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In Borders, I saw a new English translation of the Tao Te Ching. On the cover, was a blurb from James Frey, stating something along the lines of "This is the best translation of the work that I have ever read."
Liar!
Liar!
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Jan. 15th, 2006 10:02 am
media reviews
I watched Brokeback Mountain last night, and surprisingly, I didn't cry. I think I was distracted by all the hype (even though I don't think it was undeserved) and I kept waiting for certain moments that I got impatient and underwhelmed when they did arrive. Heath Ledger was excellent. A lot of it reminded me of what Ang Lee tried to do in Hulk, in using quiet space to enhance the emotional aspects of particular scenes - but that doesn't work in a comic book world.
Also, the love scenes were totally worth the price of admission.
Project Runway 2 - Daniel V. and Andrae win the Banana Republic challenge, with a dress I could see myself wearing. However, knowing Banana Republic, they will charge $250 for it when it probably only costs $45 to produce, if that. (It will eventually go on sale.) Santino insults the people who are judging his work, and finds himself on the same chopping block as Diana and Marla. How many eye-rolls did you count? I won't miss Marla, but I liked Diana, nerd-girl, and I think she was probably just way too young for the show and in over her head.
For once, the Asians on reality show have not embarrassed me in any way. How is that possible? Chloe's outfit was actually interesting this time, but I hated the fabric she chose for the reversible jacket. And how cute is it whenever she talks about how she's trying to make the cheap fabric look expensive? The girl has seven sisters (ha! she beat my family); she knows how to be resourceful. And because I would totally do that.
Scrubs - my favorite fucking sitcom ever has returned, and there are two episodes each week. Yay! It seems like they went all out this season, as we have a Bruce Lee parody scene where surgeons wear their masks like ninjas with Kung Fu Fighting as the soundtrack. I was laughing my ass off, as they nailed all the cliches perfectly. This is my second favorite episode after the one with Brendan Fraser.
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen - I've been reading this on the train ride to and from work, and it's pissing me off that it took me an entire week to finish this book. Mostly because I expect that short a novel to only take me a day or two to finish. Anyway, I really liked this book, but wow, did I hate the protagonist, Fanny Price, that I was supposed to be rooting for.
Fanny Price has no faults, other than being too gentle. She's moral and easily fatigued and has a lot of passion that is apparent to everyone and that's what they fall in love with - the fact that she feels things exquisitely and she's so damn moral. She's a total Mary Sue and I generally expect better from Austen. Fanny Price gets what she wants in the end, but not because of any real action on her part - it's mostly because everyone else flames out spectacularly that changes other people's mind about Fanny. If we are to believe that Fanny is such a perfect person, then the guy she does wind up with doesn't even really deserve her, as he's a dumbass. Upright, moral, but still a dumbass easily fooled by flirting.
I loved Mary Crawford's character, as she is everything that Fanny Price is not. She becomes a two-dimensional caricature at the end, but for most of the novel, she's charming, manipulative, smart, perceptive, and calculating. She seems to be genuinely nice to Fanny, and thus have a trace of humanity within her, and to care for her suitor, but have a difficult time deciding whether her love or her quest for comfort comes first.
Next up for reading is Sense and Sensibility, which, incidentally, is another Ang Lee movie. Hmm. I think Ang Lee needs to do more Chinese movies. I miss them.
This review of A Million Little Pieces, stolen from Long Story, Short Pier sums up my thoughts on Frey exactly and saves me the trouble of actually reading the damn book:
Frey sums up his entire life in one sentence from p. 351 of this 382-page memoir: "I took money from my parents and I spent it on drugs." Given the simplicity and familiarity of the story, you might wonder what Frey does in the other 381 pages. The story itself is simple: he goes through rehab at an expensive private clinic, with his parents footing the bill. That's it. 400 pages of hanging around a rehab clinic.
...
There they are, the most childish dreams of every little rich white boy: being down with the brothers and the Mafia. The tough guys. The Jazzmen. Having friends with connections in those two equally artificial cities, Vegas and New Orleans.
There, now you know why he couldn't get his book sold as fiction.
Also, the love scenes were totally worth the price of admission.
Project Runway 2 - Daniel V. and Andrae win the Banana Republic challenge, with a dress I could see myself wearing. However, knowing Banana Republic, they will charge $250 for it when it probably only costs $45 to produce, if that. (It will eventually go on sale.) Santino insults the people who are judging his work, and finds himself on the same chopping block as Diana and Marla. How many eye-rolls did you count? I won't miss Marla, but I liked Diana, nerd-girl, and I think she was probably just way too young for the show and in over her head.
For once, the Asians on reality show have not embarrassed me in any way. How is that possible? Chloe's outfit was actually interesting this time, but I hated the fabric she chose for the reversible jacket. And how cute is it whenever she talks about how she's trying to make the cheap fabric look expensive? The girl has seven sisters (ha! she beat my family); she knows how to be resourceful. And because I would totally do that.
Scrubs - my favorite fucking sitcom ever has returned, and there are two episodes each week. Yay! It seems like they went all out this season, as we have a Bruce Lee parody scene where surgeons wear their masks like ninjas with Kung Fu Fighting as the soundtrack. I was laughing my ass off, as they nailed all the cliches perfectly. This is my second favorite episode after the one with Brendan Fraser.
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen - I've been reading this on the train ride to and from work, and it's pissing me off that it took me an entire week to finish this book. Mostly because I expect that short a novel to only take me a day or two to finish. Anyway, I really liked this book, but wow, did I hate the protagonist, Fanny Price, that I was supposed to be rooting for.
Fanny Price has no faults, other than being too gentle. She's moral and easily fatigued and has a lot of passion that is apparent to everyone and that's what they fall in love with - the fact that she feels things exquisitely and she's so damn moral. She's a total Mary Sue and I generally expect better from Austen. Fanny Price gets what she wants in the end, but not because of any real action on her part - it's mostly because everyone else flames out spectacularly that changes other people's mind about Fanny. If we are to believe that Fanny is such a perfect person, then the guy she does wind up with doesn't even really deserve her, as he's a dumbass. Upright, moral, but still a dumbass easily fooled by flirting.
I loved Mary Crawford's character, as she is everything that Fanny Price is not. She becomes a two-dimensional caricature at the end, but for most of the novel, she's charming, manipulative, smart, perceptive, and calculating. She seems to be genuinely nice to Fanny, and thus have a trace of humanity within her, and to care for her suitor, but have a difficult time deciding whether her love or her quest for comfort comes first.
Next up for reading is Sense and Sensibility, which, incidentally, is another Ang Lee movie. Hmm. I think Ang Lee needs to do more Chinese movies. I miss them.
This review of A Million Little Pieces, stolen from Long Story, Short Pier sums up my thoughts on Frey exactly and saves me the trouble of actually reading the damn book:
Frey sums up his entire life in one sentence from p. 351 of this 382-page memoir: "I took money from my parents and I spent it on drugs." Given the simplicity and familiarity of the story, you might wonder what Frey does in the other 381 pages. The story itself is simple: he goes through rehab at an expensive private clinic, with his parents footing the bill. That's it. 400 pages of hanging around a rehab clinic.
...
There they are, the most childish dreams of every little rich white boy: being down with the brothers and the Mafia. The tough guys. The Jazzmen. Having friends with connections in those two equally artificial cities, Vegas and New Orleans.
There, now you know why he couldn't get his book sold as fiction.
Tags:
Jan. 12th, 2006 07:09 pm
against authenticity
I've been following with interest the unmasking of JT Leroy and The Smoking Gun's investigation of James Frey. I have read neither, but as soon as I saw the mug shot of Frey, I thought, holy shit, it's an overgrown frat boy! Criminal my ass.
He reminded me of the kids I met in Seattle, some of whom were older than me, but were still so focused on being the cool hipster who's down with the minorities and the poor people that they forgot they were really overprivileged brats. I would have liked them so much better if they had just been comfortable with themselves, but they seemed pretty hellbent on proving that they were down and real and never letting you forget it. I bet he talked himself into believing the things he wrote. Why be so insecure?
But anyway, so I've been thinking about what these people are trying to get out of lying the way they do, and there's some discussion about how their "authenticity" (or lack thereof) destroys people's enjoyment of their actual writing. But shouldn't the writing speak for itself? If you didn't know the real story, would you find their writing to be as compelling? From what little I've read of Frey's work, I think he wants to be Chuck Palahniuk, but there is only one Palahniuk.
I think I hate "authenticity". I like fake things - I like going shopping, I like visiting tourist spots, I like Disneyland and I like reading about outrageous things that aren't real because they give me an escape from reality. I don't understand everyone else's quest for the nitty-gritty or the fucked-up; to me that only seems like misery. I hate it when people have preconceived notions of what the "real world" should be because I got that lecture all the time when I was a kid, and you know what? Real is banal; it's boring, and there's no better way to escape it than reading some fantasy novel or going somewhere new and exciting.
That isn't to say that I like dumb things, or that I prefer fake things all the time. I just wonder about how obsessed people seem to be with attaining the authority of authenticity that they forget who they really are in the process.
Dammit, where is Mark? I need food.
He reminded me of the kids I met in Seattle, some of whom were older than me, but were still so focused on being the cool hipster who's down with the minorities and the poor people that they forgot they were really overprivileged brats. I would have liked them so much better if they had just been comfortable with themselves, but they seemed pretty hellbent on proving that they were down and real and never letting you forget it. I bet he talked himself into believing the things he wrote. Why be so insecure?
But anyway, so I've been thinking about what these people are trying to get out of lying the way they do, and there's some discussion about how their "authenticity" (or lack thereof) destroys people's enjoyment of their actual writing. But shouldn't the writing speak for itself? If you didn't know the real story, would you find their writing to be as compelling? From what little I've read of Frey's work, I think he wants to be Chuck Palahniuk, but there is only one Palahniuk.
I think I hate "authenticity". I like fake things - I like going shopping, I like visiting tourist spots, I like Disneyland and I like reading about outrageous things that aren't real because they give me an escape from reality. I don't understand everyone else's quest for the nitty-gritty or the fucked-up; to me that only seems like misery. I hate it when people have preconceived notions of what the "real world" should be because I got that lecture all the time when I was a kid, and you know what? Real is banal; it's boring, and there's no better way to escape it than reading some fantasy novel or going somewhere new and exciting.
That isn't to say that I like dumb things, or that I prefer fake things all the time. I just wonder about how obsessed people seem to be with attaining the authority of authenticity that they forget who they really are in the process.
Dammit, where is Mark? I need food.
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