I naturally wanted to return to his work, re-reading The New York Trilogy, but I gotta be real with you: it wasn’t really doing it for me. The combination of accessible, brisk prose, noirish atmosphere, and postmodern plays on identity and meaning used to be what all I wanted, but now I don’t really care to try to bend my brain around the Kafkaesque riddles. When I’m at my most cynical, it can feel like Auster sometimes has just come up with a reliable cocktail: one part Simenon, one part Borges, one part Beckett, stir, serve with a twist, preferably to be enjoyed alone in an empty bar on a rain-soaked night, as you gaze out in the neon reflecting on the wet pavement. That really doesn’t sound bad at all and it’s not bad. In fact, Auster’s relative commercial popularity for a literary author suggests that not that too long ago there was a time when elegance and ingenuity were a little more widely valued. But the whole thing just seems to confuse style and depth sometimes. Not for nothing is Auster wildly popular in France. But does it all mean anything? Ah, this is the question…Well, I kind of don’t care anymore. I’m probably being too grumpy: I will continue to read.